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Claims Conference Holocaust Survivor Memoir Collection Access to the print and/or digital copies of memoirs in this collection is made possible by USHMM on behalf of, and with the support of, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Library respects the copyright and intellectual property rights associated with the materials in its collection. The Library holds the rights and permissions to put this material online. If you hold an active copyright to this work and would like to have your materials removed from the web please contact the USHMM Library by phone at 202-479-9717, or by email at [email protected]. Bertha Geminder Brotfeld An Interview by Judy Strauss Geminder & Susie Strauss Ross Edited by Robert Geminder COPYRIGHT © 1990 by Robert Geminder First printing, January 1990, Los Angeles, California Second publishing, August 2007, Los Angeles, California PII Redacted INTRODUCTION Bertl is "a story of a unique holocaust survival". Bertl, Bertha Geminder Brotfeld; her two children, George and Robert Geminder; and her second husband, Emil Brotfeld, survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the United States. What makes this survival so unique? Simply that a woman and her two small children, all Jews, survived those horrible years in Poland, from 1939 to 1945. The only way that Bertl could recount these horrible years was by the assistance of two people, Judith Geminder (Robert's wife) and Susan Ross (Judy's sister). Judy and Susie interviewed Bertl, asking questions and obtaining the answers as to what transpired during the Holocaust years. The words, phrases, and sentences spoken by Bertl were not edited. They were left the same, in English which is not perfect, and in an accent which cannot be placed on paper. The Bertl story starts with a description of "how life was" prior to 1939. This early story helps to explain why Bertl and the family stayed in the area until it was too late. The families of Bertl and her second husband, Emil, were very large; however, only four people survived the atrocities of the Holocaust. The heroics of Emil and the courage of Bertl cannot be totally described in this story. An attempt is made to tell most of the story. Part of the uniqueness of Bertl is the way it is presented, questions by two American girls, and answers by Bertl. Both Judy and Susie lived in America during the Holocaust, and the story as told was totally inconceivable to them. Many times during the tape recordings, tears and emotions stopped the continuation of the story. Several places include brief explanations provided by Robert, which are in parentheses. The story of Bertl is done so that Bertl's grandchildren, Hope, Miriam, Ellen, Shia, Michael, Jennifer and Bertl’s great grandchildren Lauren, Tara and Nicaela “will never forget". THE EARLY DAYS... We want you to talk about yourself and your life so that our children, and our children's children, and our children's children's children will know all about you and the story of the War. I'd be very glad to. I was born in 1912. Where were you born? In Poland... oh no, then it was Austria. It became Poland in 1918, after the first world war. In Bielsko, my maiden name was Glotzer. And your first name? My first name is Bertha. But didn't they call you something else? Bertl. My father, when he was mad, called me Bluma, my Hebrew name. My mothers name was Goldie, my father's name was Ira, we called him Ere. My father was in the army in Bielsko. My mother and my Aunt Regina, a younger sister, were having a hard time when my father was in the army with cooking for the soldiers' dinners so they could make a go of it. We were living in a little room with a kitchen, with two children, me and my brother. My brother was a year older than myself; his name was Arthur. After the first world war in 1918, my father bought a house in which we lived until I got married. We couldn't have an apartment in the house, so we built a floor on the top floor. We had a beautiful apartment and my father started to make business. 1918 Bertl at the age of 6, her brother Artur Glotzer, and parents Golde and Ira Glotzer Page 1 What kind of business? He was in the cattle business. He transported cattle from Galezia, Poland, which was around Lemberg, a bigger city. He transported whole trainloads of cattle and sold the cattle to butchers. He also delivered for the military, so we became, not rich, but we were well off. We had a very nice apartment in our house. I went to kindergarten with Nuns as teachers. I remember it very well, I made for my mother a little basket, hand made. You mean you went to a convent? No, a Catholic school. The Jewish girls went there? Yes. There were no public schools? Or there were but you didn't go? There was. I didn't go. But from the first grade, I went to a Jewish school until the fifth grade. A private Jewish school? No. No it wasn't a private Jewish school. Just that lots of Jewish kids went? Only Jewish kids went. I went only to German schools. It was Poland already, but the city was on the border of Germany and lots of German people and Austrian people were living there, and then they had mostly German schools. Nobody spoke Polish. In our later years I only had once a week, the Polish lesson like you would here take French or Spanish. I went to grade school, to a Jewish school, like I said, and then I went to the German Burgerschulle which I finished when I was 17. Then I went 3 years to a home economics school, where I learned economics. It was very good for me, because later on when I came to the United States I could have this job in the Home for the Aged (Bertl was the head cook and dietician in the Jewish Home for the Aged in Pittsburgh, PA). I learned hand work and cooking, but only fine cooking, like very fancy cakes and so, at which I was very bad. Anyway, when I was 19 years old, we went once to a coffee house with my parents, my aunt, and my brother. We did this very often. There were two men sitting at another table, and my father said hello to them, and he invited them to sit at our table. One of these men was to be my husband, Mano. I didn't know that my father had made a date with this one man and my future husband, to meet then. Page 2 1904 in Kalusz, Austria Bertl's grandfather, Gadalia (second row with heavy beard); Bertl's grandmother, Freida (with babushka) is left of Gidalia; Bertl's mother, Golda, at the age of eighteen, is on the right of Gidalia; and the rest are other family members, 1929 in Franzenbod, Czechoslovakia Bertl's father, Ira Glotzer; Bert's mother, Golda (to the left); Bertl's aunt, Bella Chotiner and Bella's daughter Sylvia Richman. (Bella and Sylvia lived in the USA) Page 3