Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Simon Cymerath grew up in a close-knit family in Starowicea [Starowice], Poland. When the Germans occupied Starowicea [Starowicea], the family was moved into a ghetto and Simon was first sent to work in a local factory and then to work in a forced labor camp. Simon escaped from the labor camp with the help of a Jewish contractor and returned home to Starowicea [Starowice] where he went back to work in the factory. Soon after, the family was sent to Treblinka where his parents and youngest brother perished; Simon and two other brothers were separated and sent to Auschwitz. Simon survived Auschwitz working as a painter on a Monowitz work detail. In April 1945, the camp was evacuated and the prisoners forced on a death march that ended with their liberation by the Americans. After liberation, Simon worked several years with the American army, reunited with his only surviving brother, and immigrated to the United States in 1950.

Mala Weintraub Dorfman was born in Łódź, Poland in 1923. When the war broke out in 1939, Mala and three of her five siblings were sent to live with their grandmother in the Kozienice ghetto. Mala worked as a nurse in the ghetto until she was deported to Skarzysko where she worked in an ammunitions factory for two years. She was then deported to Częstochowa where she was liberated a year later by the Russians. After the war, Mala returned to Łódź, married, and was soon reunited with her sisters at Bergen-Belsen. Mala lived with her husband in Germany until their immigration to the United States in 1949.