Eyewitness to History: Theodora (Dora) Klayman

Theodora (Dora) Klayman: 

My name is Dora Klayman. I’m a Holocaust survivor and Museum volunteer.

I was born in January 1938 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, a country cobbled together after World War I. It was a country of differing historical alliances, several languages, and various religions.

By the eve of World War II there were within Yugoslavia serious ideological and political disagreements, and one of the results was development of an ultra-nationalist group, the Ustaša.

The Ustaša advocated withdrawal from the Yugoslav coalition and the establishment of a nationalist Croatian country. When the Ustaša failed to win enough votes in the elections, they turned to terrorist tactics.

Following the German invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, and with the support of Germany, the Ustaša assumed leadership of the so-called Independent State of Croatia.

Hardly independent, it was a puppet government of Nazi Germany, eager to persecute anyone who was not aligned with them politically or was not Croatian and Catholic. Specifically, that included Communists, Roma, Serbs, and Jews.

My maternal family members lived in Ludbreg, a small town in the north of Croatia. My grandfather, the town’s rabbi, had served the Jewish community there for many years.

Our family had a very cordial relationship with a predominantly Catholic population, and for the 40 years that my family lived there, there were practically no antisemitic incidents.

My aunt Giza and her long-time close friend Ljudevit (Ludva) Vrancic, a local bank director, had all but decided not to marry. However, fear of the German invasion of Yugoslavia changed their minds. The hope was that Ludva’s Catholic identity would protect Giza from persecution.

By June 1941, just a few months after the Nazis marched into Yugoslavia, my parents and infant brother, Zdravko, were arrested. My father was deported to the Jasenovac concentration camp and my mother was sent to Stara Gradiska, a subcamp of Jasenovac. Neither survived.

Fortunately, my little brother was saved by our housekeeper and brought to Ludbreg, where I had been staying with my extended family. My brother and I were first sheltered by our grandparents, but by 1942, nearly the entire Jewish community of Ludbreg had been deported, including my grandparents and the majority of my family members.

All were soon killed in Jasenovac. We were left behind with my aunt Giza and her Catholic husband Ludva. In 1943, Ludva was arrested on suspicion of supporting the partisan resistance movement and was sent to Jasenovac.

In his absence, my aunt Giza was denounced, arrested, and deported to Auschwitz, where she died from illness shortly after arrival.

During this time, my brother and I were hidden by our Catholic neighbors, the Runjaks, and we pretended to be their children. Most people in Ludbreg knew we were Jewish, but they never denounced us.

Sometime later, Ludva was released along with other political prisoners. Fearing the worst and having been warned that the local priest made threats toward us while we were with the Runjak family, my brother and I were baptized for added protection.

After liberation, we waited in vain for our family members to return.

Knowing that our parents would not return, Uncle Ludva adopted my brother and me and we sought to rebuild our lives in what became Yugoslavia.

The Nazis and the Ustaša killed hundreds of thousands of people they identified as “the other,” people they decided did not have the right to exist.

The history of the Holocaust, my history, highlights the precariousness of the persecuted peoples and the power of individuals, even whole towns, to stand up and do what is right, even in extraordinary times.

It also reminds us that people can rise and fight political oppression, but it takes more than just an internal uprising to achieve victory over a powerful and ruthless government.

Tragically, we all know that hatred, even genocide, did not end with the Holocaust. What became my country after World War II, Yugoslavia, experienced yet another genocide in more recent times.

We continue to witness, in many parts of the world, silence in the face of persecution based on religious or ethnic identity. Or—we profess despair but do little or nothing to help.

We must not remain silent; we must all lift our voices in pleas and in protest, in calls for action to create a better world and to work to make Never Again a reality.

Bill Benson: Welcome and thank you for joining us for First Person, conversations with Holocaust survivors.

My name is Bill Benson.

I have hosted the museum's First Person  program since it began in 2000.

Through these monthly conversations, we will bring you firsthand accounts of survival.

Each of our First Person guests serves as a volunteer at the museum.

We are honored to have Holocaust survivor Dora Klayman

share her individual account of the Holocaust with us.

Dora, thank you so much  for agreeing to be our First Person today.

Dora Klayman: Many thanks.

I am very honored to be able to speak to the audience

in front of us, and it's unusual

that we are actually able to speak to many people who are all over the place.

And I welcome you all and I'm glad to be able to share some of my story.

Bill Benson: Dora, thank you so much.

You have so much to share with us and we have limited time.

So we'll start please begin by telling us

when and where you were born and a few details about your early life.

I was born in Zagreb, but at that time was Yugoslavia

in January of 1938.

It was still a very peaceful time, of course,

much before war reached that part of the world.

And there is a picture that I would like to share of my parents.

So at this point I was already two years old

and this is a picture of my parents

with me in front of the Zagreb Zoo, and I think it's still there.

Should you go and visit.

My mother was actually not from Zagreb.

She was born

daughter of a rabbi, of the rabbi

of the small town of Ludbreg in

what is northern Croatia.

And she became a teacher of elementary school teacher,

thought for a bit of time and then married my father and came to Zagreb.

My father, the family originally also came

from originally from Romania

via Bosnia, and then established itself in Zagreb.

And my father learned

all about brush making and established

a small factory of brushes in Zagreb proper.

He must have been visiting Ludbreg  at one point,

probably as a visiting cantor  for a holiday just for the holidays.

And the two of them met and married,

moved to Zagreb and

had first me,

and then eventually my little brother.

Bill Benson: Dora you

you spent a lot of time in your mother's hometown of Ludbreg,

and eventually you would spend the war years there.

Were you share with us a little about Ludbreg

and what was unique about it?

Dora Klayman: Well, I don't know how unique it was,

but it's a small town. These days

the interesting thing about Ludbreg

these days and if anybody from Ludbreg hears it,  they will agree.

They think they're in the center of the world.

But that's sort of an inside joke.

It's a small town

in a basically rural area.

And I had before the war,

a small Jewish population, not

anything grand as a synagogue,

but there was a synagogue and at one point

the community asked,

wanted to have a rabbi come.

And my grandfather either arrived from Slovakia,

and I will explain the picture in a minute, but

he came from Slovakia already with his family.

He already had one daughter and a son, and then another daughter was born.

And eventually my mother,

Ludbreg was an interesting town in that

in that small population, there was very little to no friction

of anti-Semitic friction.

I mean, and

there were very few incidents during that time.

My grandfather was actually

a rabbi there for 42 years.

By the time war ended his leadership there.

Here is the picture is interesting because my grandfather

is the person with a circle around his head.

And so just to identify him from the other clergyman at the other end,

the other clergyman is the local Catholic priest.

Ludbreg is was a practically

totally Catholic world

but as this picture shows,

there was participation within the school.

This is the

middle school faculty pictured here.

And my grandfather apparently taught Jewish children their religion.

And there was a Catholic priest that taught

Catholic children.

My grandfather participated in many other things, 

civic things in town, acted as a translator for example, for for the court.

He spoke a number of languages.

Bill Benson: So here you have

both a

rabbi and a priest on the faculty of the public school,

which, yeah, I would I would think that that would have been very unique

at the time.

Along the same lines,

I think we have another photograph that you want to talk about, Dora.

Dora Klayman: Yes. This other photograph is of the local

tennis club at that time.

And the lady with a circle around her head

is the oldest daughter of whom I spoke, who was actually born in Slovakia.

And came.

And again,

the fellow above her with a

with a circle is Ljudevit who played a very large role in my

in my world.

And he is the only Catholic

from a well known

old time

semi aristocratic family of Ludbreg, the mother was of an aristocratic background.

And there are other

Jewish and non-Jewish people in this picture,

which also shows the social

participation and social interaction between groups

The reason I wanted to particularly point to Ljudevit with the circle

is that he and my aunt worked together in the bank.

He eventually was a director of the bank and she worked there.

Bill Benson: This is your aunt Giza,

right Dora?

Dora Klayman: This is my aunt Giza and they fell in love

and they were in love for a long time.

Here is where they are older together.

And he was very special in that he was

well known in that town

as a one time mayor.

That tennis club.

He was one of the organizers and founders of the

of the in 1919 I think of the sports club of Ludbreg

and had one of the first automobiles in town,  in Croatia in fact.

He was very proud of this large automobile

and the two of them were in love for a long time but they did not marry

probably because of the difference of religion

and in Croatia, in Yugoslavia,

at that time there was no such thing as a civil marriage.

You either had to marry in a Jewish

or in a Catholic faith and neither was converting.

And so it's not until 1939 that they married. At that time,

They of course became aware of what was going on in Germany.

The, the war had started

already with the invasion of Poland

and they decided, having heard that

perhaps a non

Jewish partner

could save a spouse who was Jewish, they decided to go to Hungary

where a civil ceremony was possible and they were married.

Bill Benson: And of course as you just said, they had hoped that it would

help save your Aunt Giza's life.

And as you'll tell us later, that that was not to be.

World War Two began in September 1939, but it really would not reach you

until Germany invaded Yugoslavia on April 6th

at that time

and you were away from Zagreb on a visit with relatives in Ludbreg.

Please tell us why you were away from your parents

and what happened once the Germans came into Yugoslavia.

Dora Klayman: There was a time that

that the

neighbors of my grandparents came to visit us in Zagreb

and my mother and father probably thought it would be a good opportunity

to send me to go visit my grandparents.

But in addition, at that point, we

my brother was already born.

My brother was born almost exactly three years after me

in January of 1941.

So here was a three year old that could be sent away for a bit of time,

for a bit of respite I would imagine

and so I was sent to Ludbreg.

Bill Benson: And here we see your mother with your baby brother.

Dora Klayman: Right.

And so by the time

April 6th of 1941 came

I was still in Ludbreg and I basically stayed there

what happened of course

with the invasion is that

not only did Yugoslavia fall

and basically fell apart

within a very short period of time and just days

and Germany

basically overran Yugoslavia.

But what happened at the same time or actually was happening

previous to that, is that there was a group of

right wing nationalist, ultra nationalist,

terrorist group of Ustasa

which had tried to get a foothold

in Yugoslavia before, but never managed to do so.

And they instead went to Italy,

organized themselves into a force with this

with the help of Mussolini, of course.

And they made an arrangement with Germany

that they would want to have

a nationalist country of Croatia,

which they would run with the tacit approval of Germany.

And that is what happened.

Here is a picture of

Ante Pavelic, who was at the head of this Ustasa group.

And this is and he's

here pictured with Hitler who came to visit.

And this was a little bit later

in the time that that

that Ustasa were already totally running the country.

What Ustasa did, they established

something they called the Independent State

of Croatia.

Bill Benson: And Dora, as you said, they were  a puppet state of the Nazi Germany

and they adopted their own set of laws

for Croatia that were mirrored on the Nuremberg laws of Germany.

Right.

And and those were incredibly restrictive.

Dora Klayman: Exactly.

Basically, Jews were now restricted

to second

to second, hence

non-citizens, basically.

But it wasn't just the Jews.

It was just like in Germany.

Other groups were

singled out.

And in this case,

it was also Roma just like in Germany.

But in addition, within Croatia,

there were also

laws and persecutions against Serbs.

Now, Serbs were a fairly large, fairly

sizable minority within Croatia, and they

they were a

subject of persecution by Ustasa

who wanted to have when they called the independent state of Croatia

It wasn't independent, of course, and it was organized so that they could

persecute Serbs and make Croatia

totally Croatian and totally Catholic.

Bill Benson: So Dora, the Ustasa is in control

as you said, your brother and your parents are in Zagreb

and you're in Ludbreg

What did that mean now for your parents?

What happened next?

Dora Klayman: Well, what it meant for the Jewish population generally

is that they were now subject to all these discriminatory laws.

That meant

as you see in the picture,

they had to wear an identifying badge.

So they're all wearing this yellow badge.

This is my parents and my aunt

my mother's sister in law and my little cousin Edita

and they're wearing badges that have this Magen David on them

that Star of David and a letter

Z with a little critical mark over it.

It makes it into "zh,", which means Zidov in Croatian, which means Jew.

So they had to wear this at all time.

And everybody that including even very little children

it also meant a loss of ability to have jobs in the government

jobs, good jobs anywhere

loss of ability to attend university

and a large amount of

confiscation.

So everybody had to declare what they own.

And actually at the at the Holocaust Museum here,

I saw facsimiles of

forms that they had to fill out, which

even my cousins had to fill out.

They had little things like one spring coat

and one winter coat and a bracelet and then one little chain.

Everything everything had to be declared so that it could be confiscated.

Bill Benson: So even even children had to fill out these lists of what they owned.

Dora Klayman: Well, the parents, of course.

Bill Benson: Did for them. Yeah.

Dora Klayman: But it was it had to be all filled out.

Everything had to be declared so that it could be confiscated.

Bill Benson: And Dora of course, it wouldn't be long

before your parents were also arrested and taken that that happened fairly soon.

Tell it tell us what happened.

Dora Klayman: Well,

as as I mentioned before,

I was in Ludbreg and I actually remained

with my grandparents but my parents were in Zagreb.

This is where the deportation started.

And so by the time by fall of that year,

they were arrested and they were being held in a

transfer transfer point,

a place where they everybody was being held.

And then we transferred to the trains to be to be sent to camp.

And my mother had my baby brother with her of course,

he was only about nine months old at the time.

But what was very lucky

at that time and of course, extremely difficult

for my parents, is that a housekeeper of ours

went to the camp and talked to the camp, and she was, of course, Catholic.

And she she talked to the guards and asked if she could have my brother

and my mother must have been a fairly difficult thing,

but she understood that it might save his life.

She handed the baby to our housekeeper,

who then went home, called my now

Catholic Uncle Ludva, and my aunt in Ludbreg.

And they came and got him.

And I have a fairly vivid memory at that point.

I was almost four, three.

Yeah, three and three quarters.

And I, I remember his arrival

mainly because I wasn't

used to a crying baby and there he was and I hadn't seen him for quite a while.

And also I remember

very soon after it was winter time and it was Hanukkah.

And I sort of remember that time,

not only the candles,

but I remember getting an orange for Hanukkah,

and that was very special.

And I was sort of

wondering whether I have to share it with my baby brother.

I remember that.

Bill Benson: Dora, as you said, the deportations

began in Zagreb, including your parents

in 1942 deportations began from Ludbreg as well

and most of your extended family was deported.

Tell us what you remember about those deportations of your own family members.

Dora Klayman: That was, that was a very difficult time.

This was 1942.

So I was already old enough that I do have some memory of it

that I remember that I was in my aunt

and my Catholic uncle's

house by that point and

I remember it was sort of evening and everybody was coming

by, all my cousins and my aunts and my grandparents

and everybody was saying goodbye to me and I wasn't quite sure.

I don't know why why

everybody was crying, but obviously

they had the feeling that they wouldn't see me, see us again.

And I had no idea where they were heading.

Exactly.

So it was it was a very emotionally laden time

and they were taken away and they went.

And all the deportations are happening quite a bit.

I think that we have a picture of a deportation.

This picture is from the museum, from the Memorial

Holocaust Memorial Museum, and it's a picture of of a Serb village being deported,

as I mentioned before.

The Ustasa were not just eager to

deport and kill

Jews and Roma, but also Serbs.

And they deported whole villages

and many were shot on the way or shot

every which way, killed every which way.

But some of them, just like our my relatives

ended up instead in the in the camps.

Most in camps, mostly in the camp of Jasenovac.

Bill Benson: Do you know where your parents were deported to

once they left that transfer camp?

Dora Klayman: Yes, yes definitely.

They they went into the very camp that I was just about to speak about,

which is that camp

Jasenovac there was some feeling that my mother may have gone to

Stara Gradiska.

I think she did.

And maybe to Dakovo, which is another place

that was a horrendous place where many women and children

especially were killed when I actually went

there two years ago.

It's a sort of

another reminder.

But mostly they went to Jasenovac.

It was a

the biggest of the camps

and it was a most horrific camp.

Bill Benson: Before 

you tell us more about that, as I know you will

you as you have you said the

Ustasa was deporting and brutalizing

not just Jews, but also Serbs and Roma, but you also shared with me

that not everyone, not everyone in Croatia

accepted those policies or the Ustasa  and some in fact resisted

Tell us a little bit about that resistance.

Who who were they?

Dora Klayman: Yes.

Many people did not follow

the dictates of the of the Ustasa.

regime.

At their own peril, of course, joined

a group that was that was basically led

first by the by a group of communists

who are more organized even at that time

than just general population.

And then

the person who was who became fairly well known later on

and people may recognize the name was Tito, but

basically people ran into the mountains and organized themselves

and eventually

became quite a force and at the end, toward the end,

they became actually a formidable military force.

Bill Benson: And you you'll tell us a little bit more about those partisans

and how it really directly affected your life in a in a big way.

Dora, you're now in Ludbreg still.

You're with your Aunt Giza and your Uncle Ludva.

Your Uncle Ludva

however was arrested in 1943 and the Ustasa

sent him to the Jasenovac camp as well.

Tell us why your uncle who was was a Catholic,

why he would have been arrested and sent

to Jasenovac

And what and what conditions were like in Jasenovac.

You've told us just a little bit about it.

Tell us some more and also tell us about what it was like for your uncle.

Dora Klayman: Ok so the reason

for my uncle's arrest was had to do with the Partisans because as I said

they became a formidable force that fought the Ustasa

forces and

the fighting was fairly frequent and very

fierce in Ludbreg

and two times during the war

we were actually liberated for a period of time

at one of those liberations  when the Ustasa returned

 they weren't

going to be just sitting down and saying, well, this is what happened.

They actually wanted to find some scapegoats.

They didn't lose just because the partisans were stronger,

but there must have been some help from within.

And so they arrested some leaders of that town

about five of them, and they sent them to the

to the same concentration camp, to Jasenovac

that included my uncle

I didn't mention before, but he came from a family

that that had

had fairly

fairly

frequent deaths

in that a number of his sisters

and brothers died young of

tuberculous is as such.

So he himself was not a terribly strong person.

So going to a concentration camp would have been terrible

because this concentration camp was a killing camp.

It was a place where people were, oh,

this picture shows them just on the way in being stripped of

all possessions. And

it was a camp in which

people were killed at will

with any kind of implements, knives being the

Ustasa favorite 

People were hanged

They were tortured.

There were thrown in the river.

The river Sava was

full of floating bodies at one point.

There are pictures of that

in the museum actually.

So it was a horrendous camp.

People were starved to death and work to death.

So my uncle arriving there

would have been very difficult

for him to survive.

I didn't mention before, but

my grandfather, all my family ended up there

except eventually for Aunt Giza.

But everybody from Ludbreg ended up there and I was told by eyewitnesses

that my grandfather never even made it into the camp proper.

But one of the Ustasa just hit him on the head with the shovel

and killed him that way.

Bill Benson: So Dora

I was struck the first time

you told me about Jasenovac and that the brutality

and I'm sure that many in our audience, probably most

just like me, that was a place we had never even heard of.

And yet it was just and

You're only just touching on the surface for your for your Uncle Ludva

however, because he was frail, he had a little bit

of little bit of good fortune in what they decided to do with him.

Dora Klayman: Yes, very much so because they found out they knew that he was a banker.

And also that he was a amateur

violinist

and that he had organized an orchestra in Ludbreg

a small orchestra and a choir.

And they put on performances and they knew that.

And so they used him in that way.

So he was

he was then put in an office to run the paperwork.

And that, of course, saved him because the rest of the world was out there

in cold and any kind of inclement weather without practically

without shelter and with almost no food and working very hard.

My father my father was there and my Uncle Ludva actually saw him there.

He actually survived to the very end.

And he he was working 

in a factory, in a tannery, which was very hard work.

There was also a factory that created chains.

These were this was awful hard work.

But my uncle was being put in was put in an office,

and there was someone kind there

that sometimes helped a little.

And also he was ordered to put on a performance.

And so he he used to tell me afterwards that he would take

everybody that he could think of into the group. And

so they would

have at least some time indoors to to practice singing instead of

instead of freezing or working out outdoors.

Bill Benson: So the fact that the Ustasa wanted to be entertained

and they took advantage of the fact that your, your, your, your uncle could

play music.

But he used that as an opportunity to try to save other things and have them join him.

Dora Klayman: Yes. Very much so.

Bill Benson: Dora was Aunt Giza able to be in touch

with your uncle while he was at Jasenovac?

Dora Klayman: Yes, he was able to write

and he was able to get some packages

and the pictures in front of you

is of my Aunt Giza and my brother and me.

And this is a picture we went to the photographer

to have it taken so that we could send it to him.

And we sent that.

And we also used to send some food and one of the foods

that I remember very well, my aunt preparing is a

something that we think of as roux in cooking in United States.

And I think in Croatia, we used to call it ajnpren

and it was a mixture of fat and flour.

And she would make a lot of it.

So it would be sort of like a brick.

It would be very, very thick and held together.

And she would send that.

And the reason for it was that you could take a little bit of that,

a sort of a walnut size, maybe

pea size piece and put it in the

in your what they called soup, which was basically water

and get some caloric value out of it, some nutritional value

so yeah, that was one of the

things that I remember very well her making and our sending.

Bill Benson: Dora, while

your Uncle Ludva was at Jasenovac.

in early 1943

Your Aunt Giza, who was caring for you and your brother, was turned

into the authorities for being Jewish and she was deported.

What can you tell us about what happened to Aunt Giza and,

and why you think you and your brother were able to

remain in Ludbreg.

Dora Klayman: It was a very unfortunate thing.

Ludbreg was

in a, in a way unique in that people

people knew who we were and no one gave us up.

No one went ringing the police or at the police door and saying there are

some Jewish children there.

But 

many, many people from that town

had relatives, children of their own

and so on in joining the partisans.

But one time there was one guy and his name was Tomczyk.

I can't remember where he came from, actually, but he knew

or he found out about my aunt and he denounced her.

And so the Ustasa came to get her

and she, she she was trying to hide

and she was running and she grabbed

my brother and me on the way and

and took us to our next door neighbor.

There was a house we owned next door.

And we had we had a family living there.

The family Runjak lived there

it was a simple family.

He was a house painter and she was a nurse

who took care of

lots of people that suffered from the coma.

And they had three children older than we were.

And my aunt took us there and said to Mrs.

Runjak, please take care of these children.

And at that point the Ustasa 

caught up with her, but she left us with that Runjak family.

And they were most kind to accept us because it was pretty dangerous

to be harboring Jewish children,

especially because at times we had

we had Ustasa bivouacking in our

in our backyard our house and my uncle's house.

And this house actually had the same common backyard.

And the Ustasa were settled there.

Bill Benson: Literally in your backyard. Literally.

Dora Klayman: That's literally in our backyard. Yes.

So, of course, I was told by Mrs.

Runjak we were told to be sure to call her

mom if the Ustasa or anybody that we didn't know came into the house.

And I was

old enough to to know when it was somebody we didn't know

and when it was somebody friendly that we knew.

So I would call her mom,

mama, when it was important, when it was dangerous.

And then I would call her Mrs.

Runjak

when I knew it wasn't dangerous any longer because we were by ourselves, my brother

on the other hand, who was three years younger, never knew the difference.

And he called her he called her mom to the end of the time.

Bill Benson: Dora, Ludva

Then was released.

And he was released from 

Jasenovac

And he came home to find that Giza had been deported.

What do you remember about his reaction

to learning that his wife, your aunt, has been deported?

And what do you know about what what can you tell us about what he did

then to protect you and your brother until the end of the war?

Well, yes, he returned because he had

as a political prisoner, he actually had a sentence,

Jews and Roma and Serbs didn't have sentences.

They were just there until until they either died or

or were killed or the war ended.

But political prisoners, some of them anyway, he had a sentence and he returned,

of course, a shock to find his wife gone

and finding us

and by the way, while while talking about Jasenovac

I do want to mention that in former Yugoslavia

in Croatia now, in Serbia, it's referred to often as "Jas-o-no-vach"

And not "Jas-sin-o-vich"

I am using the pronunciation

that we used in Ludbreg, and that's part of the

world. It's a certain dialect. So

just so that people understand that anyway,

going to the matter of what happened,

well, my uncle tried to actually follow

my aunt's trail where they had taken her,

and unfortunately, if it had been someplace locally,

he might have cajoled somebody or something or at least he'd hoped so.

But this was hopeless.

He was she at that time they were starting to ship

the what, whoever Jews that they could find at that time.

And Serbs to, they were starting to ship people to Auschwitz.

And she was one of them being shipped to Auschwitz.

So he returned and took over the care of me

and my brother, and we lived together.

From then on.

Bill Benson: You are with Uncle Ludva and your brother and you're in a

you are in a literal battle zone.

Dora Klayman: Right. So the partisans

attacked Ludbreg a number of times and

and Ludbreg was while it was being held by Ustasa.

And then the other way around at one time when the partisans were holding the town

the Ustasa attacked

And so

we found ourselves

in a sort of a battle zone and

there was there were times when when

the battle would be raging in the middle of the night.

And sometimes we were not able to even go and hide.

And there were times that I remember

crouching in a corner

in we had it was an old house and the walls were fairly thick.

So you were pretty safe if you were,

you know, in a sort of a situation where you hide behind a wall.

But of course, the,

bullets would be piercing through the windows.

And there was a time when I, I was crying in my room and I,

and my uncle came to comfort me, and the bullet went,

went exactly through the window into where he was because

we hadn't thought for everybody to hide in time. When we had the time.

And we sometimes knew that a battle would be coming,

we would go and spend time in our cellar.

So it was a basement.

But my American standard is not a normal

Basement where you would just go in the house and, you know, go down the

stairs.

You had to get out of the house and into the into the cellar.

We had a vineyard, so there were barrels of wine down there

and it was dirt floor and, you know, shelves

with some drying fruit and so on.

And frogs jumping around.

But we had some cuts down there. And

there were

times that we spent quite a bit of time down there.

Because because there would be a battle and you didn't know who was going to win.

And in the morning we would hear through those small windows on high up

near the ceiling of the of the cellar to see who was in charge.

And I remember the time that we still couldn't tell

exactly who it was, but we saw a cart

being driven by, pulled by horses

and they the carts were full of dead bodies.

So if you you you would emerge

when the shooting stopped and

and then hope that it would be the partisans in charge.

And if not, you had to be careful to hide.

There were times where the bullets were thrown running through, you know,

coming through the

windows and hitting the armoires, which we had.

And so they were after the war, they were all pierced

with bullets.

And you took out the tablecloths or the sheets for there.

And it was all

as if somebody had taken those scissors and made designs them.

And so it was very hard to to live through that.

Bill Benson: And Dora, of course, it did eventually end with the end of the war in May 1945.

And so the war is over.

You're there in Ludbreg with your uncle and with your brother

but there was more tragedy to come for your uncle and for you.

But first, tell us about your uncle.

He adopted both of you, right?

Dora Klayman: Yes. After the war, right away when after we after

he realized that my parents have perished and

neither would return

he adopted us legally.

And so in many places you could see my name as being

Vrancic. That was his last name

until I was married.

That was my name.

Unfortunately, my brother died

very shortly after in 1946

in the fall, of scarlet fever.

There were three little boys that got scarlet fever in Ludbreg

and the other two recovered with time.

And my brother succumbed and died, which was a tragedy.

It was extremely sad for me,

but it was totally tragic to my uncle who adored my brother.

And after all the losses

that was just another awful loss.

Bill Benson: And Dora, of course, now

you've gone from being under the Ustasa and the Nazis and

now you're under the communist government, but you would continue to live there for

several a number of years living with your uncle now that he's adopted you.

Dora Klayman: It was just him and me.

He never remarried, and we had lots of we had housekeepers and maids

and things like that.

And but he insisted that I learn music

and go to the very best high school, and that was available there.

I went to another town and university and

He was a wonderful, wonderful person.

Bill Benson: Dora, I do have one final question for you before we close, however, and,

and that is, please tell us why you continue to share your firsthand

account of what you went through, what you experienced in the Holocaust

and the impact that you see, what you witnessed

in telling your story means to other people.

Dora Klayman: Well, you know, after

the war for many years and even during my life here

in the United States, it was as if something

it was something that so many people who lived through that time didn't

really want to talk about it very much and didn't want to think about it very much.

We sort of felt it was behind us.

It will never happen again.

But unfortunately, as I live longer and as we have witnessed

what's been happening in the world, including

what happened in even in former Yugoslavia

in during the

this past war of the nineties, when there was another genocide

in Srebrenica. And what's happening everywhere.

And recently, the the rise of anti-Semitism

persuaded me that it really I,

I, it's, it's up to me to

to talk to, to talk about it and to,

to talk about the past.

And it's almost imperative that I speak about it.

And perhaps I could inspire someone to see

that compassion and tolerance

empathy and respect for others

is absolutely imperative.

And that the only way that

that we can go forward is to

minimize hatred and turn

toward one another in a humane way.

And I find that when, if people understood

exactly the impact that

hatred has on

human beings and really think about it,

that perhaps we could hope for never again, I hope.