Frida Klein

"Not to Run. Not to think life is so easy. Remember what your grandparents and great grandparents went through."

Name at birth

Frida Goldberger - It was then changed to Berman, my father’s mother’s maiden name because my grandparents were married by a rabbi. The Hungarian government stopped recognizing marriages conducted by a rabbi so they had to take their mother’s maiden name. It was my father who had to change his name from Goldberger to Berman.

Date of birth

11/27/1924

Where were you born?

Mukacevo, Czechoslovakia.

Where did you grow up?

Mukacevo, Czechoslovakia until eighteen years old.

Name of father, occupation

Joseph Goldberger/Berman, Printer.

Maiden name of mother, occupation

Margaret Rosenberg/Goldberger/Berman, Homemaker.

Immediate family (names, birth order)

Parents and four children: Sara, Harry, Frida, Bela.

How many in entire extended family?

Large extended family

Who survived the Holocaust?

All four children.

I was very sick for most of the war with tuberculosis. In 1943, I went to a hospital in Budapest, where my brother and sisters were living at that time. I had false papers while in the hospital but it was obvious I was a Jew. One day a doctor said they are taking all the Jews from the hospital and putting them in the Ghetto. I was in very bad shape and cannot remember anything.

April 15th, 1944, my family was taken to the ghetto in Mukacevo. On May 12th, 1944, we started working at a brick factory where we worked and lived until May 23rd, 1944. We were then transported in cattle cars that held 80 of us in each car, to Auschwitz.

On October 7th, 1944, we started undergoing the selection process headed by Joseph Mengele. However, in the middle of that process there was an explosion at the gas chamber. Mengele ran to see what had happened and the selection process was interrupted.

On October 20th, 1944, they transferred us to Langenbielau in Silesia. There we worked in the Rajchenbach textile factory. We left at 3 AM and returned at 7 PM.

On February 28th, 1945, when the Russians were only a few kilometers away from us, they took us on a five day march in the snow and terrible cold, wet weather to Sudetenland (now part of the Czech Republic) to a town called Parsnic Nach Ort ba Azaz. That is where on May 9th, 1945, we were liberated by the Russian army.

Name of Ghetto(s)

Mukacevo (Munkacs)

Name of Concentration / Labor Camp(s)

Auschwitz Birkenau / Langenbielau

Where were you in hiding?

False papers in hospital.

Where did you go after being liberated?

I was in the hospital in Tatra, in Czechoslovakia for ten months. Abraham came to the hospital to take me to Trutnov, Sudenland, Czechoslovakia. We knew each other since we were children.

When did you come to the United States?

February 17, 1965.

Where did you settle?

New York and then Detroit.

Occupation after the war

Homemaker.

Spouse

Abraham Klein, Mechanical engineer.

Children

Eva, flavor chemist, Hannah, controller, Joseph, diamond setter.

Grandchildren

Seven Eva: David and Shoshana; Hana: Samuel and Ariella; Josef: Filip, Eron and Gena.