Kansas City

Zdenko Bergl, an only child, grew up in Zabno, Croatia, a small town with only five Jewish families. Zdenko played soccer, attended public school, and had Hebrew lessons on Sunday. The Bergls enjoyed warm relationships with their non-Jewish employees and neighbors and experienced very little overt antisemitism. However, in April 1941, the Germans occupied Croatia and his father was arrested. After family connections enabled him to be released, the family fled to Italy, where a priest helped them obtain forged papers and they spent the rest of the war passing as non-Jews until their liberation in August 1944. They lived in the Cinecittá displaced persons camp until their immigration to the United States. In 1949, Zdenko married Evelyn Arzt, whom he had met in Cinecittá.

Ann Federman was the next-to-youngest of nine children born to Miriam and Abraham Warszawski in Będzin, Poland. Only fourteen when the Germans invaded Poland, Ann spent the war in Parschnitz, a slave labor in camp in Czechoslovakia. After liberation, Ann was eventually reunited with her sister and two brothers. The family lived in the Bergen Belsen Displaced Persons Camps where she met her husband, Isak Federman. They came to the United States in 1946, settling in Kansas City, where they were the first Holocaust survivors to marry.

Ann Federman was the next-to-youngest of nine children born to Miriam and Abraham Warszawski in Będzin, Poland. Only fourteen when the Germans invaded Poland, Ann spent the war in Parschnitz, a slave labor in camp in Czechoslovakia. After liberation, Ann was eventually reunited with her sister and two brothers. The family lived in the Bergen Belsen Displaced Persons Camps where she met her husband, Isak Federman. They came to the United States in 1946, settling in Kansas City, where they were the first Holocaust survivors to marry.

Dora Edelbaum was the fourth of five children born to Hinda and Hersh Kiwasz. When Dora was 12 years old, the Germans invaded Poland. Shortly after the invasion the Kiwasz family was relocated to the Lodz Ghetto where Dora worked until her deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau. After being transferred through a variety of labor camps, Dora found herself in Bergen-Belsen where she was liberated in 1945.

Frank Adler was born Franz Julius Schwarzadler, in 1923 in Frankfurt, Germany. As the only child in an affluent family Frank enjoyed many cultural activities and a rich Jewish and secular education. Following the Nazi rise to power in 1933, Frank witnessed the early persecution of the Jews and remembers being beaten on the school playground for being Jewish. When Jewish children were barred from public schools in 1934, he attended a Jewish school founded by the Rothschilds and joined a Zionist youth group. Frank’s mother recognized the danger to the Jewish community and began working to secure affidavits for the family to emigrate from Germany.

With the help of a family friend they were able to secure paperwork for Frank to immigrate temporarily to England to attend school shortly after Kristallnacht. In 1940 his quota number to immigrate to the United States came up and Frank traveled alone to New York and then to Chicago where he joined his cousin’s family until his parents could join him. The family settled into life in America and Frank later served in the United States Army as a chaplain. Frank married his wife Lois in 1950 and the couple made Kansas City their home in 1953.

Gustave Eisemann, was born in 1926 in Halberstadt, Germany. He lived comfortably with his parents and sisters in Berlin, where they frequented the opera, theater, and museums and where Gustave attended a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school. After Hitler came to power in 1933, he saw Hitler Youth and antisemitic newspapers in the street and his parents became increasingly aware that they were not accepted. As it became increasingly difficult for his father to conduct business with non-Jewish businessmen, the family prepared paperwork to leave Germany, receiving affidavits of support from relatives in the United States. In the spring of 1938, the Eisemanns left Germany, settling in Kansas City, where Gustave entered the seventh grade. Gustave completed his education, including being admitted as one of the first Jewish residents at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. He met his wife Elinor during a fellowship in hematology at Boston’s New England Medical Center.

Ilsa Dahl grew up in Geilenkirchen, Germany where her family had lived for generations. They were observant Jews and patriotic Germans, and Ilsa’s father had served in the German army during World War I. Of the town’s 4000 inhabitants, most were Roman Catholics, with whom the family enjoyed friendly relations. Ilsa had hoped to be an archeologist, but the Nazis thwarted her hopes for higher education, so she studied dressmaking, first in Aachen and then in Berlin, where she met her future husband. Ilsa, who already had an American visa, left Germany days after Kristallnacht, but her parents and most of her extended family were killed in camps. 

She discusses joining family in Kansas City, working in the garment industry, her family and social life, and other topics.

Interview with Kansas City Public School District board member Dr. A. Odell Thurman. Thurman discusses his family and early life in Mississippi and St. Louis, his father's work as a minister, attending (and later teaching at) Dunbar School, attending high school in Liberty and St. Joseph, attending Western University and later graduating from Lincoln University, getting a masters degree, and working as an educator in Kansas City, Missouri. He shares his thoughts about segregated schools in Kansas City, earning his PhD, and becoming an assistant superintendent for the school district.

Interview with Adolf Ridgway. Ridgway, born in 1890, discusses his family and early life in Arkansas, dropping out of school at the age of 6 to help his mother, picking cotton, coming to Kansas City in his late 1920s to work on the Santa Fe Railroad, and his memories of the two world wars and the Great Depression. He also shares his thoughts about past American presidents, the boxer Jack Johnson, leisure time activities, and working at other jobs, including North American Aviation.

Interview with Adolph Wilson, owner of the Fireplace Lounge and Northwest Junior High assistant principal. Wilson discusses his family and early life in Oklahoma, attending segregated schools in Kansas City, Kansas, working as a teacher and administrator in Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools, and how he got involved in the nightclub business. He also discusses the business of running a nightclub in Kansas, including taxation and zoning, his plans for the future, and also discusses school integration efforts.