Oral Histories:
Wisconsin Survivors of the Holocaust
All Excerpts
Each excerpt features an audio recording and the companion text.
Listen to their stories
Why didn't the Jews in the ghetto fight back?
- Rosa Katz
A young woman escapes from the Warsaw Ghetto
- Pela Alpert
Living under a rule of silence while hiding in Holland
- Herb DeLevie
A Polish mother and her baby escape liquidation in 1943
- Chana Comins
A female prisoner at Auschwitz kills a guard
- Walter Peltz
A young Dutch woman evades capture by the Gestapo
- Flora Bader
A teenager's Gentile friends turn against him
- Fred Platner
A rabbi recalls Kristallnacht in Berlin
- Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky
Rescued from death's door at Bergen-Belsen
- Magda Herzberger
A survivor's kindergartener comes home in tears
- Cyla Stundel
Two Czech brothers reunite after the war
- Louis Koplin
A survivor immigrates after nine years in Holland
- Flora Bader
A Polish survivor stands up to neo-Nazis in Milwaukee
- Cyla Stundel
Dachau prisoners destined for massacre are freed
- Israel Wolnerman
Witnessing pandemonium at the Theresienstadt liberation
- Henry Golde
Unrestrained freedom for a group of survivors
- Salvator Moshe
Why resistance was futile in the camps
- Harry Gordon
Suffering as a form of resistance
- Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky
Witnessing the torture of prisoners caught trying to escape
- Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky
Forced laborers break away from a Polish labor camp
- Fred Platner
A rabbi escapes to Switzerland in 1944
- Rabbi Mayer Relles
A Polish man's final goodbye to his sister
- Walter Peltz
Living conditions in the ghetto in Cluj, Romania
- Magda Herzberger
Trying to stay kosher in the Lodz Ghetto
- Rosa Katz
Jewish hospital burned down by Germans in Lithuania
- Harry Gordon
The massacre of Jews in Maniewicze, Poland
- Cyla Stundel
Witnessing the beginning of Polish Jews persecution
- Walter Peltz
Prejudice against Jews becomes violent in 1930s Poland
- Walter Peltz
Relations between Jews and Gentiles in Holland
- Flora Bader
Attitudes of German Jews toward their homeland
- Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky
The anticipation of Jewish holidays and tradition
- Cyla Stundel
School days in 1920s Poland
- Pela Alpert
Childhood memories of Jewish traditions in 1920s Ukraine
- Cyla Stundel
Visions of dead relatives console a starving Polish woman
- Cyla Stundel
A young Polish mother is protected from Germans
- Chana Comins
That cat is here to stay
- Herb Delevie
An American witnesses Dachau hours after liberation
- William Applegate
Death march to Dachau
- Salvator Moshe
The walking dead
- Henry Golde
Nazis trick the young, old, and sick into extermination lines
- Magda Herzberger
A Romanian teenager arrives at Auschwitz
- Magda Herzberger
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