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Erika eckstut biography

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Erika Eckstut

Audio

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Transcript

Bill Benson:
Tell us what life was like for you in the ghetto. 

Erika Eckstut:
You know, whenever I speak, and it came to tell how was it in the ghetto, to tell you it was bad doesn’t mean nothing. It was worse than bad; I don’t have a word to use, what it was like. There was no food. There was nothing you can do. There was nothing you can eat.

It was just terrible. Outside there were signs, if you help a Jew you and your family will be killed. There were signs, children couldn’t go to school. If they find that children are learning anything they will be killed. It was terrible what was outside. What was all over that they were talking about. My father, who was so much for just the right way, you can’t take the law in your own hands, he decided that we have to learn something in the ghetto, because we didn’t have any food and we didn’t have what to do. There were professors, teachers, students—anyb

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Erika Neuman Eckstut

Erika (Neuman) Eckstut was born in Znojmo, Czechoslovakia, on June 12, 1928, the younger of two girls. Her father, Ephram Neuman, was a respected attorney and an ardent Zionist who hoped to immigrate to Palestine with his family. Her mother, Dolly (Geller) Neuman, held a degree in business and worked in a bank before the birth of her children.

When Erika was a young girl, the Neumans moved to Stănești, a town in the province of Bukovina, Romania, where Erika’s paternal grandparents lived. Erika attended public school as well as the Hebrew school her father helped found. She loved to play with her sister, Beatrice, and especially enjoyed being with her grandfather.

In 1937, the fascist Iron Guard tried to remove Erika’s father from his position as the chief civil official in Stănești. Eventually, a court cleared him of the fabricated charges and he was restored to his post. In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed the area of Romania where the Neumans lived, but one year later, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and Romanian troops drove the Soviets from Stănești. Ro

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Identifier
irn513627
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • 1988.102.1
  • 1993.52
  • 1998.16
  • 1998.A.0132
  • 2002.73.1
  • 2004.337
  • 2006.389.1
  • 2007.387
  • RG-10.372
Dates
1 Jan 1923 - 31 Dec 1960
Level of Description
Item
Languages
  • German
  • English
  • Hebrew
  • Romanian
Source
EHRI Partner

Beatrice Rada and Erika Eckstut were born in 1924 and 1928 in Znojmo, Czechoslovakia, to Ephraim Neuman and Dora (Dolly) Neuman (nee Geller). The family moved to Stanestie, Romania (Nyzhni Stanivtsi, Ukraine) in 1930, and Ephraim Neuman became mayor. Following a massacre of Jewish residents in 1941, the family fled to Chernivt︠s︡i where they were forced into the ghetto. Erika and Beatrice obtained false papers to escape the ghetto and fled to Kiev in 1943, where Erika worked in a clinic. Near the end of the war, a nurse mistook Beatrice for a German and informed on her to the NKVD, so the sisters decided to move to Czechoslovakia. Ephraim and Dora Neuman survived the war in Bucharest, but Ephraim died of natural causes shortly after liberation. Erika immigrated to the Unit

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