Gerda bikales biography of abraham

  • Tell me your full name. My

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    Oral history interview with Gerda Bikales
    Name is Cecille Steinberg.
    I am here to interview Mrs. Gerda
    Bikales, who is a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust.
    I am doing this under the auspices of the oral history
    project, Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington.
    The purpose of this interview is to add
    to the oral history of the Nazi Holocaust
    so that through this living memorial,
    future generations will know what happened.
    With this knowledge, hopefully we
    can prevent any such occurrence in the future.
    My name is Gerda Bikales.
    My maiden name was Bierzonski.
    When and where were you born?
    May 14, 1931 in the German city of Breslau,
    It is now the Polish city of Wroclaw.
    It was a city in Silesia that, after the adjustments
    and the post-World War II adjustments was given
    was amalgamated to Poland in exchange for certain territories
    that Poland then ceded to the Soviet Union after World War II.
    If you go to Wroclaw now, the city
    is inhabited primarily by Poles who
    come from what is now Russia.
    In other words, there was an exchange
    of populations from the territory that
    was ceded to the Soviet Union, to that
    which they took from Germany.
    So the city is West Germany?
    But at the time that you were born?
    Yes, it was in the eastern--
    it was-- at first, in fact, it was probably
    the first really large city after crossing
    As a result of that, there were a fair number of Polish Jews
    who had settled in Breslau.
    It was a large center of Polish Jewry in the '20s and the '30s.
    People who had left Poland, perhaps thinking
    they would go somewhere else but somehow found that city
    with an active Jewish community and settled there.
    That's certainly what happened to my father.
    Your father was originally from--
    He was originally, and so was my mother, from a town called
    Skierniewice, which is almost exactly a

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    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik
    My name is Maran Beth Ostchega.
    I am here to interview Abe Malnik, who
    is a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust.
    I am doing this under the auspices of the Oral History
    Project Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington.
    The purpose of this interview is to add
    to the oral history of the Nazi Holocaust
    so that through this living memorial,
    future generations will know what happened.
    With this knowledge, hopefully we
    can prevent any such occurrence in the future.
    Please tell us your name and the city and country
    I was born in Kovno, Lithuania in 1927.
    Could you describe those who made up
    your household before the war?
    Yes, my father, my mother, and my little brother, which he
    was killed when I was 10.
    He was run over by a bus.
    Could you tell me about your--
    That's immediate household, right?
    Yes, your immediate household.
    Did you have other relatives living nearby?
    I had my uncles, my aunts, my grandfather and grandmother--
    two other-- two grandmothers, in fact.
    And we were very close, close-knit families
    because people in Europe were very, very close knitted.
    In fact, in our surrounding or in our--
    where we had two apartment houses,
    but it was kind of fenced in.
    We all lived-- there are a lot of them.
    Also was my cousins and aunts and uncles.
    We made up part of the complex.
    Could you tell me about your family's social status
    and educational background?
    I was born to a well-to-do family.
    As I mentioned, we had a couple of apartment houses.
    My father had a beauty shop-- barber shop,
    and my mother had a beauty shop which employed a total,
    I would say, around 15 people in both of them.
    I was going private school.
    We had a maid in the house, plus I had private tutoring.
    And the two maids from here, the German--
    And I remember a German lady, after dinner

    Wir sind Juden aus Breslau

    We are Jews from Breslau

    Young Survivors and their Fates after 1933

    A feature documentary
    by Karin Kaper and Dirk Szuszies

    Protagonists:

    Esther Adler, Gerda Bikales, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Renate Lasker-Harpprecht, Walter Laqueur, Fritz Stern, Günter Lewy, David Toren, Abraham Ascher, Wolfgang Nossen, Eli Heyman, Mordechai Rotenberg, Max Rosenberg, Pinchas Rosenberg

    and a German-Polish Group of young people in Berlin and Wroclaw

    Music: Carlo Altomare, Patrick Grant, Simon Wallfisch

    Additional music: two songs from Bente Kahan recorded in November 2015 at a concert at the White Stork Synagogue which was arranged by Bente Kahan to support refugees from Syria:

    Ani Ma’amin Text from the prayer book by Rambam and Music: 
Piano: Tomasz Kasiukiewicz and Clarinet: Igor Pietraszewski

    Unde Malum Text: Tadeusz Różewicz. English translation: Joanna Trzeciak Music: Bente Kahan Musician: Double bass: Adam Skrzypek

    In cooperation with Bente Kahan Foundation, Wroclaw

    Under the patronage of Rafał Dutkiewicz, Mayor of the City of Wroclaw and the late Władysław Bartoszewski, State Secretary for International Dialogue in the Chancellery of the Polish Prime Minister (posthumously)

    Project Coordination: Maria Luft

    Academic Advice: Katharina Friedla

    Preview on 6th of November 2016, 5 p.m.

    Cinema Nowe Horyzonty in Wrocław

    As Part of the Program of the

    European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016

    German Premiere 13. November 2016, 4 p.m. in Berlin

    Zeughauskino (Deutsches Historisches Museum)

    German Cinema Release 17. November 2016

    Sponsors and cooperation partners of the film project and the workshop:

    Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Auswärtiges Amt, Deutsch-Polnische Wissenschaftsstiftung, Deutsch-Polnisches Jugendwerk and Bethe-Stiftung within the program „Wege zur Erinnerung“, Tönnjes E.A.S.T., Ursula Lachnit-Fixson-Stiftung,

    City of Wrocław, Foundation Zukunft Berlin

    They were

    .

  • Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik.