Anneliese Nossbaum was born 8 January 1929 in Guben, Germany but moved to Bonn at age two. Her first experiences in Bonn in a Nazi environment were not good. Her father was a cantor [Annotator’s Note: official who sings liturgical music and leads prayer] and teacher and principal of the Jewish school. His being a cantor was the most important part of her life as it meant she was constantly at the Synagogue-becoming her second home. When she was 7 to 8 years old, she could go wherever she wanted in the town. She enjoyed the marketplace, but she was extremely aware that being Jewish, she didn’t belong there. She didn’t understand not being liked because of what she was. The newspapers were encased outside so anyone could read them. The Sturmer [Annotator’s Note: Der Stürmer] was on display and depicted Jews in a way that she could not recognize. If anyone wanted to accost a Jewish person, they could do so without fear since Jews had lost their rights as citizens in 1935. Anneliese was tall with blond hair and blue eyes. Not fitting the Sturmer’s image of Jews, he did not get treated as badly as others. Once they started having to wear the Judenstern [Annotator’s Note: Yellow badges], this fact disappeared, and she became more fearful. She had no Gentile friends. The star put an end to her enjoyment of the marketplace and she absolutely never thought of removing it. Walking by the University [Annotator’s Note: Universistät Bonn; Bonn University], and she saw Hebrew on the blackboard in a classroom. Her father explained to her that the Germans wanted to read the bible in the original text, so they took classes to learn Hebrew. She was confused as to why they would want to do that and yet, not allow her to go to the movie theater. On 1 September 1939, [Annotator’s Note: German invasion of Poland] they realized they would now not be able to emigrate despite having already made plans to go to California and then to Daytona Beach, Florida where her father had already been offered a job as cantor.

Anneliese Nossbaum lived in Bonn, Germany and was proud of the synagogue there where her father was the cantor. As a child, she did not always understand his sermons. Her mother sang from the Hallel [Annotator’s Note: Jewish prayer from Psalms 113-118] which asks what can a man do to me? Nossbaum remembers finding the answer to that question one day while she was in school. Someone rushed in and told her the synagogue was on fire. This was during Kristallnacht [Annotator’s Note: Night of Broken Glass; November Pogrom; 9-10 November 1938]. Her father walked with her home and they did not speak. This was the day the Holocaust started for Anneliese-her life changed forever-the loss of all hope. Her family and friend’s desperation took permanency away from her forever. They learned English immediately. There was no longer a cultural life. Her aunt and uncle had come to their home during the night. They had left their small village because a group had come and thrown her uncle in a well during Kristallnacht. A local German policeman pulled him out and likely saved his life. She can recall her mother’s frightened expression when they arrived. Nossbaum says that some of the local people did join these terror groups but most of the time they didn’t due to knowing the Jewish people. The locals were sent to other cities to take part in these actions where there was no emotional involvement with that population to prove their loyalty to the Nazi Party. She was too young to know if the SS [Annotator’s Note: Schutzstaffel-German paramilitary organization] had a large presence in Bonn. July 1942 when she was 12, her family had to give up their apartment and move to a nun’s cloister on the outskirts of Bonn. There were 110 nuns in the cloister. The Nazis gave the nuns two hours to gather their goods and leave. The local farmers helped the nuns leave so the Jews could be moved in. Nossbaum returned to the cloister later in life and wondered why they didn’t escape when they were there – noting there would have been nowhere to go. In 1941 474 people were placed in the cloister. Only seven of them survived the war-all women. She is the only school child who survived. No men or boys ever returned to Bonn.

Annaliese Nossbaum was moved into a former nun’s cloister in Bonn, Germany when she was 12 years old. The Jews in Bonn were collected at the cloister and transported to different places over a year’s time. The transport before hers was sent to the outskirts of Minsk, Russia and they were shot in the forest. Because of her father’s position as a cantor in the synagogue and the principal of the Jewish school, they did not get placed on that transport. Upon returning to Bonn later in her life and visiting the museum, Annaliese saw her father’s handwriting on records of the dates each person was taken away. She cannot imagine what it was like for her father to have to do that. A little boy of 18 months was sent away just after he had learned to say her name [Annotator’s Note: her voice cracks]. School was permitted for a short time at the cloister but not for long. At that point, they stood around a piano and cried while singing a song. The financial aspect of their condition was one of the very few things her father would openly talk to her about. The fact that he could not protect her was very hard on her father. She did have a joy at the cloister which was a kitten that a lawyer had snuck in. Everything had to be given up in stages. She and her family were the last to close the door and they ended up in Theresienstadt [Annotator’s Note: Theresienstadt; transit camp and ghetto; Terezin, Czech Republic]. The traveled there by bus and train. Later in life she revisited the train station and she did not remember anything other than getting off the train later at the camp.

Annaliese Nossbaum was moved into a former nun’s cloister in Bonn, Germany when she was 12 years old. She and her family were the last of 474 Jews to leave there when they were transported to Theresienstadt [Annotator’s Note: Theresienstadt; transit camp and ghetto; Terezin, Czech Republic]. The camp was a complicated business. In the early stages – they walked from the train station to the ghetto with all of their belongings. Later the trains would come directly into the camps. The Nossbaums were assigned a shared house with one bathroom. In these days they were not separated by gender. She remembers having a roll with butter and strawberry jam. This was important to her because the 90-year-old mother of a family friend had lived on the outskirts of Bonn. Nossbaum’s father would visit this woman at her home and took Annaliese with him. The woman always gave her a roll with strawberry jam. At the camp, they were assigned to the same room with this woman who died one week after being forced there. This was Nossbaum’s first experience of the camps – even now she thinks of her every time she eats jam. They were fortunate to be there as a family. Youth homes were opened in the camp – some of whom were for Czechs and some for German based on language. Annaliese was there for two years with 13 other girls – five of whom survived the camps. She considered this an improvement as she could now walk through the ghetto and had company her own age. The grown-ups who were able to do anything at all would informally tell stories that would be educational. No school was allowed. The SS [Annotator’s Note: Schutzstaffel-German paramilitary organization] had offices in these buildings which they occupied during the day, so teaching was cautious. Education was a way of showing they were normal human beings. They felt they were ultimately going to be liberated and moved to Palestine and the teaching and Hebrew services were to prepare them for that. The religious aspects sustained her. The adults would do anything to bring them above their living conditions in anyway. Illness was rampant-Nossbaum had pleurisy, tuberculosis, and more. The greatest fear over hunger, tiredness, death was the handing out of the pink slips which meant one was leaving the camp for the unknown. Watching the people walking down the streets to board the trains with all of their possessions created a tremendous sense of dread.

Anna Nossbaum and her family were taken to Theresienstadt [Annotator’s Note: Theresienstadt; transit camp and ghetto; Terezin, Czech Republic] in 1942. They tried to be above the treatment there of them there in order to feel human. They did not realize how much the camp life affected them. Despite the conditions they had to be prepared for life. They knew that they would eventually receive the dreaded pink slip from the Germans that would mean they were being shipped off – their attitude was: in the meantime, let us do something else. The Germans sent Jewish World War One veterans to the camp as well as artists, musicians, and intellectuals. This created an active community to help make life more bearable, often under the eyes of the Nazis. There was a visit by the International Red Cross (IRC) that was called an inspection. On that day the SS [Annotator’s Note: Schutzstaffel-German paramilitary organization] led Red Cross team around and showed them staged settings. At that moment, the people in the camp were uplifted by this visit. The transports had stopped for this time period and they felt slightly better. Nossbaum says that a dozen Oscars [Annotator’s Note: Academy Awards for acting] would not have been enough credit for the acting on the parts of Nazis for the IRC. The Nazis stocked stores with the goods they had taken from the Jews upon arrival. They also printed money with Moses and the 10 Commandments on them as currency. Nossbaum’s distant cousin recalls buying mustard with this money. Despite the camp conditions, there was music being composed and played, some theater, as well as the opera Carmen. Both of Nossbaum’s parents were in the chorus. After that, Annaliese could not listen to Carmen ever again due the memories of what followed. As she grew older, she saw it as something her parents did for relief from their condition, so she changed her feelings about it. Once the inspectors left, the transports started back up and took her father 27 September 1945, the Jewish day of atonement [Annotator’s Note: Yom Kippur]. He performed his last religious service knowing he was leaving. Annaliese did not attend because she could not tolerate the emotional pain – she cannot imagine how her father conducted the service. A new Jewish day arrived, and she had to say good-bye to her father [Annotator’s Note: Nossbaum cries]. He was 44. She cannot remember the day that he left. Another family had a son who was leaving at the same time and her father was asked to look after this boy. Shortly after this, the rest were asked to volunteer to leave. The rest of the Nossbaum family did so and went to Auschwitz-Birkenau [Annotator’s Note: Auschwitz II-Birkenau; Brzesinka, Poland] but did not see her father despite being there at the same time. He died in the Dachau, Germany concentration camp after three months of hard labor in December 1945. Three months was a common period of time for men to die. Nossbaum had a 34-year-old uncle who had come there from Berlin and he also died at the same time.

Annaliese Nossbaum was in Theresienstadt [Annotator’s Note: Theresienstadt; transit camp and ghetto; Terezin, Czech Republic] when she received her pink slip to go to Auschwitz [Annotator’s Note: Auschwitz; a complex of over 40 concentration camps and extermination camps in German-occupied Poland] Before leaving, a child gave Annaliese a necklace to remember her by. When they arrived in Auschwitz, they were made to write a postcard to the youth home. Nossbaum mentioned the girl’s name in the postcard and told her she had lost the gift as code that their belongings had been taken away from them. Both of Nossbaum’s grandmothers were in Theresienstadt – only one of which survived. The surviving grandmother never got over all of the family she had lost. The other grandmother [Annotator’s Note: Nossbaum breaks down emotionally] was one of the finest people Nossbaum ever knew. She spent time with her in Berlin, Germany as a child- it was as if the sun shone all the time. This grandmother was very ill in Theresienstadt when Annaliese and her family left. They had all lived together all of their lives. Nossbaum just had said good-bye to her father and then had to say good-bye to this grandmother. The grandmother asked where her son was. They could not bring themselves to tell her that he was already at Auschwitz and that they were leaving as well, so she never knew what became of them.

Annaliese Nossbaum traveled for three days by train from Theresienstadt [Annotator’s Note: Theresienstadt; transit camp and ghetto; Terezin, Czech Republic] to Auschwitz [Annotator’s Note: Auschwitz; a complex of over 40 concentration camps and extermination camps in German-occupied Poland]. She says that everyone had a horrible feeling of the unknown, which intensified when they arrived had to leave their belongings on the train. [Annotator’s Note: Interviewer asks if music was playing upon arrival-she does not recall]. Nossbaum says the selection system that separated the families started immediately. They could see prisoners working as they came into the camp, so they knew they were in deep trouble and were very afraid. There was a lot of yelling and screaming, dogs barking, and more. Nossbaum was with her mother and a friend from Theresienstadt. She sees that the children were being separated to the left. At the previous camp, children were treated better than the adults, so she wished to go that way. When the German doctors asked her age, she lied and said she was 14. She was sent to the right with her mother anyway. Her friend’s mother was sent to the left and was separated from them. They then had to undress in front of sneering SS [Annotator’s Note: Schutzstaffel-German paramilitary organization] guards. Their heads were shaved, they were showered, and given shoes and a dress. Nossbaum says that at this point she became an adult in an instant. Seeing her mother in rags and totally terrified ended her childhood permanently. For the next seven months she had no toothbrush or toothpaste. To her, this example shows enough to her of how their treatment was. On her fourth day there, they were locked in a barracks. Outside the barracks people were screaming as they were shot. They were terrified that they were next. Nossbaum’s father had told her that her mother had tuberculosis before they left Theresienstadt. Here they had nothing but wood to sleep on. That same evening she asked for burlap and was told no and hit by the woman in charge. Annaliese hit the woman back. The woman then made her kneel down and she then let her go. Nossbaum’s religious upbringing wherein she learned to kneel only to God made this a horrible act. When she returned to the wood she did not speak to her mother and she felt she had been abandoned by God – and as well by her physical father-all of her religious upbringing was all in vain. She never felt God was dead, but he was not for her for the rest of her life. If that had not happened in Auschwitz, her later life would have been so much easier. She came to New York, got married, had children, and yet she gets physically ill every holiday. She feels she is lucky that she was able to get psychiatric help. She is angry that there was no help for the survivors. She did not know who she was any longer, and this created problems for her as a parent and a wife.

Annaliese Nossbaum and her mother were prisoners in Auschwitz [Annotator’s Note: Auschwitz; a complex of over 40 concentration camps and extermination camps in German-occupied Poland]. After a guard forced her to kneel in front of her, she felt their torment was her fault and felt no longer worthy of God’s love. [Annotator’s Note: Interviewer suggests the camp experience was a betrayal by God]. She did later become a member of the synagogue, and she now does enjoy singing, and Torah study, but still does not pray. She feels that she can never return to the deep emotional level of her childhood religious faith due to Auschwitz. The day after she knelt, she and her mother left for Freiburg [Annotator’s Note: there were no camps in Freiburg – she must have misspoken], which was slightly better than Auschwitz – they had a pillow and blanket, and clothes now. They worked ten hours a day, seven days a week. 500 women were there and there were no toilet privileges during working hours. Once she went to the bathroom during working hours and an SS guard [Annotator’s Note: Schutzstaffel-German paramilitary organization] hit her for that. She started laughing due to being nervous and the guard saw her laughing which made things worse. Her mother was working despite having tuberculosis, so she wasn’t very fast-an SS guard hit her mother in the back for moving too slowly. They were welding in an aircraft factory. A few months after their arrival, there was a young woman who decided to make combs since they had no way to comb their hair [Annotator’s Note: Nossbaum holds up a comb that she bought for one piece of bread]. The camp prisoners were not clean. They wore the same clothing for seven months without ever washing it. The Germans decided that they could only wash their face and hands when outside which made things even worse and then gave them a small piece of soap for a shower on Sundays. They would have to put the wet soap into their coat pocket which created a mess. Another woman made soap holders – she traded another piece of bread for it [Annotator’s Note: she displays the soap holder]. These two things were made of necessity under abnormal conditions – Nossbaum defies any Holocaust deniers to see these things without receiving the truth of what happened in the camps – she brought them to America to show people the truth. [Annotator’s Note: The interviewer states that these were needed to in order to feel human and have dignity]. Nossbaum says that the muselmann - people who didn’t find ways to preserve their human qualities were done [Annotator’s Note: translates to Muslim which was used as an expression to describe prisoners too weak to work]. You gave up hope and you were done.

Annaliese Nossbaum was moved from Theresienstadt [Annotator’s Note: Theresienstadt; transit camp and ghetto; Terezin, Czech Republic] to Auschwitz [Annotator’s Note: Auschwitz; a complex of over 40 concentration camps and extermination camps in German-occupied Poland]. Before leaving she cut out a picture of her family. She took that to Auschwitz with her and she managed to get it off of the train. Whenever she had to stand kapo [Annotator’s Note: Perhaps she means antreten – to line up – most likely under the supervision of the kapo, or prisoner in charge of a work team], she would put it in her mouth. When it finally dissolved into just wet paper, was the only time she was able to cry at Auschwitz. Nossbuam did not cry again until she saw the white flag when she was 16 years old April 1945. She had a birthday celebration [Annotator’s Note: she reaches off camera to get something to read]. She wrote prose about her 16th birthday at the aircraft factory – her most meaningful experience in the camps. Her mother had put aside part of her daily ration of bread with another person to keep. On the birthday, Annaliese, her mother, and her friend shared a small piece of bread and through that she was to give love through sacrifice. She wants to pass this moral and heroic conduct lesson to others to show that people could maintain character and value under the most tragic of conditions. Shortly thereafter the factory was bombed, and they had no longer had work. Now they had time to think more deeply. A young woman from Holland had come to the camp with a 4-year-old little girl and her own mother. This woman’s mother and daughter had been separated from her. Now this woman had time to think about never seeing them again and it was heartbreaking. At that point, the guards were starting to leak information about the direction of the war. They were also close enough to see Dresden burn [Annotator’s Note: Allied bombing attacks on Dresden, Germany 13-15 February 1945]. Then she felt great about it, today she feels bad about the people burned.

Annaliese Nossbaum and her mother were prisoners at Auschwitz [Annotator’s Note: Auschwitz; a complex of over 40 concentration camps and extermination camps in German-occupied Poland] when the factory they were working in was destroyed by Allied bombers. Shortly after that, they were loaded into open train cars and they traveled for two and half weeks essentially going in circles. These were extremely difficult days as they only fed every three days, they could not fully lie down, and it was raining. They drank the rainwater which is how they survived. They ended up at Mauthausen [Annotator’s Note: Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex; Mauthuasen, Austria] which as a short stay but could have been shorter. Nossbaum learned later that by the time they got there, the Germans had destroyed the gas chambers fearing discovery by the Allies. The Germans wanted to send them to Gusen which was nearby, but the camp had run out of Zyklon-B gas. At Mauthausen, the Nazis had an entrance with dogs on the sides which terrified them. They were then taken to the Gypsy barracks where they slept in the mud. On 3 May 1945, they were ordered to get in line where they stood for a very long time before being ordered back to the barracks. The next day they white flags of surrender and they started crying for joy. They were also afraid of the news they would hear of their families. They wondered if they could even be able to function normally. Nossbaum’s mother was so ill that she could not get up out of bed and ultimately died of tuberculosis that December.

Annaliese Nossbaum came across letters she and her mother had written after their liberation from Mauthausen [Annotator’s Note: Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex; Mauthuasen, Austria]. She read that her mother had kept herself alive for her sake [Annotator’s Note: Nossbaum cries]. She feels that her mother was tested and won. Her mother did know that Nossbaum was going to America and would be with relatives. Nossbaum has survivor’s guilt. For her son’s Bar Mitzvah, she decided to show her children this history and Israel which came of it all. They went to Bonn, Germany where she was born and first moved to a camp which was very difficult for her. They went to Dachau [Annotator’s Note: Dachau; first concentration camp; Dachau, Germany] and Theresienstadt [Annotator’s Note: Theresienstadt; transit camp and ghetto; Terezin, Czech Republic]. She found that her father had been at Kaufering, where he died [Annotator’s Note: Kaufering; subcamp of Dachau; Landsberg am Lech, Germany]. The trees had grown at Theresienstadt. The worst part of the camps now was the silence for – all she could think of was where had all the people gone? She sat on a bench and her children asked her where she had been while there. She remembers dancing the hora [Annotator’s Note: a circle dance ritually performed at Jewish weddings] when the guards left for the day. She was glad to leave the camp that day. She feels that she understands how it seems beautiful, sanitized, and clean now. She feels that the survivors cannot adequately describe what they felt. She thanks the parents and communities who sent soldiers to fight. She appreciates the US government for finally taking in the Jewish people and giving them a life and the National World War II Museum to bring this kind of educational tool to help make the world act and be a better place.