Describe Event Discussions here.Options for HLS Series Survivor Speakers Bureau - USHMM:
… Survivors always travel with a companion … host costs: airfare,hotel,meals, local transportation for the survivor and their companion. Survivors generally fly out of Washington, Dulles (IAD) or National, Reagan (DCA). Info per Mar 13 mail to S Baer, Jeanne Olson from Leslie Kornreich Feldman. LFeldman@ushmm.org (Included bios for Jill Pauly and Fritz Gluckstein):
Jill Pauly (Gisella Renate Berg) Born May 1, 1933, Cologne, Germany
Gisella lived with her parents, grandparents, uncle, and older sister, Inge, in Lechenich, a small village outside of Cologne. The Bergs were an observant Jewish family. Gisella’s grandfather was the president of the local synagogue association and her uncle was the cantor. Her father, Josef was a respected cattle dealer, who had many business and personal contacts with their Jewish and non-Jewish neighbors.
1933–39: Gisella was born several months after the Nazis came to power. Her parents feared for her safety and did not permit her to play on the street with other children. On November 9, 1938, the Nazis carried out a nationwide pogrom against Germany's Jews, known as Kristallnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”). Alerted to the danger by a family friend, the Bergs fled to Cologne. That night, local Nazis ransacked their home in Lechenich, damaging or destroying many of the family's possessions. In May 1939, the Bergs left for Kenya.
1940–45: In Kenya, then part of British East Africa, the family lived on a farm in the highlands, raising cattle and pyrethrum—a flowering plant used to make insecticide. From her home, Gisella could see the distant peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya as well as many exotic animals. The Bergs, like other former German citizens, found themselves classified by the British as “enemy aliens” during World War II. They faced certain restrictions, but Gisella and Inge were able to continue their education.
In 1947, the Bergs came to the United States, and eventually purchased a chicken farm and dairy business in Vineland, New Jersey. Gisella completed her high school education and graduated from a business college. In 1957, she married Kurt Pauly, a fellow refugee from Nazi Germany.
Fritz Gluckstein Born January 24, 1927, Berlin, Germany
Fritz Gluckstein was born on January 24, 1927 in Berlin, Germany to a Jewish father and a Christian mother. His father, a liberal Jew, was a judge and a decorated veteran of World War I. When Hitler came to power in 1933, his father was dismissed from office, and the family lived in drastically reduced circumstances. Raised as a Jew, Fritz was a Geltungsjude, a “counted Jew”, and was subject to all the restrictions imposed on the Jews of Germany, including the wearing of the Yellow Star.
In 1942, his Jewish school was closed and he was sent to work cleaning up a Jewish cemetery. On his 16th birthday, he was interrogated by the Gestapo. Following that, he was assigned to work in a factory which made armaments for the German Air Force. He and his father were picked up with the rest of Berlin’s remaining Jews during the infamous Fabrikaktion on February 27, 1943.
Released from the Clou nightclub, one of the holding centers where Jews were taken, he was rearrested the following week, when he went to pick up the family’s ration cards. He was then interned with other husbands and children of non-Jewish women in a building on the Rosenstrasse. That building, which had previously been an administrative office of Berlin’s Jewish Community, was the scene of a demonstration by the non-Jewish wives and mothers demanding the release of their loved ones. The only public demonstration against the Nazi regime ever to take place in Germany, it resulted in the release of all those being detained.
Following the demonstration, Fritz and his father were assigned to forced labor gangs, which were sent to demolish damaged buildings after air raids. When the war ended, Fritz returned to a special course to finish his high school diploma. In January 1948, he immigrated to America and became a veterinarian.