Sonia Liberman

Frankel: Good afternoon. I will ask you to begin by stating your full name, place, and date of birth.
LIBERMAN: My name is Sonia. My Yiddish name is Shayndl, Berkowitz from home and now Liberman. I was born September 15, 1933 in a little shtetl in Kletsk [in Belarus] near the border of eastern Russia.

Frankel: Can you name all the members of your family who lived in your home?
LIBERMAN: My father Gershon Berkowitz, my mother Adel Berkowitz, my sister Ruth Berkowitz, my brother Pesach Berkowitz, and Bubbe [grandmother] Bluma [she said Bella] Berkowitz. And Tante [aunt] Raizel and Luba Berkowitz. They were our cousins.

Frankel: So Bubbe Berkowitz was your father’s mother?
LIBERMAN: Yes.

Frankel: Did you know your grandfather?
LIBERMAN: No, he died before I was born.

Frankel: And your aunt?
LIBERMAN: My aunt, she was actually my cousin, but we called her aunt. She was my father’s first cousin. I don’t know exactly how, but she was a first cousin.

Frankel: Why did she live in your household?
LIBERMAN: I don’t know.

Frankel: Was she married?
LIBERMAN: No, she was not married. I really remember her just from admiring her because she had beautiful clothing [chuckles].

Frankel: And who was the other person, one more person?
LIBERMAN: The other person was Marisha, a little girl. When I was born, already she was living with us. The story went down like this: My father used to have business with peasants far away in big villages. He was visiting with them, for some business probably, and he saw the father of the little girl was really abusing her, so my father mixed in. The guy — his name was Petrov — said, “You want her? Take her. I have too many. Give me ten zlote.” So my father gave him the ten zlote and took Marisha with us, and she was with us until they put us in ghetto.

Frankel: Did she serve as a servant?
LIBERMAN: We thought she’s our family. I have even her picture in the window there. She grew up with us. We slept in the same room with her. She spoke Yiddish. I didn’t know she’s not Jewish even.

Frankel: How old was she when your father brought her?
LIBERMAN: She was about ten. I was maybe about two or three. I remember her because she was making us to say the Shema Yisrael [prayer] in the evening. And I remember I didn’t want to say it. She used to tell me, “God will punish you. You have to say the Shema.”

Frankel: How did she learn that?
LIBERMAN: Because she learned from my parents, Yiddish. She was there for so many years before I was born, so she knew everything, and she used to punish me if I cut paper on Shabbat.

Frankel: So your family was observant?
LIBERMAN: Yes, they were observant.

Frankel: What business was your father in?
LIBERMAN: He used to rent out the orchards from some very rich owners of land. He was selling this to stores, probably, the produce. I remember it was mostly apples, and all kinds of melons and tomatoes. That’s what I remember. My mother had a little store next door in our building, like a kiosk, and she had everything there, everything.

Frankel: Food? Drinks?
LIBERMAN: Well, in those days the commodities were gasoline, sugar, and salt. I remember they had all kinds of things, ribbons and sewing notion and all kind of things that people need. Otherwise, they would have to wait and go to the open market in a bigger city.

Frankel: So your grandmother took care of you when your parents were working?
LIBERMAN: I don’t remember my grandmother taking care so much of me as Marisha. Marisha took care because my brother and my sister didn’t live at home during the school year.

Frankel: Were they older?
LIBERMAN: Yes. My sister was about nine years older, and my brother was about five years older, maybe a little bit more. They were with our aunt Basha in Kletsk because they had the Tarbut [means “culture” in Hebrew] school there. They went to Tarbut school.

Frankel: But you were born in Kletsk.
LIBERMAN: Yes. I was born in Kletsk, but we lived most of the time in a little village near Kletsk. We had a home there and the business there. My father had mills that used to grind. One mill was on the water and one was with wind.

Frankel: So in Kletsk there was a big Jewish community?
LIBERMAN: Yes, it was a big Jewish community, and we used to be very often there because my father and his cousin Basha Oken had two apartments there together. My sister and brother lived with them there.

Frankel: You mentioned the Tarbut school. What kind of a school was it?
LIBERMAN: When I read in this Kletsk history, it says it was first built in 1922 and was mostly Yiddish, but then it started Hebrew and Yiddish. They had from first or second grade through 12th grade. That’s when they finished.

Frankel: What was the name of this small town?
LIBERMAN: [Urvitch?].

Frankel: Were there many Jews there?
LIBERMAN: There were another two families and that’s all. On the other side of the street, I remember their name was [Ruzovski?], and they had a little girl like me. We were the only two Jewish children in kindergarten and first grade.

Frankel: So you went to a non-Jewish . . .
LIBERMAN: It was non-Jewish, a regular school.

Frankel: You said your family was Orthodox, religious. Can you remember holidays, celebrating?
LIBERMAN: All the holidays were celebrated. My father also had [sounds like “roof picking up”? — possibly putting the roof on the sukkah?], and the sukkah was there too. Always a lot of people [came to celebrate], every holiday. Pesach was the happiest holiday in our home. I think they started right away the day after Purim already feeding the geese and preparing and cleaning. But what really stuck in my mind, I remember my father used to take the three of us upstairs to the attic to take out the dishes [for Pesach]. He showed us, “This one’s from this bubbe, and this one’s from this bubbe, and that’s from your mother’s side relatives.” There were little purple glasses, the special glass, and the spoons were special, and the dishes were special. Every cup and every dish of Pesach had a story to it. So it was really important.

And also the excitement when me and my father went with the horse and buggy to Kletsk a few days before Pesach because he was there baking. He was in charge of baking the matzot. We had a big, big wicker, and they loaded the matzot inside, and it smelled so good. We used to tell him, “Could we have a piece now?” “No, you cannot.” “Could we have a piece now?” “No, not now. You have to wait.” And pick up my brother and sister and come home. And relatives used to come. So that was a really happy one. Hanukkah was also a happy one. It was always lots of people. The kids, my sister and brother, were home, and we used to visit. They visit us, we visit some relatives. High Holidays were more serious, more scary, because we didn’t have a temple in our little village. You have to go to [Nahorna?]. That’s about four kilometers. And that’s all what I remember.

Frankel: Walking?
LIBERMAN: Walking, yes. And Marisha and other guys, they used to bring all the food for breaking Yom Kippur [fast] and eating before, and we used to be with one family there. Funny about it, after I came to Israel they found me. Their name is Hadassah [Yannai?]. It was [Yananovic?] and they changed to Yannai, and they were living in Kiryat Bialik. Rehov Bialik Arba [4 Bialik Street]. She told me the most about my family. She told me she went to Jewish school in Kletsk with my father, and he went in [Neswish?] to study more in yeshiva. She told me a lot of stories and gave me some pictures and this, and she kind of adopted me when I came to Israel.

Frankel: Did you know your maternal grandparents?
LIBERMAN: I remember a little bit my Bubbe Bluma. That’s my father’s mother, Bluma.

Frankel: Right. But your mother’s parents, did you know them?
LIBERMAN: No, I did not know them. They were in Babruysk [city in Belarus], and I never met them. After the war, when Russia invaded us, my mother took me and my sister, and she traveled with us to Babruysk to find the family. She discovered that her father died in a pogrom and her mother died too. Some cousins we met there, I remember.

Frankel: How long had your family lived in Kletsk?
LIBERMAN: My zayde [grandfather] Pesach, which I have his picture here . . .

[Interview pauses while they look at the photos, then resumes.]

Frankel: I was asking you how long your family had lived in Kletsk, so you said your zayde . . .
LIBERMAN: My zayde was born there. He was born in Kletsk and he died there. They told me he was about 80, and I am 80, so 160 years ago, that’s what comes out [only if he was 80 when she was born?]. Four sons and two daughters they had.

Frankel: Did they all live in Kletsk?
LIBERMAN: Most of them lived in Kletsk. Some of them, when they were young, they were living in Urvitch with him, but then in Kletsk.

Frankel: So you knew your uncles.
LIBERMAN: No, they emigrated to Mexico. I was born in ’33, and they emigrated in ’28 or ’29.

Frankel: Why?
LIBERMAN: The story was told me by a friend of my father, and a little bit I remember, that Bubbe Bluma insisted that my father cannot marry until his two older sisters Raizel and Mikhla will get married. So he found fictitious men from Mexico, paid them to come to marry them and get them out of Poland.

Frankel: When you say “fictitious” . . .?
LIBERMAN: Well, some men from Mexico.

Frankel: Jewish.
LIBERMAN: Jewish. They agreed to come and marry them with a rabbi. Because they were already citizen of Mexico, they were able to bring their spouses or whatever. They came and they married, and they couldn’t get right away to Mexico, so they went to Cuba, and from Cuba they bought their way back to Mexico. But guess what? They never divorced, and they were married, and I met Uncle [Ruby Nurko?] and Uncle Itzhak [Rusovski?] with my Tante Mikhla and my Tante Raizel in Mexico. They came to visit me in 1961 to Los Angeles, and then I went there, and then they came for every wedding, every bat mitzvah or bar mitzvah.

Frankel: Did they have children?
LIBERMAN: Of course. One is Pepe Pesach. He’s a civil engineer. He moved to Israel with his wife and three kids, two daughters and a son, about 30 years ago. And Boris Berel stayed in Mexico City with his wife. He has two sons, Chaim and Jorge. Don’t ask me what’s his name. I was in touch with them all the time. My Tante Raizel died a really long time ago, and Uncle Ruby died, and Rusovski died, and Mikhla died. They lived in Mexico for a very long time.

Frankel: So the two sisters moved to Mexico. What about your father’s brothers?
LIBERMAN: There was Sakhne, Leibl, and Moishe. There was a pogrom in 1905.

Frankel: Way before you were born.
LIBERMAN: Before I was born. They were young men, very young. That was either Khmelnitzky [in Ukraine] or the other one. In 1905 was Kishinev, and then was in 1910 they came. They wounded my father, so — my bubbe was telling — she covered the blood with a lot of blankets so they didn’t touch him, and the other two brothers they killed.

Frankel: Growing up, do you remember getting letters from Mexico?
LIBERMAN: Yes. I knew all the time during the war that I had relatives in Mexico, two sisters of my father. I knew that I have a sister of my mother in Israel, in Palestina, and I knew that we have in America Tante Dina, that’s my mother’s sister, and Ruby, my mother’s brother, and Josef, my father’s stepbrother.

Frankel: So your mother and father were the only ones of all the siblings who stayed.
LIBERMAN: And they had already papers, but it was too late.

Frankel: To go where?
LIBERMAN: I don’t know where. They had already papers to run away, but it was too late. When we reached Babruysk, because we were supposed to go to Russia, already the Germans were there and they caught us.

Frankel: What languages did you speak at home?
LIBERMAN: Yiddish. My father and my brother and sister spoke Hebrew, so they taught me Hebrew a little bit. The alefbet [alphabet] I remember my father was teaching me. Most of the people spoke a jargon of Polish and Belarus. We had a really big house with big yard with a lot of orchards. There were cows and horses and chickens.

Frankel: Who took care of them?
LIBERMAN: I remember that Pavlov was there. He was taking care. I don’t know who he is or what he is. And there was another lady that I don’t remember her name. I remember she used to come to milk the cows.

Frankel: If your brother and sister went to a Hebrew school, Tarbut, was Zionism . . .?
LIBERMAN: Very much, yes. It was Zionism. Therefore, they always asked me, “How come your father doesn’t have peyes [sidelocks] in the picture?” Well, he’s there but he doesn’t have peyes. And he wore a kippah [yarmulke or cap], but I see a picture without a kippah. He spoke several languages. He was very observant. If Shabbos came, it was holy, and every holiday. And kosher, of course. But he was not a fanatic. And they told me that zeyde was not a fanatic too. He liked to daven [pray], and they wanted him to daven [pray], and the kids. I remember that he was chasing always my brother because he forgot to put on his kippah.

Frankel: How did your mother’s sister end up going to Palestine? Was she married already?
LIBERMAN: She was married. I have to go a little bit backwards. In 1917, when the war started between Russia and they divided — part Poland went to Russia and part still stayed where we were. We were five kilometers from the Russian border, so we were east. He was in like a haganah [lit. defense, the Jewish military organization in Palestine before the formation of the state of Israel]. He and other boys like him, young men, went to Russia and smuggled Jewish women and young people to bring them to Poland, and that’s why he was arrested and was even in jail. That’s what my Tante Raizel told me, that she bought him back, paid for it. The Black Forest, and all the forests, they knew every path, so they used to smuggle also.

He smuggled out my mother’s sister with two little boys from Russia, [Starchic?] — that’s a big little town — and brought them to Urvitch to live with us until they will find some sponsor who will take them someplace, because they were not allowed to stay in Poland. But you know, everything is to pay. Finally, they found somebody in Petah Tikva that sent them from yeshiva what they need, a shochet [kosher butcher or slaughterer], and he got some papers that he was a shochet, and that’s how he came to Israel, because he could not go anywhere else with three boys — Moishe, Shmuel, and Menachem. So that’s how they got [to Israel].

My mother’s brother got to Israel too, Ephraim. He did Zionist organization. They had, near Kletsk, a farm where they taught them hakhshara [lit. preparation, refers to training in skills in preparation for emigration to Israel]. My cousin Fruma Berkowitz and my uncle Ephraim [Paleyev?], they went in 1929 or something. They were 15 years old. They fixed up the papers so that they were older. I remember my uncle used to say, “I’m older three years!” because that’s what the man did with the passport.

Frankel: Did they go to the kibbutz?
LIBERMAN: My uncle Ephraim settled down in Beit Oved, near Ness Ziona, at a farm, a chicken farm and orchids, and worked for Golda Meir all the time. He was a Mapainik [member of Israeli political party Mapai]. My cousin Fruma Berkowitz came to Kibbutz Shefayim near Tel Aviv. They were settled someplace else, then they moved to Shefayim. She met a nice man and she married, Arke Lapid. But his name was not Lapid; it was Lipshovitz and they changed to Lapid. She remained in Kibbutz Shefayim until she died, and he died there too.

Frankel: Since you didn’t go to a Jewish day school, what were your experiences in . . .?
LIBERMAN: I was told when I will be nine years old I will join them.

Frankel: To the Tarbut school.
LIBERMAN: To the Tarbut, but I never lived to get there.

Frankel: Were you the only Jewish child in the Polish school?
LIBERMAN: No. In the school we were two, Raizele and me.

Frankel: Same age? Same class?
LIBERMAN: Same age, yes. The name was Rosovsky. She was with me. I don’t know what happened to them. We were the same. We were safe in this school because now you have somebody comes to my life who saves my life. There was a teacher who was sent from Gdynia [in Poland] to where we lived in Urvitch. He was a young, idealistic teacher, and they chose him to come and to organize because the school was chaos. Kids 12 years old and one year old, they all went to the same thing. They sent him to organize the school. He came as a young man, energetic, and he — I don’t know how he met my father. He wound up living with us in the home because we had lots of rooms. I remember only he was telling me all the time during the war that the peasants, the Pravoslavs [Eastern Orthodox] and the Catholic, didn’t like it. They always threatened him, “Why do you live with a Jew? How can you live in that Jew, the killers of our fathers?”

I don’t know. He was a diplomat because somehow he managed to stay with us. When I was born he was already with us. Then he married a wonderful woman from [Yakshitz?], which was about 20 kilometers. She was the only daughter of a mayor of this big settlement, and rich. He married her, and he brought her to live with us. Her name was Alexandra. So when I was already about five years old, I remember him. I remember him very well. When we went to kindergarten, he used to say, “Friday comes the [patchichke?].” That’s Pravoslav, like deacon or whatever, father. “He will teach all the kids who are Pravoslav religion. Thursday comes the Catholic priest, and he teaches. You disappear. Just go away from the class. You don’t have to stay in the class. And don’t worry. Just hide someplace in the forest” — because we had forest there — “and then you will come.” So we never were punished or forced to kneel or forced to cross ourselves. We were kind of protected by him.

Frankel: But how did your other classmates relate to you?
LIBERMAN: Very bad. Sometimes — actually, they related very bad the day when it happened.

Frankel: When what happened?
LIBERMAN: [Inaudible], that was Thursday. They really were mean, but then Friday they forgot all about it. Usually we played with all the kids and was — some once in a while used to say [sounds like gedovka parkhata], “the Jew,” and “you killed my savior.” I used to come home crying. I used to say to my mother, “Ima, I killed somebody. Tell me, who did I kill?” She used to tell me, “That’s only — it will go away, you will grow up, you will move from here.” And so on and so on. There were a lot of incidents where they pushed you around and they threw things on you. They did their shtick. But I was told not to react, just go away.

One time I remember one of the girls — I had a very nice scarf and she took it from me, and I wanted it back so I was fighting her. So of course, the teacher punished me, not her, and she called my parents. I claimed to my mother, “That’s my scarf.” She said, “Yes, we will buy you another one. Just forget it. Just give her.” I thought that was very bad that has happened. And maybe that’s where all my anger comes when I see someone mistreated and I always put my nose in it. I think it comes from that. I always got in trouble by protecting somebody else when I saw they mistreat or they don’t talk nicely. I just couldn’t. I just became all outraged, and I got into trouble many times about it. Punished, beaten up, and so on. But I couldn’t understand why she always told me, “Just be quiet. Just give her. We will buy you a different one.”

Frankel: When Poland was invaded by the Germans in 1939, was your town affected right away?
LIBERMAN: Right away, and we moved. Really, we were then already more in Kletsk than in Urvitch. I don’t know how my father wound up working for the Russian government, I just know that he did because he knew how to read and write.

Frankel: In Russian?
LIBERMAN: Russian, yes. Polish, Russian, and he also knew German very well because he studied. He was a natchalnik, means he was employee for the government, so he was working. That lasted — and he went to school and started to learn Russian.

Frankel: In Kletsk.
LIBERMAN: In Kletsk, started to right away learn Russian. All the Polish books were burned and so on.

Frankel: What about your brother and sister? Did they continue the Tarbut?
LIBERMAN: They still continued there. That was not forbidden still; it was continued. I think they have to always pay for it, give some bribes. For a while it was fine and then, of course, broke up. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, but not our part. Our part was not invaded. I remember that the kids were released from schools to go home — from Tarbut, from all the schools. They were afraid. We all went back to Urvitch because it’s quiet there, and we stayed there, and after a year — it was in 1940 already — suddenly we heard our parents locking themselves with other people. We started to see people coming and talking quietly.

Frankel: To your house.
LIBERMAN: Yes. They were coming from Poland, run away. And they were telling stories about the Germans. I remember my father said, “The Germans won’t do anything to us. They were in 1916 there. They were very nice. Nothing will happen.” And so on. Then later, when I met some people I knew [who were at the meetings], in Israel, they told me, “Yes, we were in your house, and we were secretly talking because we didn’t want a kid to know we were running away from [Nieszvisch?], Lodz, big cities, to the border, to run away to Russia.” So I know that we had a lot of refugees trying to go deeper to Russia.

One night they woke us up and told us to wear a lot of layers of clothing — everything was packed already — because there will be a big bus. And they loaded us. Marisha went with us too. All over, she went with us. So we all were there, and we were supposed to come to Babruysk, and from Babruysk they’re going to deep Russia, like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. Then we came a few miles from Babruysk and we were camping out there A lot of refugees, hundreds and hundreds of refugees were there. They told us that Germans were already in Babruysk.

Then they came to our camp and they wanted to know from where we are and so on. They took away everything was valuable for them, the machine or whatever, and they gave us a horse and a buggy and told us, “Go back to your own place. Otherwise you will be punished.” A lot of men said, “No, we are going to pay some peasant; they are going to lead us to the river, to the other side. Women and kids will stay here, and they are not going to touch women and kids.” Bubbe-meises [grandmother’s tales]. My father did not agree to leave us. He says, “No, I’m going back with my family.” Then later on they [learned that] they slaughtered all of them, young people, children.

We came back; it took us a month, maybe more, to travel through the forest. It took a long time. When we came back, I went to our neighbor, and I wanted to play with the little girl they had, Marushka. Marushka was in school with me together, and her family was our friend. Next door they lived. When I knocked on the door, the mother came out. She said I cannot come anymore to their house. I said, “Why?” “Because you are Jewish.” I said, “So why can’t I come to play?” “No.” So finally she came to the fence, the little one. She told me that her parents will punish her if she will talk to me. Then, of course, when German came in, they were our best friends. They right away showed where is the Jewish home, to the German, right away.

Frankel: What happened to the teacher who lived in your home with his wife?
LIBERMAN: When the war broke out? When Russia invaded?

Frankel: When the Germans came.
LIBERMAN: No, when Russia invaded. They closed up the school, and because he was from Poland, they told him to go back. So he went back to his father-in-law’s farm with the little boy, [Kazimierz?], and went to his wife’s parents to live there, in [Yakshitz?]. That’s on the other side of Kletsk.

We came back and we tried to get to Kletsk, and it was impossible. So finally — there were a lot of incidents. What they did to my father, I would never forgive them as long as I live. His best friend, supposedly, the goyim [gentiles]. The Germans were very few there — most of them were Croatian — and the Belarus, they were very mean. Ukrainians and Croatians, they collaborated with Germany. They tied my father to a horse, and they were standing in line and beating the horse and dragged him. I don’t know how and when. I was running and crying and yelling and crying. Somebody gave me a knife. Some of the peasants, he says, “Cut the rope!” And I cut the rope. At the end of the path there was some peasant, and took my father and brought him back home, because my father did not let my mother and my sister to go out from the house. He kept them in the cellar. But I always was there; I never was afraid. And I went after my father, and my brother too.

Frankel: That was still in Urvitch.
LIBERMAN: Yes. Then finally my father found some peasant who was ready to smuggle us to Kletsk. First it was my mother and my sister, because she was older. I remember I was listening through the hole, and he said to my mother, “You and Ruthie, Raisa, have to go first because the German catching young girls and send them to the soldiers to be entertained, and she is 16 years old, very well developed.” Then my father took all three of us, and he said, “Here is the cellar. I buried here all what we have. If somebody will survive, you know where to come.” The papers and the insurance and I don’t know what he had there. I remember he gave a locket to my sister and said, “If the German catch you, you open the locket and swallow the pill.” I could never forget this. I said, “Why should she swallow the pill?” Oh, he didn’t say “pill.” He said “the little pearl.” And I saw it was like a little pearl. But later I got to know that was cyanide. He says, “If German catch you, swallow this pill right away.”

After, when I was with the family what I called them uncle and aunt, he told me about it. I used to ask him why did he gave her the locket with this. He says, “Because the German catch young girls — not only Jewish, all kind — and send them to be entertaining the soldiers.” I remember this. I will never forget this as long as I live because I just couldn’t understand why would he give her a little pearl. And then we came to live in Kletsk.

Frankel: Were things better there?
LIBERMAN: It was better there because right away was Juden makher, means they appointed Jewish—

Frankel: A Judenrat [a Jewish council].
LIBERMAN: Yes, some authorities what they were representing them, the organizations. And everything was closed. And then started to — my father’s and my Aunt Basha’s place was in the vicinity of where they decided to have the ghetto. This apartment was in . . .

Frankel: Inside the ghetto.
LIBERMAN: Yes. They put us two families in one bedroom because there was a lot of Jewish people came from villages. From other places they brought them in, from all around surroundings. It was very crowded, and it was a curfew from light to light. Then Jewish people were allowed to go to shop only certain hours, and when you went the certain hours, there was nothing to buy. It really started to be bad. However, in our apartment we had a garden in the back, so my mom with Tante Basha and all of us were planting. We had tomatoes. We had all kinds of things, cucumbers and other vegetables that it was possible. But my Uncle Kazimierz, who lived with his father-in-law, had everything. The ghetto was still open; you could go in and go out. Only at nighttime was closed with the barbed wire and so on. He used to bring us food, bread.

Frankel: He did not have to live inside the ghetto, your uncle?
LIBERMAN: No. He’s the Catholic who saved my life. We called him Uncle Kazimierz, and Aunt Alexandra, the wife. His father-in-law, we called him also Uncle [Kurochiski?], and his wife was Auntie [Adviga?]. That’s how we called them. They were very nice people. He used to bring us supplies, every month, and bring a lot of things. Of course, it was shared because there were a lot of people.

One day, before Rosh Hashanah, maybe about three weeks or something like this — it was still warm and nice. He came in, and he said to my father and my mother, “Why can’t I take all three of them to my farm? My wife and my little boy would be delighted. Nobody comes in our farm. We live so far away that we could see miles people who will come. I will take them, let them run around with the horses, with the cows, with the pigs, in the forest and so on.” And he took all three of us, and we went there. We had a marvelous time for a month.

Then one day, my brother and my sister told me, “Shayndl, we are going home.” “What do you mean, you’re going home? After all, Uncle Kazimierz and Aunt Alexandra said they will bring us.” “No, they cannot bring us now.” Because they used to deliver milk from the farm once a week to Kletsk. “It’s holiday coming in a few days. We cannot stay in a non-Jewish home. We have to go. And you will just be a nuisance. We have to walk through the forest because otherwise who knows what kind hoodlum could caught us. You cannot run. We have to go through the river, through the forest. We cannot take you.” So Aunt Alexandra told me, “In three days I’m going to deliver the big kettles of milk” — because they had a big farm — “and I will bring you.” Okay. I cried, but it didn’t help me, and I stayed. I never saw them again.

Frankel: Do you remember what year it was?
LIBERMAN: That was in 1941, in September or November. The biggest . . . [sobs].

Frankel: How did you find out?
LIBERMAN: My aunt, she went to deliver the milk, and she didn’t come back all night, and her husband and everybody was worried very much. She delivered the milk, and while she was there, she told us, she decided to go to the Catholic cemetery — she had a child before who died, the first one — to clean up the grave, put some wreath. Then, she said, the Germans and the police and everything surrounded them at the cemetery and would not let them out the whole night. They heard the shooting, and they heard crying and yelling, and that was because the Catholic cemetery was on the top and the ravine was on the bottom of the Catholic cemetery.

She told me she thinks that nobody survived from my family. Of course, I was crying. She said, “You are now an orphan, and we don’t know what to do with you.” So my Uncle [Cybulski?], Kazimierz, told her he will go to the city — he had papers, so he could go to the city — and he will start to inquire. Maybe he could get in the ghetto or surrounding. He went and spent the whole day there, and whoever he found, they told him that 100% sure they know that my family was between the 4,000 first one. Then later, somebody survived, and they told me that they saw them there. So they didn’t know really what to do with me. They were afraid to hold me because everybody knew that’s not their child. They had only one little boy. I didn’t resemble no one. They really did not know what to do with me. His wife and her mother told him, “Take her back to the ghetto.”

Frankel: In Kletsk.
LIBERMAN: Yes, whatever left over. There was about 2,000 [added in editing: Jews alive. The Nazis put them in the old shul and burned them.] Well, he did not agree. He actually took me there and took me back. He said to me that he promised my father that no matter what, he will never let something happen like this. He said, “I will find a solution.” So they built a hideout in their barn, and when we heard any motorcycle — because Germans used to come and ride there; they wanted food, so they took everything from them too — he said, “Then you run and hide, and never talk to no one.” So most of the days I was in hiding there in the barn, and at nighttime I was out with them.

I was staying with them maybe something like a year, and it was a very harsh winter, lots of cold and snow, when suddenly somebody — it was already dark; dark gets 3:00 PM, 4:00 — and somebody was knocking on the door and came in and says there is a storm, could he sleep over because he cannot drive. They should give him a shelter. And they gave him. While they were sitting — they didn’t have electricity; it was a lamp only — sitting by the table eating, I don’t remember what. He looked and looked, and then he says to Uncle Kazimierz, “That’s not your daughter. That’s Gershon Berkowitz’ daughter. I know it. I am from Urvitch. I know that child.” He says, “You’d better get rid of her. I am not going to sell you out, but others will sell you out because, you know, Germans pay very well when you bring a Jew or Jewish child.” They got very scared. They said to him, “Okay. We will get rid of her when the storm will go away.”

So he took me and he brought me to Kletsk, and his wife and his mother-in-law, and he took us to the church where they have the nuns there, like a convent, a small one. They knew Father [Gsheshekd?]. That was his name, Pabel Gsheshekd. He started to him to talk. He says, “You remember Gershon Berkowitz?” “Yes, I remember him.” And so on. He says, “That’s his child. What shall we do? My mother-in-law wants to give her away to the Germans. I promised her father on my life never to do this. We didn’t know what, but I will keep. What shall I do?” So then he said, “I will talk to your mother-in-law.” She was a very religious woman, and — it came out after the war — he scared the hell out of her. He told her, “Do you want to go to Heaven?” “Of course.” He says, “You will not go because if you will give this child to the German and they kill it, means you killed it.”

Frankel: The priest said that to her?
LIBERMAN: Yes, Father Gsheshekd. He said, “We are going to baptize her, give her new papers and a new identity, and you are going to make from her a good Christian, and by saving her, you save yourself to go in Heaven.” And she agreed. So they baptized me.

Frankel: Do you remember that?
LIBERMAN: Yes. They took me, they dunked me in the water. It’s a mikveh [laughs]. Then they took holy water, put on you, then put a cross on me, and they gave me papers that I am from — you see, the mother-in-law of my Uncle Kazimierz, she came actually from Russia many, many years ago. The part what she came from they’re not blond; they are kind of brunette. They decided that I resembled a little bit her, so I will be her cousin’s child who became an orphan from the war with Germans, and so on. She took me in. They gave me the name [Zosia Kurochitska?]. So that’s how I was there.

But they could not keep me in their place either because it was very dangerous, so he brought me to his cousin, was like maybe 150 km or 200 km from where they were. It took us a long time to travel with the horse and a buggy, and because he couldn’t travel just simply. He had to build a back underneath the wagon so when we come to go through a city or through a village, he had a padding there, and he put me underneath the wagon. Otherwise, they would stop him. [Added in editing: Uncle Cybulski took me to his cousin.]

Frankel: Was it still Poland?
LIBERMAN: It was under the German. That’s not far from Pinsk. I stayed there until the war finished.

Frankel: So who were . . .?
LIBERMAN: There was his cousin, who he saw them maybe 30 or 40 years ago . . .

Frankel: And they really believed that you were Christian.
LIBERMAN: They did not believe it exactly. I remember one time I refused to bring the horses in middle of the night to get — you have to cut the ice and take water out. I was afraid, and he told me, “[Geduvka parkhata?]. I said, “How do you know?” He said, “What do you think, you have the cross so I don’t know?” But anyway, he was very mean, very mean. There were another two orphan kids with me my age.

Frankel: Jewish?
LIBERMAN: No, but there were so many orphan kids during the — and we used to sleep in the basement, and the rats were so big there! And then we used to work in the barn, and one of the boys learned how to steal eggs from the chickens. I used to say, “You cannot drink an egg. You have to boil it. You have to put salt.” I was teaching him. Anyway, we used to steal a lot of things. He learned how to steal milk from the cow. Because we were constantly hungry. They would not give us food. It was a year, but it was over, thank God, and the Germans came and started to take all the population with them when they were retreating.

Frankel: And the Russians were coming.
LIBERMAN: Russians were coming. They were fighting. One day the Russians were bombing us, and then another day somebody else was bombing us, the Germans. The Germans used to walk in the middle, and they put us, all the population, hundreds and hundreds of people, small and big, and they took the cows and the horses. We walked maybe about a whole week with them. We came to a forest, and they told us to take care of the animals. We were there, sitting or whatever, and the next morning we didn’t see no more Germans. They disappeared.

So there always comes a leader, somehow, from the population. He says, “Let’s go back to our villages.” So we walked another month by the time we got back to the villages, and it was already a few months after the war finished. But we didn’t know. We were liberated four months after the liberation of Germany, Europe, because Russia left this part of Eastern Europe, Poland, didn’t care. They cared only who get first to Berlin — United States, French, British, or them. They liberated all other one. We were liberated only in November. Most of Europe was liberated in May. We didn’t know that the war is finished. It took us a long time.

Then after a few months, my savior uncle came. He found me. We were not there. I don’t know where we were even. He found me, and he says, “Now you are safe. I’m taking you home. A lot of the Jewish people came back to Kletsk. We are going there, and we are going to find out if your family is alive. Cousin, somebody.” It took us again a week or two to come back. Then his wife and me and him, they took me to Kletsk. There were a lot of people who knew my father. A lot of people I knew by face, but I didn’t remember their names. They told, “No.” No one from my family, not cousins, no one left. All of them were together in one group, and they were all slaughtered the same day.

Geller knew very well my father and said, “Listen, they are offering to take her. She’s ours.” But my uncle said, “No. I promised her father that I will find her relatives. They had relatives in Palestina and America and Mexico. I will find them. The war will finish; we will do this.” Well, they offered several times to take me, and they did not succeed because I didn’t want to go, no way. I cried and carried on, and I said, “You promised me you will never give me to strangers.” He said, “But you are Jewish; you have to go back to Jewish people. You are not Christian.” I said, “Yes, I am.”

Frankel: You really wanted to remain with Christians?
LIBERMAN: I was afraid from these people. I didn’t know them. I really did not know them, and I was afraid from them. Not everybody was from Kletsk. They were from other shtetls. They all came now to Kletsk because that was the center what they could get together in. So the one thing what my uncle asked them, the Jewish militzia, the Jewish who were in charge, that they should take us to Urvitch, to our home, and see if they could find anything what my father buried. He knew about it. They gave us a machine [car], and they took us there. There were two Jewish guys who had some weapons with them. Of course, you could not go there.

We came, and this house was occupied by some peasant, and they would not let us in, even inside the house. But of course they had weapons, so they just walked in and said, “We will shoot you.” And we went to the cellar. There was everything. All the boxes, boxes from wood. Everything was broken. Nothing, not a picture, nothing left. Everything was taken away. So we came back, and then came a Russian order that all the population who was once upon a time brought from Poland to Russia — because they exchanged; Russian took from Poland, people brought to White Russia, or went Russian people to Poland — they have to go back. If they want, they could go back. So of course he right away registered to go back.

Frankel: Your uncle.
LIBERMAN: Yes. He wanted to go to Gdinya, back to this — but we never made it to Gdinya. We made it to [Kania Gora?], which is on the border of Poland and Austria. But there were a lot of Germans in this place, [Szczecin?]. They were allowed to take cows and so on with them, and we all traveled there. It took us maybe about a month, the reason because our train was always put aside when the Russian soldiers were going back and forth from one place to another.

We came finally there, and they gave them a farm [from] which German ran away — you left there a farm, they gave you here a farm — and we settled down. It was a big farm, and they had cows, and they had huge, beautiful rooms. They had running water inside. We never had. They had electricity. That’s the first time we saw electricity. Actually, in Kletsk already was electricity, but not in their village. So he decided that he’s going to build a school, because a lot of refugees came back and a lot of kids were there, and he find a place with everything empty. You could get a castle if you want, whatever you want. He started to build little by little, and he start to have kids, and they start to go to school, start to learn ABC.

Frankel: In Polish?
LIBERMAN: In Polish. [Sentence in what sounds like Polish.] And his wife was a learned woman, so she also was teaching. I remember we didn’t have paper, but we found the papers in some offices in German. And we stayed there. Then, after maybe half a year, came some two American men. They spoke English and Polish. And they had medals all over them.

Frankel: They were in uniform?
LIBERMAN: In American uniform. And later I got to know that they were the ones who were snooping around to find Jewish children, dedicated themselves. They never went back home. They were Zionists, high-ranking ones. How did they come to my uncle? Very simple. Everybody knew that I’m not their daughter. So they were looking for a child who doesn’t belong. That’s what they did. I saw them that they were behind the door and talking and talking and talking, but they told us not to listen so we didn’t. Then one day my uncle and my aunt tells me, “We are going to take you on a train to Szczecin, and you are going to meet some people. We are not going to leave you, but we want you to stay there a few days. We promise you we will come to pick you up [and take you] back.”

And they brought me to a place, like a communal big place, with a lot of refugees who survived and came there. Sylvia, when I came in there, I got terrified. The people were yelling and screaming and crying and pulling their hair. It was so awful that I thought I will not survive there. They left, and I know it was Shabbos; the reason I know now later on, I learned later in Israel, is that they were benching [saying the blessings after meals] — baruch atah — I recognized this, so I knew they are lighting candles. But I hid in a closet, I was so afraid. They took me out, and they told me I’m Jewish and I have to be redeemed.

When Uncle came back after three days, I said, “I would rather die than stay here. I will run away. I don’t know what will happen. I’m not staying here. I’m afraid from these people. They yell and scream.” So they took me back. Then one day, maybe four or five months, came a lady with a man. We were going to school. Some kids went from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM and some from 1:00 to 5:00 PM because there was not enough room. Me and little Kazimierz, his son, went from 1:00 to 5:00. So we were working in the barn, cleaning up the hay or whatever, and they came and they asked me — because I was older than him with four years; if I was 12, 13, he was only nine — “Where is your wujek?” Wujek mean uncle. I said, “In school, szkola.” “Could you show us where he is? We brought some learning material for him.” I said, “Fine. Kazimierz, you clean up and I’m going to show them.”

They took me in the car, and I see that they are not going the way what supposed to go, so I said, “That’s the wrong way [she repeats it in Polish]. So the woman says — she spoke Polish — “I have to tell you, you are not going to your wujek. We are going to take you to a Jewish orphanage because you are Jewish and we are taking you.” And she [sounds like draptak?]. I started to yell, and I wanted to open the door from the car. She was holding me, and she put a blanket on me. They brought me to a rail station, I don’t know where even. For some miracle, the train was there. I didn’t see them buying tickets, I didn’t see nothing, they just shoved me with her in a wagon and locked the door.

Then later on, the train left. I was yelling and screaming, and she told me, “If you won’t like this place, you won’t be convinced, your benefactors will come and take you. Then we will lose somebody, and your parents won’t be happy in the grave. They won’t be happy in the grave.” And she scared me again. So I said to her, “In the church they told me if I won’t be a Christian, my parents will burn on the stake. And you’re telling me if I’m not becoming Jewish, I will be again burning them. Somebody should tell me what goes on, you know, which way?” Anyway, she said, “We are going to change in a town pretty soon the train because the train doesn’t go where we have to go. We are going to sleep with a Jewish family, but I am not letting you from my sight.” She stayed with me. The next day she took me again to the train, and we traveled a day or night, something, and then finally we arrived in Lodz. There was somebody waiting already, and they took us to the orphanage home.

The orphanage home was on [Ceperska?] Street. It was a beautiful street and a big building, and they brought me there. I saw there lots of kids my age, lots of kids. There was a nice lady, and she came to me. She says, “I am going to be your house mother. I have a little girl here your age. Her name is Genia. I want you to be friends with her.” And I’m still friends with her. I stayed with them, and she told me, “You cannot go back. You have to be here. We are all Jewish.” I said, “Genia, you were with your mother in Russia, so you know, but I don’t have no one.” She said, “Yes, but those kids don’t have no one too, and I don’t have a father. My father died in Russia, in Siberia, and I don’t know where is my brother and my sister, if they’re alive or not.” She said, “You know, we have to stick together.” And she kind of convinced me. I don’t know how my Uncle Kazimierz knew that they are transferring us someplace else, because it was pogroms.

Frankel: After the war?
LIBERMAN: Oh, yes. They slaughtered 12 little kids next door, what we had a little orphanage home there. Little kids, and I’m talking like four- or five-year-olds who were born in concentration camp in the [pornes?]. My Uncle Kazimierz and my Aunt Alexandra came to Lodz to say goodbye, but they would not trust them to go with me. They had relatives in Lodz, so they stayed with them. And they stayed with us in this place too, but the gatekeepers were with ammunition staying there watching. I remember there was a big, heavy door. They want to take me something to go, morozhnoe [ice cream in Russian] or something, because they wouldn’t let me to go with them. No way. They could stay there but I couldn’t go with them because a lot of families came and took the kids back. I remember I cried to him. I said, “You promised me you will never give me away.” He said, “Someday you will thank me. You will grow up; you will meet your family. You are going to Palestina. Palestina is going to be Jewish.” And so on and so on. “We will be in contact.”

So after they left, after maybe two days, we got orders that all the kids older than me — we were already 13, 14 years old — have to pack, and each one of us will have a little child to carry. They informed them that a pogrom is going to be on this orphanage where we had 82 kids. They took us through the underground canal and brought us to a station which was a merchandise station, not a passenger station, and just threw us in the wagons. There was nothing, just hay on the floor, and whatever we had with us they told us to carry. Then the train stopped someplace after night [fell]. They transferred us to a better train, and then all the way to Czechoslovakia. The train was stopping like every three or four hours, and lots of peasants came with bread, cheese, and milk and was putting us milk. They opened the door.

Frankel: They gave it to you?
LIBERMAN: Later on, our madrich, our counselor, what was with us later, says, “The Jewish community arranged everything, paid them.” They knew when the train passing by and will stop there, in the middle of nowhere, because it was not legal. And they gave us different names. My name was now [Cybulski?], Sofia Cybulski. Gave us some papers. And they assigned to everyone who was 13, 14 years old a child of six years old.

Frankel: Do you remember the child you were . . .?
LIBERMAN: I was with Anya, a little one. I found her in my list when they send me not long ago from the Missing Persons. I want to know where I was, so they took from 20 years to send me the papers. We arrived finally on the border of Czechoslovakia and Poland, and the name was [Nachod?]. They put us in a peasant’s home. It was winter, very cold, lots of snow. We were staying there but one week, and they was training us and they was telling us, “You will have to go by yourself. We cannot go with you. Each one of you will carry a child. Each one of you will have” — I’ll never forget it. It was a Winston cigarette package. I never forgot this. “Each one of you will have three, four packages of cigarettes. The Polish guards will lift the gate, they will shoot but not to kill” — we didn’t trust them — “and you drop the cigarettes. Then the Czechoslovakians, few, about 40 feet, open their gate and there was already going to be Jewish people welcoming you.”

And that’s how we walked, how we schlepped the little kids with us on our backs, and throwing the cigarettes. And we were terrified that they will shoot us. That’s how 82 kids of us went through this border. There were already big trucks, and they loaded us on the trucks and they brought us to some camp in Prague. We were there a month. They tried to get us to some countries, and no country gave the visa or permission. The border was closed. That was in, I will tell you [she shuffles through some papers or photographs], in ’46. [Finds photo and shows to Frankel.] That’s before we left. Lodz, 1946, when we left Lodz.

That was wintertime, and then we arrived in the camp. We stayed there. They told us that, unfortunately, we have to stay longer than expected because no country wanted us. They wanted to [send us to] the United States. They couldn’t put us. In Italy, they wouldn’t let us. They wanted in Yugoslavia, they wouldn’t let us. Then they wanted to Sweden. They didn’t let us. Only if you had tuberculosis. Several of the kids had active tuberculosis, so they took them to Sweden. The Red Cross came. Then finally, after a month — I don’t [know] from where we got them, the counselors and everybody else, some from Israel — they told us that we are going to France. The French government agreed to take us in, and we are going to stay in a special hotel which now became a refugee place. We stayed in the place, maybe you know it [seems to find another photo]. It’s from 1946 to 1948. That’s a splendid hotel in France, [name of hotel, sounds like buchlizot?].

Frankel: Two years.
LIBERMAN: Almost two years.

Frankel: Was it like an orphanage again?
LIBERMAN: That was an orphanage, but then they couldn’t keep us there. They only kept us a year there and they couldn’t keep us, and they took us to a different place called Montintin [Chateau de Montintin]. So they took us there and they told us a baroness who had five castles like this, farming castles, because her husband died fighting the Germans, she donated the orphanage home. We stayed there a year.

Frankel: Did you go to school?
LIBERMAN: No, we didn’t go to school; everything was there. They start to finally, when we arrived in this castle, because when we were in the splendid hotel, it was there — Dror, Lichud, a Zionist organization. There were other, B’nai B’rith, a lot of them, and there were older people who came from all over, and survivors too, and it was not suitable for children there, so they transferred us to farming places.

Frankel: The children came from what countries?
LIBERMAN: Kids came from different countries. They were from Poland, from Russia. They even went from Yugoslavia. They gathered them and they brought them to this place.

Frankel: How did you communicate? What languages?
LIBERMAN: Oh, my gosh. It was very difficult communication. Then we stayed there, and I think it was in August they gathered us. This place was a beautiful place. It was a farmer’s place. We had vegetables and fruits, and people were from kibbutzim, and then came a madrich [guide or youth leader]. His name was Mordecai [Banschik?]. He told me that he is far cousins from my family because his name Berkowitz too. He was from Kibbutz Eilon. He came volunteering because he remembered other languages. He was the madrich and we trusted him. There were other madrichim too, women from Israel.

Frankel: Did they prepare you for Israel? Did they teach you Hebrew?
LIBERMAN: They teach us songs, and there was one religious man — he had tsitsis [fringes, tallit] and peyes [sidelocks] — and he taught us Shema Yisrael [“Hear, O Israel]” and blessings over bread and Modeh Ani [“I give thanks,” prayer on waking]. There were teachers who started to teach us alefbet [alphabet], and there were teachers teaching us some history. They didn’t prepare us exactly how we are going to come to Israel; they just told us once we get there, everything will solve the problem. So they packed us, and they brought us to Marseilles. They put us on a boat, and we stayed there a whole day and a night on the boat. There came a commander, and he was in charge. He says, “Out! All the kids, out! No one below 18. Only 18 and up because we are going to encounter British.”

Frankel: But it was after Israel became independent.
LIBERMAN: No, it still was not. That was before. It was in May. No, not in May — in May still was blockade a little bit — but before. He says, “We will have to fight. We don’t know what happened.” They called the boat Exodus. But it was not Exodus. It was — when I had the panel discussion here, I researched and I gave them exactly. It was Admiral Gilson or something. He was commanding officer of the boat. Then they sold to the Italians and Italians sold to the Jewish people.

So anyway, they took us back to the place again where we came from, and we waited until beginning of October or end of September. They took us to Marseilles again and put us on a boat, Pan American, and brought us to Israel. Already was State of Israel, but there was still bombing. I remember we arrived in Haifa. I could not understand still when we were on the boat and British airplanes were flying over. They told us, “We don’t trust them; you just lay flat.” It was a cattle boat, so we didn’t have — just some blankets. And they brought us to Haifa and it was late at night. I don’t know how late it was, but they told us, “Now we organize you in a row to go two by two.” Because there was a lot of people. There were all kind of people — black, white, from everywhere.

Frankel: On the ship?
LIBERMAN: On the boat. It was full, I think. I don’t know how many people there were. I thought it was the whole world. He said, “You children, you will go first.” And they take us down, and, “Don’t worry about your suitcases. We will deliver; you will get them. Because we don’t know where we are taking you.” Once we got from the bridge to the landing place, there were people standing, and each one, they put an orange in your hand. I could never understand why they put an orange. And the band was playing music, Israeli songs, and “Hatikvah” [Israeli national anthem]. We were very proud; we knew the “Hatikvah.” And they gave us an orange and a little sack. I don’t know what was there, maybe toothpaste or something.

Then they loaded us on big trucks, and they brought us to a place. It was very late at night, so I don’t remember what was place, and they put us in a barrack and said, “That’s your barrack. You find cot there. You will stay there.” So when we woke up, Tovola was with me, my friend. Her mother was not on this boat, was on a different boat. She said to me, “Sonia, chornie, chornie [“black” in Russian].” I said, “Who’s chornie?” She said, “That person is very dark, very black, that he looks like from a jungle.” I got so scared. They opened up, they gave us cots, a blanket, and we picked up. We were terrified. They were from Morocco, from Egypt, from Ethiopia. She says, “Chornie, chornie. They are like devils looking.” We ran from the barrack. We didn’t know where to go.

For two days we were walking around. That was Pardes Hannah Ma’abara [a transit camp]. There were over 30,000 people. And all wire. And while we were walking, we saw soldiers with guns, and we got so panicky. We thought they are Germans. We were running and running, and then next day we were so hungry that we went to the garbage and started to look for food. A nurse came out, and she was speaking to us our language. She said, “What are you kids doing here?” We said, “We are hungry. We are already almost two days here.” So she organized with — not the Red Cross, the Magen David Adom [Israeli equivalent of Red Cross, “Red Star of David”] — she organized people there, nurses, and they sprayed us with DDT — that’s the first thing — and start to look if we have lice or this, and they brought us to a dining room. We didn’t know. Nobody told us there is a dining room. Nobody told us there is a shower someplace, collective showers. Nobody brought us our things, and we were walking around like lost sheep.

Finally, she brought us to the dining room, and I remember she was yelling in Hebrew that they should give us food now. And the cook or whatever says it’s not time. She said, “The children are hungry. Bring food.” We saw on the table a big dish with — we thought it was black cherries; it was black olives — and we grabbed this, and everybody started to spit up. We’d never seen olives in our lives! So then later they told us the brachos [blessings], and we started to eat. We stayed there about two weeks, and a lady came to our barrack and she said, “I am from Kfar Hanna, not too far, from kibbutz, and I’m taking all 20 of you to Pardes Hannah.” The rest of them they put in a different place. “You are going to stay in a kibbutz for a while until they will find places for you.” We again started to cry, “What do you mean, find places? All the times schlepping us from one orphanage to another!”

She brought us to the kibbutz, and I know it was Friday because they lit candles and they had challah. That’s the first time we saw challah. And the tables was white tablecloth. We didn’t have clothes, so she organized the kibbutz children, and each one of them brought their clothes. The clothes was blue tops and blue shorts and red strings [the uniform of the youth movement with which they were affiliated]. Later I knew it was a Communist thing. I didn’t know it, Mapai [an Israeli political party, a predecessor of the current Israeli Labor Party; socialist, not communist per se]. They were very nice to us and they put us with the kids of the kibbutz.

So we stayed there a whole week, and that was a mekhaye [joy, pleasure]. She had to bring us back to Pardes Hannah, and we cried so much. She says she cannot keep us any longer. One week, that’s all that she was allowed to. And there is organization by the name Sachnut [The Jewish Agency for Israel]. “It is unfortunate we have to divide you, and you will be crying and yelling, but that’s the way we have to find a place for you to stay.” Not every place wanted to take kids. So came a truck and they picked us up. At the first kibbutz — later I found out it was Mishmar HaEmek — five kids they dropped there, then was Beit Zera, five kids. First Beit Zera, five kids, then Mishmar HaEmek, then — I forgot the name.

Frankel: Ein Gev?
LIBERMAN: Not Ein Gev, no. There was another kibbutz, a Mapai kibbutz not far from Mishmar HaEmek. I forgot. Then finally there came 12 of us to Kibbutz Merhavia. They dropped us there. They said, “That’s it. You’re home.” And that’s what became our home. Then came a lady by the name of Anda Meir [Ya’ari?]. She said, “I am going to be ima bayit [house mother], and we are going to put you in the tents now because we don’t have room, but in another month they are finishing building on top, and you will have rooms, two in a room. Here is the towels, and you have some clothes arrived that belong to you, but you cannot wear this kind of clothes in kibbutz.” Because they gave us skirts and — who knows what they put us. “You are going to school and to work, whoever fit to what is. That will be your bayit [home]; that’s your moledet [homeland]. I didn’t know that Kibbutz Merhavia is also Mapam [another leftwing political party that later merged into the current Israeli Labor Party].

So we stayed there, and we started to adjust. The only problem was when they put us to school the first day, the mossad kids [Hebrew for “institute” — must be referring to the kibbutz school, not the Israeli intelligence agency by that name] refused to sit with us. They walked out from the classrooms and they called us cowards. “You were led to the slaughter like sheep; you did not resist. You are cowards, and you don’t belong here.” We were supposed to eat with them at a certain time dinner and lunch in the kibbutz in the heder ochel [communal dining room]. They would not let us in.

Frankel: And the adults?
LIBERMAN: Didn’t do absolutely nothing. They finally gave us a place to study in a separate barrack, classrooms, and they did not include us. And we ate with the grownups. That’s what was our place. That is — what does mean mishpachah [family] in kibbutz?

Frankel: Did they have adoptive families that they paired you up with?
LIBERMAN: No, they didn’t. That was in Kibbutz Merhavia. Ein Harod, yes. Part of the kids there, yes. They were kind of assigned to parents. We were not assigned. We had a garin [“seed,” a seed group of people who move to Israel together or get together to prepare to found a kibbutz] in Kibbutz Merhavia. The garin was not from Kibbutz Merhavia. They were from all over. They were already in their 20s. They adopted us. They were our mentors; they included us. But not the kids of the mossad. They were so mean. They would not even sit at the same table. That was our experience in Kibbutz Merhavia.

Then came a guy and he says, “My name is Meir Ya’ari. I am the head of the Mapam Movement, and that’s my home here in Kibbutz Merhavia. Anda is my wife. She is the ima bayit of you.” He had a son Hanan, and he used to say all the time to us, “Why don’t you rebel just like them?” Because he already was in military. What can I tell you? That’s the way it was. Then in 1950, they called me to the maskirut [office of the secretary, head of the kibbutz] that there is a visitor to visit me. I go there and there was a nice-looking man. I thought he was very old then, and he told me, “Ani dod Ephraim, ach shel ima shelach [I am your uncle Ephraim, the brother of your mother].

Frankel: You knew of his existence.
LIBERMAN: I knew that there is a brother, but I didn’t know exactly where and what. Because my Uncle Kazimierz still didn’t find him when I left. He said, “Here I have pictures to prove it to you, and you are coming with me. And the maskira [secretary] said, “You’re not taking her nowhere. She was entrusted here in the kibbutz.” He said, “None of my family will be in this kibbutz!” So I said, “What kibbutz are you?” He said I’m in a moshav [collective], and I am a Mapainik [Mapam and Mapai were rivals]. So the maskira said, “Well, you could be a Mapainik or whatever.” Both were yelling and screaming. I said, “I’m not going with you. I don’t know you. And where have you been when I really needed you? I don’t want to.” So finally he went. He did find Fruma Lapid, my father’s cousin in Kibbutz Shefayim. He knew that she’s there. He decided that when she will come, she will convince me.

Well, she couldn’t come because she had a baby, so her husband came. The only thing that he convinced is to take to Kibbutz Shefayim. I liked Kibbutz Shefayim because that’s what kibbutz do. Then one day she came already with the baby. That’s far from Kibbutz Shefayim to Merhavia, not easy. That’s three buses, and from Afula [a nearby town] you walk. She took me and she says, “You have to do something in honor of your mother and your father. You have a sister in Petah Tikva, your mother’s sister. But we have a problem. She’s very religious and they live in a yeshiva, and they are taking care of the bochurim [boys or young unmarried men] in the yeshiva. You cannot go in shorts there. I have a friend in the kibbutz, and she will sew for you a skirt and we will find a top. You have to promise me that you will go with me next day when we are ready to Petah Tikva because that’s your mother’s sister, and I know her as a child still from Urvitch and from Lahovitch, and you have to meet her.”

Frankel: Just to meet her.
LIBERMAN: Yes. So I said, “I will go with you just to meet but not to stay.” So we went there and she said, “Here is Gershon’s and Adele’s daughter, Sonia Shayndl.” She became hysterical, and she fell on the floor, and she start to yell and to scream. She scared me to death. I said to Fruma, “Take me back to the kibbutz.” She said no. So finally, her husband came. He started to talk, and she got better, and she was, “Oh, my shvesterkind [my sister’s child], my shvesterkind.” She was a nice lady, later turned out to be, but she scared me.

Both sons came. They were married, living not far. They came and their wives came, and suddenly they say, “You have a big family here, and you cannot stay in the kibbutz there.” I said, “I’m not going nowhere. I know the kibbutz, I feel at home, and I’m not going nowhere.” I was already over 15 or something, going on 16. No, nowhere. “I’m going to stay with my friends. I was with them all the time. I was with them in France, in three orphanage homes. They’re like my family. They don’t have no one. I don’t have. They will find also some relatives.”

Then later on at the kibbutz, after a year and a half, they said they cannot keep us anymore. They came from Sachnut and told us they are going to place us in a military camp, in Tel HaShomer. That’s not far from Petah Tikva. We will learn there to be a profession and serve in the army at the same time. They will train us. They took all 14 of us, but Tovola went with her parents and Miriam went with her relatives.

Frankel: Who was Miriam?
LIBERMAN: Miriam was also one of the orphans, but she had some cousins, somebody, very close family, and they come pick her up. And Tovola went with her mother. Meantime her brother and sister arrived from Uzbekistan, so they found family. They put her in Talpiot in Yerushalayim [a neighborhood in Jerusalem] to learn to be a teacher. I wanted too, but there was no one to put me. Anyway, Talpiot was a religious place.

So we went to the Tel Litvinsky [name of the training camp], and it was fun. We had lots of soldiers, dancing and singing, and they took us right away to study nursing, anatomy and history of the body and so on and so on. We were already very well in Hebrew, and we promised on scout’s oath that we never speak another language in our lives. It’s our moledet [homeland]. And we really took it with our heart. We are going to build it, and we are going to protect it, and we are going to be in the army. We will be trained. So we stayed there two years. Meantime I met my husband there.

Frankel: Was he a soldier?
LIBERMAN: He was a soldier. I met him in Kibbutz Merhavia because when Jordan bombed Kibbutz Merhavia, he was in charge. There were anti-tank artillery, so they were stationed there. I met him there. He was in charge. When we had the alarm, he was in charge to put us in the bunkers. We refused to go, so he pushed us to go. And I remember that he told me this word I learned: chutzpahnik [audacious or impudent]. He says “Ani etkhaten itakh pa’am” [I will marry you someday]. I told him, “Akharei mavet sheli [after my death]. Then he started to come to Tel Litvinsky too because he did some exercise or whatever.

I stayed there for two years, came out in ’52, and became a nurse. They sent me to Givat Geva. They had a mental hospital, Teva, and I didn’t know, so I was working there and then they put us in Bellinson [hospital, now Rabin Medical Center] near Petah Tikva. The little Bellinson. Not the new one; the old one. We were trained there. I start to see my future husband more — he was with his brothers living — and in ’53 we got married.

Frankel: Where was he originally from?
LIBERMAN: He’s from Czechoslovakia, Carpatho-Russia. He also lost most of his family, but he had in Israel two brothers, and two sisters saved from Auschwitz. The sisters were Leah and Miriam. They were twins. Leah was experimented on by Dr. Mengele. [Yoli?] survived, but Yoli died five year ago. She’s my age, a little bit older.

Frankel: Did he come to Palestine before the war?
LIBERMAN: No, she came after.

Frankel: No, your husband.
LIBERMAN: He came half a year before Israel became a state. They ran away from Cyprus. They caught their boat, the British, and put them in Cyprus.

Frankel: But he was in Europe during the war?
LIBERMAN: Yes, he was in Budapest in the ghetto, in labor camp. Then he was in [Boro?], Yugoslavia, in a labor camp. There were only young men there. They ran away from Cyprus. Some Greek guy gave them a little boat, and they were paddling. Took them about ten days, paddle. There were ten of them in the boat. They almost drowned, but they got to the Akko, and in Akko they had some already they came and grabbed them and took them to Kibbutz Barkai in emek [valley]. They became soldiers right away, training because he was for a while in the Russian army. So he was there, so his family too.

Frankel: Where did you get married?
LIBERMAN: Petah Tikva.

Frankel: With your family?
LIBERMAN: Yes. My family. I had my uncle Dovid, and Alovitch, who was in yeshiva. Rabbi Katz, that’s the one that Rabbi Stampfer knows. The father, not the son. He didn’t like the son. He was a chutzpahnik.

Frankel: Was your husband religious?
LIBERMAN: When he was with his mother he was religious, but he cut off his peyes when he was 16, and then after the war he didn’t want to have nothing to do.

Frankel: Where did you live after you got married?
LIBERMAN: In Petah Tikva, Ahad HaAm.

Frankel: What did your husband do?
LIBERMAN: He worked in pardes [citrus orchard], and then his brother was a painter and he got him into painting, which I hated, but I didn’t have nothing to do with it. It was not enough work anyway. I was helping in a toddlers’ program. They had a gannon [nursery school] in Petah Tikva, and I was a teacher’s assistant.

Frankel: So you didn’t work as a nurse anymore?
LIBERMAN: No, after I married I didn’t. I always wanted to be a teacher. My father always told me that I should be a teacher. So we lived in Petah Tikva, then my Uncle Ephraim came in very handy and he said, “Golda Meir is building shikun amami [public housing] in Hafetz Haim, Petah Tikva, but you have to either be pregnant or have a baby, and you better be pregnant. He registered me, and he said it will be “shikun zugot tse’irim,” for young couples only.

After a year I had a baby, so then we moved in. Gershon was already a year old because it took a year to build — not a year, less than a year — I remember we used to go to check our binuva [construction]. We knew that we were going; we just didn’t know which part we are getting. We saw Golda always checking the builders, and we admired her. She talked to us. There was so much mud there, and she was in her boots, gumi [rubber boots]. And we admired her so much. She used to tell us, “You have to have lots of children. We have to build our country; we have to bring more kids.”

Frankel: Golda Meir?
LIBERMAN: Golda Meir. He told us the story of how she went to Cyprus to get other young children — there were a lot of children in Cyprus, caught too with their families — and how she was trying to get the young people out before they are 18. Then later I learned in books about her, that she did this. We admired her. We thought she was an angel.

Frankel: Before we continue with Petah Tikva and getting married, I wonder, when you were still in Europe and you passed as a Christian child, did you yearn to get back into a Jewish . . .?

LIBERMAN: I missed very much my family. My family always represented Erev Shabbat, Erev Yom Tov, always. So I maybe took out from my heart for a while, but I never — because I know when I went to Szczecin to be the few days with the Jewish people, and when they were singing Avinu Malkeinu [Our Father, Our King], I cried. I remembered the melody. I remembered the Shema Yisrael, but we didn’t say Shema Yisrael. They told me, “We say Kryshma — Kriyat Shema, so Kryshma.” So I knew. However, I was told to take out from my head when I was with the nuns, for maybe about five months in the place. They specifically told us — they didn’t tell me that I’m Jewish, I didn’t know if they knew it even about it, but there was a lot of Jewish kids there probably. That’s what I was told later.

Frankel: Where was that?
LIBERMAN: In Kletsk, in the — how you call this place with the nuns?

Frankel: The convent.
LIBERMAN: Convent. Okay. There was an orphanage convent. The Germans later destroyed this, and Russians finished the destroying. The convent was for orphan kids only. When I was there and they were telling us, “You always put Jesus first in your life. Jesus comes first, the only one. That’s your God, that’s your parents, that’s your family, and if you do something against Jesus, don’t believe it. Wherever your parents are, they will be burned on the stakes.” So we were terrified. Even this came from my head. I was telling, it’s not true. I’m a Christian, and I have to believe in Jesus because can you imagine what they will do to my parents, my sister and brother and everybody else? That’s why I still have dreams. I still have awful dreams, nightmares many times.

Frankel: How long did you wear that cross?
LIBERMAN: I brought it with me to Israel, and one time my cousin from Kibbutz Shefayim, Fruma, she discovered and she took it away from me. Then before I left to the United States, she gave me back, and I still have it. It doesn’t represent nothing to me, but it represents that it was given to me by a person who really wanted me to be alive. That was my Uncle Kazimierz and Alexandra. They did this because that’s the only way they were able to keep me, and that represents me the lot what they gave me, the attention what they gave me. I was not an angel, they had their own thing, but that’s what they did for me.

I couldn’t, and even Fruma told me. I said, “Do you want me to throw away this in garbage?” She said, “No. Keep it as long as you want.” When my kids got older I showed them, and my daughter said, “Don’t you destroy it. Keep it. Let it be in the family. That represents life. They gave you life with this.” I don’t believe in it. I had a lot of doubts when they taught us catechism in the convent. I used to ask stupid questions and I got in trouble. I said, “How does he came alive again? People don’t come alive.” I got patchink for this, and, “Stay on the stones and say 20 times Hail Mary.” No. I did ask questions that I was not supposed to ask. I told them I don’t believe that Jewish people killed him. But still, it’s something that I could not throw away.

Frankel: How was it when you were in Israel, celebrating all the holidays?
LIBERMAN: Because my husband’s brothers, both brothers — Itzak was very religious — and before I married I got very close to my Tante Raizel and Uncle David in yeshiva. I really got very close to them. Dovid, let him rest in peace, didn’t stop to tell me about my mother. He says, “I was in love with Raizele, but Adel was so beautiful, your mother, that I could not — but I loved Raizele more, so I married Raizele.” That is my mother’s sister. He used to tell me a lot of things about my father. He knew my father better than I knew him. He knew him for many years. They lived together. He said, “Your father, Gershon, was responsible for me to come to Palestina and save my family.”

And I liked my aunt too. Anything that I did she used to say, “Your mother will come and be — Adel came to me in the dream and told me you should do this and this.” She kind of represented somebody like my mother. When I got married she wanted me to have a wedding. We didn’t want it; we didn’t care. We wanted to marry legally, but we didn’t care, no. But my Uncle Ephraim had the chicken and the eggs, so he got permission from the Agriculture to bring 200 eggs to Petah Tikva, because in those days, not allowed. I remember he said he got 15 kilos of naknik [sausage].

Frankel: Sausage?
LIBERMAN: Naknik tarnegol.

Frankel: Chicken.
LIBERMAN: No, tarnegol hodu [turkey].

Frankel: Turkey sausage.
LIBERMAN: That was the wedding, bread and piece of turkey and eggs. They baked and they cooked. My tante from Mexico sent me a wedding dress. We were not allowed a whole dress to send to Israel in those days, so she sent the bottom separate, the top separate, and the sleeves separate, and the seamstress put together. [Background noise sounds as if they begin looking at photographs here.] I really loved very much to go in hospital. You remember David, he brought the Yemenite kids?

Frankel: That was before you got married?
LIBERMAN: Yes. I loved to work with kids. That’s my tante sent me this dress for the wedding.

Frankel: Beautiful. So you lived in Petah Tikva . . .?
LIBERMAN: So we lived in Petah Tikva because . . .

Frankel: You got into the housing.
LIBERMAN: To the shikun zugot tse’irim [housing for young couples]. And really, they were all young couples, so it was fun. We had one bus. We walked to Petah Tikva. It only was two kilometers.

Frankel: How long did you live there?
LIBERMAN: We lived there until 1960 in December.

Frankel: Then what?
LIBERMAN: In 1956, when we had the war, my cousins from Los Angeles came to visit, just in the end of the — not Six-Day War, that’s when we had the . . .

Frankel: Sinai Campaign.
LIBERMAN: Sinai Campaign. That’s when the French were our friends. They mobilized everybody. Gershon was about two years old then. It was in 1956, yes? He was born in ’53; he was three years old. I was mobilized to go to the hospital because every nurse they needed, so my neighbor took care of Gershon. Shalom was mobilized and we didn’t know where he is.

Frankel: Shalom was?
LIBERMAN: My husband, let him rest in peace. He said to me, “I will write you a postcard. And if I say, ‘Ani halach im ha’ruach’ [I am gone with the wind], it means they are sending me to Mount Scopus.”

Frankel: Gone with the wind.
LIBERMAN: Gone with the wind. “If I’m not sending you at all, that means I’m going to the desert.” Because he was a ranking commander. Okay. So I got it and he said, “I’m going with the wind,” so I knew he was Mount Scopus and I knew that Mount Scopus means all Jordanian around him. They were not allowed to have ammunition, so they have to [inaudible word] him. The UN, the anti-Semites, would have the Jewish soldiers go. They exchange every few months, yes? And then the UN — but when the Jordanians came and killed so many of our boys, that was okay. So he was there. I didn’t know for three months where he is because they could not get out from there.

Meantime, my cousins came from Los Angeles, my mother’s cousin, and they start, “Look. Your child is with neighbors.” You know, Americans didn’t like this. “You are a mother. You are not home. Come to America for half a year, just to rest.” Then my cousin says, “You lost everybody. I lost my two.” That’s his two, family. “Do you want to lose him and be almonah [widow]? What are you going to do? Come, stay a year, rest, and then go to serve your country again.” They bombarded me since 1956.

Then they say because I was on Polish quota, there were no quota, so we applied, and after half a year they send us paper — go. We said, “No, we are not going.” So we dragged them until 1960, and then in ’60 they send us a letter says, “If you’re not taking now, you’re losing your visa.” To send a visa, it means they have to put up high collateral in America, because America was afraid, God forbid, Sonia and the two little boys and a husband will eat too much and they will have to feed us. So my cousin is supposed to put her business as a collateral. He was a jeweler, very famous in Los Angeles, and he didn’t want to do this either. His wife forced him, my mother’s sister. That’s his mother-in-law. He says, “We did everything, so much papers, and you come at least to thank them what they give you the papers.”

So finally, we decided in December of 1960, “Okay, we will go.” We didn’t have too much in Israel. We lived in shikun amami [public housing]. We owed more money on the shikun amami because each time he was in military, in miluim, in reserves — they didn’t throw us out, but we always have to pay off, back. Sometimes we didn’t pay mortgage for half a year. So anyway, we paid off everything and we said, “Okay, we will go and try.”

Frankel: Did you have just one son?
LIBERMAN: No. I had Gershon and Adi. Adi was born in the meantime. We came, and they really were very gracious. In Los Angeles, they rented us a nice apartment by an Israeli woman so we could speak our language. Only one block from Fairfax, so you have all the kosher food and everything else. They really were very gracious. And they collected furniture, probably from everybody because everything was different size and color. They welcomed us. Then they said, “You just don’t have your mother’s family. We discovered you have your father’s family here. We found them, and they are going to come to introduce themselves, but we didn’t let them to come the first week because it will be overwhelming.” I already knew Yiddish very well, learned in Israel very well Yiddish.

Frankel: You didn’t know Yiddish from your home?
LIBERMAN: I forgot completely. I knew words. It came easy to me, very easy. So after maybe a week, suddenly arrives — we had only one bedroom, so the living room was — suddenly arrive five families.

Frankel: Where were they living?
LIBERMAN: All in Los Angeles.

Frankel: All of them, your father’s family too?
LIBERMAN: That’s my father’s brother’s kids. He died, but his wife still was alive, and she was older two years than my father, so she knew my father. They lived together. And she came. Her name was Hannah Berkowitz, and she started to introduce, “That’s Sam and that’s Burton, this is Goldie and that is Raizel.” All of her eight kids. They were very nice to me. They wanted to make me Americanize. They want to teach me to drink coffee; they want to teach me to smoke. I was not a good student. Anyway, I really felt like I’m in heaven. I really felt good. For holidays, they were quarreling to whom we will go. Nobody ever invited me; no one ever paid attention if I have a holiday or not.

Frankel: In Israel, they didn’t?
LIBERMAN: No, because we used to go to yeshiva, only not always. We couldn’t go always. For Pesach we went and for Rosh Hashanah. But actually, people made arrangement to whom we come first. That was very exciting.

Frankel: Your husband felt the same way?
LIBERMAN: Not exactly. He didn’t kind of take to them. Right away we started to talk I want to go to learn. She introduced me to the University of Judaism. It was on Sunset Boulevard, far away. I enrolled in school, teacher’s seminary, and they gave me lots of credits for what I served in military as a nurse and working, and I needed only 120 credits.

Frankel: Did you know English?
LIBERMAN: No. I went with her to City College. There was a counselor and he says, “You don’t know English. You cannot be in college.” I says, “I cannot go to high school because they teach, ‘What is your name? Repeat: I am in America’” [says very slowly, mimicking teacher]. I says, “That is not for me. I have two kids; I want to learn.” His name was Mr. Green, the head of the City College. He says, “Okay, I will give you a year.” I said to myself, “In a year I will be able to read and to write English, no matter what.” And that’s how I got in, and that’s how I finish. The University of Judaism was five years. I couldn’t take all the credits. I had two kids. Then I needed 80 credits from City College, but I need 20 credits from accredited school, so I took at UCLA classes and SISA classes, Southern University, and I finished. I finished my teaching credentials, and I made my master’s degree in Judaica.

Frankel: What did your husband do?
LIBERMAN: My husband went to learn. Television was very important, to fix it, so he went to learn to be a benchman, and he worked. But then he decided he wanted to take care of people, like board and care.

Frankel: Like what?
LIBERMAN: Board and care, for people who the local government places them in a place. And they helped him get a mortgage to buy the little house — it was for nine people — and he was taking care of them. He had two other people working. I was cooking for him a lot, and he was. He was an excellent cook and the people loved him. He had [this] for many years. He didn’t make too much money, but he loved to do this. And he was a volunteer, [sounds like Nielson Bills?], for 15 years. He was very involved in Jewish community and JCC, and when I enrolled the kids in temple, at first he was yelling at me, “Why? What for?” I says, “They have to go, that’s it!”

We came in December. In January they were already enrolled in temple to go. The little one was in toddler programs. I said, “They have to. We are not in Israel. They have to be Jewish.” Thank God that he listened and he participated with me, and we got them in time. And we promised that we will speak to them only Hebrew, so all three of them — the middle one because he was married to an American girl, she didn’t know and didn’t want me to talk to her kids in Hebrew because that would confuse them. But now when he is alone for the last seven years, I text him in Hebrew. And they all insist. They talk to me and they text with me in Hebrew.

Frankel: After you got your degree, where did you work?
LIBERMAN: I started to work before I got my degree, but I was supposed to finish. The first job was Whittier, in California — that’s near Anaheim — which was one hour and ten-minute drive.

Frankel: A school?
LIBERMAN: It’s a Jewish temple, because they couldn’t get teachers. I remember my principal, Dr. Lieber.

Frankel: That’s a Conservative synagogue.
LIBERMAN: Well, no, he was at the University of Judaism. He was our teacher.

Frankel: He was a contemporary of Rabbi Stampfer.
LIBERMAN: He was our dean in school, and he found me the place. I really didn’t know how to drive there. There was no freeways and just was — that’s Beth Shalom, and I worked there two years and got a very good reputation. They liked me very much. So later on, I didn’t have any problem to get a school. But meantime, City College was looking for a language teacher. I went with one of the women who was very active in ORT [Organization for Rehabilitation through Training, supported by women’s clubs in that era], and I was active in ORT. She says, “I know the dean of the — there was a teacher, but he quit. We have to have continued Hebrew classes.”

So City College, what I went there to study from the beginning to get my English — one, two, three, four English —hired me to work there, and I worked there two years teaching. I had every day two classes Hebrew and one class I had Home Economics in the high school. I got very good reputation, very good recommendations from Dr. Whitaker. Later I got a job already in the city right away.

Frankel: A job where?
LIBERMAN: In Los Angeles.

Frankel: In a Jewish day school?
LIBERMAN: In a Jewish day school, Emanuel Jewish School on Burton and Robertson. I don’t know if you knew Rabbi Geller and Rabbi Nussbaum.

Frankel: In Los Angeles?
LIBERMAN: No. But I still continued to work in afternoon in Temple Ahavat Shalom, 48 years. The kids used to go [to Israel] during the summer. First it was ulpanim [intensive language training programs]. That’s when my kids went back, ulpanim. Then they went from NFTY, a lot of them. Now it’s the Birthright. I have generation of kids, the children’s children.

Frankel: So two of your sons were born in Israel, and then you had another child.
LIBERMAN: Then I had a surprise. She was born here, and I was very glad that she came along because she’s a little girl. That’s her, Ruthie.

Frankel: When did you move to Portland and why?
LIBERMAN: Portland? I came four years exactly ago. It was ’14, in August. Because I have a son here, Gershon, and Esther which I always introduce her as my daughter. She’s wonderful. I know her since she was 15 from Camp Saratoga, Camp Solel. They were from Jewish camps. All my three kids married with girls. They knew them from Los Angeles, but in the camp they got hooked up to each other. Thank God. Other people bought property in Los Angeles. We spent that money on Jewish education, schools, and camps. And we came up ahead of everybody. Really, we were very lucky.

Frankel: Thank you very much. Is there anything else you would like to . . .?
LIBERMAN: Share? I want to tell you that I personally, I became not only dedicated to my Jewishness and Jewish life, it became part of me. Since the kids are born, I really started to come back to it very much, and I saw how much I don’t know, how much I should learn, and how much I missed this. When I came here [to Portland] and they told me they have homes here, other homes which is much cheaper and some is much nicer . . .

Frankel: Non-Jewish.
LIBERMAN: Non-Jewish. And I went there to see, just for one day [it sounds as if she is talking here about visiting assisted living facilities upon moving to Portland]. I felt again in Poland. I have no idea why. There is a lot of Jewish people because it’s cheap. I said, “I can’t be in a place . . ..” I am not kosher 100%. If you will invite me, I will not question you: What do you cook? How you cook? I maybe not eat meat, but I will eat everything else. The same thing when I go to a restaurant. I will eat salad, fish, but I want to tell you, I was there for a day and I said, “Gershinka, I don’t have too much, but they told me if I have for six years I don’t have to worry.” It goes on the government because federal government pays for them here. I says, “That’s I have it, from my pension. I maybe not leave nothing for you, but I will be . . ..” And they also said, “We never thought you will go to a goyishe place, but we just offered you.”

And I’m glad that I came because my other kids had me for many years to take care of their kids in Los Angeles and so on. The only one who never had since he moved up from there, here, only I came to visit or they sent every summer the kids to me. But really now, I am very glad that my grandsons, I convinced them a lot of things about Judaism. Not their parents, but I convinced them in a lot of things. Now when was the wedding, my daughter-in-law and my son says a lot of things I got them to do that they couldn’t make them do, to have a real Jewish wedding. I am pleased because they come and we go out. My best thing with Joe, one of the twins, he is 31, is “Safta [grandmother], I’m ready for a haircut. I’m coming.”

Frankel: You give him a haircut?
LIBERMAN: No. We eat lunch here and we go to . . .

Frankel: A barber.
LIBERMAN: Yes. Then Michael says, “Safta, I’m married already, but I still want you. I’m coming for a haircut.” Because each time when I came to Portland visit — I came very often to see them — I took them for haircuts. I fell in love with the building here [Rose Schnitzer Manor], and when I came in they didn’t have so many wheelchairs. They had very few. Friday night made me so happy what they distinguished the Friday night. Now, every Friday I dress up. I have a lot of dresses. I dress up and they say, “Where are you going, on a date? Where are you going?” I say, “Shabbos today.” It’s very important for me, and I seek out any place that I could get. I am only sorry that I gave up driving, but I really have problem with my eyes and I had problem with my back, and I was very afraid here to drive. So I just gave my new car to my son. I said, “You need it.” But I do find always to get with somebody.

I’m very pleased here. I like the weather here very much. I like to be near Gershon because I was alienated from him for so many years, and now we have a steady outing and studying together, and talking, and he wants to know a lot about — because I never had the chance to tell him a lot of things what he wanted to know. Now we go to Lake Oswego, we sit, buy coffee, and we talk. We walk and we talk. My life is not an exceptionally happy life, but I cannot complain. I think that both of us, from nothing we accomplished a lot of things.

We raised a very nice bunch of kids who are dedicated. My daughter is running a place in Boston for abused women and children. Now she is teaching other welfare recipients in other states. Now she is in Alabama for three days giving seminars and teaching them how to use the funds what the government gives and what the private sector gives, and to keep the place running. They have an exemplary place in Boston there. She is working there already 22 years. When she finished Harvard, she started to work there. She thinks they’re her children. We are very pleased in Gershon too. Everybody thinks he’s a rabbi! It’s not funny. When he leads services Friday night — ask Jean, ask anyone — it’s full. Last Friday it was 35 people. On Rosh Hashanah, we hardly have this. He really makes it fun for them and nice. The drash is very important, stories. So thank God. I’m very glad that I’m near my kids here.

Frankel: Thank you very much.
LIBERMAN: You’re welcome.

Frankel: Did you ever reconnect with your Uncle Kazimierz and his wife Alexandra?
LIBERMAN: Of course. Not only reconnected, I arranged through Yad Vashem a year ago in December, finally worked up all the papers what they came to Gdynia and they awarded them the Righteous Among the Nations on her 100th birthday. One day I will bring you all the pictures to show you. In one of the — he is the leader of Conservative movement.

Frankel: In this country?
LIBERMAN: Yes. What’s his name? He wrote a big article in Hoffman’s — it was b’Haaritz [in the Israeli newspaper Haaritz] and was here in newspapers. Anyway, I will find the letter. They awarded them with medals of honor, and I planted a tree a long time ago there in the Righteous—

Frankel: At Yad Vashem?
LIBERMAN: But now he has a statue there, their own plaque.

Frankel: How and when did you actually reconnect?
LIBERMAN: I lost contact with them in 1952.

Frankel: So in Israel you still had contact with them?
LIBERMAN: I had with them contact there all the time. Also I had contact from here a few times, from Los Angeles. Then they moved. First they were in Kania Gora, that means Chechen. Then they moved to Gdynia, and they never gave me the address. Each letter that I sent came back. Russia was there and so on. I lost completely contact. Then three years ago my son read on Facebook that somebody’s looking for one young, either girl or woman, a survivor, and described something that he connected to me, and then he called me.

He says, “Ima, somebody’s looking for you from Poland.” He gave me the information, and I got in touch with someone who knows them from here, and that’s how I found them again. I started to correspond with them, calling and writing, and then discovered — so then I started applying to Yad Vashem, took me a year and a half, and somebody, Hannah Kadmon from Israel, helped me too, with the Yad Vashem, because they were dragging their feet and I insisted she is almost 100 year old and they have to do this before she dies. She really died a few days after.

Frankel: What about her son?
LIBERMAN: The husband died a long time ago. He died already about 15 years ago. Her son Kazimierz too. They awarded all of them, the whole family. They were advertising in Poland and in Israel, so somebody from Haaretz read the article in Haaretz and they called me. Then the same article was in English here in the United States, published in New York Times.

Frankel: What happened to the son?
LIBERMAN: The son — I’m 85 and he’s 80.

Frankel: Does he live where his mother lives?
LIBERMAN: In Gdynia. He’s alive. That’s his son, and that’s his granddaughter.

Frankel: Did you ever meet again?
LIBERMAN: No, I never meet. I cannot travel to Poland. It’s too hard.

Frankel: When you were in Israel, they never came to Israel.
LIBERMAN: No. First thing, they were very restricted, they told me, with the letters to send to Israel because Russia did not like Israel for a long time. Each time, when I sent letters, they always send me back, “Why is your letter blacked up so much?” Censored, and their letter was always censored. But they do remember that I sent them Jaffa oranges from Israel.

Frankel: And they got it?
LIBERMAN: They got it. For Easter and for Christmas I sent it. Even from Kibbutz Merhavia I sent it, and then I later sent them. Now here, I send them — she needed something. She was bedridden for 20 years, Alexandra, and she needed something, so we sent them several thousand dollars, the kids and me. Now I am in touch with his granddaughter, Alicia. She is finished now high school. And I have somebody here who goes to Poland every few months to visit her parents, so she takes — I cannot send a check, and through the union it’s very difficult to send money, so she’s now going in September, and she’s going to buy them the gift cards there and I pay her here. They were so happy. But on the Facebook when they got the awards, there were so many anti-Semites wrote in, and I read this, we all read. It says, “How could a Polish family shelter a Jewish kid?”

Frankel: Today. Painful.

LIBERMAN: A year ago. You should see. Awful things they were writing. But most of them were writing congratulations. It was the right thing to award them, they deserve, and they bless them. They told them beautiful things. It was hundreds and hundreds of these. But some of them were very nasty, very bad.
Frankel: Thank you.