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DARING TO RESIST:
THREE WOMEN FACE THE HOLOCAUST
1:00:00:00
[Sun rising]
1:00:32:00
BARBARA:
I think I had an instinct for living. I had an instinctive drive to live.
I had seen many young people disappear and I wasn’t going to sit
still and have the Germans pick me up.
1:00:52:00
SHULA:
Danger was there constantly. People went down in the morning to buy a
newspaper and they never get back anymore, home. That’s when we really
started to get into the real business of trying to save lives.
1:01:08:00
FAYE:
I was a child before the war. And when the war started, I became an adult.
When it’s time to hug a boyfriend, and to have fun with a boyfriend,
I was hugging the rifle.
1:01:26:00
NARRATION:
Resistance against Nazi genocide took many forms besides armed combat
and sabotage. Resisters found ingenious ways to hide people, change their
identities, or smuggle them to safety. Teenagers were often among the
first to recognize the Nazi menace, and act.
1:01:46:00- DARING
TO RESIST title
NARRATION CONT'D:
These are the stories of three young women who dared to resist.
1:02:01:00
INNOCENCE BETRAYED
TEXT SCREEN:
BARBARA LEDERMANN RODBELL
BORN, 1925 BERLIN, GERMANY
1:02:09:00
Montage of Barbara’s early life in Berlin; include Nazi political
posters/rallies/rise of Hitler politically
1:02:17:00
BARBARA:
My father was a lawyer, my mother played the piano. And they had a lot
of music in the house and my mother and father went to a lot of concerts
and plays and it was a very nice life in Berlin for us. When Hitler was
elected, I remember getting back to school and uh there was a little girl
that sat next to me who uh wore a swastika. Now this was basically not
allowed in school, but already at that time the teachers were afraid to
say anything. And I remember her sitting next to me and saying uh; "I
can't play with you anymore." I went home [laughs] and I told uh my parents,
and they said, well you know this might happen once in a while but there
are lots of children that you don't like to play with either. So it wasn't
told to me, "Well that's because she's gentile and she is uh a Nazi."
1:03:36:00
NARRATION:
In 1933, the Ledermann family traveled to Holland to visit Barbara’s
Dutch grandparents. People there who recognized the danger in Germany
urged them not to return to Berlin. After much agonizing, Franz Ledermann
decided they should remain in Holland. The painful process of starting
over began.
1:04:01:00
When we got to Holland things were very different. This was 1933 and I
went to 3rd grade and that's where I met the Dutch kids. There was a little
girl though from Germany that had some of the same problems I had, and
her name was Margot Frank, and that was Anne Frank's sister. She and I
started school together.
1:04:24:00
BARBARA:
This is the Merwedeplein where I used to play, my sister used to play,
with Margot and Anne Frank. We came here every day after school and they
were very happy times. And after the Germans came, I guess we played for
another year or so, till the world collapsed.
1:04:48:00
TEXT SCREEN:
SHULAMIT GARA LACK
BORN 1924 BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
1:04:53:00
SHULA:
My father taught me how to use a gun from very early age. I think I was
5 years old I had to sleep with a revolver on my night table and he taught
me how to shoot. My father loved me very much but he was very unhappy
because he wanted a boy. So I loved my father and I wanted to please my
father, so naturally I tried to be more boy than the boys. I had to be
the best student and I was not allowed to be afraid of anything. (Chyron,
Shula’s school, Buda, Hungary, 1930)
1:05:25:00
The first three years of school I was in a very elegant, very nice uh
boarding school, but on the fourth year when I went to another elementary
school we were very few Jews in that school and uh in the very beginning
of the year, one of the girls um throw me into the lap of another girl,
and this was very annoyed and was screaming, "Don't throw that dirty Jew
to my lap." And that was first time in my life I heard that distinction
that a Jew is something else than a Hungarian. I looked at her, I said
"What you mean dirty Jew? I am a Hungarian like you are," and then I get,
"No you are not, you are a Jew."
1:06:32:00
My father learned me that if I, there's something I don't like I just
beat the person up, so I beat the person up, and that was the first time
that they learned that even so that I am the smallest in the class, I
can beat very well. I went home and I tell to my parents, "I am not a
Hungarian anymore, I am a Jew."
1:07:01:00
TEXT SCREEN:
FAYE LAZEBNIK SCHULMAN
BORN 1924 LENIN, POLAND (NOW BELARUS)
1:07:07:00
FAYE:
I was born in Poland in a town situated at the Russian border. In town
was approximately 5,000 Jewish population and 5,000 non-Jewish population
and we have lived in harmony like here now.
1:07:37:00
My father, since he was busy in the synagogue most of the time, he was
not a good businessman, but my mother made a living. She cooked for the
Polish officers they liked Jewish food.
1:07:50:00
FAYE:
My oldest brother was a photographer, so of course everybody in the house
knew photography. When the Russians came in 1939, my brother was married
already and he lived in another town. I became the photographer, as a
teenager, I was the main photographer already.
1:08:09:00
FAYE:
The problem started in 1941, Germany attacked Russia, and it only took
two days, and the German army occupied our town.
1:08:28:00
NARRATION:
From 1939 through
1945, Nazi Germany spread terror across Europe and Russia. In each country,
the genocide of Jews and other condemned groups followed a different timetable.
A Jewish girl could still be living in relative freedom in Hungary, while
her Polish counterpart was on a train to Auschwitz. Barbara, Shula and
Faye’s stories differ. But their ingenuity and resistance in the
face of unspeakable horror unite them.
1:09:01:00
AWAKENING RESISTANCE
1:09:06:00
BARBARA:
The Germans invaded on May 10th, 1940 and that was a horrendous day. And
when we came back here to talk to various people and on the balconies
we used to talk together and uh I suddenly saw that there were people
that had, were lying there that had tried to kill themselves. I kept saying
to my father, "What are they doing? Why do they want to kill themselves?"
And my father kept saying, "Well things aren't very good for Jewish people
and you know, they think that they will die, will get killed or that they
have to flee again and change countries again, and when you get older
it gets to be very hard."
1:09:57:00
My father went over his library, and we got a big wash basket and he had
taken out all the books that he thought that the Germans wouldn't want
him to have, and he put them all in the wash basket and I remember carrying
it with him to the large incinerator in the skyscraper and we uh we threw
the books, these beautiful books, and they burned up.
1:10:25:00
BARBARA:
It was the most frightening time you can imagine. I was 15. I remember
friends of ours being asked to come to the railroad to be shipped off
and they were told they were going to work and these people would say
well you know I took heavy work b--boots and I took a warm coat, but I
also took some lipstick and I took some makeup because after work we will
be having a campfire and we'll sit around and we'll be having, you know,
a good time. These were teenagers talking.
1:11:05:00
I didn't know
anything about politics, and just didn't think of anything else than what
teenagers in those days uh thought about. But when I got to be 16, I met
a fellow named Manfred. He had told me about people who had been taken
to camps, c--concentration camps in Germany and he thought that all the
young people who were going happily off to work so-called, that they would
end up being dead. I started arguing with my father. He believed that
if the Germans said you were going to go to a work camp that you would
go to a work camp. When my father said, "You know if you get called up
you will go because otherwise you will endanger us," I said to him "I'm
not going. I am not going."
1:12:03:00
NARRATION:
By the middle of 1942, Jews in Holland had seen their jobs, their possessions
and their freedom stripped away. They were required to wear a yellow Star
of David, and Jewish children were banned from public schools. Barbara,
aged 17, attended a Jewish-owned dance school where she immersed herself
in ballet.
1:12:25:00
BARBARA:
In 1942 there was a sudden roundup by the Germans, they rounded up the
Jews in our area and uh as I saw them coming, uh I got very much afraid
and I took off my star and I ran down the stairs and I ended up, uh I
saw the tram roll and the Germans had not stopped the tram, the Germans
had not stopped the tram and I could get on and go to my dancing class
where there were people who were going to hide me for the duration of
this particular roundup. This time we were very lucky, the Germans let
my parents go and I could go back home.
1:13:06:00
That was when I decided that it was time for me to disappear. I changed
my name, I took off my star, I became a non-Jewish person.
1:13:19:00
NARRATION:
All over Nazi-occupied Europe, the first thing a Jewish person passing
as a Christian needed was false identity papers. Barbara got her papers
with help from her boyfriend, Manfred, who was already involved in resistance
work. She moved into a boarding house and continued to study dance. After
eight months, Barbara’s parents pleaded with her to come home for
a visit. Her friends warned her that it was too dangerous — roundups
and deportations could happen at any time — but Barbara yearned to
see her family.
1:13:54:00
BARBARA:
I was so homesick, and they were homesick for me and so I, I put on my
star, and came home. But that next morning at ni——6 o'clock
somebody told us that this whole area was going to be picked up. And uh
I couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe it, I kept saying this can't
be happening, I mean I'm only home for one day and one night you know
and anyway my father who really had always said he didn't want me to go
underground, that time he said "Go."
1:14:36:00
We were hugging and kissing and they had to get ready you know, so I of
course took the star off and I went downstairs and there were loudspeakers
going around saying: "All Jews have to prepare themselves; gentiles are
not allowed in the street." And I was in the street. I did not know what
to do. And I just walked, and you know all the rivers and canals in Amsterdam,
it's so easy to close off a neighborhood, you just stand on the bridges.
And I went to the first bridge and there was a Dutch N.S. Bayer a black
uh——uniformed man standing there and he said, "Nobody is allowed
on the street, go back to where you came from."
1:15:21:00
So I knew there were more bridges and I went to the next bridge and they
said, "Nobody is allowed to cross the bridge." So I started to cry and
I started to run and I went to the next bridge, and I think it was this
bridge that I am standing at and there was one soldier standing in the
middle of the bridge and it was a German soldier and he said to me "What’s
wrong?" [in German], and I said uh "I want my mother. I want to see my
mommy" [in German]...and he said "Where is your Mommy?" [in German] and
I said "Da," and he said, "March, go, quick." [in German]
1:16:05:00
And I ran across the bridge and I was free, and he saved my life. And
then I walked to Manfred's house, and there was peace and quiet and people
were going to church and nobody knew what went on one block up.
1:16:25:00
BARBARA:
We did have hiding places in our apartment, and I had begged my mother,
just if y——please all of you go in there — there were papers
that we had, papers for all of them, then my father just couldn't do it.
We, I said to them at least put Susanna in there — my sister. At
least put her in there, we will go get her. And Manfred did go, they went
at night...and all they came out with are some rugs and some silver and
whatever they thought was of value, paintings. But, not my sister.
1:17:12:00
FAYE:
Shortly after the Nazis occupied our town they formed a ghetto and all
the young men they took away in a hard labor camp. In the ghetto were
left all the women, children, elderly and sick.
1:17:30:00
FAYE:
And people were crowded they were sitting and talking what happened the
day before, how many died, how many got killed and how long will we suffer
like this, what will be the end?
1:17:44:00
The Nazis took
Jewish people to work, and I worked as a photographer even though I was
still a teenager. And I was allowed to go out from the ghetto to my house
because my darkroom was there. I could have escaped, I had the opportunity,
but if I would have escaped, the family would be killed or fifty other
people would be killed.
1:18:09:00
NARRATION:
Faye was summoned to take a portrait of the Gebitz Commissar, the terrifying
regional commander of the Nazis.
1:18:16:00
FAYE:
I looked at him and he was like an animal. I knew he's a killer, I knew
he killed already in the thousands. I covered myself up to look into the
lens from the camera, and I saw that if I will take this portrait, he
will kill me. He looked like, scary. So can you imagine I, a Jewish girl,
said to the Gebitz Commissar, "Smile," and I took another picture smiling.
He showed his teeth, but his eyes were still like an animal. So he was
very happy, and of course no thank you, no nothing, who wanted a thank
you as long as he's not killing me.
1:19:04:00
FAYE:
A German came
to me, and he said to go to the Wehrmacht with my camera. Every time when
I was ordered to come with the camera, they asked me to take pictures.
This time they didn't. They said leave the camera and go. So I was very,
very disappointed and very nervous and shocked about it, and I said, I
was crying all the way back home, I came into the ghetto my mother said,
"Why are you crying?" "Mommy," I said, "they took my camera, what am I
going to do now?" So my mother took her arm around my shoulder and she
says, "My daughter, they took" — it's hard — "they took the
house, they took the the the furniture, they took the clothes, they took
the gold, the silver, the cow, the horse, everything. We have nothing
now. Are you crying because of a camera?" But for me it was a matter of
life and death.
1:20:12:00
NARRATION:
The next morning, the Nazis ordered everyone in the ghetto to assemble
outside. After one year of starvation, deportations and terror, only one
third of the original 5,000 Jews remained.
1:20:37:00
FAYE:
I heard the noise woke me up, there is another assemble, so I, everybody
when I woke up everybody was out already except my sister stayed with
the two children, the 2-year-old girl and the 4-year-old little boy. She
was changing them. She knew we are going to be killed so she wanted the
children to have clean clothes. So I helped her and then we went out and
the Nazi took the rifle and hit me and asked me to go. I didn't know where
I am going — Am I going to be shot? 'Course. So I walked, and it's,
it's hard to explain the feeling. You don't hear, you don't think, I was
only, I only had in mind will it hurt, how long will I be alive, will
will will I have pain. I was sure he is taking me to the — to the
— to be killed.
1:21:32:00
NARRATION:
But Faye was sent to wait in the synagogue, where she found a Jewish shoemaker,
a painter, a tailor, and a carpenter. They had skills the Nazis still
needed.
1:21:43:00
FAYE:
So I walked up to the attic of the synagogue, there was a little window
and I was watching through the attic window and I have seen everything.
Open trucks took small groups from the assemble place into the three trenches.
And from there I could hear, I could hear the cries, I could hear them.
And then it was quieter and quieter and it got quiet.
1:22:18:00
FAYE:
And the Nazis left me as a photographer by myself. They took the pictures
and they gave me the film to develop, so I made a few extra copies and
I was hiding it for myself, to remember. And this is the actual picture
where the people from our town were shot. My father, my mother, my sister
Sonya, my sister Esther and her husband, and two brothers, Kopel and Boac,
and they are all in one of the three trenches. And even now, after 50
years, sometime I think to myself, how did my family died? Did my mother
have seen the father died first? Or the children have seen their mother
first died? Or the other way around? Who died first? Who have seen who?
And I still think about it. I don't know.
1:23:36:00
NARRATION:
Hungarians lived in the shadow of Germany, and many in their government
shared the Nazi goal of exterminating the Jews. Young Shula worried about
the growing anti-Semitism around her. In 1938, at age 13, she surprised
her assimilated family and joined Hanoar Hatsioni, a Zionist youth group
dedicated to building a homeland for Jews in Palestine.
1:24:02:00
SHULA:
They were teaching us Zionism, Jewish history, it wasn't religious oriented,
it was rather nationally oriented, we were singing there, we were dancing
there, I mean we didn't do anything outrageous there, it was just a very
nice social get-together.
1:24:20:00
In '39 when the war broke out, we the youngsters we feeled that we won't
be so lucky that we will get away without a scratch, so we started to
plan how we will, how we will do things when when it getting worse.
1:24:43:00
NARRATION:
By 1942, the situation for Jews in neighboring Poland was already desperate.
They were imprisoned in ghettos, shipped to concentration camps, even
slaughtered in the streets. Polish Jews who escaped to Hungary turned
to Zionists like Shula for help.
1:24:59:00
SHULA:
And from these people we learned about the gas chambers and about all
the terrible things which was going on. And, we the young people, we believed
them, but the older people, like my parents, they just couldn't believe
it, and my parents was always telling me, "Even if it's true what you're
telling me, it cannot happen to us."
1:25:32:00
SHULA:
It happened to be a nice Sunday morning when we decided already that something
will happen, it was hanging in the air, and we decided to go out to the
woods and make some plans, because our resistance wasn't a resistance
that we will blow up bridges, our resistance was built on the idea to
save as many youngsters, or as many Jews, or as many people as we possibly
can, in any which way what we could think of. If that shall be with false
papers, with putting them in bunkers, or sending them over the border
to Yugoslavia or to Romania, that was what we wanted to talk about and
figure out. And then noontime we were coming back on the bridge and when
we were approximately in the middle of the bridge, we saw already in the
Pest side the tanks, the German tanks rolling in. So they came in on 19th
of March and my mo——my mother was taken 20th of April, so that's
one month, one month and one day.
1:26:51:00
SHULA:
They wanted to ask for false papers for my mother. So I come here, at
that time the office is far from the different Zionist organization and
my cousin told me that the papers aren't ready so I will have to come
back in two or three days, I have to find some hiding place for my mother
till then and then they will be able to give me the papers. And I went
home, and I was sitting the whole night trying to explain to my mother
and she said: "I was a decent human being all my life and I cannot picture
myself living with forged papers, with a false identity. You go, you try
to disappear, but do me a favor, let somebody know where you are because
if the miracle happen and I survive so that I shall be able to find you."
I think the most horrifying night in my life was this night when we were
sitting and talking to each other because I knew it's no hope if she goes
in there that she will ever come out from there. And I was a——apologizing
because I wasn't the best child in the world, and she was apologizing
to me because they were very much against me being a Zionist. And the
next morning I had to take my mother and it was the last time I saw her.
1:28:42:00
I felt awful and I was mixed up completely. The only thing which really
kept me alive was the Zionist organization, the thoughts that we have
to go on and we have to try to save as many people as we can and that
I have an empty apartment now and I can risk to put people there and do
anything there because it's nobody else I can endanger with it but myself.
1:29:12:00
RESISTANCE ESCALATES
1:29:23:00
NARRATION:
In 1943, Barbara continued posing as a Christian and studying ballet in
Amsterdam, not knowing what would become of her parents or sister.
1:29:35:00
NARRATION:
Manfred’s sister Marga rented rooms for all of them in the home of
a German woman who sympathized with the Nazis. It was a stroke of risky
genius — German Jews, living under cover in Amsterdam, doing resistance
work right in the home of the enemy.
1:29:54:00
MARGA:
I was looking for a house for me and for my fiancée, so and then
I came in th——that house fifty years — more than fifty
years ago —
1:30:05:00
BARBARA:
—in this very house where we are now.
1:30:06:00
MARGA:
In this house, yeah, and um. Yeah there was a woman, she opens the door
and uh they spoke not very good um Netherlander — Dutch — and
I said, "Are you German?" "Yes I am a German," I said, "If you like I
can speak German with you," "Oh say," she said, "Are you a German? Uh
I like to have German in my house," and uh [German phrase] — how
you say that?
1:30:33:00
BARBARA:
Somebody who thinks the same as I do.
1:30:36:00
MARGA:
Yeah.
1:30:37:00
NARRATION:
Young resisters defied Nazi laws and listened in secret to radio broadcasts
from London. Some published underground newspapers that Barbara and Marga
helped to distribute. 1:30:49:00 MARGA: It was a very dangerous thing.
1:30:51:00
BARBARA:
Very dangerous.
I would be told, "Take this bag," and we put uh lettuce and tomatoes on
top, remember?
1:30:58:00
MARGA:
Yeah, yeah.
1:31:00:00
BARBARA:
And we carried it to a stoop
1:31:02:00
MARGA:
sometimes
1:31:03:00
BARBARA:
And we weren't even told who would pick it up and we weren't supposed
to wait, you know they would tell us, "Put it in #19..." and this and
that.
1:31:10:00
MARGA:
Yeah, put it there, put it there, put it there. (Yes.)
1:31:13:00
BARBARA:
That's how we had the news about what really happened.
1:31:17:00
BARBARA:
And then if somebody would say "Can you hide so and so?" or "This place
has gotten dangerous," and if you could, you would do it.
1:31:26:00
BARBARA:
When they asked me, ‘How did you spend the war?’ I said I stood
in line for food. Because we had many people here, and you could not,
for instance, go and buy for seven people. That was dangerous.
1:31:37:00
MARGA:
Yeah that was dangerous.
1:31:38:00
BARBARA:
So you split up. You bought for four.
1:31:41:00
MARGA:
Yea, and I got little coupons.
1:31:44:00
BARBARA:
Where did we get the coupons?
1:31:47:00
MARGA:
I get it from that man. . .I think he was a little in love with me. .
. . And he gave everything I need. [Barbara interjects: "Oh, that’s
good."]
1:31:55:00
NARRATOR:
Barbara risked her life daily, passing in public as a non-Jew in a city
where many people knew her real identity. The danger increased when she
began performing with the famous ballerina Yvonne Georgi. Georgi was believed
to be a personal friend of Hitler, and her ballet audiences were full
of German officers and anyone could have betrayed Barbara.
1:33:20:00
BARBARA:
Now, there was one thing about that and that was that I got these great
papers which allowed me to be out after curfew, and um as I remember it,
I managed to do a few good things with those papers and that is transporting
people who had to be moved from one hiding place to another. In these
little carriages that they used to have, they took out the little bench
in the back and the person being moved would be the bench, he would be
huddled down, and I would be sitting on his back, and if somebody would
stop you, you could show the papers and a big smile, with the makeup still
on, and it worked. I know I was scared and worried about it, but um I——it
never stopped me. I mean, you’re 17, you’re 18. . .this was
exciting!
1:33:18:00
NARRATION:
In 1942, confined to her Polish ghetto, Faye had witnessed the slaughter
of her family. She felt compelled to fight back. She knew that groups
of armed resisters, called partisans, used the woods surrounding her town
to hide and stage attacks against the occupying Germans.
1:33:42:00
FAYE:
When partisans attacked our town, the fighting started and we have seen
through the windows people were running. Partisans were running. Nazi
soldiers were running. The bullets were still in the air; I could see
sparkles in the air. And I wanted to run away and to join the partisans.
Right away I took——I tore off the yellow star from the front
and from the back no more to show that I am Jewish.
1:34:14:00
NARRATION:
Faye managed to find the commander of a local partisan brigade and asked
to join. Most partisans were non-Jews, Russian soldiers who had escaped
from German prison camps and were trained in combat. It was almost unheard
of for a Jewish girl, with no weapon, to be accepted into the partisans.
But the commander had an idea.
1:34:35:00
FAYE:
He thought if my brother-in-law was a doctor, I will be able to look after
the wounded people, but I had no experiences in medicine at all, no training,
I didn't, I was afraid of blood, but I was afraid of a g——of
a rifle also. I never had a rifle in my hand. Now I said to myself, my
life is changed. I learned how to look after wounded; I even learned how
to make operations, because the main doctor was not always on the base.
And sometime I was forced to operate. We had no beds. The operating table
was made from branches, and then after the operation, back on the ground.
1:35:21:00
NARRATION:
The partisans raided nearby villages to restock weapons, food and medicine.
Faye rescued her camera and many family photos in a raid on her own town.
She continued taking pictures with the partisans, stealing supplies and
hiding everything during long missions. Faye developed her film at night
and printed pictures by campfire light.
1:35:52:00
FAYE: We attacked our town against the Nazis four or five times. Once
it was an order to burn the big houses where the Nazis are stationed.
When I came with my group of course I went to my house. And I when I walked
in and I have seen what's going on, the Nazis just left, the potato peels
on the floor, empty, I heard noises, I, I pictured the whole family alive
there and everybody's talking to me and everybody's saying, "Good, do
something, fight back, revenge, kill the enemies!" Another partisan walks
and he looked at me and he said, "What do you think?" Like, what do I
think? So I said to myself all in the seconds, what do I think? The police
is stationed here, I won't be living here, the family's killed, who will
live here, to leave it for the enemy? I said right away, "Burn it."
1:37:04:00
We left the town, I looked back, I saw the fire, the smoke of my house.
I came back after a few weeks we attacked again the town and I took a
picture and this was what was left from the town. And three crosses. Three
Nazis who were killed when the partisans attacked, so they buried the
three Nazis in front of our house.
1:37:36:00
NARRATION:
At the same time Hitler was losing the war in Russia, he invaded former
ally Hungary and was racing to exterminate its Jews. It was 1944. Shula
was 19 and completely alone — her mother lost to the Nazis, her father
in a hospital due to long-standing illness. Defiantly, Shula turned the
family apartment into a base of operations for Jewish resistance.
1:38:03:00
SHULA:
As soon as you went out on the street, and the policemen came to you and
asked you for identification, you had to produce papers — everybody.
1:38:13;00
Naturally we had to have papers for everybody who wanted to disappear,
Whichever way you wanted to escape you needed papers. So we were sitting
hours and hours and hours in my apartment and writing papers.
1:38:29:00
NARRATION:
The young Zionists developed a daring, complex system for creating false
documents. First, at city offices, they used bogus requests to gain a
few seconds to memorize names from the large public ledgers — names
they believed were Christian. Next, someone else in the group would return
and use a memorized name to request a valid birth certificate. By shuttling
from office to office and swapping memorized names, Shula and her friends
were able to obtain many documents that they altered and copied to save
lives.
1:39:07:00
SHULA:
It sounds very simple but you went there so that your stomach was moving
like that because you never knew if you really getting from that mission
back h——back alive. And every single day you went, and every
single day you were asking God, please, let that person be alive, let
that person not be Jewish, and let me not stand next to the person asking
for that name.
1:39:34:00
NARRATION:
Jewish resisters also arranged an escape route through Romania, which
they hoped would lead to Palestine. Escapees would meet at Shula's to
get instructions.
1:39:43:00
SHULA:
Somebody always was caught. So one of the girls who was caught and beaten
said that she got the papers from me and from my apartment. So the police
came looking for me naturally after that.
1:40:01:00
NARRATION:
That time, Shula was able to outsmart the police. She went into hiding
in the woods and began to plan an escape for herself and the remaining
members of her group, (including her boyfriend Dov).
1:40:13:00
SHULA:
And you could get up in the morning — early — and take the train
back and forth for two or three hours, till everybody went to work and
it wasn't too obvious that you are hiding. Now it wasn't much of fun —
believe me — but I had to do it two weeks before I really could start
out to Romania.
1:40:46:00
NARRATION:
Shula led a group that included six young Zionists who had escaped from
Poland, and Ruth Kurtzweil — a 17-year-old whose parents entrusted
her to Shula — only 19, herself. On the train, they aroused the suspicion
of the Hungarian civil detectives, who roamed the train cars or "wagons"
looking for Jews.
1:41:13:00
SHULA:
I went from one wagon to another to tell the people that when we go off,
they shall follow me, not to get lost and uh when I came back, I saw there
the civil detective, so I went back to tell the people not to follow me
when they arrive to the last station. And I asked Ruth to go with any
one of the other fellows, but she didn't wanted to. She insisted coming
with me, and I couldn't argue on the train with her, so unfortunately
we both were caught, we both landed in jail.
1:41:49:00
NARRATION:
Shula finally had to admit that their papers were false, that she and
Ruth were Jewish. The girls were imprisoned in a cell full of prostitutes.
1:42:01:00
SHULA:
Naturally we get a language what we never heard before in our lives and
we get so scared [laughs] we get more scared from them than from the police,
we didn't know what to answer, and we didn't know — we were afraid
to sit down because we figured if we sit down we will get syphilis right
then and there so we were standing in the corner and we didn't say a word,
we didn't opened our mouths, we didn't know how to answer — the first
time in my life that I couldn't know how to answer somebody.
1:42:28:00
When they find out that we are Jewish they were very nice to us, believe
it or not. When the police wanted to do us something, they come to our
help that they said if they want a girl, take us, leave them alone. So
they were really very decent to us and naturally we, we shared our food
with them.
1:42:46:00
The problem was that they were let out of there a couple of days and we
weren't let out of there a couple of days. I wanted to escape from the
jail, and I was that time 19 years old and I saw the film Monte Cristo
before, and I saw Monte Cristo escaping from his jail, so I figured if
he can, why can't I? And I have a small hand, so I decided to open the
jail door and walk out. So Ruth came with me, we walked out, we didn't
get very far needless to say and we get caught.
1:43:22:00
NARRATION:
Shula and Ruth were moved to a prison in Budapest, and from there to a
transit camp to await deportation. Despite Shulašs continuing efforts
to devise an escape, the girls soon found themselves on their way to the
death camps of Poland.
1:43:40:00
SHULA:
It took I think a week to get to Auschwitz. You don't forget a transport
like that. We were stuffed in like animals and you could hardly breathe
and you could hardly sit down and you get nothing to eat. Naturally when
we get into Auschwitz everything was taken away from everybody. You were
thrown out, rush, rush, rush, and Mengele was standing there and sending
the old people and the young children right, to the gas chambers, and
the other ones left and that was the end of story.
1:44:45:00
SHULA:
They took 3,000 people over to Birkenau where the gas chambers were, and
we were standing before the gas chambers hours, and a young Polish girl,
Jewish girl, was standing before us and her job was to watch us standing
before the gas chamber. I said to her, "Look, let us in already, let's
have it over with, what the heck we are standing here hours and hours
and suffering from the heat and everything else." So she said to me, "Wait,
don't rush, you never know what happens." And she was right.
1:45:23:00
NARRATION:
An unexpected order came from Stutthof, another concentration camp. The
waiting Jews were sent there.
1:45:34:00
SHULA:
It was September, it was a beautiful weather and we went from Auschwitz
to Stutthof and I remember with all my trouble I enjoyed the scenery.
You get there, where the soldiers lived it was gardens and flowers and
just like you arrived in Heaven. You walked through the gate and you get
to Hell.
1:46:05:00
NARRATION:
Shula and Ruth were taken into the forest with other women. They were
forced to dig trenches designed to stop Russian tanks from advancing against
the Germans. Shula was appointed the head of her work group.
1:46:17:00
SHULA:
In the beginning I told them how many, and I saw that we get so much work
that the people simply are unable to finish it on time. As the weather
get worse and worse, I saw that it's an impossible situation, I have to
do something.
1:46:34:00
NARRATOR:
Shula devised a way to hide some of her workers in the woods, while the
Polish overseers went from group to group assigning tasks. With seemingly
fewer people, her group received a smaller workload.
1:46:46:00
SHULA:
So naturally we were ready f——before everybody else was ready
and that way we could go first there back to the camp and our two soldiers
were happy, so we get much less beaten up from the soldiers. And I hoped,
for my luck that I would not be caught.
1:47:05:00
LIBERATION
1:47:16:00
FAYE:
In the partisans everybody was sitting around the campfire singing songs,
and there was a song — what a pleasure will be when the war will
be over and we will return to our homes. And I was sitting and singing
with them and thinking to myself, not for me. Who will wait for me? Where
will I go? Which train station will I take? Where to go? I have nobody
to, to, to greet me. I have nobody to bring me flowers.
1:47:52:00
NARRATION:
Faye spent two years fighting with the partisans. By the summer of 1944,
Faye’s brigade made their way to the Russian town of Pinsk, which
they liberated from Nazi control. In this area once brimming with Jewish
culture and community, Faye found herself completely isolated.
1:48:12:00
FAYE:
When I came to Pinsk, this was really my worst time in my life, when I
have seen what's going on, the world is still wealth, the town where it
was 45,000 Jewish people is empty now. A schoolyard with kids, hundr——two
hundred children playing outside, not one Jewish child. And I didn't know,
what is now my life.
1:48:41:00
NARRATION:
Faye received medals for her bravery and took a well-paying job as photographer
for the new government of Pinsk. Her profound loneliness was eased when
she found two of her brothers still alive — one of them living with
Morris Schulman, another Jewish partisan. Faye and Morris married. Suddenly,
after years of deprivation, they had more than enough.
1:49:05:00
FAYE:
So much money I had, I never counted. I have so many eggs, so much butter,
and nobody to eat. Where was all the food when my parents were alive and
the family was alive? I could not enjoy the food and I said with my husband
we decided to leave Russia and to find our identity and to live among
our people again. We left the house, the money, everything; and we took
sacks on our backs and we left Russia.
1:49:40:00
NARRATION:
By January of 1945 the war had ended for Faye, but Barbara remained trapped
in Amsterdam and Shula was still digging trenches at gunpoint in the Polish
forest. When the Russians broke through those German defenses, the Nazis
fled, taking prisoners like Shula with them.
1:50:01:00
SHULA:
The order comes that we have to march, people who were sick who couldn't
march stayed there and were most probably killed. Unfortunately Ruth couldn't
come either because her leg was frozen so I knew if I take her with me
they will shot her before my eyes, so I couldn't take her. And I remember
still today when I went over in the morning and told her that, "Ruth,
we had the order to march, and I have to leave you here." She looked at
me and she told me if you leave me here I know that I am dying, and till
today I can't excuse myself, but I had no other choice.
1:50:45:00
The march was terrible. Five days we lived on onion and on snow. The German
SS left us and the next morning, the Russians were already occupying the
city. And that's how we were freed. Nobody cared; it was not like by the
Americans that if you were sick you were taken to the hospital, that you
get food, you can anything, no, you were on your own. You free and that's
it, good-bye, you do whatever you wish, that you are thousands of thousands
of kilometers from your home, that you don't know the language, that you
don't have money, that it's the middle of the war, because it was end
of January, nobody cared, you are free and do whatever you please. It
took me two horrifying months to get home, but I get home.
1:51:40:00
BARBARA:
The winter from '44 to '45 when you know everybody was liberated except
us.
1:51:49:00
There was no more gas, there was no water, there was no coal to make electricity.
It was so cold, and I remember all of us getting in bed together —
not for fun, but just for warmth. And we put everybody's blankets and
mattresses on top of us and we were still freezing.
1:52:11:00
BARBARA:
And the year came to an end and you know we didn’t know what was
going to happen. We knew there was going to be an end to this, but we
just didn’t know when. [Montage showing liberation of Holland, May
1945]
1:52:39:00
BARBARA:
The Canadians arrived and everybody went crazy, I mean the girls clambered
up and threw flowers. And the Dutch government made a big party all over
Amsterdam. The air was soft and there was music everywhere. And it was
just the most heavenly thing. And I know what you’re thinking —
was I thinking about my parents? Was I thinking about my sister? No, I
wasn’t. Because that was liberation first. And then we were going
to think about how to find out about things and what to do.
1:53:16:00
There were lists of people who were supposed to be on trains coming back
to Holland and my mother's name was on one of those lists and of course
I went to the train station and she wasn't there. After the war there
were 450,000 people walking all over Europe. They were displaced. Poles
were in Germany, Germans were in France, France — French were in
Holland, I mean people were all over the place. And I kept thinking maybe
they got lost somewhere and they will come back.
EPILOGUE The Ledermann
family died in Auschwitz. Barbara moved to New York in 1947. She worked
as a dancer and later joined the Ringling Brothers Circus.
1:54:10:00
Barbara married Martin Rodbell, who won a Nobel prize in Medicine in 1994.
They had four children: "two for me and two for my sister."
1:54:23:00
Shulamit immigrated to Palestine (now Israel) in 1945. There, she fought
in the War for Independence and the Sinai campaign and was decorated for
heroism.
1:54:38:00
After 15 years, Shulamit left the country she helped build and moved to
New York.
1:54:47:00
Faye and Morris spent two years in a displaced persons camp in Germany,
supporting the struggle for a homeland in Palestine.
1:54:59:00
In 1948 they obtained visas for Canada, where they raised two children
and opened a family business. Faye’s memoirs were published in 1995.
1:55:13:00
CREDITS
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