Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Zoltan Rubin - January 12, 1983

Zoltan Rubin was born in Kapúsány, Czechoslovakia. He is the youngest child in a large family of eight sons and three daughters. His family was fairly well off since his father owned a large farm and several mills. Zoltan and his parents were protected from deportation by an economic exemption until 1942 when the exemption was eliminated and his parents were deported. Zoltan was able to avoid deportation by using Gentile papers given to him by friends. In 1944, he was captured with a group of partisans and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp near Jena where he was part of a forced labor detail digging tunnels for the Germans. Towards the end of the war, he escaped with three others and lived off the land for about six weeks until the American army arrived in the area. He was later reunited with an older brother who was a doctor with the Czechoslovakian army.

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Link to Portraits of Honor Project

1. Pre-War Life
2. Family
3. Father and Brother
4. Extended Family
5. Religious Life
6. Relations with Non-Jews
7. Czechoslovakian Leadership
8. Increased Anti-Semitism
9. Arrest of Father
10. Possibilities of Leaving
11. First Deportations
12. Economic Exemption
13. Deportation of Parents
14. Attempt to Rescue Parents
15. Failure to Find Parents
16. Joining the Partisans
17. Fate of Family
18. Jena
19. Jews in P.O.W. Camps
20. End of War
21. Reaction to Persecution of Father
22. Return Home
23. Immigration to Canada
24. Talking About Experience