Audio Recording

Isak Federman, the sole survivor of his family, was 17 years old when the Germans occupied Wolbrom. A short while later, he was grabbed off the street by the SS and sent to the first of a series of labor and concentration camps. He was liberated by the British at Sandbostel, a sub-camp of Neuengamme, in 1945. At the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp, he met Ann Warshawski and they made their way to Kansas City in 1946. In 1993, with his friend Jack Mandelbaum, he founded the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education.

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.

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.

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.

Maria Devinki grew up in Wodzisław, Poland. The Germans sent her father to Treblinka and forced the rest of the family into a ghetto. In 1943, after a year spent as a slave laborer in the Skarżysko complex, a Polish army officer helped Maria leave the camp and hide – along with her husband, her mother, and her brothers. After the Soviets liberated Poland, they tried to resume their lives. However, in May 1945, after her younger brother was killed by members of the Armia Krajowa, Maria and her husband made their way to Germany and from there to the United States, arriving in Kansas City in 1950.

Marianne Dennis was born in the suburbs of Berlin. She was 7 years old at the time of Kristallnacht, when she came home from school to find a Star of David painted on their door. She also recalls being forbidden to attend school, not being allowed to use public transportation, and giving up many of their possessions – including all pets and appliances. Nevertheless, the family remained in Berlin throughout the war evading round-ups by walking the streets, hiding, and using false names. In 1945, Marianne and her family was liberated the Soviet Army. 

Tola Gottlieb was born in 1924 in Sosnowiec, Poland to an observant Jewish family. One of four siblings, Tola remembers that though her family was not wealthy, they had what they needed and they were happy. As a teenager Tola was forced into the Sosnowiec ghetto where her family was gradually taken away until she was left with just her younger sister. When Tola was deported to the Auschwitz camp complex she was consigned for forced labor, first at Gleiwitz and then, following a January 1945 death march, in Ravensbrück. After her liberation, Tola made her way to Paris where she eventually met and married Iser Cukier. The couple, and their son Jeanot, immigrated to the United States in 1952.

The family settled in Kansas City, where Tola had friends and family. 

Iser Cukier (born Iser Cukrowski) the youngest of seven children, was born in Częstochowa, Poland, where his family owned a large bakery that was located in the same building as their apartment. An older brother advised him to learn a trade rather than attend high school. He became a men’s tailor and, when that proved insufficiently challenging, he moved to Lodz to learn women’s tailoring and then to Warsaw and Katowice to attend design school. Eventually he had his own shop in Zawiercie, employing ten people and supporting his mother. He also married and had a child. His wife and son and the rest of his family were murdered during the Holocaust, but Iser was kept alive as a slave laborer making German uniforms in a factory in Zawiercie.For a time, after the slave labor workshop was disbanded and most of the workers deported, a sympathetic officer hid him on a Luftwaffe base. In May 1945, after liberation, he made his way to Paris, where he worked as a designer and met and married Tola Gottlieb. They immigrated to the United States in 1952, settling in Kansas City where his wife had family.

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.

Felicia Sussman was born in 1922 in Vienna, Austria. She enjoyed a comfortable life as the only child of her parents with a large extended family. Shortly after the annexation of Austria in March 1938, Felicia’s father was warned of his impending arrest and was able to flee to Prague. Felicia and her mother followed a few months later, making their way across the war-torn Sudetenland to be reunited. After a short time in Czechoslovakia the family was again separated with Felicia and her then pregnant mother fleeing to Italy while her father fled east into Poland, only to be later killed in Treblinka. Felicia’s mother eventually emigrated to England where she gave birth to a son and was imprisoned in an English interment camp as a foreign national. Felicia made her way to Portugal on false documents, eventually making her way to Ecuador where she met and married her husband, Victor Brill. The Brills emigrated to the United States in 1951.