Philip Solomon describes serving in the United States Army as part of the 101st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mechanized), which liberated the Landsberg concentration camp on April 28, 1945; his unit’s arrival in Germany in February/March 1945 and their military mission; their lack of knowledge of concentration camps or the scale of mass murder; how their first indication of Nazi horrors occurred after crossing the Rhine, heading east, when his unit captured small towns, liberating displaced persons from forced labor camps (mostly Eastern Europeans); his second indication came when liberating several prisoner of war camps; the ominous experience of finding sealed railroad cars on a siding filled with dead concentration camp victims; his unit stopping on April 28, 1945 near the city Landsberg, Germany waiting for a bridge to be repaired and unaware of the camp 1000 yards away; how a shift in the wind eventually alerted them to the smell and sight of smoke from the camp, where retreating S.S. had just massacred the inmates; his unit finding about 20 starving and ill survivors; the conditions of the camp and his feelings upon seeing the massive piles of bodies, hangings, and other atrocities; how his unit had no food or medical and could only radio for help; being commanded to leave Landsberg after 20 minutes in order to seize and hold a causeway near Munich, Germany; the reactions of the prisoners to liberation and the response of the young soldiers to the experience of witnessing atrocities in the midst of war; his own complex and gradually evolving psychological reaction to the experience; his concern about genocides since World War II; and his faith and pride in his Jewish heritage.
Rita Harmelin (née Brauner), born June 17, 1925 in Bucharest, Romania, describes her Polish-born parents, who returned to Poland in 1931; the family moving to the oil town Boryslaw (now Boryslav, Ukraine); her secular and religious education and interactions with local Poles and Ukrainians; life under the Russian occupation beginning in September 1939; the German invasion of Boryslaw in June 1941; the efforts of local Ukrainians to save Jews; the successive waves of pogroms encouraged by Germans and carried out by local Poles and Ukrainians; a Jewish quarter or ghetto that was established in Boryslaw; the periodic roundups leading to deportation; how Berthold Beitz, a director in the local petrol industry, and Mr. Siegemund rescued many Jews, including Rita from the deportations several times; the gradual increase in restrictions; many Jews working in the Boryslaw petrol industry; the establishment of a forced labor camp in 1943 for the Jewish workers guarded by Ukrainian volunteers; escape attempts by workers; going into hiding with her future husband, Rolek, and 11 others in the home of a local Ukrainian from March to August 7, 1944 when Russian troops arrived and re-occupied Boryslaw; the deportation of her parents before they could accept an offer to hide in a Polish woman's house; her mother’s death in Auschwitz and her father’s survival; how the Jews from Boryslaw being transported to Płaszów, Poland but the final transport in July 1944 went directly to Auschwitz; why resistance was difficult; the attitude of the Polish underground (Armia Krajowa) and most Ukrainians toward Jews; her post-war experiences; returning to Poland; searching for and reuniting with her father in Austria in 1945; smuggling herself in and out of Poland; immigrating with her father to Australia on January 9, 1949 and reuniting with her husband, whom she had married in Austria; her guilt as a survivor and telling her children about her past; life as a Jew in Australia; and examples of acts of humanity and compassion by individual non-Jews (Polish, Ukrainian, and German).
Walter Silberstein, born November 9, 1902 in Stargard, Germany (Poland), describes being the son of the only rabbi serving around Stargard; studying engineering and economics in Berlin and Leipzig; nearly completed his doctorate when his University of Leipzig professors were fired for their political views in 1933; returning to Berlin in 1934 after a brief business venture in Prague, Czech Republic; living with his parents until July 1939 when he left for Shanghai, China without a visa; his voyage on a German luxury liner and the shock of arriving in the Hongkew district of Shanghai during a cholera epidemic; the character of the native and newcomer Jewish communities and the political subdivisions of Shanghai; his parents arriving in 1940 with Japanese visas; his father serving as rabbi to the refugee community; their life after the December 1941 occupation by the Japanese; serving with other Jews, Russians, and Chinese in the Pao Chia as air-raid wardens and ghetto guards in the summer of 1945; leading a contented life between the American liberation on September 6, 1945 and the Communist takeover in 1949; leaving in 1950 with his mother and returning to Germany; living in displaced persons camps at Rhön and Föhrenwald; and arriving in the United States on October 29, 1951. Anna Berenholz (née Bohorochaner), born on June 28, 1924 in Jasiňa, Czechoslovakia (now Yasinia, Ukraine), discusses her life in Budapest, Hungary during the war; her experiences with Raoul Wallenberg; and the underground movement in Budapest. Anne Dore Weidemann-Russell, a non-Jew born in Brandenburg, Germany in 1926, describes going to school from 1933 to 1945 in Brandenburg; her father telling her about the experiences of Germans opposed to Hitler; her uncle being sent to Sachsenhausen; hearing about a Jehovah’s Witness who was imprisoned and later killed for his beliefs; a neighbor who had been a Nazi sympathizer and had a mental breakdown after executing Jews as a soldier on the Eastern Front; Kristallnacht and life in Brandenburg under the Nazis; her father, who was a civil servant, losing his position in 1933 because he was a Social Democrat and belonged to the Socialist Party (SPD); her father’s reasons for opposing the Nazi regime; how her father avoided using the “Heil Hitler” salute and secretly listened to the BBC (British Broadcasting Company); learning to be careful in public because of her father’s beliefs; the local police taking her father into protective custody in July 1944 during a roundup of men suspected of involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler; the behavior of local Nazis near the end of the war; and attending Humbold University in East Berlin and the Free University in West Berlin after the war.
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