October 2010 - Sheboygan County Historical Research Center

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Oral Histories: Wisconsin Survivors of the HolocaustTaken from www.wisconsinhistory.orgSix million European Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis and their allies during the1930s and 1940s. This persecution of Jews is known as the Holocaust. As Nazi tyranny spread, millionsof other people were also killed by the Third Reich. About 140,000 Holocaust survivors came tothe U.S. More than 1,000 eventually settled in Wisconsin.Wisconsin Historical Society archivists interviewed 22 Holocaust survivors and two American witnessesbetween 1974 and 1981. These oral histories are now available digitally and in their entirety forthe first time, uncensored and unfiltered. (www.wisconsinhistory.org) Three short vignettes follow.Lucy Rothstein Baras was born in Skalat, Poland (Ukraine), on August 15, 1913. She was the oldestchild in the family of an Orthodox Jewish leather merchant. After graduating from high school, she attended law school inLwow. A 1933 law prohibiting Jews from practicing law forced her to abandon her schooling. Instead, Lucy learned the tailoringtrade and returned to Skalat to open her own shop.The Jews of Skalat lived in relative safety until July 4, 1941, when Nazi forces overran the city. They killed about 400 men, includingher father. The Rothstein family continued to survive by working for the Germans in the family leather shop makingshoes for concentration camp workers. A short time later a Jewish ghetto was established in the family's neighborhood in Skalat.Its borders continued to shrink following numerous "actions" in which thousands were murdered.In early 1943 the family was forced to leave their home and work at the labor camp established in Skalat. Lucy was appointedthe personal tailor to the Nazi overseer of the county. Lucy's husband-to-be, Edward Baras, was the overseer's farm administrator.In the summer of 1943, Lucy, her mother, and her brother escaped to the forest, where they hid for three weeks. Duringthat time, her mother failed to return while searching for food. She was never seen again. Lucy and her brother joined a groupof Jews hiding deeper in the woods. They remained there until their liberation by the Russian army at the end of 1943. Afterliberation, they traveled through Zbaraz, eventually to return to Skalat in early 1944 where she immediately reunited with Edward.The two were wed and a son was born in 1945.Fearing similar persecution under the communist regime, Lucy and her family fled the Ukraine soon after their son was born.They were captured in Czechoslovakia, but escaped to a displaced persons camp at Bamberg, Germany, where they were interreduntil 1950. After leaving Germany, the Baras' spent nine months in New York before arriving in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.They joined Edward Baras' brother and sister, who were relocated to Sheboygan directly from Germany. Edward worked as amachinist at the Kohler Company until his retirement in 1974. Lucy worked as a part-time tailor for many years. She died in February2002.Rothstein Home, 1925 Baras Family, 1949Survivors Rothstein Baras Family 1949Other Local Resources- Sheboygan’s own Mead Public Library established a Jewish Holocaust Collection in 2001for consultation and use by the public. It is located in the Fela and Anschel Warschau Room. The purpose of the collection is tocollect and make available for researchers materials about the Holocaust contributed from the personal collections and files ofSheboygan residents who survived the Holocaust and its aftermath. Generous support from community members enabled theLibrary to introduce the collection with 150 cataloged items along with numerous documents and photographs, some of whichare displayed in the Warschau Room. Donors are listed in a commemorative booklet available at Mead Library.4
Louis Koplin (born Ludwig Kopolowitz) was born in Nelipeno,Czechoslovakia (now in the Ukraine), on July 30, 1920. He camefrom a family of Orthodox Jews who had lived in an area knownas Subcarpathian Ruthenia for hundreds of years. Louis graduatedfrom the Munkacs Gymnasium in 1941, two years afterthe German-sympathizing Hungarian government occupiedSubcarpathia.Although the Hungarian government did not persecute theJews until the spring of 1944, Jewish men were sent to the Russianfront beginning in June 1941 to mine and dig trenches. Louis was sent to a laborcamp in Komarom, Hungary. He was chosen from among 2,000 men to remain there as ashoemaker. The others were never heard from again.Louis remained in Komarom until March 1944, when the Hungarians abandoned thecamp after the Nazis invaded Hungary. Louis was rounded up and sent to the Austrianborder, where he worked in a forced labor camp until February 1945. He was then forcemarchedwith thousands of others for more than 300 miles to the concentration camp ofMauthausen. More than 95 percent of the prisoners died en route. Soon afterward theNazi guards fled the camp, leaving the inmates on their own until they were liberated bythe advancing U.S. Army several days later.Upon his arrival at a displaced persons camp in Germany, Louis was hired by the AmericanJewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to help resettle refugees throughout Europe.Through the JDC, he was accepted at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, wherehe arrived in September 1947. Louis studied pharmacy and moved to Milwaukee aftergraduating. Louis married in 1954, opened a pharmacy in 1957, and raised three children.Louis retired in 1992.* * * * * * * * *A suffering young girl atMauthausen concentration camp inMay of 1945 at the time of thecamp’s liberation. SCHRC collection.Rachel (Rosa) Goldberg Katz was born in Lodz, Poland, on May 6, 1924, to a well-to-do family withliberal Jewish beliefs. In 1935, her sister and brother-in-law immigrated to Palestine while the rest ofthe family remained in Poland. When the Germans occupied Lodz in 1939, 15-year-old Rosa wasamong the thousands of Jews crowded into the city's ghetto.Three years later, in July 1942, her mother was deported from the ghetto and never heard fromagain. In August 1944, the Lodz Ghetto was liquidated. Its starving residents, including Rosa, her father,brother, and sister-in-law, Hela, were all shipped to Auschwitz. There she was separated fromher father and brother. She never saw them again.German officials mistakenly sent Rosa and hundreds of other Jewish women (instead of French prisoners) to work at the Kruppmunitions factory in Berlin. For eight months, Rosa assembled delicate timepieces for German bombs. In March 1945, she wastransferred to the death camp in Ravensbruck, Germany.The Swedish Red Cross liberated the camp within a month of her arrival.Its inhabitants were transported to Sweden where Rosa recuperated for several years. She married Bernard Katz there(also a survivor). In April 1948, they came to the U.S. Initially settling in North Carolina, the Katz family moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin,in 1953. They raised four children while Rosa earned a degree in nursing. She worked as a nurse at Mercy Medical Centerin Oshkosh until her retirement in 1994.Prisoner 19053 - Robert Matzner was just twelve years old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. The Nazis took allthe men including Robert’s father for work details and labor camps as they swept through the country. Robert and his motherstayed in their home until 1942, surviving the best they could in a time when Jewish people could not work. Then the Nazis emptiedthe country of all Jews, separating Robert from his mother and grandmother. Robert went to a work camp and spent thenext three years fighting to survive. He made it with a great deal of luck, hard work and intelligence. Robert, his wife Lucy andtheir son settled in Sheboygan in 1950. Robert put his gripping story to print in 2008 with the help of friend, Larry Vogel.Prisoner 19053, the book documenting Matzner’s experiences, is available for purchase at SCHRC.5
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October 2010 - Sheboygan County Historical Research Center

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