The Obermans - Holocaust Years
Berek Oberman’s descendants were the first living Oberman relatives we were able to identify. They were not the last.
We first learned that we had another living branch of the Oberman family from Jon Acker and from our newly discovered Israeli and Australian cousins. Berek Dov Oberman, they told us, had a younger brother who survived the Holocaust. He had immigrated to the United States after the war. His given name, they told us, was Leo.
There was only one of Huna and Rywka Oberman’s children who fit this information: the seventh of their nine children, Hersz Leyb Oberman.
How had Leo Oberman survived the Holocaust? What happened to his family? And had he really made his way to the United States?
Much of the information about Leo’s family is either sparse or non-existent. For Leo, it is plentiful but, nevertheless, leaves much to puzzle over. This post and the next — Parts Three and Four — set out what we have learned so far about the fate of Leo Oberman, his parents, several of his siblings and his family.
Birth record for Hersz Lejb Oberman, April 2, 1904. Hersz (Leo, as he became known later in live) was born in Częstochowa. He was 12 years younger than his older brother Berek, who left home to study agronomy in Germany and who moved to Israel in the mid 1920s.
Hersz Leyb
Hersz Lejb Oberman, who sometimes used the name Leon during the Holocaust, and used the name Leo after the war, was named for his grandfather, Hersz Lejb Oberman, who had died in 1902.
Between the wars, Leo Oberman, still listed in records as Hersz Lejb, appears in multiple entries for Częstochowa residents, living with his parents, Huna and Rywka. His name also appears several times in pre-World War Two lists of potential Polish Army recruits, where his occupation is given as a furrier.
From later records we learned that, before the war, Leo was married to a woman named Fela nee Szere. The couple lived in Częstochowa. We have, so far found no records of a marriage date. Nor do we know if Fela survived the Holocaust. But a record created in 1945 and placed online recently from the Aronson Archive of the International Tracing Service contains information probably collected directly from Leo Oberman during the Holocaust. It states that Leon's parents are "Huna O." and Ryfka O" and that his wife is Fela O, born Szere.
Like Leo, most of the Oberman family — at least those for whom some records are available — continued to live in Częstochowa between the wars and were in Częstochowa at the time of the Nazi invasion.
Despite their ages — Huna was 74 in 1939, Rywka was 69 — we have no record of either dying before the war began.
Invasion and its Aftermath
German troops occupied Częstochowa on September 3, 1939, and followed up, one day later, by slaughtering 300 Jews and injuring and terrifying many more.
Within a few weeks German authorities established a Judenrat and began the process of restricting Jewish activity and access to normal commerce and of expropriating Jewish possessions.
Life for the Jews of Częstochowa grew worse over the following months and by the spring of 1940, a year before the creation of a ghetto, forced labor had become a reality for many.
Leo Oberman's name appears on a German list of forced laborers dated April 22, 1940. His name is the fourth in the list:
The document is titled “List of Jews involved in forced labor”
Another German record, created on the same day, lists available hand tools owned by the Jews of Częstochowa. It includes an entry for Leo of "one sewing machine for sewing furs and tools of a furrier”.
During that same year, Leon’s younger brother, Mojzesz, who had worked with Leon as an apprentice furrier, married Chaja Katz, who went by the name Helena. It was as Helena Oberman that she is listed along with her husband and two brothers- in-law among the many Jewish inhabitants of Częstochowa who were forced into laboring for the Nazi war effort.
Short version of marriage record of Chaja Katz and Mojzesz Oberman, August 27, 1940.
Ghetto
The Częstochowa ghetto was created in April 1941. Four months later, in August 1941, the ghetto area was completely closed off from the rest of the city. Between the spring of 1941 and the following spring 40,000 to 50,000 Jews from the city and surrounding towns were crowded into the ghetto area.
In 1942 and 1943 the ghetto was decimated two times. Each time thousands of Jews were shipped to death camps. In 1942 most inmates were sent to Treblinka and the size of the ghetto was drastically reduced. In mid 1943 the remaining ghetto inhabitants were sent to their deaths, with the exception of a few thousand forced laborers.
It is likely that several member of the Oberman family, including Huna and Rywka, were sent to Treblinka and to their deaths during the first deportation. In later records, after the war, Leo Oberman gave 1942 as the year his parents were murdered. Years later, in Israel, Berek Oberman placed the same year of death in a record in Yad Vashem for his father, Huna Oberman. There is no way of knowing whether either Berek or Leo had direct knowledge of the exact time of their parents deportation and murder.
The Hasag Pelercy munitions plant in Częstochowa photographed after the war. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Hasag Pelcery
Hasag, a German metalworks company founded in 1863 and based in Leipzig, became a major munitions manufacturer for Nazi Germany during the Second World War. By 1941, the company had established dozens of plants across German occupied Europe in places where unpaid slave labor was readily available.
Hasag opened three plants in Częstochowa: Hasag-Rakow, in a former ironworks in the Rakow suburb, Metalurgica, a foundry on Krotka street, and Hasag-Pelcery, located near the train station.
Forced laborers for the Hasag facilities were drawn from among the Jews of Częstochowa even before the formation and closure of the ghetto. When the first transport to Treblinka decimated the ghetto in mid 1942, those laborers were spared, and moved to the small, remaining ghetto area. When the second transport occurred one year later, ford laborers who were still alive were moved once again — this time to SS run barracks within the confines of the Hasag-Pelcery munitions plant.
Four Oberman family members were forced into slave labor at some point early in the occupation and spent the next few years working at the Hasag-Pelcery munitions plant.
The documents below are from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. All, according the Museum, date from Hasag Pelcery lists created at the time the Częstochowa ghetto was finally closed in mid-1943 and Hasag forced laborers were moved inside the confines of the SS barracks at the Hasag Pelcery site.
We can never be sure that Polish birth records are completely accurate — reluctance to engage town officials, failed memory, and simple error are always a possibility. But time and again, German records appear to be obviously error prone and carelessly entered. One of the most common errors — using the last month or last day of the year — is something we have found repeatedly. The most likely causes ares German haste, lack of interest, and difficulty with the Polish language along with prisoner fear and possible ignorance of the exact date of their birth.
The four hand written records above are the only trace we have of the four Oberman’s during what was probably three years or more of slave labor.
For the war years we have, so far, found no records of Abram Oberman or Helena Oberman beyond the hand written Hasag-Pelcery records. Nor are post war records available for Avram, the youngest of Huna and Rywka Oberman’s children. It is possible he was murdered during the years he was forced to laborer at the Hasag factory. It is also possible his life ended during transit when Hasag factories in the last months of the war.
Entrance to the underground V2 and V1 rocket factory at the Dora-Mittelbau slave labor camp.
Buchenwald and Dora-Mittelbau: 1945
Thanks to the Aronson Archive we now know far more about the fate of the two Oberman brothers after they were transported to Buchenwald and then, within days, to Dora Mittelbau.
The records created during these last months of the war are surprisingly plentiful. All were created by SS RDHA which seems to have stuck to a set of rigid bureaucratic rules until the end, despite the chaos building around them.
Those records tell us nothing about the state of the thousands of prisoners who labored in underground factories during the last months of the war. They provide only the barest outline of where these prisoners suffered and, except for a few, died before liberation was a possibility. But they are all we have, and they serve to identify and confirm the fate of at least some of the victims.
The next record, below, has hand written information that apparently was collected by the SS from newly arrived slave laborers at Dora Mittelbau. Like the other records, Leo’s date of birth is wrongly listed as the last day of the year 1912.
This record proved most important to us: it clearly states (though mis-spelled) the names of Leo’s father and mother: Hona O and Rjfka O, born Heilborn. Both, according to the record died in 1942, the year of the first, massive deportation of Jews from the Częstochowa ghetto to Treblinka. Their death is indicated by the word “verst” — an abbreviation of the German word versterben, which means “passed away” — a strange euphemism for their murder. The information in the record about the name of Leo’s wife and parents, could only have been supplied by Leo himself. Leo’s signature may also appear toward the bottom of the form, though the line appears, confusingly, to be about dates of military service.
Mojzesz Oberman
The two documents above confirm that Mojzesz Oberman arrived in Buchenwald and was transferred to Mittelbau on the same dates at his brother Leo.
The spelling of Mojzesz’s name changed from the Hasag records, and from his birth record. And his birth date is incorrect. But there can be no doubt that this is the same person.
The next record, below, confirms the names of Mojzesz’s parents, father, “Chano O.” and mother “Rywka O” born Heilborn. It also confirms that his wife name is Hela, born Katz.
As with Leo's record, there is a signature, placed, strangely, in the second of two lines originally created to record the military service of inmates. The handwriting is different and is probably the signature of Mojzesz Oberman.
Many of the Buchenwald and Dora Mittelbau records, often redundant, were filled out for both brothers. But in one record created for Mojzesz there is an important difference:
A crossed bones symbol and a new remark was added in English at the bottom of the record for Mojzesz: “See Dora Hosp Card, March 3, 1945”.
The document confirms that Mojszez’s fate differed from that of his older brother.
That short note was likely written by an American who was with the forces who reached the Dora-Mittelbau complex in early April, 1945. And it clearly refers to other documents the American forces had found, left behind by fleeing SS. One of those documents is shown below. The date on this hospital records is illegible, but the record is clear: it lists two ”deceased prisoner-inmates” of the hospital — Pietr Swatschenko and Moniek Oberman.
Mojzesz, along with his brother, had suffered more than four years of slave labor in German war production factories — first in Czestochowa and then in the Harz Mountains of Northwestern German.
The note bears the crossed bone death symbol the American soldier copied. Mojzesz Oberman died on March 3, 1945, just weeks before American troops arrived at Dora Mittelbau.
The death note written by a doctor at Dora Mittelbau gives the cause of death as Nephritis.
