Bensinger Global Media
Refuge: Stories of Selfhelp Home
TRANSMISSION SCRIPT
Cover Page
Time-codes & Captions Dialogue
01:00:00:00 TITLE SEQUENCE
01:01:00:02 Female: ...page are you on?Female: No, no, no, no, no.
01:01:03:04 Male: It starts here and then you go...Hedy: Oh, at the bottom.
01:01:05:18 Male: ...make...make...Female: At the bottom.
01:01:05:21 Edith: Du liegst mir im Hertzen.
01:01:07:00 Male: Yeah, yeah.Hedy: Yeah, yeah.
01:01:11:09 Male: I promised you some gifted soloists, and here we have one, truly.
01:01:18:13 Edith: [Singing in German.]
01:01:37:13 Group: [Join in on chorus.] [Applause.]
01:01:58:09 Male: So Horst has volunteered to sing “Edelweiss,” so it’s Horst’s solo.
01:02:08:17 Narrator: From the beginning there was a sense of gemütlichkeit here. Gemütlichkeit is a German word. It means a feeling of comfort.
01:02:18:23 Horst: [Sings Edelweiss.]
01:02:25:01 Narrator: A sense that you’re feeling calm in your surroundings, that you’re at home. Here at Chicago’s Selfhelp Home, over 1,000 Western European Jews who survived the horrors of the Nazi regime have found a place to spend their final years. Today it is home to the last generation of Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors.
01:02:50:04 [Applause for Horst.]
01:02:57:22 Leni: Hi, Phil. You know I want to tell you, I just talked to Mrs. Barrett, and she mentioned you, but I didn’t know it was you. She talked about Mrs. Fink. How are you feeling?Female: That’s okay.
01:03:09:01 Leni: How long have you been here? A month?
01:03:12:07 Female: I came in Thursday, last week.
01:03:15:19 Leni: Oh, this week. Oh, no wonder I haven’t seen you. I wasn’t here last week. I come when it suits me, so I didn’t...I don’t think I was...
01:03:24:0301:03:25:11SUBTITLEFemale Speaking Female: No. I was single, but I met my future husband, who is a survivor of Auschwitz and was liberated in Bergen-Belsen.
01:03:36:08 Rolf: And then...
01:03:37:02SUBTITLEFemale Speaking Female: And then we came to Chicago.
01:03:39:02SUBTITLERolf Speaking Rolf: Did you have anybody in Chicago that you knew?
01:03:42:06SUBTITLEFemale Speaking Female: My father had a cousin who gave us the affidavit. So, I mean, everybody has their story— —-and I still know the older Selfhelp people, the original bunch.
01:03:58:11SUBTITLERolf Speaking Rolf: Yeah. Well, I’m...I’m part of that original bunch.
01:04:00:10 Female: [Laughs.]
01:04:00:20SUBTITLERolf Speaking Rolf: I’ve been around for a long, long time. I’m probably...I’m probably as old as you, or older.
01:04:07:20SUBTITLEFemale Speaking Female: I’m 91.
01:04:09:07SUBTITLERolf Speaking Rolf: You’re ninety what?
01:04:10:20SUBTITLEFemale Speaking Female: Ninety-one.
01:04:11:18SUBTITLERolf Speaking Rolf: Ninety-one? I’m 90.
01:04:13:12SUBTITLEFemale Speaking Female: See? Beat you to it.
01:04:15:18SUBTITLERolf Speaking Rolf: I was born in 1921.
01:04:25:02 Paula: I can’t believe that I’m a hundred years old. Well, but that’s the way it is. I think I have to thank my genes from my grandfather. If they wouldn’t have killed him, he was high in the 90s, and his mind was perfect. He was a sweet old man. I remember he was taking a nap and he had a beard, and I was a little girl, maybe 12 years old. You know, he used to braid his beard and put little bows in. And he was smiling. [Laughs.] He thought that’s fun.
01:05:20:2401:05:49:20LOWER THIRDPaula Tritsch – Selfhelp Resident Paula: Okay, let’s go. I grew up very sheltered, and they offered me everything I could want to learn. They were very much for education. I went to Paris in ‘34, and I went to a designing school, and then I met my husband and I married in Paris, and so I stayed in Paris and I stayed in France. That’s how I stayed alive.
01:05:55:1501:06:01:13LOWER THIRDS (2)Edith Pollak Stern – Selfhelp ResidentMarietta Pollak Ryba – Selfhelp Resident Edith: Marietta and I, we used to go for a walk. We had to hold hands and go in front of the parents, and breathe deep.
01:06:04:17 Marietta: Yeah.
01:06:05:12 Edith: And go very straight. And I don’t know about Marietta, but I was always bored to death with the walk.
01:06:11:01 Marietta: I know, you hated it.
01:06:13:00 Edith: She was four years younger, and at that time, when I was 14, I was already a teenager. She was 10 years old, she...blech.
01:06:20:16 Marietta: But you know now, when I look back, I wish I could hold my father’s hand and my mother’s hand.
01:06:31:05 Edith: I grew up in Czechoslovakia and my childhood was the happiest time in my life. My mother always used to say, “Don’t forget that you don’t have a better friend than your sister.” And we were thinking, oh yeah, what does she know, all right? But then the life taught us that she was right.
01:06:58:15 Rolf: It’s `almost Hanukah time, and so I want to wish you a happy Hanukah and a good new year. Let’s hope it’ll be peaceful. The potential of conflict in the world has not changed, and so we live dangerously all the time.
01:07:19:21LOWER THIRDDr. Rolf A. Weil – Selfhelp Founder Rolf: In my first few years I never had any Anti-Semitic experiences at all.
01:07:28:2201:07:32:00LOWER THIRDProf. Christopher R. Browning - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Browning: Jews in Central Europe, particularly in Germany, thought that they were simply one more kind of German, like Protestants and Catholics, and assumed that being Jewish in no way identified their belonging to the nation as somehow less or different.
01:07:45:19 Rolf: Of course after 1933 things changed.
01:07:50:07LOWER THIRDProf. Leon Stein - Roosevelt University Stein: There was Antisemitism, but it wasn’t government policy. And so many of the Jews, most of the Jews, still felt secure at that point.
01:07:59:04 Rolf: The first Anti-Semitic incident that I remember distinctly was marching to the public swimming pool for our swimming instruction, and there was a sign that said, “Juden verden nicht erlaubt im wasser.” And I stepped out of line and the teacher said, “What’s the matter?” And I said, “Well, can you see...read that sign? It says Jews are not permitted to pollute the water.”
01:08:34:11 Stein: As soon as the Nazis came to power, which was January 30th, 1933, almost immediately Jews began to experience assaults.
01:08:43:13LOWER THIRDGerald E. Franks - Selfhelp Founder Gerald: There was a boycott of Jewish stores all over Germany.
01:08:49:08LOWER THIRDHorst Abraham- Selfhelp Resident 01:08:49:08LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: A Nazi was posted in front of the shop, of my father’s shop,01:08:54:02LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: and that people couldn’t come in there.
01:08:58:16 Browning: Nineteen Thirty-Five Nuremberg Laws, which basically prohibit intermarriage or sexual intercourse between Germans and Jews, is what I would call the social death of German Jewry. No German and no Jew can be seen even fraternizing with one another without the fear of denunciation, without the fear that someone will accuse them of having violated this law, for which the consequences are dire.
01:09:20:21 Male: But as the Nazis prepared for European war, they stepped up their measures against the Jews.
01:09:26:20 01:09:26:20LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: I remember Nazis marching in the street with brown shirts and sang a song. 01:09:33:15LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: In English means when Jewish blood is flowing, it’s good to taste it.01:09:41:20LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: It tastes twice as good when they are killed.
01:09:45:20LOWER THIRDProf. Richard S. Levy- University of Illinois at Chicago Levy: The SA, the Stormtroopers, begin to drag people off the street, many of them Jews, torture them in basements, impromptu prisons.
01:09:54:12 Stein: A line had been crossed, and many of them thought it would pass. I would say the real turning point was the violence of Kristallnacht. Kristallnacht happened on November 9th and 10th, 1938. It’s a euphemism, “the night of the broken glass.”
01:10:10:15 Levy: It’s the reference to plate glass windows that had been broken, in Berlin, so many of them that they’re ankle deep on the street.
01:10:19:1501:10:23:16LOWER THIRDLeni Weil- Selfhelp Founder Leni: I have a very clear recollection of Kristallnacht. We were all at home – my father, my mother and myself and my two sisters.
01:10:29:19 Gerald: My uncle had been arrested at five in the morning and then apparently the arrests were aimed at the men in each family. The Nazi Party was designating the stores by having some Stormtroopers mark each store that was owned by Jewish people, and then they were followed by what was supposed to be a mob of people, really, but it was all organized. And, they came and then broke the windows, destroyed the stores, looted the stores.
01:11:08:22 Levy: They burn synagogues, hundreds of them, in Austria and Germany. They vandalize thousands of Jewish shops and loot them.
01:11:16:18 01:11:16:18LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: I went on the balcony and I smelled smoke.01:11:20:08LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: Said, “My gosh, what is this?”01:11:22:05LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: So I walked into my parents’ bedroom and said to my father, “Papa, please turn the radio on.”01:11:28:10LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: On the radio we heard that all the synagogues in Berlin were burning.
01:11:34:05 Gerald: The fire department controlled the flames so that it wouldn’t spread to the adjoining buildings, but they didn’t do anything to prevent the synagogue from burning inside. It was an unforgettable sight. And that was a very forcible reminder of what had happened and what was to come.
01:11:57:18 Leni: And around ten o’clock or eleven o’clock we had a doorbell ringing, and it was the Stuttgart police force, and they said, “We are here to pick up Arthur Metzger,” my father.
01:12:11:24 Levy: They kill one hundred Jews and arrest 30,000 Jewish males and send them to concentration camps.
01:12:21:12 Leni: My father then was in Dachau for four weeks, and was finally released totally bald, totally emaciated. His toes were all frozen and he could barely walk, he was that weak.
01:12:39:00 Levy: This is physical violence condoned by, organized by, the state, by government, and this, I think, removes any lingering doubts Jews might have had about being able to hold out. It makes them desperate to get out anywhere.
01:12:54:00 Gerald: It broke something within me and I decided that I could not just be a good German and a good Jew anymore, that, that our days were numbered.
01:13:05:24 Browning: Increasingly, the avenues of emigration have been closed, the refugee situation around the world is saturated, no one wants to take more penniless refugees, so that even though they’re desperate to get out, the opportunities to get out are simply not there, for the most part. Everybody wants to get out after Kristallnacht; there just isn’t enough time.
01:13:25:14 01:13:25:14LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: We always thought where shall we go, where shall we emigrate? We have no money.01:13:30:12LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: I’d like to go to Shanghai, but my father and mother said, “You must be crazy.01:13:34:11LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: What do we do in Shanghai, in China?01:13:36:16LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: We have no money to pay for this. And what do you do?”01:13:39:21LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: And my sister, two years younger than me, “Let him go. He will save our lives. Let him go.”
01:13:50:18 01:13:50:18LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: We left from Genoa to Shanghai, China, and the trip took 27 days.
01:13:56:23 Stein: Shanghai became a refuge – it was part of China, controlled by Japan – for 17,000 Jews.
01:14:02:23 Browning: This is the one place in 1939 where there are still no immigration restrictions. The Japanese didn’t buy into and didn’t, in a sense, implement Anti-Semitic racial policy. There were no Jews in Japan, and so, ironically, within an ally of Hitler, there is a pocket refuge to go where basically, Jews are left alone.
01:14:28:15 01:14:28:15LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: I wanted to help my parents and my sister. I spoke some Japanese01:14:33:23LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: and I went to the Japanese military.01:14:37:05LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: “Can you give me three permits to save three people from Germany to come to Shanghai?”01:14:43:14LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: “No, we can give you only two permits.”01:14:46:12LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: I sent the two permits to Berlin.01:14:48:16LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: “Two can come. One has to stay behind. You can come later.01:14:52:04LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:Horst: And my sister had to stay back in Berlin.
01:14:55:22 Levy: The official policy, if you can detect an official policy, is to drive the Jews out of Germany, to make it so unpleasant for them that they leave, even though this is, you know, very difficult. It’s not simply trying to drive them out, they have to have someplace to go. And the Nazis make it very difficult to leave with any kind of resources. There are emigration taxes, there are currency restrictions, bank accounts are sealed, so, unless you have enormous means, unless you have connections abroad, it’s very difficult to go anywhere.
01:15:28:11 Rolf: I emigrated in 1936, specifically in December. My father had gone ahead two or three months before, and my mother and I followed.
01:15:39:1401:15:45:09LOWER THRIDHerbert L. Roth – Selfhelp Board Member Herbert: We came in June of 1938. We had, my mother had a cousin here, so that was our only good contact into the United States, so we came to Chicago.
01:15:52:12LOWER THIRDHal Strauss – Selfhelp Resident Hal: Well, my father and the uncle in America made plans to get the family out of Nazi Germany, and very soon, very quickly, we left and took a boat from Hamburg to New York harbor. Hello, America.
01:16:19:2301:16:21:01LOWER THIRDDr. Edward H. Mazur – President, Chicago Jewish Historical Society Mazur: There are many, many tirades, warnings, pleas to deal with the rise of Nazism and Hitler and its restrictions on people in Germany. There are many calls to open up the immigration quotas so more people can come to Chicago.
01:16:40:04 Narrator: But only a limited number of Western European Jews, including the founders of Selfhelp, were able to obtain coveted exit visas and make their way to the safety of the United States. In Chicago, these newcomers set out to create a supportive community for themselves, their parents and others fleeing Nazi persecution.
01:17:02:14 Rolf: In 1938, when Selfhelp of Chicago got started, it was primarily a self-help organization. The idea was that instead of relying on public aid or charity, the refugees were going to cooperatively help each other.
01:17:22:0801:17:27:02LOWER THIRDGerald E. Franks – Selfhelp Founder Gerald: That involved, in many instances, helping them to find a job, which was not easy at that point yet, because the Depression was in its last days.
01:17:34:22 Mazur: And this concept of self-help I think is just such a wonderful term for what eventually would become the Selfhelp organization and Selfhelp Home here in Chicago.
01:17:48:15 Rolf: And so the early days consisted of taking care of the sick and the old and providing clothes for children.
01:17:59:04 Gerald: They assisted people who had extra rooms in their apartments to sublease space to arriving immigrants.
01:18:08:1101:18:14:14LOWER THIRDLeni Weil – Selfhelp Founder Leni: I could do teaching, English in the evening, and it was mostly an older group of people who did not or were not able to work and had very little chance to use the English language.
01:18:22:17 Rolf: Selfhelp started out with very little money. In fact, we had little collection boxes that people put in extra dimes or quarters.
01:18:35:06 Leni: What we did with that money was mainly to help people in need, especially when there was a problem with medical bills or with, actually, food costs or rent. We tried to keep it as a minimum, and it was always a gift, never a loan.
01:18:56:02 Mazur: The group that had arrived here, these immigrants in the 1930s, while they were adjusting to life here in Chicago and in the United States, many of them still had relatives, many of them still had friends, many of them still had some sort of associations in Germany and Austria and in Czechoslovakia.
01:19:18:0401:19:21:04LOWER THIRDHannah Messinger – Selfhelp Resident Hannah: The part of Czechoslovakia that I lived in was German speaking, and all the Germans took to Hitler, and my close friends started not to talk to me as much.
01:19:41:02LOWER THIRDEdith Pollak Stern – Selfhelp Resident Edith: Czechoslovakia was the only country in Europe, when somebody would curse you and would say, “You dirty Jew,” you could accuse him, and he could be punished.
01:19:53:10 Mazur: It must have been very disheartening, as they learned of the consolidation and the iron fist of the spread of Nazism in Czechoslovakia.
01:20:03:07LOWER THIRDMarietta Pollak Ryba – Selfhelp Resident Marietta: My father, as the manager of a chocolate factory, traveled quite a lot to different countries. England was one of them. And he went to Birmingham and met Mr. Cadbury, who is...who owned the chocolate factory. And I think this Mr. Cadbury told him that there was a man who was organizing children transports from Czechoslovakia. And my father found out about it and enrolled me. It was...there were children up to the ages of 16. However, my sister was 17, so she couldn’t be part of it.
01:20:50:04LOWER THIRDProf. Leon Stein – Roosevelt University Stein: Well, kindertransport was really inspired by British Jews. There was Nicholas Winton, who was a lawyer and stockbroker. He approached the British government with some Jews, and some people in the British government were sympathetic.
01:21:05:13 Browning: In the summer of ‘39, hundreds of Jewish children do manage to get out of Czechoslovakia, come to England.
01:21:13:03 Marietta: Well, this was an adventure because I was firmly convinced that my parents will come, and that they will follow, so I looked at it as...as an adventure. You know, 13-year-old kid. And also relief to get out of that part of Europe.
01:21:31:10 Browning: People hoped to, in a sense, provide early exit for Jewish children, with the expectation that later parents will follow, or when things finally settled down, Jewish children could go back.
01:21:45:16 Marietta: I didn’t like leaving my parents and my sister, but there was nothing I could do. I could see that my father, it was very important for him, and he said, “You know, we’ll come and join you as soon as we can, but you’re the first to go because there is an opportunity for you.” I was hoping that somehow Edith would...could come on a nursing permit. She could have, but she said she didn’t want to leave her parents. So we drove to Prague and we were to be at the railway station at a certain time. And I remember saying good-bye to my...my parents, but they more or less snatched the children and they put us on the train. And I do remember that my father was trying to climb the carriage to be able to kiss me good-bye. And...and I remember seeing my mother and my sister waving to me, and the train went, and that was it.
01:22:55:19 Edith: We all were on the train station, and we were all crying, you know, and then they...they...they put...the kids had to go into the wagon and my father... The...the train started moving...eh-eh-eh-eh-eh... And I see my father was trying to go with the wag... I...I don’t remember. I...I...I only know it was just...it just breaks my heart when I think about it.
01:23:40:18 Stein: World War II broke out on September 1st, 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland. Hitler thought that France and England would do nothing, but now France and England declared war on Hitler.
01:23:57:00 Browning: Germany had hundreds of thousands of Jews; Poland has millions of Jews. And even when Germany divides Poland with the Soviet Union, and they only get Western Poland and Stalin gets Eastern Poland, Germany now acquires close to two million additional Jews within their boundaries. Clearly emigration, and certainly emigration during war, is not going to solve the problem.
01:24:20:24 Edith: I was back with my parents in Hodonin. There were three families living in one apartment. And the transports started.
01:24:29:16 Hannah: My husband received a letter telling him that he had to appear at a certain train station at such-and-such time. I received a letter two weeks later, and the same thing, I had to report to a railway station where we each got a number hung around our neck. And were taken by train, we didn’t know where, but it was Theresienstadt.
01:25:03:01 Browning: Theresienstadt is where Jews will be rounded up, and from there, as it fills up, it will be emptied, and new space will be made by shipping them to Auschwitz, and so it is basically a transit ghetto.
01:25:17:05 Stein: It’s unique because it was both a ghetto and a camp. A ghetto, it was sealed off, but families lived there together. And it was also a camp, of course, because it was controlled by the SS.
01:25:28:24 Edith: So we came to Theresienstadt, as everybody else. At least it was still Czechoslovakia, you know, it was home.
01:25:36:11 Hannah: We were taken to a barracks. There were women and children taken to one large room with no beds or anything. There was straw on the floor, and we had to sleep on the floor. The food was next to nothing.
01:25:59:19 Edith: Everybody worked in Theresienstadt, everybody, unless you were so old or so sick that you couldn’t.
01:26:06:00 Hannah: The rule was women could not have long hair, so they asked if anybody is a hairdresser, and okay, I didn’t want to shovel coal anymore.
01:26:18:16 Edith: I think, in a way, we were happy that we didn’t have to go east, even though we didn’t know about the gas chambers.
01:26:25:19 Hannah: My parents and my sister came to Theresienstadt in May, Nineteen Forty...Two. I tried so much to arrange that they could stay there, but no. When they left three days later, that was the last time I ever saw them. That was terrible. It was...I was unable to speak for about a week, I couldn’t talk. It...it was... The last words my sister said to me, “Hannah, you were my best friend.” Those were her last words.
01:27:21:03 Edith: I had surgery and I got meningitis, and now I was deadly sick, and my fiancé was called into a transport, and he was supposed to go east. And my father knew that if he leaves that I will die. We had to get married right away. And I got married. My head was bandaged because, you know, I’m...so I had this bandage, and I must have been a beautiful bride. Anyway, and I’m lying there, and then my husband was standing next to me, and there was the rabbi, and there were lots of people, nurses and, you know, because it was unheard of. [Laughs.] And everybody cried, of course, because it was... I laughed. I was happy. I didn’t cry.
01:28:11:16 Hannah: And later on my husband and I were allowed to live together if we find a place to live. So with cardboard we made ourselves a little room in the attic of one of the houses. I became pregnant in Theresienstadt, and there was a law that you cannot have children. If you have children, you get taken elsewhere. And I had an abortion, which was done by Jewish doctors.
01:29:08:15LOWER THIRDPaula Tritsch – Selfhelp Resident Paula: We were hiding. We were afraid, was constantly afraid to be caught.
01:29:17:12 Stein: Jews in France, for example, were sheltered everywhere – in farms, in castles, in estates.
01:29:24:11 Paula: My husband became a gardener who never did any gardening and didn’t know anything about the garden. He was a chemist. And I was a cook.
01:29:37:1401:29:41:00LOWER THIRDProf. Richard S. Levy – University of Illinois at Chicago Levy: They had to be able to pass for natives, and often they could. The Nazi stereotype that every Jew was instantly recognizable by his big nose or by the way he looked or the color of his hair is clearly not true.
01:29:51:17 Paula: We moved around a lot because if you stay long at one place, the neighborhood knows you. And then came a time where the Germans attacked villages. We saw villages burning. The Germans used to take out the people, shot the people and burned the villages down. And when we saw that, we told this lady we are not going to stay there anymore, this is dangerous, and we left.
01:30:27:00 Levy: It was a perilous life. They often had to stay on the move. They could not, for a variety of reasons, stay in one place. It was a burden on those who were taking care of them.
01:30:38:00 Paula: My son was three years old. If he gets scared and cries, the Germans, they’ll shoot us.
01:30:46:13 Levy: Life, this kind of constant peril, always looking over your shoulder, always indebted to someone else for your survival, it was, it certainly changed people, and drained them. They did, of course, what they had to do.
01:31:02:24 Stein: During World War II, the number of concentration camps metastasized to ten thousand and four, of every description – slave labor, detention camps, transit camps, punishment camps, political camps.
01:31:15:22 Horst: 01:31:15:22LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:My sister wrote letters.01:31:18:14LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:The last letter that she wrote, “All others on vacation.”01:31:23:02LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:And I asked, “What does that mean?” 01:31:24:24LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:“Horst, that means everybody was deported.”01:31:28:04LANGUAGE SUBTITLE:So three days later, she was deported to Auschwitz.
01:31:35:00 Hannah: I don’t remember how many men, a couple of thousand, probably, were told to appear at a certain barracks at a certain time, and they didn’t know why. And they were taken by train, they didn’t know where to. That’s the last time I saw my husband. And two weeks later, I was summoned.
01:32:04:02 Edith: Amongst those 5,000 men was my husband and my father. We believed that they are going to some labor camps in Germany. The Germans told us that 500 women can voluntarily follow their husbands or their fathers. Of those 5,000 men, there were more than 500 women left behind. So everybody tried whatever they could to...just to get into the transport. And when we were leaving Theresienstadt, we were singing, we were so happy. We were like on the German borders, but then all of a sudden we noticed we really don’t go to Germany, we go...we go east.
01:32:52:09 Edith: And my mother had a nervous breakdown right there in the wagon. So we arrived in Auschwitz.
01:33:05:13 Stein: Auschwitz was so vast that it was about 15 square miles with its surrounding camps. By 1944, the railroad station at Auschwitz was bigger than New York’s Pennsylvania Station, which was the biggest railroad station in the world.
01:33:19:24 Levy: The number who die in Auschwitz, variously estimated, but over a million.
01:33:26:06 Edith: And those kapos, they started screaming at us, “Leave everything! Leave everything! Nothing, nothing!” You know, just leave it. “Out, out, out, out!” And then they said, “Young people this…older people and mothers with children on this side.” And my mother, she was old. She was about...she was 55. I tried to go with her, and I was told, “No, you cannot go with her because you have to go left.” And my mother was crying and screaming, and so there wasn’t much of a good-bye.
01:34:03:18 Browning: Since you had a labor camp and you had the gas chambers, when transport arrived, you had to decide who went to which place.
01:34:11:12 Stein: These camps were ultimately designed for industrialized mass murder. Children, the elderly, pregnant women, women with small children.
01:34:24:04 Browning: There’s a team, basically, of about 24 SS doctors, and they will take turns servicing the ramp, as it’s called, when these people arrive, who will go off to the labor camp and who will be sent to the gas chambers.
01:34:38:18 Hannah: It was Mr. Mengele who was there. He pointed at me and he said, “You are pregnant.” And I said, “No, Herr Kommandant. I was pregnant but I had an abortion.” “Why did you have an abortion?” And I said something that I regret to this day, but I wanted to save my life. I said, “Because I didn’t want to bring another Jewish child into this world.”
01:35:20:06 Edith: And then we marched. And while we were marching, we saw those chimneys with...with flames, and we were led by a woman kapo. She told us, “Do you see the chimneys? Do you see the flames? Do you see the smoke? Those are your parents, your children, your husbands burning.” And we looked at each other, she’s...she’s crazy. I mean, you know, we really couldn’t...we couldn’t...we couldn’t believe.
01:35:51:08 Hannah: I heard a woman calling. She said, “If you have any bread, give it to us. Give it to me. They don’t let you keep it anyway.” I had a little piece of bread and I threw it to her, and they shot her.
01:36:21:07 Edith: They screamed at us, “Disrobe!” So we were naked. And they shaved us. All the hair was shaved. And then we were supposed to take a shower. The so-called older people also were supposed to go to a shower. Instead of water, it was gas. Those were the gas chambers.
01:36:42:23 Hannah: We didn’t know anything about what showers meant, could mean in...in Auschwitz. They took away all our clothes. We got just one shift, a...a so-called dress, just nothing. And they put us in the barracks.
01:37:04:08 Edith: There were no mattresses, there was no straw, nothing. There was just wooden bunks and latrines in the middle.
01:37:10:17 Hannah: We were five people on one of the beds. If one person wanted to turn, the others had to turn, too. I don’t remember ever talking to anybody because everybody was in such total shock.
01:37:30:20 Stein: For Jewish women in the camps, to become pregnant was a death sentence.
01:37:35:14 Edith: When I said good-bye to my husband before he was sent away, I apparently became pregnant. I didn’t know about it, of course. The Allies were bombing all the time. The trains were not go...not going, so I knew that somehow the end is approaching. So I don’t remember that I would have been desperate or anything. I just took it day by day.
01:38:00:01 Browning: By the summer of 1944, the Allies are...have invaded or are advancing through France, but most important, the Russians have made a huge breakthrough on the Eastern Front.
01:38:11:23 Paula: And one day there was a lot of commotion in Chamberey, and somebody came back and they said, “The Germans are gone.” And we were liberated by the Americans, and that was very nice. And I took my son to see the Americans, and they gave him chocolate and chewing gum. And a kid, you know, he never had chocolates in the war.
01:38:45:06 Hannah: Rumors had it that the war is going to an end, that the Allies and the Russians are nearby.
01:38:56:17 Hannah: It was May 7, 1945. They did not unlock our room in the morning to get out to work. And we looked out the window and there were no people outside, no Germans, not nobody. So we said, something’s going on. All of a sudden somebody unlocks the door to our room and there is one Russian soldier, and he said to us, “You’re free.”
01:39:35:20 Browning: The allied armies arrive at various places – Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau – and find them overrun with masses of starving prisoners, often at the very, you know, last gasp of life. The number of Jews and others who die in the first weeks after liberation is staggering, because they just are beyond...beyond rescue.
01:39:58:21 Edith: The day of liberation, we decided that we have to leave the camp.
01:40:07:03 Browning: They’ve been separated from their family, they don’t know how many of their family are still alive, and this is the number one concern: are they alone in the world or are there other family members that are still alive, and if so, how are they going to find them?
01:40:20:08 Hannah: We walked towards the Czech border. We found an abandoned farmhouse where people must have left in a hurry. There was a huge pot with boiled chickens and potatoes, and we decided we make this a festive affair.
01:40:43:16LOWER THIRDMarietta Pollak Ryba – Selfhelp Resident Marietta: When I first came to Czech soil, I kissed the ground. The whole six years in England I lived for the time to go back. I returned with a small company of Czech doctors and nurses. We were told that we were needed to go to Terezin, convert it into a hospital. I was still looking for my sister, you know? There was one Czech nurse.
01:41:15:05 Edith: A young woman with whom I used to work in Theresienstadt.
01:41:20:21 Marietta: And I said to her, “Did you ever meet Edith?” She said, “Yes, I do know her.” And this particular nurse had a day off and she went to Prague, and she bumped into Edith on the street, you know.
01:41:39:03 Edith: And she told me, “You have a sister in Theresienstadt,” and I said, “No, I don’t have a sister in Theresienstadt, I have a sister in England.”
01:41:46:22 Marietta: And she said, “No, no, she came with a transport of doctors and nurses and she’s working in Terezin, and she’s looking for you.”
01:41:55:03 Edith: I didn’t feel like seeing her right away because first I have to find my husband, and then I can look for my sister. I met somebody who was a very good friend of my husband and where I knew that they went together to Auschwitz. And this guy told me that my husband – his first name was Otto – and no, Otto is not coming back. So I turned around and went to the train station.
01:42:27:07 Marietta: And in walks this little person. I didn’t recognize her. And she walked in and she said, “I’m looking for Marietta Pollak.” And I said, “Well, that’s me.” I was separated from Edith for about six years. Cried hysterically and we went into another room and...
01:42:53:12 Hannah: When I came back to Prague, I went to our former apartment, and a strange lady answered the door. And I asked her if she had heard anything of my family. No, she hasn’t. Nobody had survived.
01:43:13:20 Stein: The primary concern for Jews who survived was where to go. A hundred and forty thousand Holocaust survivors came to America. One reason is by 1947 and 1952, our immigration laws changed.
01:43:31:02 Hannah: I sent a telegram to my aunt, “Everybody killed. I am all alone.” I arrived by plane in Chicago. I was very eager to get out of the plane, and somebody, a man came to me and said, “Are you Mrs. Kohorn?” And I said, “Yes.” “I have to talk to you.” So the tears were coming. Here I am, I finally made it here, and my family is waiting, and what’s going to happen? Are they sending me back? And he assured me he’s from the Chicago Sun-Times and he wants to interview me.
01:44:26:07LOWER THIRDDr. Edward H. MazurPresident, Chicago Jewish Historical Society Mazur: But here, after World War II, we start to get a number of people that we called displaced persons, and we see an influx of survivors. People came to the United States and to Chicago during this period. Really, other than perhaps a small suitcase and the clothing on their backs, they had very, very little, and they needed help. The Jewish community responded to their needs.Those who came here found a community that had well established charitable and social help organizations.
01:45:01:04 Rolf: The older generation was in need of a place where they could be comfortable. The younger people were trying to finally get settled, and they couldn’t properly take care of many of the older people who were still talking almost exclusively German, and so the idea developed that a home was needed, which would provide a comfortable old age for refugees.
01:45:30:2201:45:35:24LOWER THIRDLeni Weil – Selfhelp Founder Leni: We first helped the newcomers and then we realized that the only thing our parents still clung to were the old habits from the homeland, so the main thing was to provide some kind of a good life for our parents in their old age. And we felt the best way to help them was to open this home. We all realized, at an early age, that the people that had suffered the most with this whole immigration was not our generation, but our parents’ generation. They were the ones who lost everything and left a certain happy life for a total uncertainty and total financial loss.
01:46:17:09 Narrator: It became clear that a home was needed where older refugees could spend their final years. By 1950, Selfhelp’s committed volunteers had finally raised enough money to put down a deposit for a house on Chicago’s South Side.
01:46:34:0701:46:36:20LOWER THIRDGerald E. Franks – Selfhelp Founder Gerald: We were really what I would say were cockeyed optimists because we didn’t have any money and we were looking at a building, so how we were gonna acquire the building we didn’t really know.
01:46:45:22 Rolf: Most of the money came in very small amounts. People contributed five dollars or ten dollars a year, and so it was a shoestring operation.
01:46:55:08 Gerald: The Selfhelp interest was in German Jews and Austrian Jews, primarily. There were a few Czechs and a few Hungarians, but they were a very small number.
01:47:07:17 Rolf: The criterion for even being put on the list was that you had to be a victim of Nazi persecution. We started out with 18 residents, and they lived there just like a family.
01:47:21:23 Leni: It was a very homey kind of an affair. People all knew each other. It was friendly. It was a living room. It wasn’t an institution. It was a home.
01:47:33:00 Gerald: And all the cooking was done by our volunteers. They did everything. So it was really...it...it had a family atmosphere.
01:47:43:18 Narrator: Selfhelp had become a new home, but in the process it had also become a cause. For all the volunteers, there was a powerful need to try to recreate for their parents, and grandparents, or perfect strangers, a bit of home life that had been lost.
01:48:02:04 Leni: The Friday night services were very intimate. Everybody had a chance to participate, and therefore felt very important, and it provided for great sociability in the home as such.
01:48:17:01 Edith: We had coffee klatches. Volunteers came and we served special coffee and cakes and cookies, and for everybody, and the volunteers were serving, and there was lots of talk and exchange of gossip.
01:48:32:22 Narrator: For Jews whose lives had been fractured by the Nazis, sustaining Selfhelp became a lifelong commitment. Founders, their families, and many other members of the community devoted time and money to make sure the home would remain a refuge for those who needed it.
01:48:52:01 Gerald: Dr. William Becker became president of Selfhelp during this very important period, and his wife Dorothy also was very active.
01:49:03:10 Leni: I don’t know what she would have done without Selfhelp. She was always there whenever one needed it, and so she had a tremendous influence on all of us.
01:49:13:07 Gerald: She had her own feelings, and they were very strong when it came to Selfhelp. [Laughs.]
01:49:20:04 Narrator: Generous donations allowed Selfhelp to construct a larger building on Chicago’s North Side in 1963, while still maintaining the home on the South Side, where shortly thereafter Edith Stern became the administrator.
01:49:35:09LOWER THIRDEdith Pollak Stern – Selfhelp Administrator Edith: I came to America in August, 1965. I had to live in the Selfhelp. I had a studio on the second floor. And I was in my 40s at that time, and the residents on the South Side were about our age today – [laughs] – so they all could have been my parents. So my relationship to the whole job was, I couldn’t do anything for my parents, but I can do something for those old people here.
01:50:06:13 Narrator: This desire to help the refugees and survivors remains a hallmark of Selfhelp. Leni is the treasurer and she, Rolf, Herb and Gerry still serve on the board of directors. Selfhelp continues to be a community that understands the deep significance of feeling at home. Residents who have survived tremendous fear and loss find companionship in a place created especially for them.
01:50:38:20 Female: Here we go. Now we got to move everyone back. Wow, you look pretty bright today under all these lights. Okay, let’s start with a little hand clapping. Slow, slow, quick, quick. Slow, slow, quick, quick. Slow, slow, shoulder, shoulder. Slow, slow, thigh, thigh. Slow, slow, shoulder, shoulder. Slow, slow, thigh, thigh. Slow, slow, shoulder, shoulder. Slow, slow, thigh, thigh. Slow, slow, shoulder, shoulder. Slow, slow, thigh, thigh. Slow, slow, shoulder, shoulder. Slow, slow, thigh, thigh. Very good.
01:51:16:02 Edith: I am lucky because no matter how bad the situation was, or seems to be, somehow I always wiggle out. I survived the Holocaust, I am healthy, I can run, I can dance, I can jump, I can carry, so yeah, I’m lucky, right? Happy? That’s something else, okay?
01:51:45:24 Paula: I’m not happy. Happy I would only be if my husband was here. But very satisfied. I can’t complain about anything.
01:51:56:07 Hannah: I started doing these drawings. It was a catharsis for me. Before that I used to have many nightmares. After I did these drawings I never had nightmares again.
01:52:15:09 Herbert: Let’s talk about what the future should be.
01:52:19:02 Rolf: When our generation is gone, it will be very, very difficult to maintain that spirit.
01:52:28:24 Herbert: I’m concerned because what made this organization for what it is, is a cause, and that cause is evaporating, and then you lose the ambiance and the culture that we have here.
01:52:42:23 Rolf: Certainly it’s not going to be victims of Nazi persecution anymore. They’re gonna be gone within, what, ten years.
01:52:49:14 Edith: We are the last generation. We are dying out, okay, the survivors.
01:52:54:04 Leni: It is up to the future generation whether they feel that we are doing the right thing and we are able to maintain the high standards that Selfhelp has set for itself. And until we can know that, I cannot really vouch for the future of Selfhelp.
01:53:16:00 Leni: Hello, Mrs. Barrett, how are you?
01:53:19:00 Mrs. Barrett: Okay.
01:53:19:24 Leni: I’m so glad that I have a chance to visit with you. I tell you, you know Selfhelp is my second home. I live here, practically. And people don’t realize how long I’ve been involved with this organization. And I’m going to be 89 next week. I’m not exactly young either. [Laughs.]
01:53:38:18 Mrs. Barrett: I’m 96.
01:53:40:21 Leni: Well, I wish I were like that. Otherwise it’s not good to get that old.
01:53:44:05 Mrs. Barrett: Stick around, you’ll make it.
01:53:46:19 Leni: Look, I’m happy and grateful for what I have.Mrs. Barrett: Yeah.
01:53:49:10 Leni: That’s all you can say. You have family?
01:53:51:21 Mrs. Barrett: No, I have nobody.
01:53:53:00 Leni: Nobody here, so you really...Mrs. Barrett: No, I have nobody. I’ve got Selfhelp.
01:53:58:11 Leni: Well, that’s a good thing. That’s what we’re here for.Mrs. Barrett: Yeah.
01:54:01:20 Leni: I just hope we can keep up the...in the same spirit.
01:54:05:10 Mrs. Barrett: Yeah, thank you.
01:54:06:02 Leni: And with the same nice people that we have around here.Mrs. Barrett: Yeah.
01:54:10:13 Leni: And hope that it’ll last for a long time to come. What else can we say?
01:54: 15:08 Rolf: Will we be able to find board members in the future with the same dedication that we had from the old guard?
01:54:26:08 Leni: Our people are dying out.
01:54:29:04 Hal: I’ll take a piece of that and a cup of tea, please. Went to college in Louisiana, and the Army grabbed me when the war came along and I became an interrogator. And I feel like me and Winston, we won the war. Before I know it, Korea comes along. They were about to send me off to Korea until some general looks at my record and says, “This guy interrogates Germans. He’s not gonna find too many of ‘em in Korea. Send him home.” That was the end of my Army career.
01:55:12:24 Hal: I love this place. I’ll get dressed up for Shabbos dinner and the activities.
01:55:23:07 Male: So we’re gonna be doing our Friday night service today as we do every week in Selfhelp Home.
01:55:28:12 Group: [Singing.]
01:55:39:24 Hedy: Oh, how lovely Hannah Broze looks.
01:55:43:10 Female: Hi.
01:55:43:23 Hedy: Hi. Good evening. You missed a good, good performance.
01:55:50:02 Female: Hi. Hedy: Hi. Don’t you look nice?
01:55:55:15 Hedy: You’re in Hollywood here at Selfhelp Home. Did you know that?
01:56:00:07 Male: Of course we do.
01:56:00:23 Female: What? But I didn’t hear.
01:56:02:14 Hedy: You’re in Hollywood now. Selfhelp Home is being filmed.
01:56:07:03 Female: Oh.
01:56:08:16 Hedy: Okay, good Shabbos to everybody. We’ve got lots of guests and we’re gonna light the candles, as we always do for Shabbat. If you could, rise please so that we can light the candles. If you can, rise.
01:56:33:08 Female: Very good.
01:56:35:20 Hedy: Okay.
01:56:36:14 Group: [Singing.]
01:57:05:11EPILOGUE TEXT:for Marietta Pollak RybaSeveral years after the war, Mariette and her husband escaped Czechoslovakia. With the assistance of her wartime foster family, they immigrated to England before finally settling in the United States. Marietta has three children and six grandchildren.
01:57:21:13EPILOGUE TEXT:for Edith Pollak SternShortly after liberation, Edith gave birth to her son, Peter, who died several days later. Edith remarried and stayed in Prague until 1965, when she and her daughter immigrated to the United States and were reunited with Marietta. Edith had two grandchildren.
01:57:37:13EPILOGUE TEXT:for Hannah MessingerHannah has shown her paintings in many exhibitions, including at the University of Wisconsin and the Chicago Cultural Center. Today, her art is in the collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Hannah has two children and two grandchildren.
01:57:53:15EPILOGUE TEXT:for Hal StraussAfter serving in the US Army as a German-speaking interrogator during World War II, Hal came to Chicago to attend Northwestern University. He then established an accounting practice and raised a family. Hal has two children and two grandchildren.
01:58:09:17EPILOGUE TEXT:for Horst AbrahamHorst’s sister, Vera, was murdered in Auschwitz. He and his parents emigrated from Shanghai to Chicago where Horst worked at the Armour Corporation before becoming an antiques dealer. Horst published his memoirs at the age of 90.
01:58:25:18EPILOGUE TEXT:for Paula TritschAfter the war, Paula and her son immigrated to Chicago. Paula is a sculptor and painter. Her art is in the collections of the Illinois Holocaust Museum, The Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the Desert Holocaust Memorial in Palm Springs, California. She has five grandchildren.
01:58:41:17END CREDIT CARD:DirectorEthan E. BensingerProducerBeth SternheimerEditorRuth Efrati EpsteinComposerSteve Zoloto
01:58:47:21END CREDIT CARD:WriterBenjamin AvishaiDirectors of PhotographyMatthew CozzaInes SommerLocation AudioJ. Byron SmithJesse McAlphinAssistant EditorRyan PostelGraphics DesignerJoe HunnewinkelSound Design & MixBrando TriantafillouColoristStephen HullfishOn-line FacilityMedia Process Group, Chicago
01:58:54:07END CREDIT CARD:NarratorJared FernleyTranscriptionsTranscription ProfessionalsHistorical AdvisorDr. Elliot LefkovitzMedia RelationsLisa PevtzowCommunity Engagement ManagerErin WilliamsFiscal SponsorDocumentary Educational ResourcesLegal CounselHolland & Knight
01:59:01:18END CREDIT ROLL:Archival Imagery Courtesy of:ABC News VideoSourceArchive FilmsBeit TerezinSam K. BryanBundesarchivBundesfilmarchiv/Transit Film GmbHChicago History MuseumChicago TribuneChicago Sun-TimesBettmann/CORBISDmitri BaltermantsThe Dmitri Baltermants Collection/CORBISHulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBISFILM ArchivesLou Reda Productions/Getty ImagesRobert Fulton/Getty ImagesFilm Audio Services/Getty ImagesFox Photos/Getty ImagesFPG/Getty ImagesThe Granger Collection, New YorkIllionis Holocaust Museum & Education CenterPhotothèque CICR (DR)/ ROSSEL, MauriceJewish Museum in PragueJoods Historisch Museum/ Jewish Historical MuseumHannah MessingerMuseum of Jewish Heritage, New YorkThe National Archives of the UK, ref, HO294/612Petrified FilmsMarietta RybaSelfhelp HomeShutterstockEdith SternSteven Spielberg Film and Video ArchiveThought Equity MotionPaula TritschUS Holocaust Memorial MuseumDr. Rolf A. WeilThe Wiener LibraryYad Vashem Photo ArchivesCol. Alexander Zabin, MD/ Dr. Steven ZabinThank you to our interviewees:Marietta RybaEdith SternPaula TritschHannah MessingerHal StraussHorst AbrahamDr. Rolf A. WeilLeni WeilHerbert L. RothGerald E. FranksProf. Leon SteinProf. Christopher R. BrowningProf. Richard S. LevyDr. Edward H. MazurSpecial Thanks:Molly BarrettKareena BeckmanElizabeth Nicolay-BensingerJennifer BensingerRachel BensingerAna BensingerLouis BermanChicago History MuseumHedy CiocciTali Bensinger-ColtonMichael Bensigner-ColtonKeith CurtisMarielle EpsteinJacob EpsteinAlice FinkLillian GerstnerLlyce GlinkLisa HackerAustin HirschRick HirschhaulIllinois Holocaust Museum & Education CenterGary KahnNatalie KalbJillian KligmanChad KreindlerKaren KreindlerJennifer LeemisSteven LevineUrsula LevyFrank MayerMarion MayerJoanne NicolayNicole NicolayPatricia NicolayRichard NicolayRick NicolayRicky NicolayTyler NicolayAnthony RodriguezCarmen RodriguezMarvin RubinTimothy SamuelsonSee3 CommunicationsJoseph SeigleFern ShafferRachel ShermanSpertus InstituteTonya StaffordCharles WolfLillian ZolotoIlyce ZolotoZachary ZolotoJacob ZolotoAbigail Zoloto
01:59:24:21END CREDIT CARD:We are very grateful for generous donations from:Walter and Karla Goldschmidt FoundationWalter S. Mander FoundationMr. and Mrs. Manfred SteinfeldRoth Family FoundationHerbert S. WolfDan WolfCamera, lighting and sound equipment donated by:Think Glink Publishing
01:59:34:19END CREDIT CARD:Our deepest gratitude to all the residents and staff at Selfhelp for so graciously allowing us into your “home.”
01:59:41:03END CARD:REFUGE: STORIES OF THE SELFHELP HOMEIs produced by Bensinger Global Media, which is solely responsible for its content.© 2012 Bensinger Global Media. All rights reserved.