Holocaust Oral History Archive
The Holocaust Oral History Archive is one of the earliest and largest collections of Holocaust testimony in the United States. Established in 1979 by Nora Levin (1916-1989), and maintained by a dedicated volunteer staff, the Archive is one of the earliest Holocaust oral history projects in the U.S. documenting a wide range of experiences during the Nazi era and Jewish life in pre-Nazi Europe. Holdings include interviews with over 900 survivors, rescuers, liberators, and other witnesses to the persecution and extermination of the Nazi era, 1933-1945. Special groupings include the testimonies of "Kindertransport" children sheltered in England, the 1985 Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, the 1991 and 1999 Rickshaw Reunions of Shanghai Survivors, and the Vilna Ghetto Fighters.
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Oral History Interview with Edith Millman
Date:
10/01/1981
Interviewee: Edith Millman
Interviewer: Bernice Zoslaw
Interviewer: Bernice Zoslaw
Edith Millman, nee Greifinger, was born in 1924 in Bielsko (Bielitz), Poland. Father was an executive for Standard Oil Co. In 1937 the family moved to Warsaw. She was injured during the bombardment of the city in September 1939 when bombs hit the building in which they lived. She describes persecuti...
Oral History Interview with Sybil A. Niemöeller
Date:
11/21/1986
Interviewee: Sybil A. Niemöeller
Interviewer: Edith Millman
Interviewer: Edith Millman
Sybil Niemöller (nee von Sell), born in 1923 in Potsdam, Germany, describes growing up in a Gentile, aristocratic Prussian family; her grandfathers, who were Prussian generals; how after World War I her father was appointed by Kaiser Wilhelm to be his financial advisor and administrator; growing up ...
Oral History Interview with Willie Nowak
Date:
05/09/1983
Interviewee: Willie Nowak
Interviewer: Josey G. Fisher
Interviewer: Josey G. Fisher
Willei Nowak, born August 1, 1908 in Berlin, Germany, describes his family of liberal, Austrian Jews; his father, who owned a tobacco factory in Berlin; graduating from a gymnasium in Berlin; selling pharmaceuticals in Brunn, Czechoslovakia (Brno, Czech Republic) from 1935 to 1937; returning to Berl...
Oral History Interview with Vera Otelsberg
Date:
11/06/1989
Interviewee: Vera Otelsberg
Interviewer: Edith Millman
Interviewer: Edith Millman
Vera Otelsberg (née Neuman), born in 1924 in Bielitz (Bielsko-Biala), Poland, describes her wealthy family; her father, who was an industrialist and owned several factories and a mill; her mother, who died when Vera was a young child; being brought up by a nanny; how her family was not religious and...
Oral History Interview with Mirjam Pinkhof
Date:
07/08/1989
Interviewee: Mirjam Pinkhof
Interviewer: Sylvia Brockmon
Interviewer: Sylvia Brockmon
Mirjam Pinkhof, nee Waterman, was born May 12, 1916 in Loodsdrecht, Holland. Her father, an idealistic socialist, left Amsterdam, where he worked in the diamond trade, to found an agricultural training center on a farm in Loodsdrecht in the 1920’s. Her mother once belonged to an agricultural commune...
Oral History Interview with Ernst Presseisen
Date:
04/22/1983
Interviewee: Ernst Presseisen
Interviewer: Elizabeth Geggel
Interviewer: Elizabeth Geggel
Ernst Presseisen was born July 13, 1928 in Rotterdam, Netherlands. His father was a businessman. He describes the German invasion of Holland and the bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940. He details the gradually tightening restrictions imposed by the Germans to isolate the Dutch-Jewish citizens. After r...
Oral History Interview with Mayer Relles
Date:
06/27/1983
Interviewee: Mayer Relles
Interviewer: Ellen Rofman
Interviewer: Ellen Rofman
Rabbi Relles born in Skala, Poland June 2, 1908 lived in Italy from 1933 to 1944. He studied at a university and a rabbinical college. He explains how he managed to remain in Italy as a student. He describes Mussolini’s treatment of Jews and his changing attitude towards Hitler. Even after anti-Jewi...
Oral History Interview with Max Roisman
Date:
04/22/1985
Interviewee: Max Roisman
Interviewer: Bernice Zoslaw
Interviewer: Bernice Zoslaw
Max Roisman was born July 25, 1913 in Warsaw, Poland. In 1939, before the German invasion of Poland, he and his wife left Warsaw to go to Russia. Stopped at the border, he remained in Slawatycze and worked with a local tailor for German SS border guards. Warned by an SS officer, who had made a death...
Oral History Interview with John Sauber
Date:
10/21/1999
Interviewee: John Sauber
Interviewer: Gloria M. Schwartz
Interviewer: Gloria M. Schwartz
John (formerly György/George) Sauber, was born August 14, 1926 in Budapest, Hungary. His family lived in Rakoskeresztur until 1936 when they moved back to Budapest. After 1942 or 1943 food shortages, persecution of Jews, wearing the yellow star, and deportations started. Non-Jewish Hungarians brough...
Oral History Interview with Sarah Schwimmer
Date:
04/22/1985
Interviewee: Sarah Schwimmer
Interviewer: Gladys Bernstein
Interviewer: Gladys Bernstein
Sarah Schwimmer was born in Irsava, Czechoslovakia on August 19, 1926, one of 15 children in an observant Jewish family. Her father was a blacksmith in a largely Jewish community and supported his family until antisemitic Hungarians confiscated his business in 1939 and those of other family members....