Holocaust Records
UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM, Washington D.C., USA
SURVIVORS AND VICTIMS LIST
ROHATYN RECORDS
1. Soviet Extraordinary Commision Microfilm RG-22.002M, Reel 11, Fond 7021-73, Opis 13
http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Holocaust/ExtraordinaryCommission.htm
http://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/ExtraComInventory.html
In 1942, after the Soviet Army recaptured land occupied by Germany, the USSR established an "Extraordinary State Commission" to document exactly what had happened in every Soviet locality occupied by the Nazis. Under the direction of special NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) units, teams were to record the names of those killed. Property damage was also recorded. In most places NKVD personnel were assisted by local residents. These reports, handwritten in Russian, are organized geographically by republic, oblast (state), raion (county) and town. They were stored in the Central State Archive of the October Revolution in Moscow, with relevant copies in republic area archives. These reports were microfilmed in Moscow by Yad Vashem in 1990. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington has copies of these microfilms: 27 reels, [RG-22.002M].
2. Jack and Beatrice Glotzer Papers located in the Archives, Call number 2005.259.
The papers contain one postcard dated Mar. 9, 1940, and a memoir entitled, "Survived the German Holocaust Against All Odds: A unique and unforgettable story of a struggle for life written by Jack Glotzer compiled and edited by Alexander Walzer and Beatrice Glotzer."
3. Kakh Zeh Hayah by Dina Dor Kasten located in Library Stacks, Call number DS135.U43 D67 2008
See also the Kasten Family page on the Bukaczowce shtetlinks website
4. Laura Scheer Lille Collection
HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR LIST FROM USHMM WEBSITE:
Survivors listing Rohatyn as birthplace.
ROHATYN YIZKOR BOOK
NAMES OF MARTYRS OF THE HOLOCAUST
YAD VASHEM, Jerusalem, Israel
CENTRAL DATABASE OF SHOAH VICTIMS NAMES
http://yvng.yadvashem.org/index.html?
Victims of the Shoah from Rohatyn
ROHATYN RECORDS
Shoah-Related Lists Database (Enter "Rohatyn" in the search box)
A search on 'Rohatyn' yeilds 11 documents. The first three definitely contain names of Rohatyners. The others need further inquiry.
1. List of survivors and perished from Rohatyn from Soviet Extraordinary State Commission includes itemization of property damage
Click here for translation of these lists.
2. List of Jewish Survivors from Rohatyn in Dolny Slask region from the Soviet Extraordinary State Commission:
See the RDRG Holocaust Survivor Database
Donia provided some details on current names and location of immigration.
3. List of Jews from various ghettos in Stanislawow region, who were murdered, 1942-1943 http://bit.ly/GfrWt
(Yad Vashem website problem preventing display?)
4. List of those who perished from the Bolszowce region, 1945-46 http://bit.ly/NGE5Y
5. List of murdered people from Bursztyn in 05/1944 (Extraordinary Commission) http://bit.ly/9tvab
6. List of deportees from Bursztyn in 1942-1944 (Extraordinary Commission) http://bit.ly/m9MuX
7. Lists of Jewish Survivors who used to live in Bursztyn living in Dolny Slask, 16 Nov 1946 http://bit.ly/p9IX0
8. List of Jews from Bolszowce who were murdered in Belz from 14/03/1942 to 25/03/1942 http://bit.ly/2hVXgD
9. List of murdered people from Bolszowce in 1944 (Extraordinary Commission) http://bit.ly/2w2b7c
10. List of murdered from Bukaczowce and Zurow, 1941-1944 (Extraordinary Commission) http://bit.ly/2flrZv
11. Lists of Jewish Survivors who used to live in Bukaczowce living in Dolny Slask, 6 Dec 1946 http://bit.ly/16nYnO
Items in the Yad Vashem Library
Photographs in the Yad Vashem Photo Archive Search on 'Rohatyn'.
Shpeigal with wife Perla Schwartz and unknown man
Jozef Chaje, 1967
Marcel Lewenter
Leon Arie Blech
The Faust Klezmorim
Millions of Books Stolen By Nazis
Similar to art looting by the Nazis, millions of books were also stolen by Nazis during World War ll. The search for books has recently intensified driven by researchers in America and Europe who have developed a road map to track the stolen books. Some were hiding in plain sight on library shelves. This will be a monumental task. In Germany, the Central and Regional Library suspect that one-third of the 3.5 million books have been looted by the Nazis. Many of the looted books were recovered after the war ended up in a depot outside Frankfurt, Germany , the Offenbach Archival Depot, where the US Army "Monuments Men" attempted to process them for return-mostly to the countries of origin. The director of the depot arranged for the books stolen from a "prominent European Yiddish organization in Vilna", to be shipped to New York City where they are now at YIVO. Other books reside in Russia which has been resistant to efforts to have the books returned. Libraries in Germany have returned 15,000 books. However, many which were marked with a "J" for Judenbucher-Jewish books were changed following the war to G for Geshenk for gifts. The German Lost Art Foundation publishes descriptions of books with photos when their owners cannot be located See: https://www.kulturgutverluste.de/Webs/EN/Start/Index.html Click on menu bar and then go to databases. Austrian libraries have returned 15,000 books. Over the past ten years in Germany and Austria the libraries have returned 30,000 books to 600 owners, heirs and institutions. As an example of the wealth of these books, last year the University of Potsdam library returned a 16th century volume to the family of its owner -the owner was murdered in a concentration camp. The book explained the fundamentals of the Torah's 613 commandments. A preeminent expert from the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard discovered ten lists of looted items from French libraries by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), a task force headed by the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg. The ERR took over 6,000 books from libraries and archives all over Europe. Hundreds of thousands of records from the task force have been posted to a website located at: https://www.errproject.org/guide.php . This is funded by the Claims Conference. The National Library of Israel has helped in cataloging and identifying the books stolen from Croatia and made the lists accessible to those who speak Hebrew, Ladino, Yiddish and more. To read the New York Times article on this see: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/arts/nazi-loot-on-library-shelves.html
Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933 - 1945
https://www.bundesarchiv.de/gedenkbuch/
Memory of the People
The website Memory of the People added 18 million service records, 1.3 million award records and 900,000 killed in action records to the database which now has 70 million records. To view the website see: https://pamyat-naroda.ru/ it's in Russian. https://pamyat-naroda.ru/heroes/?adv_search=y If the search boxes do not appear click on "specify". The key words need to be in Russian. Use Google translate https://translate.google.com/ or Steve Morse's transliterating English to Russian in One Step at: https://stevemorse.org/russian/eng2rus.html
The website covers both Jewish and non-Jewish military records. For some keywords in Russian, and tips for searching and looking at the search page see: https://lostrussianfamily.wordpress.com/2018/06/03/millions-of-records-added-to-wwii-database/ [or https://tinyurl.com/y7zekbyc --Mod]
The Russian Military Archives provides a guide to this database. See: https://pamyat-naroda.ru/how-to-search/ If it opens in Russian click on the EN on upper right This website also has more free databases. See: https://lostrussianfamily.wordpress.com/free-databases/
Edgar Hauster's site on Czernowitz and Rohatyn.
According to Chilean diplomat and fellow researcher Jorge Schindler, Samuel del Campo, the chargé d'affaires of the Republic of Chile in Romania during WW2, succeeded to rescue at least 1,700 Jews from Poland by protecting them from deportation to Transnistria and/or giving them Chilean passports. As part of Jorge's research, we succeeded to identify a listing for 532 <Polish> Jews, who resided in Czernowitz and who were rescued by Samuel del Campo's intervention:
http://czernowitz.blogspot.de/2016/06/samuel-del-campos-rescue-operation.html
USC SHOAH FOUNDATION
https://vhaonline.usc.edu/login
Arsen, Boris #31757
Blitz, Abraham #12915
Blitz, Cipora #15986
Blitz, Joseph #15985
Blumenfeld, Kalman #18902
Doar (nee Klasten), Dina-Eta #51714
Finger (nee Kraushar), Dorothy #40055
Glotzer, Jack #20586
Halpern (nee Faust), Rosette #21684
Kaminska, Matylda #47518
Kimel, Alexander #11145
Paul (nee Knossow), Anna #37747
Piatkowski, Ryszard #37464
Sager (nee Glotzer), Feiga #11656
Tennebaum, Janina #17406
Weitz (nee Friedman), Berta #24690
Wohl (Bauer), Bertha #27349
Shlomon Laufer article
Lauderhill man, 85, presents his own Holocaust memorial
November 16, 2010|By Lisa J. Huriash, Sun Sentinel
Shlomo Laufer, 85, knows too much about the Holocaust.
Laufer was barely a teenager when Hitler's Germany invaded his hometown of Rohatin, Poland, and he said goodbye to his mother, never to see her again. His late wife had nightmares and refused to speak about the horror.
It is only now that Laufer is inspired to create art, to do his part to honor the 6 million Jews who perished at the hands of the Nazis.
So for two weeks he lovingly crafted a 16-inch sculpture out of clay and plaster and sprayed it with gold and silver paint. The hand reaching for the sky with figures of men, women and babies clinging to it is a scaled-down replica of "The Sculpture of Love and Anguish," the massive bronze at the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach.
On Tuesday, at the Forest Trace community in Lauderhill where Laufer lives, his piece was formally presented to the Mania Nudel Holocaust Learning Center at the David Posnack JewishCommunity Center in Davie. It will be on permanent display there.
When the Germans invaded Poland, Laufer's father, who owned his own business manufacturing military uniforms, fled with him and one brother. His mother and three other siblings stayed behind and all of them eventually died from hunger in a ghetto.
Laufer's father bribed one of his employees for his survival. In exchange for food and shelter in the basement for him and his two sons, the employee, a tailor, could help himself to the 20 electric sewing machines in the family business. The tailor eagerly agreed.
Laufer made his way from Poland to Russia, where he was conscripted into an army tank brigade that eventually liberated Majdanek. In the 1940s, Laufer tried to flee to Palestine with other young Jews, but its British occupiers caught him and sent him to a camp in Cyprus.
There he met his wife Freida, who had survived Auschwitz and a labor camp in Poland, and they emigrated from Greece to Israel in 1948.
Eventually the couple and their children moved to Brooklyn, where Laufer worked as a home contractor and builder. He has lived in Lauderhill since the 1980s. His wife died two years ago and he now has a girlfriend, a survivor of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Laufer dabbles in art as a hobby and previous projects include metal art sculpted with a torch, and figurines made of Lucite. This piece is his only work dedicated to the Holocaust.
The memorial committee of the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach describes the full-size sculpture this way: "A giant outstretched arm, tattooed with a number from Auschwitz, rises from the earth, the last reach of a dying person. Each visitor has his own interpretation. Some see despair, some hope, some the last grasp for life, and for some it asks a question to God: 'Why?'"
The idea behind Laufer's memorial is simpler. "I did it for you and for your children," he said. "They should know about the Holocaust."
Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@SunSentinel.com or 954-572-2008.
YAHAD IN UNUM
website: http://www.yahadinunum.org/en/ and http://www.holocaustbybullets.com/
email: contact@yahadinunum.org
Father Patrick Desbois
114 boulevard de Magenta
75010 Paris
phone: + 33 1 42 88 40 54
fax: + 33 1 42 88 17 63
Yahad travelled to Ukraine and recorded testimonies about the Holocaust from Ukrainians.
These testimonies were later translated from Ukrainian to French.
Member Marla has now translated relevant testimonies to English for our site.
Click here to view these translated testimonies.