Post, Florence_1975/4/7, Oral History, 1975 - 1975

GREATER HARTFORD JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

Tape No.: 99 No. of Tapes: 2 Name of Interviewee: Florence Post (Mrs. Philip) Date of Interview: April 7, 1975 Occupation: Homemaker Date of Birth: March 14, 1936 Place of Birth: Kovna, Lithuania Transcript (yes/no): yes No. of Pages:

Abstract: Mrs. Post’s father was an accountant and her mother , a dentist. Schools were available to Jews. Her parents were not religious as was the case with many intellectuals.

Life changed when she was five years old and in kindergarten. In 1940, the Germans occupied her town and all the Jews, about 60,000, were transferred to a ghetto. Her father was taken to a concentration camp but escaped just before the end of the war. Her mother, brother, cousin and she were put in a concentration camp. Her mother was able to smuggle Mrs. Post and her cousin out of the camp in a sack. A dental school friend of her mother’s found a place for the girls on a farm under the care of a Lithuanian teacher and her husband. They stayed with them until the end of the war. Her mother was able to find a place for her brother also. Then her mother worked as a farmhand, going from place to place until the end of the war.

At the end of the war when the Russians entered Lithuania, the family escaped to Poland where they were reunited with their father and subsequently fled to West Germany, which was under the domination of the U. S. troops. They lived in Santaquilian, a hospital for displaced persons, her mother working as a dentist on the staff and her father working as a bookkeeper, both for the hospital. They also lived in Badvereshaufen, a displaced person’s camp, until they received papers from relatives in the United States and came to Waterbury, CT in 1949. Her father worked as a bookkeeper, but the mother could not resume her dental career.

Mrs. Post went first to the University of Connecticut, Waterbury branch, then transferred to Central Connecticut Teachers College in New Britain where she earned her bachelor’s degree, then took a Master’s degree at the University of Hartford. She married in 1958 and moved to West Hartford. She has three children, Michael ll, Allison, 8, and Aaron, 6 ½. Her parents live presently in Bloomfield. She has been active in the American Jewish Congress, Beth El Temple Sisterhood, where she is on the Board, Brownies, and also does secretarial work for her husband in his law office.

She talked about the anti-semitism in Lithuania, Poland, and Germany, and also admonished against complacency about anti-semitism here.



Subject Index: Anti Semitism Community Activities (in the Jewish community) Holocaust-Ghetto Holocaust-Survivors Dentist Oral History