Their Stories: An Ethnographic Exploration of Harrisburg Holocaust Survivor Narratives. Jenna Rappaport

Transcription

1 1 Their Stories: An Ethnographic Exploration of Harrisburg Holocaust Survivor Narratives by Jenna Rappaport A Project in American Studies Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for a Master of Arts Degree in American Studies The Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg May 2018 Author's Signature Jenna Rappaport First Reader's Signature Charles Kupfer, Ph.D. Second Reader's Signature John Haddad, Ph.D. Program Chair's Signature John Haddad, Ph.D.

2 2 Abstract Their Stories: An Ethnographic Exploration of Harrisburg Holocaust Survivor Narratives Jenna Rappaport M.A., American Studies; May 2018 The Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg Charles Kupfer, First Reader This Master's thesis transcribes and interprets four first-hand accounts provided by Holocaust survivors from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, utilizing digitally preserved interviews from the 1980s from the Edna Silberman Holocaust Oral History Project Collection. The collection is currently housed in the Schwab Holocaust Reading Room as part of the archival holdings at The Center for Holocaust and Jewish Studies at Penn State Harrisburg. Working from lengthy recordings, the author edits, synthesizes, and clarifies these historical narratives.

3 3 Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...4 INTRODUCTION...5 Chapter 1. SAM SHERRON...11 Chapter 2. LINDA SCHWAB...26 Chapter 3. ANNETTE BERMAN...41 Chapter 4. RABBI MENACHEM BORNSTEIN...71 CONCLUSION...94 REFERENCES...95

4 4 Acknowledgments I first want to thank Edna Silberman for her hard work in interviewing the vast majority of Holocaust survivors and liberators from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Without her enthusiasm, an Oral History Project would never have been compiled. Next, I would like to acknowledge Linda Schwab's continuous dedication to Holocaust education. Through her generous donation for the creation of the Schwab Holocaust Reading Room to Penn State Harrisburg, she provided an integral resource for Holocaust and Jewish studies on campus. Of course, this project stands on the shoulders of the four survivors: Sam Sherron, Linda Schwab, Annette Berman, and Rabbi Menachem Bornstein. Their incredible testimonies not only provide insight into the horrors of the Holocaust but, by telling their stories, they ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten. I want to thank my family, especially my mother Lillian Rappaport, for their constant support and love. Without Mrs. Rappaport's resources at the Jewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg and fruitful knowledge of Holocaust education, this paper would not have been possible. Lastly, I have to thank Dr. Charles Kupfer. This paper would never have been written were it not for his constant and weekly guidance, support, understanding, and friendship. As first reader, he went above and beyond the call of duty and I am forever grateful to him. This thesis is dedicated to my grandparents, Jacob and Genia Weinstock, of blessed memory who survived the Holocaust.

5 5 Introduction After surviving the Holocaust and smuggling himself into Israel, a weary and frustrated Menachem Bornstein enlists in the Israeli army, vowing "No more again!" The mantra of "Never Again" not only serves as the cornerstone of Holocaust education and remembrance but also as the primary reason that survivors tell their stories. After WWII, the events of the Holocaust remained mostly unspoken until the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem, Israel in At that point, most survivors were still living and some gave eye witness testimony during the trial. That was the first time that the general public received an understanding of the horrors suffered by Jews during the Holocaust. Still, it took another fifteen years until the televised miniseries, Holocaust, aired in 1978, exposing the Holocaust to a wide audience. As a result, for the first time, mass gatherings of survivors were organized throughout the world. The publication of Helen Epstein s Children of the Holocaust gave rise to the Second Generation movement and a new generation committed to Holocaust education. This renewed focus motivated schools and civic groups to invite survivors to share their eye witness accounts. As Holocaust survivors began to die, it became imperative that their experiences be preserved for posterity. In the 1980s, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania resident Edna Silberman created a committee of volunteers to interview and videotape Holocaust survivors and liberators who settled in Central Pennsylvania. "The Edna Silberman Holocaust Oral History Project Collection 1 " contains the testimonies of approximately one hundred people. The Jewish Teacher Research Center, located in the Jewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg (JCC), originally housed the tapes. In approximately 2006, an agreement was reached between Penn State Harrisburg and the JCC. Penn State Harrisburg agreed to digitize the tapes into DVDs in order to properly 1 The Edna Silberman Holocaust Oral History Project Collection, 1980s.

6 6 preserve them. A copy of each DVD is now housed in the Schwab Holocaust Reading Room as part of the archives at the Center for Holocaust and Jewish Studies at Penn State Harrisburg. Unfortunately, due to the sheer number of testimonies, their poor digitization quality, and the unorganized interviewer, the Silberman collection remains largely unused by the public. This thesis uses the testimonies of four survivors from the collection whom I believe represent the wide range of Holocaust stories. Holocaust research shows that there remain as many different Holocaust experiences as there are people who survived them. Every story is different. The Silberman collection represents an important ethnographic source on the verge of no longer being accessible and, through this project, I am preserving the collection s relevance and importance to Central Pennsylvania s history and to Holocaust education. Holocaust education has transitioned from photographic documentation to making the lessons of the Holocaust relevant to present day. Those lessons include taking a stand, not being a bystander, and speaking up. These survivors and their testimonies provide a roadmap for living moral and productive lives after having endured tragedy. This project serves as an ethnographic archival research project, utilizing the transcripts from four Holocaust survivors to document their stories for posterity and to create an historical narrative. The amount of Holocaust survivor testimonies is four for reasons of time and length constraints. Of course, the ideal goal of any ethnographic researcher remains to utilize all of the data and the collection. That must always be purely aspirational. I realize that, by leaving out the majority of the other interviews from the collection, my thesis becomes limited in its range. However, in order to complete a graduate thesis in a timely and usable fashion, the scope had to be minimized without diminishing the Silberman collection s importance to Holocaust research.

7 7 Nonetheless, the four survivors still represent a wide range of Holocaust experience through their detailed testimonies. To complete this paper, I contacted the Director of Jewish Education at the Jewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg who provided me with the DVDs of the survivors. One of the first limitations of this project was that the discs remained unreadable on laptop computers. In order to view these discs on a computer, I first had to electronically convert them into the MP4 format. Watching the interviews brought to light the poor quality in which the Penn State University students originally transferred the footage from VHS tapes to DVDs because of the low quality of the videos. For example, over two minutes of footage from the second half of Menachem Bornstein s interview are cut out and missing. Also, the poor sound quality during some of the interviews in the collection, probably due to the camcorder the filmmaker used, causes the viewer to either turn up the volume or place themselves closely to the television or computer screen. Another important limitation also came up while watching the collection. Mrs. Silberman took on a great undertaking with this oral history project. She dedicated many hours of time and funds into interviewing Holocaust survivors. However, despite her generosity, Silberman s inexperience with the process of pre-planning and conducting interviews greatly affects the useful qualities of the testimonies. Nonetheless, despite these faults, the Silberman Collection remains an important resource for the Harrisburg Jewish community and Holocaust researchers. The footage of the survivors telling their stories remains the most important tool for Holocaust education and for future generations. This thesis is not the first scholarly work to approach the topic of transcribing and analyzing Holocaust testimonies. In Witness to the Holocaust: an Illustrated Documentary

8 8 History of the Holocaust in the Words of its Victims, Perpetrators, and Bystanders 2, Michael Berenbaum compiles primary source Holocaust material in order to trace the history of the Holocaust and its aftermath. Like the Silberman collection, Berenbaum tells the story of the Holocaust through the narratives of its wide range of victims. He also delves into the stories of perpetrators and bystanders. In another work of Berenbaum s, A Promise to Remember: The Holocaust in the Words and Voices of its Survivors, 3 he again creates a history of the Holocaust. This time, he uses photographs and testimonies from the Photo Archive and the Oral History Collection from the United States Holocaust Memorial and is more focused on the stories of survivors. The interactive text includes photos, artwork, and manipulatives such as maps, letters, and telegrams. Although, not as historically in-depth as his other text, Berenbaum still provides a very useful overview of the Holocaust. With a goal similar to the Edna Silberman Collection, The USC Shoah Foundation 4 was founded by Steven Spielburg in 1994 in order to preserve the recorded worldwide testimonies of Holocaust survivors and others involved in WWII. The over 54,000 testimonies are housed in the Visual History Archive and contain in depth personal accounts of life before, during, and after the war. A majority of the testimonies revolve around the Holocaust, including not only Jewish survivors but also liberators, political prisoners, and more. The archive utilizes oral history-based methods of interviewing and collecting. The Shoah Foundation and its Visual History Archive act as an incredibly important preservation and educational resource. Despite the important work researchers such as Berenbaum and Shoah Foundation conduct, this paper marks the first time that the Silberman collection, and its Holocaust 2 Michael Berenbaum, Witness to the Holocaust: An Illustrated Documentary History of the Holocaust in the Words of its Victims, Perpetrators, and Bystanders (New York: HarperCollins, 1997). 3 Michael Berenbaum, A Promise to Remember: The Holocaust in the Words and Voices of its Survivors (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 2003). 4 "About Us." USC Shoah Foundation, accessed October 22, 2016,

9 9 testimonies from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is being used for scholarly work. This paper fills a gap in Holocaust research by utilizing the stories of survivors from central Pennsylvania. Moreover, much of the scholarly research that has been done on Holocaust survivors, including the second and third generations, remains from a psychological standpoint and the transmission of trauma. As a result of the psychology field's hold on Holocaust studies, a gaping hole is left waiting to be filled with research from American Studies and other liberal arts fields. In terms of the Silberman collection, more work is still waiting to be done by students and researchers. Potential jobs remain open for future Penn State Harrisburg students and interns involving the transferring of the DVDs to readable MP4 files and creating a finding aid for the collection. Most importantly, there remain approximately ninety-six more Holocaust interviews from the collection open for viewing, interpretation, and analysis. This thesis contains four chapters focusing on the testimonies of four Holocaust survivors from Harrisburg: Sam Sherron, Linda Schwab, Annette Berman, and Rabbi Menachem Bornstein. Chapter One explores Sam Sherron s life in Lithuania. At nine years old, he witnessed the destruction of his town and continued to endure the horrors of the Holocaust alongside his father. In chapter Two, our focus turns to the experiences of Linda Schwab, whose family survived by hiding in haystacks in a field and through her father s many connections. Chapter Three covers Annette Berman s fascinating accounts of hiding in France and participating in the French Resistance. Finally, Chapter Four focuses on Rabbi Menachem Bornstein s harrowing story of surviving a mass shooting, escaping a cattle car, enduring the concentration camps, smuggling himself into Israel, and fighting in five Israeli wars. The paper concludes with this man s life which represents 20 th century Jewish History.

10 10 Holocaust education and remembrance remain vital tools in ensuring that the mantra, Never Again, remains true. This thesis provides a window into these Holocaust survivors experiences while also shining a light onto the importance of Harrisburg s Jewish history. Each story is unique and devastating while united in their themes of faith, resiliency, and ensuring the education of future generations. Although, three out of the four survivors have died in recent years, their memory lives on through these testimonies and through future scholarly work waiting to be completed by students.

11 11 Sam Sherron On August 11, 1987, Edna Silberman interviewed 55-year old Sam Sherron as part of the Holocaust Oral History project. Throughout the interview, Sherron remains very articulate and easy to understand. The candor and ease with which he conveys his harrowing account, despite several confusing and off- topic questions, is quite remarkable. While other survivors, as seen in other videos from the project's collection, showed restraint and hesitation in their descriptions of graphic details, Sherron remained unafraid to provide such facts. Most importantly, his story provides insight into the psychology of survival. Sherron's experiences during his town's liquidation and during his time in Auschwitz not only convey the extent of his determination and will to live but also his need to tell the world of the atrocities of the Holocaust. Sam Sherron was born in Lithuania, then an independent Baltic country with an ancient Jewish tradition of learning. The Soviets occupied Lithuania from 1940 until 1941, when the Nazis invaded. His father, who came from a wealthy family, was a flax and seed merchant with five sisters and two brothers. Sherron's family lived in a very small town. He had two older sisters and was part of "a very observant, Kosher" family. The Jewish community was very close-knit and helped each other. One of the pictures that Sherron shows the camera is of his school and he points out all of the Jewish children. He remembers the rampant anti-semitism of the Lithuanian people but also how it was rarely reflected during his schooling. Sherron grew up with non-jewish friends and would often go to their houses. In 1939, Sherron's family built a large house. He recalls the first inklings of the rise of Nazi anti-jewish persecution from the radio and newspapers. Some of his cousins found a means of escape during this time. However, most of his large family remained in the town, bordering Lithuania and Germany. When Sherron was 9 years old, the German army invaded Lithuania.

12 12 The following passages are a transcript of his experience during the German invasion and liquidation of his town. Sherron: "The war broke out and we heard shelling of our town. It was 3:00 in the morning. We thought maybe it was thunder. But then, at 5:00, we saw already German soldiers in our town. So, we started to run. We were going to the fields, away from the German border. But still we couldn't run, we were surrounded right away and we were taken back to the town. We went about 20 kilometers and then we had to come back. And we were put in together with all the rest of the Jews. It was the first thing they did. In one of the streets, they made a ghetto and that was in 1941, June the 22nd. And then we were there for about a week. We all were together [men and women were not separated]. But, they put together maybe four or five families in a room like this [He points to the room of the interview], half of this. They took them in to work, all kinds of work: cleaning the streets and whatever they needed. They came home at night. Sunday was the war, June the 22nd. June the 28th, the German S.S., the black shirts, came in with the Lithuanian Partisans, Lithuanians pointing out where the Jewish homes are, and they took us, they took the Jews, to the synagogue. I was laying on a couch when the Germans came in and they asked "Who is on the couch?" My mother said "This is my little boy."so the Germans said "Mitkommen! Come along!" So, she gave me a little plate and a spoon and she said "Go my son. You'll be back right away. You'll come back soon." I never saw her again. They took us to the synagogue and there I saw already my father, my uncles, the rabbis, and all the townspeople. Men, only men, young and old. There weren't too many young ones, not my age...maybe two or three. Most of them were very old. The young were in their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties. There was a doctor

13 13 from town. He was a very good man. He was very good to the Jews. He said, when we asked him "What's going to happen to us? Are they going to shoot us," and he pointed and he nodded. There was also a barber that used to cut our hairs. We used to go to him. They ordered him to make a cross on our heads. So, each one of us had a cross sheared onto our heads. From there on, they asked us to take whatever we had, rings and watches, to give it to them. There was, in synagogue, downstairs, the men would pray and upstairs would be the women. They put all them, us, upstairs. While we were going upstairs, they had every two meters, two yards, an S.S, man with a whip. They beat, wherever they could, until we go up. So, we had to go through the whole line. When we got upstairs, we did all kinds of calisthenics. They made all of us jump and do activities on our elbows and our knees, up and down, everything. They cut the Rabbi's beard... Then they took us downstairs to the synagogue's yard. They had all of the scriptures, the Torahs and the books, everywhere. They opened it up and asked us to jump and jump and jump on these scrolls, which we did for about three hours. They also put money, rubles, on the floor, purposefully, to see if we are going to pick it up. We didn't even care about it. We were just worried about our lives. So, some of us could not, did not, jump on the Torah. The men jumped over it. The younger ones, especially, they called us back and gave us a beating that we thought we were going to die right there and then. And then they made us do it again, and made us to jump and to burn all of the scriptures and the books, the Siddurim. Finally, that was Friday night, on Shabbat. They always did something when it was a holiday. That was evening June the 27th. On June the 28th, Saturday morning, trucks came along and they loaded us onto trucks. Before they loaded us, they saw our women coming with some food and they wouldn't let them go near it. So, what they did was they shot in the air to scare the women so they had to run away. They wanted to see us before we go. And then, of course, they took the women back to the

14 14 ghetto. They told them all to go back to the ghetto. They loaded us on trucks and they took us to a slave labor camp, under the leadership of a black uniformed SS Doctor who was a captain or a lieutenant. He took us to his tremendous, big farm, with a palace. He also had factories. He had brick factories and farms. So, we worked over there with the bricks. There were selections. While we were there, we were in a stable guarded by SS. Now, the black SS, black shirted with red swastikas and armbands, were worse than any of the other SS ever. They were very mean. They used to make us get up in the middle of the night and do all kinds of sports. After that, in the morning, we used to stay for hours to be counted and then they made us go to work. Then we had selections and they'd say "Who wants to go home?" And we thought we would want to go home. So, my father, he said he would like to go home. When I saw my father was going, I asked also to go home. So, the SS that was in charge, the commandant of that camp, not the doctor, said "No, you, we need yet. You must be here" I used to clean his apartment, clean his shoes. So I begged him and said "So if I'm not gonna go, can my father stay too?" They knew it was my father then and he said "Ok." The ones that were selected were the very old. They were taken outside and they were shot. How did we know they were shot? Because we saw their clothes coming back and that's the clothes they gave us to wear afterwards. Three months later, there was another selection one day before the Jewish New Year. That was when they liquidated all of the women, children, my mother, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, seventy-two members of my family. That was in With me, it happens right away, early, in Lithuanian Jews suffered right away unless you were in a ghetto. With the ones that were taken to concentration camps and slave labor camps, it was right away. We did not have the few years from , like some of the other

15 15 Jews who got to be with their families in the ghetto or be with them. Us, we were taken away. That was it. The women in Lithuania were killed from town to town. The Germans with Lithuanian battalions and annihilation squads were called Einsatzkommandos. They went town to town and they killed each and every Jew. My oldest sister was in a different town and she was going home because she wanted to be with her mother. Of course, she was caught and she was brought back with my other sister. They were all shot and killed one day before Rosh Hashannah in that place right here. [He shows the camera a picture of a wooded road]. This is where it leads to. And this is the mass grave,[sherron shows another picture of a cement road], which was where the cows used to walk. In 1961, they sent a bunch of money from the United States to this man that took the pictures to have cement put down. They took a selection, again, from us and asked again "Who are the people that want to go back home?" Of course, a lot of them wanted to go him, which they did. Even though they wanted to go home, the S.S. didn't allow those who were able to work to leave. But then, there was a Lithuanian person walking with a chain gang on the street who dropped a note that said they [the Jews in town] were all killed on that day. We were in that camp until In 1943, the beginning of May, there came an order that all the Jews had to be liquidated. They came and they said "You were all good workers." The commandant said it. "And what we're going to do is we're going to give you a special paper to say where you are going, that you are good workers. And, you'll have a good life." We didn't know what was going to happen with everything. Finally, we were loaded into a train in We travelled for a week. My uncle was there, my father, me, and 500 others from around my

16 16 town...we were transported. We didn't know where we were going. We didn't have much food. We were hungry and ridden with lice and scabs and everything. We arrived. We saw the German SS and people with striped uniforms because we did not have a striped uniform where we were, in a concentration camp. There was just civilian clothes with a yellow patch on your arm and on your back. When we saw this, we didn't know what to think and, all of a sudden, we heard "Rouse! Rouse! Rouse!" And it was left and right and left and right. Selections. My uncle went into a truck to the left. My father went to the right. It came to me and the German points to the left with my uncle in a truck. And then other people came to the left and some of them to the right. I saw my father was on a truck and I wanted to be with him. What I did is I jumped down the truck. I went back to the group that had to be selected yet. This time, another SS officer pointed to the right. So, I went to the right. Then they marched us. When we marched, we saw gates with the saying "Arbeit Macht Frei," "Work Makes Free." There were women with an orchestra. This was Birkenau. So we thought "Maybe it's Heaven." We got in there. We asked "What happened to the people, the other inmates? What happened to the people that went to the truck? What camp did they go, the ones who went left on the truck?" So they pointed at the chimneys and they said "You see the smoke? They're already gassed and burning." Then we knew what was going on. The women still played the orchestra. We had to march in and then we went from there, in the evening, to a shower. It was marked "Showers." We went in there. We got new clothing, new striped clothes. It was an entirely different world. They were disinfected. Then, they told us to go in. We saw these shower heads and we were waiting to get showers. All of a sudden it came, cold water. Afterwards, we found out that we were lucky that we got cold water because

17 17 we could have gotten the gas. And that was the real thing because we went into the work camp..." Sherron remained in Birkenau for around eight months, from April/May November. The prisoners were quarantined. Every morning, they would get up at 4am to line up for three hours. During this time, he was still with his father, who was healthy, strong, and around forty-six years old. According to Sherron, "What was going on in Birkenau, was hell on earth because there was no camp like what we saw in Birkenau." He and his fellow prisoners built Birkenau from the beginning. Transports came from all over Poland and France. Sherron asserts that many French Jews were not really French. They were Polish Jews, born in Poland, who lived in France or became French citizens. The transports came by hundreds of thousands: Jews from Holland, from Greece, and many more countries. These accumulated prisoners, including Sherron and his father, worked every morning, after quarantine, on the train tracks. Their specific detail, as demanded by their commandant, involved constructing a direct path to the gas chambers. In July/August 1943, Sherron was given a number. He remembers being addressed solely by number, 132, 814. His father's number was 132, 813. Every day, Sherron and his fellow prisoners would walk 10 kilometers to their work detail. During these long treks, he would be beaten by SS guards and bitten by dogs and was often required to carry back the weak and/or deceased. During this recollection, Sherron stresses the importance of the count. "X amount of people went out. X amount of people had to come back." According to Sherron, the count not only had to always be the same but also enforced the idea that Jewish identity no longer mattered and that Jews were to be treated like livestock.

18 18 Sherron continues his story by defining Auschwitz for the viewers. According to Sherron, Auschwitz was the main concentration camp, consisting of barracks and acting as an army base for prisoners of war. He compares Hershey, PA to Auschwitz. Auschwitz was one enormous complex. Birkenau, also referred to as Auschwitz II, is a sub-camp. Sherron claims that he and his fellow prisoners built Birkenau. In 1942, the Nazis began building it. When Sherron came, construction was still underway. One day, an entire town was wiped out. The prisoners of the town were driven, by truck, straight to the crematoria. All of them perished except for one girl who remained sitting atop the pile of corpses. During his stay in Birkenau, Sherron had German and Polish "kappos," or "overseers." Other Jews served as kappos. These fellow Jews acted as cruel overseers in order to receive the possibility of better treatment or rations. They would hit and beat prisoners. The Polish kappos, however, remained the worst in their ruthlessness. It was better to be beaten by a Jewish kappo than a Polish one. Fellow Jews resented their treatment by the Jewish overseers. Often, Sherron was required to count his own beatings as he was being hit. The food at Auschwitz was terrible. The rations consisted of three peices of bread, a bit of margarine, and two or three cigarettes a week. Sherron never smoked. Those who smoked or chose to exchange their food for cigarettes barely lasted two weeks in the camp. The facility was surrounded by barbed wire and an electric fence. Sherron remembers waking up each morning to see hundreds of bodies hanging from the fence. Those who lost hope or could no longer handle their treatment would walk over and touch the fence. Guards, who stood close to the fence, would also wrongfully shoot approaching prisoners under the claim that they were escaping. One morning, Sherron remembered hearing a Lithuanian song being sung by a guard. He realized that not only did the guards come from his own country but that they also came from an

19 19 eclectic mix of different countries. He recalls the Lithuanians being especially murderous because they helped to exterminate all the Jews in Lithuania, and other towns and countries bordering Russia. The Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and Latvians, along with the einsatzgruppen, killed Jews from town to town. At Auschwitz, hundreds of thousands of prisoners were murdered each day. The Sonderkommando, mostly made up of fellow Jews, would then burn the bodies. Sherron recalls celebrating all of the major Jewish holidays in the barracks. His father would recite, from memory, Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur. He and his fellow prisoners secretly spilled their food on the ground in order to properly fast for the holiday. He also remembers the dreams he and his fellow prisoners had in the camps. According to Sherron, "we only wanted one thing: to be able to survive. God give us that hope, that we could live and tell the world whatever happened to innocent people." Sherron's need to tell the world of Nazi atrocities drove him to survive. He exemplifies those heinous acts with the story of a mother, a father, and three children. In August/September 1943, the family came to the camp. The mother had a small child in her arms while another child held her hand. The third child accompanied the father. One of the SS, who was in charge of the barracks, walked the family to a wall [This wall, made famous in Elie Wiesel's Night, stands in front of Block 11. It served as a notorious site of Nazi executions, usually by firing squad.]. Sherron, standing on top of a table inside the barrack, looked on, knowing where they were being led. The SS guard killed the oldest child first and then shot the second child. However, the second child survived. So, he sat on the child and shot him in the skull. The Guard wrenched the baby from the mother's arms and shot it in the head. Finally, he shot the mother and then the father.

20 20 Sherron proceeds to discuss the Warsaw ghetto uprising and claims that no one knew or wrote about the concentration camp constructed in Warsaw after the uprising. 5,000, non-polish prisoners, including Sherron and his father, were sent from Auschwitz to build a concentration camp in Warsaw. The prisoners came from Lithuania, France, Holland, and Greece. They spent a year, from , constructing the camp. In the beginning, they lived in a large prison. Three weeks later, they built the surrounding barracks. One barracks consisted of Germans, primarily homosexuals, criminals, and political prisoners of war. The camp was named "Concentration Camp Warsaw." Sherron emphasizes that this camp was constructed after the liquidation of the ghetto. No trace of the ghetto remained. The purpose of building this camp was clean up the ruins of the ghetto. Sherron and the fellow prisoners worked there day in and day out. He temporarily received a different identification number. He and his fellow prisoners were required to load bricks onto horse-drawn wagons. During this time, Sherron became sick with typhus and was taken to a hospital. He blacked out for three weeks and does not remember coming back. When he returned, many of his fellow prisoners were dead from the typhus outbreak. The surviving prisoners built a crematoria. When the Russian army began to advance on the Polish border, an order came to exterminate all the remaining Jews. The general governor of Warsaw came and demanded, "Get them out of here!" Immediately after, the Nazis asked "Who cannot walk? Who wants to go by car?" Many prisoners raised their hands. Those who went by car were taken and immediately shot. Those who remained walked for one week from Warsaw to near Lodz, without food or water. There was an especially brutal SS lieutenant who, with some other guards, would shoot the prisoners walking in the back of the line. Sherron and his father walked in the front.

21 21 A week later, they came to a town near Lodz to wait for the cattle trains. They were packed, 110 to one cattle-car, into the trains, overnight, during a rainstorm. The trains were so crowded that the prisoners were unable to stand, they had to sit. When the prisoners asked for water, they were told it would be provided shortly. Days later, water finally arrived. The Greek Jews, desperate for water, drank their own urine. After a week, the train arrived in Dachau. Out of the 5,000 prisoners who started in Warsaw, 2,400 survived the journey to Dachau. Once at Dachau, selections took place. From Dachau, they were taken to a sub-camp, Muhldorf. Sherron and the other prisoners built large hangars for planes to fly underneath, undetected, to make repairs. Sherron was required to work two ten hour shifts, day and night, to construct the hangars. According to Sherron, "People fell like flies" from the grueling labor. During this time, his father was supposed to be sent with another group to a different camp. Sherron hid his father in a bread warehouse and that group of prisoners was subsequently killed. The Nazis were told that they could exchange Sherron and the other prisoners with German troops in the Alps, to be killed. The prisoners were loaded onto trains that took them back and forth for several days. Subsequently, the American and Russian armies surrounded the Nazis. Later, the Nazis told Sherron and the prisoners that they were free. Two days before the liberation, the Luftwaffe, the German air-force, arrived and surrounded the prisoners in a field with machine guns, claiming they were trying to escape. Sherron's father took his hand and recited the Shema Yisrael, the holiest prayer, and told his son that "If we're going to die, we're going to die together." The mayor of the town came and told the Nazis that the prisoners did not escape. The prisoners were taken back to the wagons and driven back and forth. Sherron got separated from his father. They were in different wagons.

22 22 During this time, the American air-force flew over the area and shot at the prisoners, mistaking them for German troops. As a result, many prisoners died. Sherron was liberated on April 28, 1945, by the 3rd United States Army. He weighed fifty-six pounds. A week later, he reunited with his father. After liberation, he was taken to a Displaced Persons (DP) Camp in Munich, Germany. Two months later, Sherron and his father moved into a small apartment with a German family. He went to school for three years and had his Bar Mitzvah, at age 13. Then, he went and worked with the American government as an interpreter. Sherron eventually came to America and became a citizen five years later. He credits his survival to God, saying that "The almighty God wanted me to live." He believes that there was something inside him that willed him to live. Moreover, Sherron stresses that his story is unique in that, as a nine year old boy, he suffered incredible trauma and survived the camps. He never lived in a ghetto, "...to have the warmth of a mother and a father..." Although the ghettos were horrible, Sherron claims that Jews underwent varying degrees of suffering and, for him, his experience remains rare. He believes he and his father are the only father and son pair to survive Auschwitz with two consecutive identification numbers. Analysis The interview ends with Sherron answering questions from Silberman and the cameraman. He goes back to parts of his story, providing more details, such as his rate of starvation. Sherron had much more to say, however, for the purpose of this thesis, the primary bulk of his story was already transcribed and summarized. The Holocaust failed to end Sam Sherron's life. Although, he did not provide details regarding his immigration to America or any information about his adult life, Sherron's appearance and energy during his interview insinuate that he built an admirable and successful life for himself. Evidently, once settled in America, he

23 23 eventually moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and became a noted member of the local Jewish community. Spurred by a fervent energy to tell his story, to make the Nazi atrocities known, Same Sherron became a common public speaker for annual Holocaust programming events, thus fulfilling the promise he made to himself and to God. Sherron lived to not only tell but also to permanently document his story, ensuring that what happened to him would never happen again. Upon beginning my research for this thesis, I came across David Aretha's The Holocaust Chronicle; A History in Words and Pictures 5 in my mother's office. This tome essentially serves as an encyclopedia of the Holocaust that provides a detailed historical account of the events of the Holocaust, including a 3000-item timeline and 2000 photographs. In the index, Lithuania has many sub-sections. The most prominent, in terms of Sherron's account, are "Genocide in," and "Jewry destroyed." 6 The pages for "Jewry Destroyed" continuously mention Lithuania and the other Baltic countries whose Jewish communities were decimated by the Einsatzgruppen in July and August of "Genocide in," however, nicely sums up the destruction of Lithuanian Jews, as marked during the 1958 Einsatzkommando trial. According to trial records, ninety-four percent of Lithuania's Jewish population was wiped during the Holocaust. 8 Prior to Nazi occupation, Lithuania held a rich and old history. For over a hundred years, the country served as a center for Jewish study and culture. In the span of two months or, in Sherron's case, one day, that population and its legacy were gone. Someone like Sherron, a nine-year old child at the time, bore witness to that destruction. One of the most tragic results of Sherron's experiences was that he became so affected by watching his community die and losing his mother and sisters that he compares his experiences 5 David Aretha, ed., The Holocaust Chronicle; A History in Words and Pictures (Lincolnwood: Publications International, Ltd, 2000). 6 Aretha, The Holocaust Chronicle, Aretha, The Holocaust Chronicle, 213, 236, 251, Aretha, The Holocaust Chronicle, 671.

24 24 to the other survivors who went through the ghettoes. Throughout the interview, Sherron believes that, as horrible as the ghettoes were, his experiences remained worse. In his mind, Sherron feels that those survivors had more time with their families. The trauma of losing his family blinded him from fully acknowledging the realities of ghetto life. Many survivors, like my grandfather, suffered from "Survivor's Guilt" after the Holocaust. Not Sherron. He felt jealousy. Sherron's story and his resulting warped psychology showcase the truly devastating effects that the Holocaust had on survivors. I found the most difficult passages to hear were when Sherron described his time in the synagogue and the story of the family that came to Auschwitz. As a young Jewish adult, reading about how the Jewish men were not only forced to watch their rabbi be publicly humiliated but were also themselves forced to have crosses carved on their foreheads resonates and remains quite a disturbing passage. The actions of the einsatzgruppen at this synagogue exemplifies cruel cunning. The Nazis knew that, like a priest or pastor, a rabbi acts as a holy servant of God for the community and then they utilized that knowledge to their advantage.. This passage remains particularly unsettling because it shows these men being demeaned and being forced to participate in anti-semitic, unholy acts. Sherron's words vividly convey the inhumanity and sorrow of the situation. The story of the family that came to Auschwitz conveys the daily ruthless routines of the Nazis. On a whim, Nazi guards guided the family to a wall and subsequently slaughtered them one by one. This account exemplifies how killing became an almost mindless routine for some Nazis and vividly reminds me of Amon Goeth, whose war crimes were infamously documented in Schindler's List. 9 Amon Goeth served as the commandant for Plaszow concentration camp. As portrayed in the film and verified by survivor accounts, every morning, Goeth woke up, 9 Schindler's List.

25 25 stretched, walked out onto to the balcony carrying his morning coffee and rifle, and randomly shot prisoners. Such acts of senseless violence happened in every camp. Sherron's story of the family not only serves as harrowing evidence of Nazi cruelty but also marks the trauma that he witnessed and endured. Sam Sherron's story remains a powerful example of the will to live in spite of extreme loss. The majority of his country's Jewish population and his entire family were wiped out. Through luck, quick-thinking, and bravery, Sherron managed to survive along with his father. As difficult and brutal as his story became, throughout the interview, he remained poised and calm. His interview shows that the trauma from the Holocaust failed to break the Jewish people. Sherron came out of the Holocaust to live a successful life in America and to fulfill his promise to God. Although he died in 2015, Sam Sherron successfully told his story in a way that not only educates future generations but also ensures that his legacy of survival and determination will never be forgotten.

26 26 Linda Schwab On September 18, 1989, Edna Silberman interviewed Linda Schwab, who became an important pillar in the Jewish community. She and her husband, Maury Schwab, endowed the Schwab Holocaust Reading Room at Penn State University Harrisburg campus in order to promote Holocaust education. In 1999, Schwab established the Holocaust Essay Contest for students in grades 8 through 12. Her hope was for students to learn about the Holocaust and its lessons. Then, in 2000, Schwab, along with Lois Grass, founded the Gesher L'Machar endowment fund to provide scholarships for the March of the Living. The March of the Living is a 2-week trip for Jewish high school juniors and seniors that spends one week in Poland and one week in Israel. Through her donations, endowment funds, and speaking engagements, Linda Schwab has not only played a major role in the history of Jews in Harrisburg but has also ensured that future generations never forget the lessons of the Holocaust. Her family's story marks the importance of strong familial and community ties. Through those connections, her father was able to keep his family alive. As a result, the Holocaust failed to end her life. Instead, coming from a haystack on the ground, Schwab reclaimed her life and used her success to fuel the education of children. Linda Schwab begins the interview by addressing her feelings regarding recounting her story. She reveals that many of her friends and colleagues do not know about her Holocaust experiences. Her friends' ignorance is not because she tried to hide her story or because she dislikes recounting it (which she does) but rather because she often has nightmares about the Holocaust. It remains hard to imagine that Schwab, who, as of 2017, is known for making public speaking engagements in which she recounts her story, once hated speaking about it. For Schwab, telling her story means reliving it and facing those nightmares. She underwent a period

27 27 of adjustment before she felt comfortable enough to speak out. Schwab emphasizes the importance of telling her story by affirming that she is with Mrs. Silberman because of that need to speak. This interview marks the first formal retelling of her Holocaust experience, even to her own family. Linda Schwab was born in a small town outside of Vilna, Poland. For centuries, Vilna acted as a major center of Jewish learning. Her father also grew up in the same town in Poland while her mother was born and educated in Vilna. Her father was the youngest of two sons from a large family. Schwab's grandfather died when her father was a young boy. As a result, he would often help his mother tend to his sisters. Her maternal grandfather was a noted Lobovitch (very religious sect of Judaism) Rabbi in Vilna. He ran a printing factory that made siddurs (Hebrew prayer books) and would inspect the volumes. His name is often found signed in siddurs. Schwab remembers that, recently, while on a trip to Israel, her mother found a prayer book with her grandfather's name written in it in a small synagogue. Her maternal grandmother had sisters. Schwab describes how her grandmother's family is in fact distantly related to the Schwab family. That familial connection enabled the Schwab family to bring over Linda's family after WWII. She also informs the viewer that her maiden name is Swidler. Schwab's mother and father lived on the premises of the factory until they moved to the same town where her father grew up. That is where she and her two brothers were born. When the war broke out in her town, her mother's and father's families were scattered throughout Poland. Most of the people were taken into ghettoes, including Schwab's immediate family. Her grandfather and grandmother were subsequently killed in the ghetto before ever entering a concentration camp. Two of her uncles were taken away and never returned.

28 28 She vividly remembers a story that was often retold, even though she was a very young girl at the time. Apparently, when the war broke out and the Germans invaded, underground Polish townspeople, who secretly sided with Germany, turned against the government and rounded up around fifty Jewish men. They took those men to the town square and forced them to dig an enormous hole in the ground before them. Other people doused the men in hot water while Nazi police dogs bit and attacked them. The Jewish men were then thrown into the mass grave. Those that were still alive helped to throw the dead and wounded into the hole. According to Schwab, the ghetto was one long street. She and her family could hear those men's screams. After this incident, her father went out in search of a place for the family to hide. The following pages are a transcript of Schwab's experiences in hiding: Linda Schwab: " He [her father] came back two nights later. That night, we all disappeared. It [the ghetto] wasn't really blocked off and it wasn't policed. We could still move around. We left at night with just what we had on our backs. My father did manage to have a lot of money and they were gold coins. He took them with him. We stayed, at that point, with a Polish family that really kept us. They knew my father very well. We were a wealthy family before the war broke out and my father was very charitable. He helped a lot of people. Those people remembered us. [At this point, Mrs. Silberman asks Linda Schwab to discuss her childhood] I had an older brother, two years older than I, and I had a younger brother, a year younger than I. None of them went to school yet. We didn't have that [memories of Polish anti-semitism]. We were still young. My father had very good relations with the people in his community. There was never anyone that came in and said "My sister has had sickness in the family and she needs this..." He had cows. He had orchards. He always said "Go and take whatever you want. Whatever you need

29 29 for them." Or, if they needed clothes for the children, he had a dry goods store. He always gave them whatever they needed. He really had a very nice relationship with the people in the community. In fact, it was a very small Jewish community. I don't know too much about it, but I know there was a very small community. It was like a little village. There weren't many Jewish people living there. Those people that really arose, when the war broke out, I don't think that there were many. Maybe not, they were like the partisans. I didn't mean it like that. Partisans were those that resisted the Germans. But, prior to the war, I meant, those people that resisted the Polish. They were pro-germany. They arose when the Germans came in. In Vilna they had Zionist movements but not in my city. Not that I remember. My mother did talk about the life in Vilna. I would say that Vilna was a big city. In fact, I think it was probably the most cultural center of the European Jews. At the time, I still believe it's noted for that. My father served in the Polish army. I remember seeing a picture of my father in a Polish uniform. I think that must have been World War I. Being a veteran did not gain my father any special treatment. We always lived in fear. Before the Germans were surfacing, you had the feeling about the anti-semitism from Poland. Always. I imagine, they thought the war wouldn't be as long or it would be like a little bit bigger than World War I. But, it wouldn't be as bad as it was. Never dreamt, they never had any dreams that it would be as it turned out. We knew it was going to be bad but we didn't know how bad it would be for the Jews. [At this point, Linda is still discussing her past broadly, responding to the earlier question about her childhood.]. When we were in the ghetto, we were in our city. My father had two sisters who lived nearby but in another small town. When the Germans were coming and they had the ghettoes, people were trying to get out. I remember this story very well. The two uncles