Copyright © 2012 by Alice Neuman Schoenfeld
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be copied,
transmitted, or reproduced without permission.
Cover designed by Carolyn Eckert
Cover photo: Alice Schoenfeld at
Wetzlar Displaced Persons Camp, 1948
ISBN 978-1-937650-38-4
Library of Congress Control Number 2013932839
In memory of my parents,
Rosa and Jacob Neuman z”l
who brought me into the world and to
whose courage, ingenuity, and faith
I owe my life and the lives of
my children, grandchildren, and all of
our family’s future generations.
“Listen, my child,
to the instruction of your father;
do not forsake the teachings
of your mother.”
—Proverbs 1:8
Foreword by Rabbi Abner Weiss, Ph.D | |
A Note from Rabbi Marvin Hier | |
A Note from Dr. Michael Berenbaum | |
Acknowledgments | |
Prologue | |
Chapter 1 | A Small Miracle |
Chapter 2 | A Goose in the Basement |
Chapter 3 | “We Need to Leave” |
Chapter 4 | Aunt Malvinka’s |
Chapter 5 | Separations |
Chapter 6 | Leaving Slovakia |
Chapter 7 | Ungvár |
Chapter 8 | A Respite in Gereny |
Chapter 9 | The Intruder |
Chapter 10 | Debrecen |
Chapter 11 | Short Escapes |
Chapter 12 | Invasion |
Chapter 13 | Life as Gentiles |
Chapter 14 | Sirens, Explosions, and Shelter |
Chapter 15 | Liberation |
Chapter 16 | The Missing Father |
Chapter 17 | The Returning Remnant |
Chapter 18 | A Zionist is Born |
Chapter 19 | Refugees |
Chapter 20 | Wetzlar |
Chapter 21 | Moving On |
Chapter 22 | Leaving Europe |
Chapter 23 | The New World |
Chapter 24 | A New Life |
Chapter 25 | Looking Back |
Postscript | Our Family, Then and Now |
Appendix | Some Historical Context |
Resources | |
Photos |
These I remember…
I am the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe who were fortunate enough to have left between the wars. I grew up in South Africa during the war. “The war” was a family obsession. The adults were glued to the radio news broadcasts. There were whispered Yiddish conversations about “the war.” I remember watching the goose-stepping gray shirts and brown shirts in downtown Johannesburg. The experience was frightening.
Most of my friends were children of Yiddish-speaking immigrants. Few had living grandparents. We were puzzled by their absence from Jewish families, but nobody ever spoke of the Shoah. The Holocaust was never mentioned—only “the war.”
The silence of my family was not unique. It was universal. Many years would pass before Elie Weisel and others broke the silence with their autobiographies. Once the gifted literary pioneers of Holocaust literature broke the silence, the need to tell the story found many voices.
The autobiographies were cathartic, permitting the expression of long-repressed memories and emotions. The need was also ideological, the imperative to bear witness to the horror, the drive to resist repetition of bestiality and genocide by its denial.
There was another motive: Autobiography is intimate revelation, a window into the soul of the writer, the unfolding of his or her personality in the context of the lived experience of horror and heroism. Autobiographies allow readers who think they know the writers an entirely different, much clearer perception of who they really are.
I thought I knew Alice Schoenfeld and her family very well. I met them in 1985, the day I arrived in Los Angeles, and we became close friends. We frequently visited together and worked together at Beth Jacob Congregation and on behalf of the State of Israel. I called on Alice’s parents every Friday until their passing, presided at family milestone events, and, sadly, eulogized my dear friend Oscar Schoenfeld when he passed away.
I had every reason to believe that there was little about the family I did not know. Oscar had shared many memories with me, as had Alice and her parents. But until I read this important book, I did not really even begin to know Alice Schoenfeld and the world that shaped her.
From Ungvár to Beverly Hills is a tale remarkably well told. The style is clear and the background vivid enough to be pictured by one who has never been in Hungary or Czechoslovakia. The tones of the narrative are authentic. In the early chapters, Alice Schoenfeld speaks with a genuine child’s voice, capturing innocence, anxiety, hope, and the surprising optimism of childhood in a world gone mad—full of horror, loss, confusion, and dislocation. Later in the book, the reader can actually hear the voice of the young adult experiencing the early intimations of romantic love and the excitement of life in a challenging, bewildering, and fascinating new world.
Rich in detail, emotionally restrained, and historically contextualized, this book is a fine example of the genre. It will be of great value not only to Alice Schoenfeld’s family—children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren—but also to all who wish to be connected to a vibrant Jewish life in a world destroyed, and the emergence of renewed Jewish life and culture in the United States and Israel.
I invite you to join Alice on her journey. You will be as enriched as I was by the experience.
I have always believed that every survivor has an obligation to future generations to tell their story so that our children and grandchildren may draw strength from their courage. This is especially true of Alice Schoenfeld, who along with her late husband, Oscar, became pillars of the Jewish community of Los Angeles. Alice’s story, From Ungvár to Beverly Hills, is a story of faith in the face of adversity. The story of a young girl forced into adulthood at the age of nine. The story of how her family tried to stay ahead of the Nazis by escaping from one town to the next, from Slovakia to Hungary, of how they lived in constant fear even when they assumed the identity of non-Jews.
But most of all, Alice’s story focuses on her family’s steadfast belief in God, and how amidst the horrors of the Holocaust, she never lost her faith and became inspired by young Zionists, including her future beloved husband, Oscar, who were working for a Jewish homeland, believing that only a Jewish state could guarantee Jewish survival in the future.
Importantly, Alice emphasizes that she never allowed the Holocaust to rob her family of its optimism and belief in a better world and a more vibrant and enduring Jewish community.
A book well written and worth reading!
RABBI MARVIN HIER
Founder and Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center
Alice Neuman Schoenfeld’s From Ungvár to Beverly Hills: One’s Survivor’s Journey is a slim yet elegant work that will be a treasure to her family and her community and to all who were touched by Oscar and Alice Schoenfeld. Her experience as a child survivor who survived with her family intact is testimony to the daring and creativity of her parents and to her own courage and determination.
Like many Holocaust survivor accounts, her memoir can be divided in three: Before, During, and After. She describes the placid and tranquil years of her early childhood, the turmoil of the wartime years, and the courageous efforts to rebuild in its aftermath in a new country with a new language and with new challenges.
The story is worth telling and well told.
MICHAEL BERENBAUM, PH.D
Director, Sigi Ziering Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Ethics
American Jewish University
I wish to express my gratitude to Tom Fields-Meyer, who assisted me organizing my story, editing the manuscript, and preparing it for publication. He was instrumental in finding a publisher and offered many helpful suggestions for how it should be presented. He was most helpful in all directions, and I was very pleased to work with him. Thank you, Tom.
I am also grateful to Rabbi Abner Weiss, to Rabbi Marvin Hier, and to Dr. Michael Berenbaum for reviewing the book and adding their kind words.
During my life here in Los Angeles, I have been lucky to have made many close friends and acquaintances. It is truly heartwarming. I would have liked to include everyone in this book. I thank you for your friendship.
In writing this book, my aim was to bring back memories of my life—to leave an indelible mark of my journey from uprooted childhood to a rich, full, and happy life, surrounded by children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. The missing link in all of this is my husband Oscar (z”l), who is hopefully smiling down at me and perhaps can’t believe it that I wrote a book.
ALICE SCHOENFELD
Beverly Hills, California
March 2012
These are my recollections of my childhood—though childhood is probably the wrong word.
When most people describe their childhoods, they speak of all the things we consider to be childlike: games and friendships, schoolteachers, songs, sports, toys, and dolls. Adults who are long past the years of youth yearn to return to those days, the carefree time before they faced the pressures of life; before they had to worry about livelihood, money, and health; before responsibility for other people became a heavy burden. We pine for childhood because, for most of us, it symbolizes innocence, freedom, and hope.
My childhood was something different entirely.
My story is not about games or school or toys.
My childhood was cruelly interrupted so early that I recall little of those innocent early days. What I remember is hiding, undertaking clandestine travels. I remember being surrounded by a world in chaos, a society turned upside down. I remember fear. I remember confusion. I remember the awful feeling of not knowing what dangers the next day might bring. Or the next hour.
Most of all, though, I remember the things that kept me alive. I remember being sustained by a loving family, and benefiting from a series of small miracles that kept me safe through one of the darkest chapters in human history. I am profoundly grateful for my adoring parents, for my sister, and for the faith that upheld us all.
Of course, when most of these events occurred, I had little real understanding of what was going on around me. I knew it was a dark period; I knew that most people we knew were enduring awful and painful fates. I did not understand why. As a girl, I lacked the capacity to comprehend the political forces at work in the larger world. I knew only what I needed to know to survive from one day to the next.
I tell most of this story not as I understand it now, many decades later, but rather as I perceived things at the time, as a curious but frightened young girl. These are difficult and painful memories, but they are also memories of what made me the person I became, someone full of life and hope and faith.
My childhood was no ordinary childhood. It was hardly a childhood at all.
This is my story.
Run! Hide!” someone was shouting from the street. “The Germans are coming!”
My heart skipped a beat. I was nine years old. It was the middle of the Passover holiday. I was standing with my mother and my sister, Édike, in the courtyard of the small apartment building where our family of four had recently been forced to move into a one-room apartment.
“Alizka, come!” my mother whispered, gesturing across the courtyard. I followed her, grasping the hand of little Édike, who was only four. The other tenants—all Jewish families, like ours—had managed to hide themselves quickly, scurrying off into their apartments or God knows where. But the three of us, caught off guard, fled to the only place that seemed to make sense: a storage cellar whose entrance was on the edge of the courtyard. I was filled with fright and panic; I had no idea what might happen if we were caught. Would they arrest us? Kill us? Just interrogate us until we turned in Father? I simply didn’t know. But I keenly understood that we needed to keep quiet and hide from view.
It was April of 1942. Prešov, Slovakia. In a few short few weeks, my world had changed. The government, in full cooperation with Nazi Germany, had enacted edicts against Jews, limiting our ability to travel, rationing our food, and requiring every one of us to wear a Star of David—a yellow cloth patch of regulation size—on our outer garments whenever we were in public. Most terrifying of all, Jewish men were disappearing, abducted by German captors and their collaborators, the Slovakian militia known as the Hlinka Guard. Where were they going? We didn’t know. Word was that they were being sent to Arbeitslager—German work camp. Perhaps. But most didn’t return.
Just a few nights earlier, our family had joined together for a most strange Passover seder. Every year, for as far back as I could remember, it had been my father’s job to preside over the seder, the traditional feast that opens the holiday marking the ancient Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. But this year, as we celebrated the freedom of our ancestors, we did so without Father—in fact, without any men at all, save for a single gentleman so elderly and frail that it was presumed the Germans couldn’t use his services at the Arbeitslager. Instead of a lively family feast with singing and celebration and delicious matzah ball soup, we marked the evening with a hushed, meager meal.
At the table, as I examined the faces around me—Mother, Édike, the women from neighboring apartments—I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering to my worries about Father. Where was he? Was he safe? Would I ever see him again? We all shared the same fear: that the Germans, knowing full well it was seder night, would launch searches from house to house to find able-bodied men for work in the Arbeitslager. Keenly aware of this, Father had gone into hiding—probably sequestered in the expansive nearby house of some cousins.
“When will Father come back?” I had asked my mother.
“Don’t worry,” she assured me once again. “We’ll see him soon.”
Her reassurances did little to ease my concerns. My imagination ran wild. A few days after the seder, Father still hadn’t returned. I supposed it was probably for the best; somehow, Mother had gotten word to him that he should stay where he was, safely hidden from the authorities. She knew that emerging into the open would mean risking his life.
So, on that morning when we heard the neighbor’s warning that the Germans were approaching, we were without Father.
The three of us made our way into the cellar as quickly as we could run. Mother was hurriedly reaching for the door, to close it and conceal us, when we heard a sudden clanging sound: the courtyard’s metal gate swinging open. We froze. It was too late—Mother couldn’t close the door now; the risk of being seen was just too great. We silently descended the staircase as quickly as we could. We stopped; the three of us crouched in the shadows. Mother tried to cup a hand over Édike’s mouth to keep her silent. Suddenly, I heard a terrifying sound: the pounding of heavy boots on the cobblestone. Then something even scarier: loud voices shouting in German and Slovak. I held my breath and silently clutched Mother and Édike, praying that we would stay safe. The footsteps got closer and closer. Now the men were practically at the edge of the cellar. Terrified of what might come next, I closed my eyes, prepared for the worst.
“The door’s open,” I heard a man say. God, no, I thought, don’t let them see us. The seconds seemed to stretch out to hours, days, years. When would this end? I thought of Father, my grandparents. I prayed for survival.
And then I heard this: “There must not be anyone inside,” one of the men said curtly, “or they would have closed it.”
As quickly as they had arrived, the soldiers scampered off, moving their manhunt to other parts of the neighborhood.
I breathed a sigh of relief and began to ascend the few steps.
“Not yet, Alizka,” Mother said. “Not so fast. We can’t be too careful.” I held my breath again and stewed in my fear for a few more minutes as we stayed put, lingering in the shadows. Finally, after what seemed like forever, Mother was certain the threat had passed, and together the three of us emerged into the light.
I looked around. The building didn’t seem like an ordinary building; even the air didn’t feel normal. I felt that I had experienced a small miracle. I had been filled with anxiety about the open cellar door, but perhaps the very fact that Mother hadn’t had the time to close the door was what saved us. A closed door might well have raised the curiosity of the intruders. Would they have harmed us—a woman with two young girls? We didn’t know. They would have at least interrogated us about where Father might be. Whatever might have happened, it would not have been good.
We had escaped harm this time, but our close encounter only served to remind me of just how precarious our existence was. Even after Father’s return, a few days later, life didn’t return to normal. Nothing was certain in these times, and nothing would ever be the same again.
I was born in a time and place that made ordinary childhood impossible. Other women look back on girlhoods of playing with dolls, sharing secrets with friends, taking piano lessons, or hosting imaginary tea parties. If I enjoyed any such pleasures, I have long since forgotten them. Mostly I remember hiding, running, taking clandestine journeys, and seeking shelter—doing anything to survive.
I was born in 1933 in Uzhorod, Czechoslovakia.