Centropa Stories

Katarina Vidor grew up comfortably middle class in Bratislava. She worked in an accounting office and spoke four languages. She loved playing tennis and water skiing with friends on the Adriatic. She had recently married and her parents lived nearby. Then the war came.

Her story is read for us by Jan Goodman in London.

She grew up in a well-to-do family in Budapest, married in 1928, and doted on her only child, Erwin while running three hat shops with her husband. Then the entire family descended into hell.

Her story is read to us by Tina Gray.

Auschwitz-Birkenau. the ultimate symbol of the Holocaust, where more than a million Jews were murdered. Of the 1,230 elderly Jews we interviewed between 2000 and 2009, nearly 100 managed to survive this hell on Earth—some to be sent on to even worse places. We present excerpts from five of those interviews, one each from Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia and Poland.

Mirou-Mairy Karasso was born in 1921, the oldest five children. She grew up wealthy and sheltered until she and her brother Albert, hiding with false papers, boarded a bus for Athens. The rest of the family fled to the mountains. A heartbreaking story of loss. Interviewed by Nina Hatzi in Athens in 2006

narrated by Jeni Barnet

Lily Pardo and her three sisters lived on Tsimiski Street and their father’s store was just down the block. And when the Germans began deporting tens of thousands of Jews, their fathers’ friend would hide them in his flat—for 18 months.

Interviewed by Annita Mordechai in Athens in 2006.

Narrated by Jilly Bond.

narrated by Allan Corduner

Alberto Beraha’s father was a currency trader, his mother taught French. The family escaped during the deportations, and Alberto tells of hiding in a mountain village, where he listened to BBC broadcasts on a hidden radio, and translated the news for the villagers protecting him and his father. Interviewed by Annita Mordechai in Athens in 2007.

narrated by Annita Mordechai

I grew up Jewish and Greek, the granddaughter of a woman who survived the Holocaust hiding with her parents and sisters in a friend’s apartment. In 2005, I joined a team of Centropa interviewers led by the historian Rena Molho and our goal was to ask elderly Jews born in Thessaloniki to share with us their personal stories—from the 1920s until the early 2000s. We highlight three of those interviews in this podcast season and you can find links to the interviews, as well as book recommendations, in the shownotes.

Thanks for listening

A story of horror and resilience

Anna Rottenberg, born in 1915 in Lodz, grew up in a wealthy orthodox family. She broke away to study child psychology in Warsaw and when war came, she escaped, but went into the Warsaw Ghetto to try and save her family. Anna describes scenes of unimaginable horror, and how she married resistance fighter Eduard Lanota. Together they fought  the Germans in the August, 1944 uprising. Eduard was killed. Eight months later, Anna delivered their baby. Anna went on to become one of Poland’s leading magazine editors and taught child psychology well into her 80s.

Read for you by Sara Kestelman in London. Produced by Oleh Teteriatnyk. Interview with Anna Lanota by Alexandra Bankowska

Kirkus Review called Götz and Meyer “brilliantly disturbing” and The  Guardian called it “unimprovable.” In this short (168 page) stream of  consciousness work of fiction, a school teacher in Belgrade muses—and  practically hallucinates—as he wonders just what the two SS men who  drove the infamous gas van talked about all day. The fact that both  Breda and Matilda Kalef watched their father and grandmother being  loaded into this van makes it all the more harrowing. We have chosen an  excerpt from Götz and Meyer, which is read by Allan Corduner, an actor  with more than 140 screen credits, including Tar, Defiance, The Woman in  Gold, The Merchant of Venice and Operation Finale.

narrated by:

She was born with the name Ruchel Kalef. During the war, Father Andrej  Tumpej gave her a name to hide behind: Breda. After the war, Ruchel  decided, “He gave me more than a name. He gave me a life.” Thanks to  Breda, Father Tumpej is now listed as a Righteous Among the Nations.  Breda became one of Yugoslavia’s best known mezzo-sopranos. Jane Bertish  has appeared on stage in London performing George Bernard Shaw and  Tennessee Williams. Her television credits include Rosemary’s Baby and  most recently, Ted Lasso.

narrated by