Oral Testimonies

Olga Andraši was born in 1951 in Novi Sad. She worked as a teacher and curator. Today she is retired and an active member of the Jewish community in Novi Sad. Olga’s father Mirko Polak survived the Novi Sad Raid. Later, he was deported and imprisoned in various concentration camps in today’s Hungary, the Czech Republic and Austria.

Interviewee: Olga Andraši
Interviewer: Miško Stanišić
Length: 00:48:27
Date: 25.07.2021
Place: Novi Sad
Camera: Viktor Čobanović

Mirko Stefanović was born in 1952 in Novi Sad. He graduated in 1974 with a law degree from the University of Novi Sad. He has a rich diplomatic career behind him. Among other positions, he worked as a charge d’affaires at the Yugoslav embassy in Israel. Mirko’s mother, Suzana Erdesh, survived the Holocaust in Auschwitz. Mirko is a prominent member of the Jewish community in Novi Sad.

Interviewee: Mirko Stefanović
Interviewer: Miško Stanišić
Length: 00:35:06
Date: 25.07.2021
Place: Novi Sad
Camera: Viktor Čobanović

Rena was born in 1942 in the Krakow ghetto. Her parents, Aszer and Leonora, came from Jewish families. Aszer was very religious, Leonora was a secular Jew. During the war, Leonora gave Rena into the care of a Polish family. She herself earned money for her upkeep. Once a month, she took the money to their flat and took her daughter for walks in the Planty Park in Kraków.

Rena is a secular Jew. For 20 years she worked in the Tax Office, then, until her retirement, in a municipal company. She is a member of the JCC Krakow (Jewish Community Center)  and the Kraków Jewish Community. For several years, she has been meeting youth groups at the Galicia Jewish Museum and telling her wartime story.

Interviewee: Rena Rach
Interviewer: Bartosz Duszyński
Length: 18:54 min
Date: 23.09.2021
Place: Kraków
Camera: Piotr Banasik

Marek Handwerker was born in 1952 in Kraków. He is the son of a Holocaust survivor, Juliusz, a Jew, and Aleksandra, a Catholic. Juliusz survived the war thanks to a Soviet officer. Marek is a secular Jew. For many years he was involved in car rallies – his adventure began in the Auto Moto Club of the Cracow University of Technology. He was also a member of Janusz Kulig’s rally team. He is a member of the Krakow Jewish Community, very much involved in Jewish life. He supports many commemorative activities.

Interviewee: Marek Handwerker
Interviewer: Ewa Arendarczyk
Length:  16:45 min
Date: 28.09.2021
Place: Kraków
Camera: Piotr Banasik

Herbert Lappe was born in 1946 as son of Jewish emigrants, his family moved to Dresden (GDR) in 1949. Next to his career in the field of IT, he has been a long-time member of the board of the Jewish community and the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation in Dresden. His role has been very crucial in the construction of the New Synagogue in Dresden (2001). Mr. Lappe gives lectures about Jewish history in schools, youth institutions, Christian communities and other places in Germany, Israel and the USA. In the context of talking about the post-war Jewish community in Dresden, Herbert Lappe mentions the Slánský trial, which refers to a Stalinist show trial in 1952 Czechoslovakia. Part of a series of such trials in the Soviet bloc in that time, it had an antisemitic dimension which frightened many Jews in the GDR of which many left east Germany in that time, making the very small communities even smaller.

Interviewee: Dr. Herbert Lappe
Interviewer: Stefan May, MA
Length: 00:11:18
Date: 13.07.2021
Place: Dresden, Germany
Camera: Olga Yocheva

Special Thanks to Jakoba Schönbrodt-Rühl

Marion Kahnemann was born in Magdeburg (GDR) in 1960. She studied art at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (department of sculpture) and works since 1986 as a freelance artist in Dresden. She has had various exhibitions in Dresden, Berlin, Sofia, St. Petersburg, Basel, Oakland, Wroclaw and elsewhere. She is also known for her public artworks: among them a fountain in the courtyard of the “Elsa-Fenske-Heim”, an old people´s home in Dresden, a wall installation at “Beit haGalgalim” Herzliya, Israel, the Memorial for the Deportations of the Dresden Jews at the railway station “Neustädter Bahnhof” in Dresden and three “Denk-Orte” in Dresden (Places of Uncertainty and Memory). In the context of talking about the life of her father returning specifically to the GDR, Marion Kahnemann mentions the Slánský trial, which refers to a Stalinist show trial in 1952 Czechoslovakia. Part of a series of such trials in the Soviet bloc in that time, it had an antisemitic dimension which frightened the Jews of the GDR of which many left east Germany in that time, making the small communities even smaller.

In the context of talking about antisemitism today, Mrs. Kahnemann refers to the AfD, a right wing populist party in Germany that tried to appeal to the Jewish communities with the argument that antisemitism is imported through migration from predominantly Muslim countries, but was rebuked by the Jewish communities. She also refers to the Al Quds day, an international campaign initiated by the Islamic republic of Iran against Israel, that has been the site of antisemitic propaganda also in Germany for 3 decades now.

Interviewee: Marion Kahnemann
Interviewer: Stefan May, MA
Länge: 00:12:34
Date: 27.07.2021
Place: Dresden, Germany
Camera: Olga Yocheva

He was born in 1960. He is a journalist and correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Achronoth in Greece. He reports on the Arab-Israeli conflict and global antisemitism. He is the chief editor of the Jewish Community of Athens journal, called Alef. He is the General Secretary of the Central Board of the Jewish Communities of Greece.

Interviewee: Victor Eliezer
Interviewer: Dr. Eleni Kouki
Length: 11 min
Date: 9/7/2021 (Part A), 2/9/2021 (Part B)
Place: Athens
Camera: Dimitris Polydoropoulos

Nelly Nadjary was born in 1957 in the US, daughter of Marcel Nadjary who was a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau. His manuscript, resembling a will written in Greek, was found buried outside Birkenau’s crematorium post mortem in the 1980s. Nelly is working for the Israeli embassy in Greece. She conducted interviews with holocaust survivors on behalf of the USC Visual History Archive.

Interviewee: Nelly Nadjary
Interviewer: Dr. Eleni Kouki
Length: 9 min
Date: 3/7/2021
Place: Athens
Camera: Dimitris Polydoropoulos

He was born in 1950 in Larissa but he grew up in Salonica. Son of an Auschwitz survivor, who lost his wife and three children. He is retired now.

Interviewee: Nathan Giechaskiel
Interviewer: Dr. Eleni Kouki
Length: 7 min
Date: 27/9/2021
Place: Athens
Camera: Dimitris Polydoropoulos

She was born in 1966 and still lives in Chalkis. Her parents were both Auschwitz survivors. She owned a linen shop.

Interviewee: Joya Eliakim
Interviewer: Dr. Eleni Kouki
Length: 9 min
Date: 28/07/2021
Place: Athens
Camera: Dimitris Polydoropoulos

Elisaf was born in Ioannina in 1954 and graduated from the University of Athens in 1979. His parents were Romaniote Jews and Holocaust survivors who managed to escape the roundup during which most of Ioannina’s Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Like most of the other Jews in Ioannina, Elisaf considers himself secular and does not observe Jewish religious law. Elisaf is a pathologist, a professor of internal medicine at Ioannina Medical School, and director of the Lipids, Atherosclerosis, Obesity and Diabetes Department. He has been the president of the Romaniote Jewish community of Ioannina for more than a decade, and previously served as the president of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece. Elisaf has also served on the city council and as the president of a cultural center. Running as an independent politician, he obtained 50.33% of the vote in the second round of the elections for mayor of Ioannina in June 2019. Elisaf is the first Jewish mayor in the history of Greece.

Interviewee: Moissis Elissaf
Interviewer: Dr. Eleni Kouki
Length: 9 min
Date: 10/10/2021
Place: Athens
Camera: Dimitris Polydoropoulos