Jewish community on this project. Examples of oral testimonies Helen Farkas was born in Romania, as Helen Safa. She remembers the Hungarian occupation and growth of anti-Semitism very clearly. She was part of the death march, yet made a heroic escape. Helen married her pre-war fiance and left Romania shortly before it came under communist rule. Helen later moved into the San Francisco Bay Area and spent much of her time educating about the Holocaust. Hurst Sommer is a Holocaust survivor. A German Jew, he escaped Germany with his family in 1938 to Shanghai, China, where he spent World War II in a Japanese internment camp. Max Drimmer and Herman Shine were both born in Berlin and knew each other as small children. In 1939 they were both sent to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp close to Berlin. Their lives remained intertwined as they survived and escaped the horrific realities of the Holocaust. Gloria Hollander Lyon was born in 1930 in Nagy Bereg, Czechoslovakia, where her family owned a store. In 1938 Jews were forced to close all businesses. Gloria spent time in a local ghetto before being deportation to Auschwitz. While there, she was selected for the gas chamber, but escaped by jumping out of the truck . After several camps she was finally liberated. Gloria resides in San Francisco and is an active Holocaust educator. Oskar Klausenstock was born in Ciesezin, a small town in Poland. He was 17 years old when the war started. His memories of the Holocaust are from a teenager's perspective. He tells of his experiences with such vividness and clarity. He is also a poet and has transformed many of his memories into beautiful poems. See also Holocaust survivors Holocaust Oral History Antisemitism References External links Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project Hurst Sommer Oral history Organizations based in the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish German history