South Carolina ETV

South Carolina Voices: Lessons from the Holocaust

Descriptions of Videotaped Interviews - Part 1

As mentioned on the home page section to this forum, the interviews vary in length. Excerpts from several of the interviews have been woven into the documentary Seared Souls, which is designed for classroom use.

All the interviews are available for classroom use. However, because of the graphic and intense nature of some of the materials, teachers should screen any material first to insure it is appropriate for their students.

The interviews may be purchased on VHS at Shop ETV.

Below is a brief description of each interview. Along with the person's name is the number to use when ordering a videocassette copy and the length of the interview. The VHS cassette you receive may contain more than one interview. For instance, if you ask for the interview with Leah Starkman, in addition, the tape will contain interviews with Ben Stern and Jadzia Stern.

V77191—Leah Starkman (77 min.)

When the Germans invaded Belgium, Leah Starkman and her family evacuated deep into France where they stayed until her parents were arrested. Later the children were shipped from one house to another—from the Salvation Army to a Jewish Community Center. One little suitcase was always with Leah. She wondered if she'd ever see her parents again and kept asking, "Are my parents alive?" After a severe depression at the age of 12, she heard rumors that "I would be gotten rid of." She was always afraid to say she was Jewish. Finally reunited with her father, she asked, "Where's Mother?" Her father said, "We'll talk about it later," but they never did.

V77191—Ben Stern (101 min.)

Staying in a ghetto in Poland in the early 1940s, Ben Stern's people wore white arm bands with the Star of David to identify themselves as Jews. Food was rationed. In 1943 they were all taken away in cattle cars to extermination camps. Some died on the way. Looking through cracks in the cars, survivors saw signs reading, "Auschwitz." Their every thought was "I am going to a crematorium." Hearing cries and screams, they lost all feeling. According to Stern, "I lost faith." He was a skeleton of 87 lbs. when liberated. Upon arriving in New York in 1949, he was overcome by the Statue of Liberty. "Never have I taken this place for granted." In this interview he says, "I am delighted to tell you this story for introducing into the curriculum of the schools. If we don't educate people, the Holocaust can happen here as in Europe."

V77191—Jadzia Stern (96 min.)

Those born in Poland knew that people in Europe pointed a finger at Jews all the time; some still do today. When the Germans invaded Poland, some Jews fled with Gentiles or underground, but most were moved to a big ghetto farm. Jadzia Stern was sent to an Auschwitz work camp where conditions were awful. Fellow inmates said to her, "Little girl, you're gonna live. And you must tell the world what the Nazis did to us." Three of her family were the only survivors from their town. Today she constantly lives with the thought of the Holocaust, remembering the thick smoke in the skies of Auschwitz where four million people were murdered. "It's hard to live in peace after that. Our world is in bad shape. And it will be even worse unless each of us learns the lesson of the Holocaust well. Since Auschwitz, we know the evil man is capable of."

V77192—Leo Diamanstein (116 min.)

Living in constant fear, the Diamanstein family fled from place to place—to a large Jewish community in Frankfurt; to the apartment of friends in Milan, Italy; to Como, Italy, escaping barefoot in the snow to the other side of the Swiss Alps. Trying to dodge German patrols, they still wound up in a German work camp. When the war ended, they eventually moved to South Carolina where Leo Diamanstein is an interpreter and teaches classes at Furman University. He says, "This happened there; it can happen anywhere; we want to make sure it never happens here. Stand up for your human rights. You have no idea what people might be in power or what they might do. Know your rights and remember them."

V77192—Margot Freudenberg (102 min.)

Born in Germany, Margot Freudenberg grew accustomed at a very early age to being part of a minority. Her family lived in a large academic Jewish community of professors and doctors. Upon the Gestapo's arrival, a million questions were asked and the suicide rate was tremendous. Following Kristellnacht, all synagogues were dismantled stone by stone and burned, along with Jewish stores. The family escaped to America. People in South Carolina were lovely to them. "There were many people before us; many after us. Outstretched hands warmed and soothed us. The younger generation still doesn't believe it happened; it is, to them, made-up history how the people were tortured and persecuted and slaughtered. I owe this to six million Jews and one million precious children that were burned in the concentration camp, that I open my mouth and tell you what happened. Einstein said of this torture, 'The world is too dangerous, not because of people who do evil, but because of those who sit and let it happen.'"

V77192—Bluma Goldberg (49 min.)

Bluma Goldberg grew up in Poland in a small, pretty town, with a close knit family and lots of friends. In 1939 Hitler invaded, and the whole town was burned. The Nazis took Jews, including her mother and three sisters, to crematoriums. Her father and brother joined the underground. She and her older sister hid in the woods. Captured and taken by truck to a labor camp, the girls were sent by train to Auschwitz, where there was little food, no running water, dirt, cold, disease, insanity. At Auschwitz, Bluma lost family and friends, along with the desire to live. Liberated by the Americans, she and her husband were later welcomed to South Carolina. "To review these events is very painful to me. I bear it willingly only if you take it into your heart that somehow you and I will contribute together to diminish the possibility that this could ever happen again."

V77192—Felix Goldberg (59 min.)

Born in Poland, Felix Goldberg was captured near Warsaw in 1939 and sent to a German work camp. He worked hard on the farm in the bitter cold with little to eat. Later he was sent to Auschwitz. He remembers trucks arriving at the camp—those in trucks went straight to the crematorium. Campmates wouldn't believe that the Nazis were burning people in the big chimney off to the side. Goldberg didn't know. The world didn't know it because no one would believe it. At the war's end, survivors went with the American Army. After moving to Columbia, Goldberg said, "I live in the best country in the world, but I carry inside of me a very unpretty past. And I worry that what I experienced, others could experience in the future. Let us appreciate what we have, and guard it always."

V77193—Felix Bauer (45 min.)

Born in Vienna in 1914, Felix Bauer lived with anti-Semitism even before Hitler's takeover of Austria. When the Nazis invaded, his father said, "Nobody will do anything to me." But the killings increased, and the family had to leave the area. Bauer's father was forced to enter a labor camp in Austria. Bauer was in refugee camp for two years before migrating to New York. Passing Ellis Island, he cried on viewing the Statue of Liberty. Thinking America wouldn't accept Jews, he sailed on to the Dominican Republic and married there. Later, he returned to the U.S. to settle in Due West, S.C., to teach music and art.

V77193—Martha Bauer (49 min.)

Martha Bauer and her family lived in Belgium. When Hitler took over, children were taught to hate all Jews. She was careful with childhood friendships and would not even walk with non-Jewish friends at school, to keep them out of trouble. "I made them go to the other side of the street to stay away from the danger of being with me." She tried to live an Orthodox Jewish life style, yet to reach out to all persons. Her childhood dream of being a nurse came to fruition in 1938 in a Jewish hospital in England. When Churchill announced war with Germany, many patients tried to commit suicide. After the war, she settled in Due West, S.C.

V77193—Peter Becker (135 min.)

Peter Becker was born in Munich in 1929. At the special Nazi school he attended, students were taught to be political or military leaders and that Hitler was the savior who would lift Germany up. In schools, Jews were depicted in anti-Semitic publications as fat, repugnant and ugly. Students were told that the Jews were their enemies. In biology, students were brainwashed about racial purity. There were inferior races, and then there were the Germans—the top race and an all powerful people. After the war the Russians occupied Potsdam where Becker lived and he was denounced as a Nazi. "I was 100 percent Nazi, but not a leader; I was arrested and interrogated, then released. It took me two years to accept that Germans had killed Jews." According to Becker eternal vigilance is the order of the day to keep people from controlling others and to guarantee there are no secrets. In addition, a viable, strong press and political activism is needed.

V77193—Horace Berry (51 min.)

Born in 1920 in Greer, S.C., Horace Berry graduated from Clemson in 1941 and entered the service. As part of Patton's army, he was assigned to bury the dead and send surviving Jews to hospitals in Wales and Austria. At Dakow, he learned that prisoners who were deemed troublemakers were shot; most were gassed. He found it inconceivable that people of one race could treat members of another race in such a way. He recalled that starving prisoners who were given candy sometimes died from cramping and that sometimes they ate cigarettes whole. Until now, Berry says he has never talked about his experiences. "If you dwelled on it, it would be very depressing."

V77193—Reverend George Chassy (38 min.)

George Chassy, an Episcopal priest in Columbia, joined the Air Force right after Pearl Harbor. He was part of the invasion at Normandy Beach. He found it incredible what Nazi power had done to people. In the town of Erca, there was a sense of death. There was a concentration camp outside the village. When given the task of removing bodies, Germans claimed they had not known it was a death camp. He saw the remains of bodies hanging on barbed wire fences, pyres where live people had been burned, the sites of hangings. He used pictures of the camps to teach high school history and to show friends. Rumors were thus validated. "There are people who don't believe in the Holocaust," says Chassy. "I witnessed the results in one place of what happened. To say it is a myth distorts history. I have evidence in my mind, my heart, and in pictures that it occurred."

V77193—Senator John Drummond (28 min.)

Born in Greenwood, S.C., in 1919, John Drummond joined the Air Force and went to England. He was captured by the Nazis and shipped to a prison camp in Frankfurt where Americans were interrogated. Next he was sent to Berlin and then Barth in the Baltic Sea to the major prison camp for American POWs. In a smaller prison camp, he saw a shower room, which had optional heads for gassing. Drummond was gravely impressed by these alternate shower heads, understanding the reality of what had happened. After the war, Russians did not shelter and protect Jews. Americans fed and took Jewish prisoners to hospitals, causing the Russians to fingerprint and photograph the Americans. "The International Red Cross kept us all living," he says. Then adds, "In conclusion, thank you for collecting all you can about the Holocaust. Maybe it won't happen again."

V77193—Joe Engel (23 min.)

Joe Engel was born near Warsaw, Poland in 1927. His father ran a luncheonette grocery. He went to public school in a small Jewish community and felt the animosity created by anti-Semitism. In 1942 all Jews were sent to work camps; families were separated. Engel doesn't know where his parents were sent. Most went to gas chambers, especially those who did not do their work. If quarters were not spic and span, they "beat the hell out of you." Many were buried alive and their graves burned. The smell of burning bodies was prominent. Every six months, there were mass killings and new prisoners arrived. In Auschwitz, Engel was a brick layer, building spaces in the crematoriums for new bodies. After Liberation, he returned to Poland but found no one he knew. He came to New York and eventually settled in Charleston, S.C.

V77194—Trude Heller (87 min.)

Trude Heller's family narrowly escaped deportation to a concentration camp, but still had to live through other anxieties. At 14, she was made to quit school, and the family was forced out of their home. Living in hiding, they often heard shouting voices and then learned that many people were disappearing. It was a horrendous time. People kept asking, "How can men do this to men?" They escaped to the United States and moved to South Carolina. She and her husband have always felt so blessed to have gotten away and they tried to extricate other Jews from the war lands. They have raised their children to be kind to their fellow men, hoping to be treated likewise.

V77194—Bert Gosschalk (94 min.)

All five members of this Jewish family survived the World War II Nazi persecution in Holland, their home. Jewish refugees were trained in centers, by rote lessons, not to have ideas of their own or to be aware politically. The Nazi-Dutch government didn't allow Jews in restaurants or public schools, or to have money or jobs. They had to move out of their homes into ghettos or live underground without newspapers or radio. Later Gosschalk was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp in Holland but lived to see its evolution into a concentration camp for Dutch Nazis. In 1962 he settled in Charleston, S.C. "I cannot ever tell another person how bad it was; how we suffered from fear in those years. You can't express it."

V77194—Max Heller (58 min.)

Max Heller was born in Vienna in 1919 into an orthodox Jewish home. His father was a businessman. Heller drew strength from the Jewish community and from non-Jewish friends. Due to anti-Semitism, however, Heller had to fight his way through school and the streets. When Hitler came to power in 1933, there were unimaginable stories. Jewish businesses were confiscated. Jews were not allowed to work or to intermarry. Jewish bank accounts were closed. Jews were made to clean the streets and thrown out of their apartments and businesses. Jewish people were forced into concentration camps where they underwent severe cruelty. Heller and a sister set sights for America in 1938. As they drove away, they became very sad as they watched their parents get smaller and smaller. "American leadership, genius, willingness to bleed, and to liberate Europe saved us from Hitler. Freedom is not free, but earned; to continue, it must be shared everyday."

V77194—Luba Goldberg (73 min.)

Luba Goldberg nee Schreibman was born in 1921 in Romania, not far from Russia. Her family contained many well-respected Romanian doctors. With Romania part of the WWII German Axis, it enacted the same anti-Jewish laws as were enacted in Germany, taking away all Jewish property and businesses and putting Jews in ghettos. Any Jew who did not work was deported to a concentration camp to be killed. Luba's mother was killed trying to escape to Russia. Her brother began the Bucharest office of The Joint Jewish Distribution Committee, the American/Jewish organization which helped Jews to leave or get medical help, food, or housing. Shortly after the war, Luba left Communist Romania and went through a British Displaced Persons camp on Cyprus (where she met her husband, Bernard, a Polish Holocaust survivor whom the British sent to Cyprus after capturing him in an attempt to illegally immigrate into then British-controlled Palestine) and then to Israel soon after the establishment of the State in 1948.. She and her husband and two children ultimately immigrated to Columbia, S.C., where he worked in Lourie's Department Store before they bought a series of motels together. With the help of Senator Fritz Hollings, she was able to bring her Holocaust-survivor sister and niece to Columbia from Argentina. She always cherished the opportunity to live in America.

V77194—Allen Wise (30 min.)

Allen Wise is a native of Saluda, S.C. Graduating from medical school in 1943, he joined the Army and went to Germany. In 1945, his unit found a barn full of emaciated prisoners who had been burned to death. Three hundred bodies were still piled atop each other at the doorway, where victims had tried to escape. In all 1000 died; seven survived. He located as many citizens as possible and showed them what had happened. He believes that probably most locals had begun to see the truth already and they were trying to hide any evidence of mistreated political prisoners. They viewed a limited part of the planned process of elimination of Jewish people through gas chambers and crematoria. "I saw this part; saw what happened, and left. Today it seems worse than then."

V77195—Dientje Kalinsky (64 min.)

Dientje Kalinsky was born in Holland in 1938. Her grandfather and aunt were sent to a concentration camp and never returned. "When I was four we went into hiding. My parents didn't explain what was happening, and it was very confusing." The family moved from one hiding place to another, always fearing sirens and paddy wagons. They hid at a nun's house from 1943-45 in the attic. Dientje had only a blanket and pillow and a little doll. The family rarely left the attic. During this time a man there sexually assaulted her and hit her with the butt of a rifle. In addition, the nun beat her and didn't feed her always. "She [the nun] told me my parents had passed away. My doll was everything to me; she threw my doll away. After the war I had nightmares and flashbacks and never talked of the war." Later Dientje was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown. To this day she still suffers from claustrophia brought on by being confined in the attic. "You'd never know how hungry I was. Many don't believe the Holocaust happened: the gassing, the murder. I was there and it was real."