A preview of Episode 3 of 'Resistance, Resilience & Hope: Holocaust Survivor Stories'

Here's a preview of Episode 3 of "Resistance, Resilience & Hope: Holocaust Survivor Stories," in which we hear from Judy Kolb.

Judy's maternal grandparents owned a fabric and dressmaking shop in Swinemünde, Germany, a fashionable spa town on the Baltic Sea. Their daughter, Carla, met a cantor named Leopold Fleischer in January 1937 when he moved to Swinemünde and rented a room in the same building. Carla and Leopold fell in love and married in the spring of 1939. By that time, the Nazis had begun encouraging Jews to emigrate from Germany, and when Judy’s grandfather, Julius, was arrested and imprisoned for six weeks in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, his wife, Martha, insisted that the family leave Germany as soon as possible. She set her sights on Japanese-occupied Shanghai, an open port city which refugees did not need a visa to enter. To be able to afford passage there, Martha sold her house, clothing store, and some furnishings to a wealthy, non-Jewish neighbor. She bought tickets for the entire family on the German Lloyd Line. After obtaining exit papers to leave Germany, Martha presented the passenger tickets to the Gestapo at Sachsenhausen. Soon after, Julius was released from the camp.

In June of 1939, Julius, Martha, Leopold, Carla, and her brother Heinz embarked for Shanghai. The journey took four weeks.

In Shanghai they were immediately taken to a Heime, German for “home.” Many Heimes were converted barracks crammed with narrow bunk beds, sleeping anywhere from six to 150 people a room. Soon, the whole family moved into an apartment in a small area called Hongkew. On March 6th, 1940, Carla gave birth to her daughter, Judith “Daisy” Fleischer.

Then, on December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor happened. The Japanese were at war with the United States and formed the Axis alliance with fascist Italy and Germany.

[Judy Kolb] So the following spring, in 1942, Colonel Meisinger came to Shanghai. He was called the Butcher of Warsaw. . . .

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