Click here to watch Shlomo Biezunski’s full Holocaust video interview. The transcript below can be used to locate the timestamps of words or phrases of interest in Shlomo’s Holocaust testimony.
Interview transcript:
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Good afternoon, my name is Jeanie Miller.
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I am a member of the Kean College Oral
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Testimonies Project of the
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Holocaust Resource Center. We are
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affiliated with the Video Archives for
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Holocaust Testimonies at the Sterling
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Library of Yale University. Sharing the
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interview with me is Bernard Weinstein.
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We are privileged to welcome Shlomo
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Biezunski, a survivor presently living in
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Fair Lawn, New Jersey, who has generously
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volunteered to give testimony about his
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experiences before, during,
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and after the Holocaust.
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Welcome Mr. Biezunski. I wonder if you
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could tell us about the town that
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you were born in and were growing up in?
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I was born on May 13,
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1926 in the town of Łódź in Poland.
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This was a big industrial center –
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textiles. We used to call it before the war
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the Manchester of Poland. Many of the
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factories used to employ hundreds, even
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thousands of people and there was a
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population of almost 600,000.
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What percentage was Jews?
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The percentage was – one-third was Jews.
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You have – many people who developed
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the silk industry and textile industry
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in Paterson, New Jersey came from Łódź.
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It’s known – they brought – by coming
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to the United States, they brought with them
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the skills and they developed it here.
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Like I said, one-third of the
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population were Jews, were very
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involved in the trade profession and took a
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very active life in
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Jewish culture – and we actually
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had even two newspapers, that my father
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in Yiddish used to read. I remember there was Der Haynt
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and Der Moment, that was the two Jewish –
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there was a very vibrant city and my father –
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studied pharmacy in Köln.
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He had a brother. From 1918 –
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to 1920, he was in Germany, at that time, in
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the Köln University – I understand that it only
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took two years at that time to get a –
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and we had a like we call a drugstore
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here, in Łódź.
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And actually I had only an older sister,
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her name was Manya, she was born on, I don’t remember
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the date, but she was born in October 1920.
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I remember those telling that my
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father came in 1920 back to Poland and he
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went to the Army and fought with the
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Polish Army by defeating the Communists.
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It was in a famous battle, it was called the
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Miracle on the Vistula. It was a defeat for the Bolshevik Army
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at that time, the Poles under Marshal Piłsudski,
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he was a Polish marshal, and Poland became an
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independent state. We belonged to the middle class.
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We used to be members in a local synagogue –
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it was in the neighborhood. We lived on
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the street was named Narutowicza, number 40.
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It was in one of the best parts of
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Łódź. Next to us was a big
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hotel – Polonia, the name was Polonia.
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There was a main street – Piotrkowska street – it was
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the main throughway: all the cinemas
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and theaters and where the young people
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used to promenade, forth and back – it was
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a short distance. We lived on a fourth floor,
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on a five floor house, it was a very modern house
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with an elevator, at that time which was not so
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very popular in Poland. Actually, we were the middle class
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but compared to our neighbors we were
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you can say, very poor, because many
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of our neighbors were very rich and very
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influential people in the industrial part of
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Łódź. But we had the six, seven room
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apartment. My mother had always
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help. A maid, a young
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girl, a Polish girl, used to help out with the
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household, and downstairs we had our
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store. My father, every morning,
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used to go downstairs and he had also a
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help and assistant, a girl, and I used to –
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at the age of six, I started to attend a
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private school, Jewish private school, it was
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normal that the education age in Poland
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was from seven, you went to first grade, but
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if you went to a private school you
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could start at the age of six.
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And all my life, actually the next
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six years, I went to the private school.
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I was a very good reader.
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I read very well, we had a library not
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far, a private library, and I was
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very interested in reading
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different books like Zane Grey and Karl
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May and Jack London and
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Victor Hugo – even at a very early age.
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And I also took interest by
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reading newspapers. I remember being the
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age of nine – it was the beginning
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of the Ethiopian war with
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Italy – all the atrocities and
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Haile Selassie, I remember there was a song
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in Polish that they wrote, what I even still
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remember, that they wrote about the war.
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And after was the civil war in Spain
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in 1936, it started and I remember as a
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kid I was very active, very
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interested in what’s going
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on. I had an older sister, we had a very
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comfortable and pleasant life she went
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actually already when the war broke out she was
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18 and she finished a high school, was
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was a high school but also had a commercial background.,
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Every year, we used to go rent
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a cottage like here in the Catskills
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we used to go over there next to Łódź
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very wooded areas what we used to
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rent a cottage and on Sunday was my
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father used to come like Sunday, Saturday
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night to visit the family and
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in Monday morning he used to go by train back.
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And in the last year, my
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parents bought me a new
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bicycle, English-made bicycle
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and the last year of the war we actually
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stayed over there, we couldn’t get back,
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when the war broke out. I remember
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I was standing over there and seeing the
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Polish Army when they recede,
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they went back, they left Łódź and
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went back to Warsaw and I was standing
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with my bicycle and a Polish soldier
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came and took the bicycle away and just
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said what’s that, I couldn’t – but
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we knew that the war is going on
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and we had a very hard time to come back
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because there was no way we, at that time
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when you went you had a part of your
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furniture and special clothes you took
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to the summer, used to have a truck bring
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you back and forth, there was nobody to take us, we
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had everything to leave and the neighbor
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had a car, he took us and brought us home and
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my mother was very sick, she got
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dysentery from that time.
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Before we go forward, I’d like to just
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go back a little bit and ask a couple of
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questions. First, in in the years
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before the war what did being Jewish mean to you?
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Our town was a workers’ town, there was a
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very strong socialist movement.
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We knew that the Jews in Warsaw were very, you
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know treated very bad because the
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national organization were very
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anti-Semitic. We had also an anti-Semitic
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organization in Łódź, but they
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like I said the workers are
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very well organized and the workers many
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of the factories belonged to Jews and they
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were very well treated by the Jewish
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owners. Like we had over there
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Widzew Manufaktura, Mr. Max Kohn was the owner and
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the director was Rabinovich – David
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Rabinovich – and he lived in our, in the
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same house where we
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lived. And I remember the first time
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when the workers marched
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the police even stood inside the house
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and they didn’t trust them to show up.
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And actually I never experienced
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some personal anti-Semitism.
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In fact, I had neighbors, they
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had a big grocery story, and they had
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two sons and the two kids were my friends
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we used to go – across the home
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was a big park, and winter time
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we used to ride a sled – and I had a big
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Canadian sled it was a very
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special sled and they had a big
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dog and we all three used to go over
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there and the dog used to pull us with a
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sled, they had a big German Shepherd.
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But my mother was happy by having
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those friends because they all protected
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me from the other Polish kids
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nobody could touch me, those
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those boys used to protect and I was
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very welcome in their home – but
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personally, I didn’t have any trouble
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with anti-Semitism – my sister she
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belonged to the paramilitary organization
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with going to school, every kid
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like every kid in the high
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school had to – and I remember she used to
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come home, used to have the
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dark brown – brown shoes like khaki
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she even – got even a small
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medal for shooting a small medal
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but her name, I don’t know, was
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Marisha – in Polish they call it, outside
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Marisha Biezunska, that was an extreme Polish name
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Biezunski – it’s not a Jewish name, it’s an
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extreme Polish name and maybe she
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maybe she escaped over there
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in the organization and innuendos to being
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Jewish or anything, you
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know. But we know what’s happened to the
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Jews that in Poland at
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that time there was like in Krakow
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and Warsaw universities, the Jews were not allowed to sit
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there was a strike of the
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Polish students, even before the war that they
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didn’t want to sit with the Jewish
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students together they had to
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stand on the side. But like the Jews
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always find a way out they send the
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children to Germany to study
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like my sister had a boyfriend his
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name was Judenherz. I don’t know what
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was his first name, I can’t remember – but he was
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a textile engineer and he studied
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actually in Germany
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oh, I know Mr. Rabinovich, my neighbor, had a
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son studying in England – and
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before the war broke out he came to the
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store, my father, and he says Mr. Biezunski
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there will be no war, I just came from England
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and I heard Chamberlain talking
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and the day after, two days after, the
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Germans attacked Poland. That actually I was
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never mistreated in a physical way but
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like you say as a Jew
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you had to stay out of trouble
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that was the perception what
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was what they call it in Hebrew they
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call it a Galut living in a
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strange country – my family lived
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maybe for for 500, 600 years in Poland and
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they were invited by the Polish King
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Wladyslaw, I don’t remember his
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name, the history, where he invited the
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maybe 700 years back to develop
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the commerce
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but for some reason the
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Catholic Church has had a very
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big influence on the people and
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the perception even my two
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Polish friends that I had – this is very
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00:13:12,920 –> 00:13:15,560
interesting – when it comes to Good Friday
256
00:13:15,560 –> 00:13:17,519
they used to say
257
00:13:17,519 –> 00:13:19,560
“you killed our God” and I
258
00:13:19,560 –> 00:13:21,079
didn’t know the first time I was a
259
00:13:21,079 –> 00:13:23,480
little – what do you mean – I asked
260
00:13:23,480 –> 00:13:27,040
my mother what is, which God I killed?
261
00:13:27,040 –> 00:13:28,399
and she explained. They said
262
00:13:28,399 –> 00:13:30,040
this to you? They said it to me, they didn’t
263
00:13:30,040 –> 00:13:31,720
even play a day with me but
264
00:13:31,720 –> 00:13:34,959
after days everything is because the
265
00:13:34,959 –> 00:13:37,480
Catholic Church they used to
266
00:13:37,480 –> 00:13:39,480
infame the name of the Jews in
267
00:13:39,480 –> 00:13:41,199
the small villages over there as a
268
00:13:41,199 –> 00:13:43,720
priest, he was a king. – when he
269
00:13:43,720 –> 00:13:46,160
said “the black cat is a Jew”, then the black cat
270
00:13:46,160 –> 00:13:48,680
is a Jew everything and you
271
00:13:48,680 –> 00:13:51,600
know for 2,000 years, the Jews were persecuted
272
00:13:51,600 –> 00:13:54,800
because of the notions that they killed Christ and
273
00:13:54,800 –> 00:13:56,519
then they used to call us “Christ killer”.
274
00:13:56,519 –> 00:13:58,639
As a young boy, how did you take
275
00:13:58,639 –> 00:14:00,880
that – that kind
276
00:14:00,880 –> 00:14:04,560
of statement? I tell you, I was – at first
277
00:14:04,560 –> 00:14:06,560
I was shocked, I didn’t understand that, I
278
00:14:06,560 –> 00:14:08,600
didn’t know there a story, but when my
279
00:14:08,600 –> 00:14:10,759
mother explained to me, she says
280
00:14:10,759 –> 00:14:12,480
they don’t know better you cannot
281
00:14:12,480 –> 00:14:14,880
blame them
282
00:14:14,880 –> 00:14:17,160
because that what they are taught
283
00:14:17,160 –> 00:14:20,040
they go to Sunday school and that is
284
00:14:20,040 –> 00:14:21,759
what the priests are teaching them,
285
00:14:21,759 –> 00:14:24,279
they keep the flame of
286
00:14:24,279 –> 00:14:27,079
hatred always burning. I wanted
287
00:14:27,079 –> 00:14:29,399
to know about your Jewish home life – did
288
00:14:29,399 –> 00:14:30,959
you go to the synagogue and did you
289
00:14:30,959 –> 00:14:35,000
celebrate? No, you see,
290
00:14:35,600 –> 00:14:40,320
we actually used to have Saturday, the
291
00:14:40,320 –> 00:14:42,920
store open, because we were not far
292
00:14:42,920 –> 00:14:46,199
across from the main station,
293
00:14:46,199 –> 00:14:49,000
railroad station, and all the peasants – not
294
00:14:49,000 –> 00:14:50,880
the poor peasant, but the rich peasant – used
295
00:14:50,880 –> 00:14:53,959
to come to to town for shopping
296
00:14:53,959 –> 00:14:56,519
Saturday and buy cosmetics,
297
00:14:56,519 –> 00:14:58,880
perfumes, things like that.
298
00:14:58,880 –> 00:15:00,920
And that was a very important day.
299
00:15:00,920 –> 00:15:02,639
You made on a Saturday, the
300
00:15:02,639 –> 00:15:05,040
income was much larger than during the
301
00:15:05,040 –> 00:15:08,279
week and for material purposes
302
00:15:08,279 –> 00:15:11,639
the door has to be open Saturday. But
303
00:15:11,639 –> 00:15:15,000
we observed Friday night. We used
304
00:15:15,000 –> 00:15:17,800
to have all the family, a really
305
00:15:17,800 –> 00:15:19,480
ritual Friday
306
00:15:19,480 –> 00:15:23,279
night evening meal with fish and meat and
307
00:15:23,279 –> 00:15:26,320
cake and even coffee. I remember
308
00:15:26,320 –> 00:15:28,120
coming home from school I used to get a
309
00:15:28,120 –> 00:15:30,480
light meal like a hamburger
310
00:15:30,480 –> 00:15:35,680
because in the evening we had a big meal.
311
00:15:35,720 –> 00:15:38,120
Did you go to Hebrew school?
312
00:15:38,120 –> 00:15:42,199
Yes, we went to Hebrew school.
313
00:15:42,199 –> 00:15:44,319
I went to a private Jewish, private
314
00:15:44,319 –> 00:15:46,880
school – always Hebrew was one of those –
315
00:15:46,880 –> 00:15:50,240
it’s amazing that I was always so
316
00:15:50,240 –> 00:15:52,759
bad in Hebrew, then I came to Israel
317
00:15:52,759 –> 00:15:56,079
and I speak Hebrew. Now I always – I can
318
00:15:56,079 –> 00:15:57,680
remember that the teacher said he’s a
319
00:15:57,680 –> 00:16:00,800
terrific student, only the Hebrew he
320
00:16:00,800 –> 00:16:03,959
hasn’t got it. For some reason, I couldn’t
321
00:16:03,959 –> 00:16:07,360
catch on with the Hebrew. But I did very
322
00:16:07,360 –> 00:16:08,519
well in Israel.
323
00:16:08,519 –> 00:16:11,639
And we used to go to the holidays
324
00:16:11,639 –> 00:16:13,440
I cannot say that my father used to go
325
00:16:13,440 –> 00:16:15,920
every Friday. No, we used to go on
326
00:16:15,920 –> 00:16:19,959
big holidays like Passover, Yom Kippur,
327
00:16:19,959 –> 00:16:22,759
then two days of the new year –
328
00:16:22,759 –> 00:16:25,839
the main holidays used to be observed.
329
00:16:25,839 –> 00:16:29,639
When did you notice that
330
00:16:29,639 –> 00:16:32,079
your environment began to change
331
00:16:32,079 –> 00:16:34,480
because of the war? At this time, when you
332
00:16:34,480 –> 00:16:36,560
went on a summer retreat?
333
00:16:36,561 –> 00:16:40,600
We came to the summer retreat, the man brought
334
00:16:40,600 –> 00:16:43,240
us back and my mom’s mother had to go
335
00:16:43,240 –> 00:16:46,600
to the hospital. And the hospital at that time
336
00:16:46,600 –> 00:16:49,360
was very crowded because already the
337
00:16:49,360 –> 00:16:52,560
war was in progress. But Łódź was bombed
338
00:16:52,560 –> 00:16:56,399
and was not damaged because
339
00:16:56,399 –> 00:17:02,000
from what I understand, the commander –
340
00:17:02,000 –> 00:17:05,240
was named Frank – and Frank is a Volksdeutsch
341
00:17:05,240 –> 00:17:08,679
they call it Volksdeutsch, it was a Polish-German.
342
00:17:08,679 –> 00:17:12,000
For some reason, they bombed a little
343
00:17:12,000 –> 00:17:14,480
but they shelled it actually and
344
00:17:14,480 –> 00:17:17,079
after six days the German were in Łódź – that’s it.
345
00:17:17,079 –> 00:17:19,520
You’re speaking of Hans Frank the
346
00:17:19,520 –> 00:17:21,839
governor general? No, no, no –
347
00:17:21,839 –> 00:17:23,839
another Frank.
348
00:17:23,839 –> 00:17:27,520
And the war was – that’s it.
349
00:17:27,520 –> 00:17:31,440
In six days, Warsaw was encircled
350
00:17:31,440 –> 00:17:33,960
and then Łódź was. They were
351
00:17:33,960 –> 00:17:37,120
marching, I remember they put a big
352
00:17:37,120 –> 00:17:41,480
proclamation: the whole population of Łódź has to come
353
00:17:41,480 –> 00:17:43,880
out to the main street Piotrkowska
354
00:17:43,880 –> 00:17:51,039
… from the west, and we have
355
00:17:51,039 –> 00:17:54,120
to show appreciation to the
356
00:17:54,120 –> 00:17:57,320
victorious German army. And believe it or not
357
00:17:57,320 –> 00:17:59,679
everybody went, I went myself, and I
358
00:17:59,679 –> 00:18:03,080
was very impressed at that time. Were the proclamations
359
00:18:03,080 –> 00:18:05,480
in Polish? No, in German, in Polish and in German.
360
00:18:05,480 –> 00:18:07,919
Yes, and there was a main city hall and
361
00:18:07,919 –> 00:18:10,080
they put on city hall a flag out
362
00:18:10,080 –> 00:18:12,919
from the fifth story, the big
363
00:18:12,919 –> 00:18:14,960
swastika, from all the front.
364
00:18:14,960 –> 00:18:18,000
And as a kid I went also
365
00:18:18,000 –> 00:18:21,159
and I was very, very – they
366
00:18:21,159 –> 00:18:22,880
came with a tremendous might, everything.
367
00:18:22,880 –> 00:18:24,520
Like the Polish soldier used to march – they
368
00:18:24,520 –> 00:18:26,400
came all motorized with cars,
369
00:18:26,400 –> 00:18:28,320
with trucks, with tanks, even the
370
00:18:28,320 –> 00:18:30,360
horses used to be on track they have
371
00:18:30,360 –> 00:18:32,080
some kind cavalry.
372
00:18:32,080 –> 00:18:36,480
And the hotel next to us, Polonia
373
00:18:36,480 –> 00:18:38,919
they throw all the people out –
374
00:18:38,919 –> 00:18:44,919
it was all in Jewish ownership, in fact, and they put
375
00:18:44,919 –> 00:18:48,280
officers over there, the German officers in there
376
00:18:48,280 –> 00:18:50,039
and you head over there, right away,
377
00:18:50,039 –> 00:18:53,000
a German soldier standing guard.
378
00:18:53,000 –> 00:18:55,600
You went by, you had to bow and take your
379
00:18:55,600 –> 00:18:58,799
hat off – this was a – then if a German
380
00:18:58,799 –> 00:19:01,120
soldier walked by you had to go off the
381
00:19:01,120 –> 00:19:04,480
street and let him pass.
382
00:19:04,480 –> 00:19:07,480
And you have to greet him, over there people
383
00:19:07,480 –> 00:19:08,960
wear hats, you have to take your hat off.
384
00:19:08,960 –> 00:19:11,720
How soon after the invasion did this happen?
385
00:19:11,720 –> 00:19:18,080
This was in the first month. This was September,
386
00:19:18,080 –> 00:19:23,720
October, November, December, was the army, in fact,
387
00:19:23,720 –> 00:19:27,120
in charge of Łódź. They didn’t
388
00:19:27,120 –> 00:19:29,960
actually discriminate against the Jews
389
00:19:29,960 –> 00:19:34,320
everybody was included – the Poles and the
390
00:19:34,320 –> 00:19:37,559
Jews and in fact we had a booming
391
00:19:37,559 –> 00:19:40,559
business going we had soaps
392
00:19:40,559 –> 00:19:43,559
in a big storage over there
393
00:19:43,559 –> 00:19:46,080
the Palmolive, Colgate, and others.
394
00:19:46,080 –> 00:19:48,919
We had all the best cosmetics in there
395
00:19:48,919 –> 00:19:51,000
from all the international made –
396
00:19:51,000 –> 00:19:53,280
from Germany, from England, from
397
00:19:53,280 –> 00:19:55,799
America and we had soaps and the Germans
398
00:19:55,799 –> 00:19:57,840
were crazy after soaps. They didn’t, for
399
00:19:57,840 –> 00:19:59,480
some reason, didn’t have enough soap.
400
00:19:59,480 –> 00:20:02,039
We had soap where the fragrance was
401
00:20:02,039 –> 00:20:03,720
gone, but the soap was good.
402
00:20:03,720 –> 00:20:05,520
Normally, you cannot sell it, but they used
403
00:20:05,520 –> 00:20:08,200
to buy cartons of it to send home
404
00:20:08,200 –> 00:20:10,280
they didn’t have any soap over there.
405
00:20:10,280 –> 00:20:12,679
We had for women milk
406
00:20:12,679 –> 00:20:15,400
like for skin, they used to
407
00:20:15,400 –> 00:20:16,960
buy everything. They used to pay – they had
408
00:20:16,960 –> 00:20:18,960
a tremendous amount of money and they
409
00:20:18,960 –> 00:20:21,640
paid everything. It was interesting at
410
00:20:21,640 –> 00:20:24,559
that time the girl we had to work
411
00:20:24,559 –> 00:20:28,080
with us, our maid, left for the village and
412
00:20:28,080 –> 00:20:30,039
also the girl my father employed in
413
00:20:30,039 –> 00:20:33,799
the store, she left, and we had a girl from
414
00:20:33,799 –> 00:20:35,760
a neighbor, she was a Jewish girl, but she
415
00:20:35,760 –> 00:20:38,520
looked more German than
416
00:20:38,520 –> 00:20:41,200
the Germans. Long blonde hair,
417
00:20:41,200 –> 00:20:44,799
and name was Eva. And she helped out
418
00:20:44,799 –> 00:20:46,480
my father and the Germans used to come
419
00:20:46,480 –> 00:20:49,520
in and they didn’t even realize because
420
00:20:49,520 –> 00:20:52,120
my father spoke perfect German
421
00:20:52,120 –> 00:20:56,000
my mother spoke perfect German and
422
00:20:56,000 –> 00:20:58,640
he said “you are Jews?” This is
423
00:20:58,640 –> 00:21:00,000
impossible – because they know the Jews
424
00:21:00,000 –> 00:21:02,120
from Der Stürmer with the nose
425
00:21:02,120 –> 00:21:04,320
and my father and my family we all had
426
00:21:04,320 –> 00:21:06,840
light eyes, straight nose
427
00:21:06,840 –> 00:21:09,280
narrow lips, and they only know the
428
00:21:09,280 –> 00:21:11,360
German – the Jews from some German’s
429
00:21:11,360 –> 00:21:15,159
Der Stürmer, it was the Stürmer – caricature
430
00:21:15,159 –> 00:21:16,880
And they didn’t believe – people like here,
431
00:21:16,880 –> 00:21:19,559
speak German, was so nice.
432
00:21:19,559 –> 00:21:21,520
And the officers used to
433
00:21:21,520 –> 00:21:23,279
sit over there we had like a small corner, you
434
00:21:23,279 –> 00:21:25,880
couldn’t get rid of them. They bought everything.
435
00:21:25,880 –> 00:21:32,040
But after, the Partei people came in – the
436
00:21:32,041 –> 00:21:38,640
Gestapo, the SS, and you had to put
437
00:21:38,640 –> 00:21:44,559
“Jewish store” in the window. And they used to take
438
00:21:44,559 –> 00:21:46,279
the Jews, pick them up in the street, to
439
00:21:46,279 –> 00:21:50,360
work for the German government and for the
440
00:21:50,360 –> 00:21:53,159
military, and everything. And in fact,
441
00:21:53,159 –> 00:21:58,120
we had a the big house – my mother,
442
00:21:58,120 –> 00:21:59,799
my grandmother had her room and she
443
00:21:59,799 –> 00:22:04,200
died before the war and then the maid,
444
00:22:04,200 –> 00:22:06,480
the service maid, also had a room – she left
445
00:22:06,480 –> 00:22:09,559
and we were left with a big house
446
00:22:09,559 –> 00:22:12,760
and they put a German officer, we had
447
00:22:12,760 –> 00:22:15,159
to take in like a tenant. German officer,
448
00:22:15,159 –> 00:22:22,880
with his servant – was a soldier servant.
449
00:22:22,880 –> 00:22:27,279
But he was an old timer, he was like an
450
00:22:27,279 –> 00:22:33,760
… administrative officer, not a fighting man
451
00:22:33,760 –> 00:22:37,120
In some way, he was very
452
00:22:37,120 –> 00:22:39,080
helpful because the Germans used to
453
00:22:39,080 –> 00:22:41,039
get drunk and used to look for
454
00:22:41,039 –> 00:22:43,080
women, for Jewish women, and raped them.
455
00:22:43,080 –> 00:22:45,480
And he said “your daughter
456
00:22:45,480 –> 00:22:47,279
might be in danger” but then he said
457
00:22:47,279 –> 00:22:48,960
“any knock on the door, you let me know”
458
00:22:48,960 –> 00:22:51,600
“don’t open it, I will get rid of them”
459
00:22:51,600 –> 00:22:56,520
… and sometimes he used to bring
460
00:22:56,520 –> 00:22:58,799
a loaf of bread because
461
00:22:58,799 –> 00:23:02,000
everything got a little tight and scarce
462
00:23:02,000 –> 00:23:04,600
But one day, for some reason, I
463
00:23:04,600 –> 00:23:06,200
don’t know – because my father is a
464
00:23:06,200 –> 00:23:08,039
pharmacist, he was an officer in the
465
00:23:08,039 –> 00:23:12,320
Polish Reserve, but in 1939 they
466
00:23:12,320 –> 00:23:13,679
didn’t call him to the
467
00:23:13,679 –> 00:23:16,400
army. But the there was German
468
00:23:16,400 –> 00:23:18,559
propaganda, they said
469
00:23:18,559 –> 00:23:20,640
everybody should go and and fight for
470
00:23:20,640 –> 00:23:23,159
Warsaw and a thousand people went
471
00:23:23,159 –> 00:23:25,279
for Warsaw marching, to help,
472
00:23:25,279 –> 00:23:27,880
to protect Warsaw. And they came with
473
00:23:27,880 –> 00:23:30,440
with planes and shot and
474
00:23:30,440 –> 00:23:32,440
massacred the people on the roads – all was
475
00:23:32,440 –> 00:23:34,360
blocked, the Polish Army couldn’t
476
00:23:34,360 –> 00:23:37,480
move, it almost like a some kind of plan
477
00:23:37,480 –> 00:23:40,640
to block the road. And my father
478
00:23:40,640 –> 00:23:43,799
he saw many men left and my father saw
479
00:23:43,799 –> 00:23:47,080
that it’s no business I never
480
00:23:47,080 –> 00:23:48,840
get a life … he was an old
481
00:23:48,840 –> 00:23:52,120
soldier, he came back. Was this the first
482
00:23:52,120 –> 00:23:56,600
real atrocity you saw taking place
483
00:23:56,600 –> 00:24:00,200
that involved mass killing.
484
00:24:00,200 –> 00:24:03,200
Yeah, I didn’t see it, I was home
485
00:24:03,200 –> 00:24:05,360
with my mother and my sister
486
00:24:05,360 –> 00:24:07,440
but he came and he says this is a provocation
487
00:24:07,440 –> 00:24:11,120
because the people … the thousands of people were going
488
00:24:11,120 –> 00:24:12,960
to Warsaw, they blocked the Polish army
489
00:24:12,960 –> 00:24:15,320
from reaching Warsaw and the Germans
490
00:24:15,320 –> 00:24:17,960
came with those Stuka planes
491
00:24:17,960 –> 00:24:20,760
and they just massacred them with machine
492
00:24:20,760 –> 00:24:24,200
gun fire – and he said
493
00:24:24,200 –> 00:24:25,960
after the first, second attack, he said
494
00:24:25,960 –> 00:24:28,600
there’s no way I’m going to do that. I’m
495
00:24:28,600 –> 00:24:31,200
going back to my family. What’s happened happened.
496
00:24:31,200 –> 00:24:34,679
We had a neighbor with a son and he
497
00:24:34,679 –> 00:24:37,039
went over there and he came back after
498
00:24:37,039 –> 00:24:42,840
the war, but they also didn’t survive – I don’t know.
499
00:24:42,840 –> 00:24:45,440
But after that, the worst thing that happened
500
00:24:45,440 –> 00:24:49,240
there was in January, I remember
501
00:24:49,240 –> 00:24:51,240
it was in January
502
00:24:51,240 –> 00:24:54,480
we had some prominent Jewish
503
00:24:54,480 –> 00:24:57,240
neighbors I told you – one of
504
00:24:57,240 –> 00:24:59,880
the neighbors there, Rabinovich, he had a car
505
00:24:59,880 –> 00:25:01,880
in Poland with a chauffeur – in
506
00:25:01,880 –> 00:25:04,960
Poland at that time, car with a chauffeur –
507
00:25:04,960 –> 00:25:07,039
you have to be very prominent – he
508
00:25:07,039 –> 00:25:09,760
took his wife with the chauffeur and he has a
509
00:25:09,760 –> 00:25:11,880
daughter, and two sons were in England at
510
00:25:11,880 –> 00:25:15,559
that time studying, and he went to Latvia,
511
00:25:15,559 –> 00:25:18,120
… and from that he went to
512
00:25:18,120 –> 00:25:21,240
I don’t know where, but he lived in
513
00:25:21,240 –> 00:25:26,840
Mexico after the war and
514
00:25:26,840 –> 00:25:30,919
what the Jews lost in Łódź
515
00:25:30,919 –> 00:25:33,200
you cannot even imagine – the
516
00:25:33,200 –> 00:25:35,559
factory, Max Kohn also I think was in
517
00:25:35,559 –> 00:25:37,840
Mexico, left for Mexico, but those
518
00:25:37,840 –> 00:25:39,320
people at that time were
519
00:25:39,320 –> 00:25:41,720
multi-millionaires. They had 10 thousands
520
00:25:41,720 –> 00:25:43,240
of people working for them
521
00:25:43,240 –> 00:25:45,760
in the textile. There was a family
522
00:25:45,760 –> 00:25:48,440
Poznański – they had like a
523
00:25:48,440 –> 00:25:50,159
castle, villa in the middle of Łódź
524
00:25:50,159 –> 00:25:52,720
surrounded by a big fence.
525
00:25:52,720 –> 00:25:55,720
They used to be customers of ours,
526
00:25:55,720 –> 00:25:58,760
by telephone, I used to deliver
527
00:25:58,760 –> 00:26:01,080
and we went to the Poznańskis and I used to go
528
00:26:01,080 –> 00:26:02,840
to deliver, I only just wanted to go
529
00:26:02,840 –> 00:26:05,000
in and see the riches of of the
530
00:26:05,000 –> 00:26:07,120
of those people, how they live, and they give
531
00:26:07,120 –> 00:26:09,559
you a good tip too. Now, we had
532
00:26:09,559 –> 00:26:10,960
the boy, Polish boy, used to
533
00:26:10,960 –> 00:26:13,799
deliver the packages, but over there I
534
00:26:13,799 –> 00:26:15,640
used to go because I wanted to
535
00:26:15,640 –> 00:26:23,399
see … many of them – and one day – we had
536
00:26:23,399 –> 00:26:24,960
many officees over there in the house and
537
00:26:24,960 –> 00:26:26,679
they never bothered my father because
538
00:26:26,679 –> 00:26:28,720
they knew there was a store and we had
539
00:26:28,720 –> 00:26:31,399
many German officers work, live
540
00:26:31,399 –> 00:26:35,399
each of the Jewish families
541
00:26:35,399 –> 00:26:37,840
they had so much room they had to take in.
542
00:26:37,840 –> 00:26:41,960
And we had like an inside yard,
543
00:26:41,960 –> 00:26:43,200
the whole inside yard was
544
00:26:43,200 –> 00:26:45,520
filled with German cars. We had a
545
00:26:45,520 –> 00:26:47,520
porter, a man who used to be in
546
00:26:47,520 –> 00:26:53,480
charge of their home, the yard,
547
00:26:53,480 –> 00:26:56,000
and everything. But they never bother my
548
00:26:56,000 –> 00:26:57,440
father because they knew him –
549
00:26:57,440 –> 00:26:59,000
sometimes you have to push the car to start,
550
00:26:59,000 –> 00:27:00,840
they used to pick up people from the
551
00:27:00,840 –> 00:27:03,520
street. But one day the Gestapo came and
552
00:27:03,520 –> 00:27:05,320
picked him up. It was in January.
553
00:27:05,320 –> 00:27:08,399
And they picked up 360 more
554
00:27:08,399 –> 00:27:10,960
Jewish people I don’t know … more than 300.
555
00:27:10,960 –> 00:27:13,840
And they took him over there, we
556
00:27:13,840 –> 00:27:16,320
used to have an electric tram station, you
557
00:27:16,320 –> 00:27:18,320
used to have to take a tram
558
00:27:18,320 –> 00:27:21,039
in Łódź. Trolley car. Yeah, trolley car.
559
00:27:21,039 –> 00:27:23,880
And – they shot him.
560
00:27:23,880 –> 00:27:27,600
Just shot them all to death.
561
00:27:27,600 –> 00:27:29,840
And the irony was that they
562
00:27:29,840 –> 00:27:33,080
contacted the family,
563
00:27:33,080 –> 00:27:36,000
and said to pick up the body.
564
00:27:36,000 –> 00:27:38,840
And my mother, my sister she was 18
565
00:27:38,840 –> 00:27:40,399
years old, she was afraid, they were
566
00:27:40,399 –> 00:27:43,399
two women. And I had the
567
00:27:43,399 –> 00:27:46,880
Canadian sled, the big sled, and I
568
00:27:46,880 –> 00:27:49,120
took another kid and we went over there
569
00:27:49,120 –> 00:27:52,919
and we took the body and covered it with …
570
00:27:52,919 –> 00:27:55,399
I don’t remember what was it and we
571
00:27:55,399 –> 00:27:58,720
schlepped all the way to the Jewish cemetery
572
00:27:58,720 –> 00:28:00,600
to get buried over there, all the bodies.
573
00:28:00,600 –> 00:28:05,200
How old were you? I was at that time
574
00:28:05,200 –> 00:28:08,159
almost 13 years old.
575
00:28:08,159 –> 00:28:11,159
That was a very tragic experience
576
00:28:11,159 –> 00:28:16,080
and it shattered our lives
577
00:28:18,080 –> 00:28:21,399
and luckily my mother was a
578
00:28:21,399 –> 00:28:24,120
very strong woman, a very
579
00:28:24,120 –> 00:28:28,799
business woman, and she
580
00:28:28,799 –> 00:28:34,760
said she took all the means to cancel,
581
00:28:34,760 –> 00:28:36,799
to close the store, to sell everything she
582
00:28:36,799 –> 00:28:41,000
knows. And in fact, in May, we got the
583
00:28:41,000 –> 00:28:44,159
order that we have to move to the Jewish
584
00:28:44,159 –> 00:28:46,760
quarter, the ghetto – it was all part of the
585
00:28:46,760 –> 00:28:51,279
Jewish quarters, the first time I came face-to-face
586
00:28:51,279 –> 00:28:53,320
with the Jewish proletariat, the Jewish
587
00:28:53,320 –> 00:28:55,080
working people. I never met people working
588
00:28:55,080 –> 00:28:57,039
in the factory Jews, but over there you had
589
00:28:57,039 –> 00:28:59,720
the part where Jewish workers used to
590
00:28:59,720 –> 00:29:01,799
have small factories, home factories
591
00:29:01,799 –> 00:29:05,200
to work in the home.
592
00:29:05,200 –> 00:29:08,000
And we rent a room … Jewish family
593
00:29:08,000 –> 00:29:11,279
and we only were allowed to
594
00:29:11,279 –> 00:29:14,240
take some bedding and some pots
595
00:29:14,240 –> 00:29:16,760
and everything has to be left
596
00:29:16,760 –> 00:29:20,279
and we just had to move in the ghetto, and we
597
00:29:20,279 –> 00:29:23,960
had over there a room in a family and we lived
598
00:29:23,960 –> 00:29:27,039
for six, seven months. After, they enlarged
599
00:29:27,039 –> 00:29:28,760
the ghetto they took
600
00:29:28,760 –> 00:29:31,600
a part of the Polish part of
601
00:29:31,600 –> 00:29:37,399
Łódź … they moved the Poles out and moved the Jews
602
00:29:37,399 –> 00:29:40,120
in then we get a house maybe four
603
00:29:40,120 –> 00:29:42,559
four rooms – a house with four rooms and
604
00:29:42,559 –> 00:29:45,200
each room was actually a living quarter
605
00:29:45,200 –> 00:29:47,720
everything was in their room, there was a pot and
606
00:29:47,720 –> 00:29:49,919
a stove in the middle and that’s
607
00:29:49,919 –> 00:29:52,559
it. That’s like the people live, with an out
608
00:29:52,559 –> 00:29:55,559
house outside, from brick, was lucky was
609
00:29:55,559 –> 00:29:57,720
from brick because the first winter we
610
00:29:57,720 –> 00:29:59,720
have nothing for indoor heat and all
611
00:29:59,720 –> 00:30:01,799
the fences between the houses were gone
612
00:30:01,799 –> 00:30:07,320
even the wooden door from the out house was stolen
613
00:30:07,320 –> 00:30:08,919
and if you had to go middle of the
614
00:30:08,919 –> 00:30:12,200
night you had to take something with you to cover it.
615
00:30:12,200 –> 00:30:14,440
Was it one family to a room or was it more than
616
00:30:14,440 –> 00:30:15,960
one family? No, no it was one family but
617
00:30:15,960 –> 00:30:18,000
that was – there was four families, four
618
00:30:18,000 –> 00:30:19,600
rooms. The whole house was four rooms, but
619
00:30:19,600 –> 00:30:22,240
separated – each one was made.
620
00:30:22,240 –> 00:30:25,919
The Polish family, they were with one big room
621
00:30:25,919 –> 00:30:28,240
in the winter time
622
00:30:28,240 –> 00:30:30,240
there was not enough to heat
623
00:30:30,240 –> 00:30:31,799
and I remember I used to read next to
624
00:30:31,799 –> 00:30:33,880
the stove, keep to the pipe, and read
625
00:30:33,880 –> 00:30:36,559
the book, it was very cold. But luckily we
626
00:30:36,559 –> 00:30:38,120
had good beddings with us
627
00:30:38,120 –> 00:30:41,000
with down, good stuff, and keep
628
00:30:41,000 –> 00:30:45,039
us warm and in fact in winter all walls
629
00:30:45,039 –> 00:30:47,760
from facing the window was all
630
00:30:47,760 –> 00:30:50,360
like was snow, it was ice
631
00:30:50,360 –> 00:30:52,559
because from the cooking there was
632
00:30:52,559 –> 00:30:55,240
frozen. Did you have electricity?
633
00:30:55,240 –> 00:30:58,799
We had electricity, only one bulb.
634
00:30:58,799 –> 00:31:01,760
Did you have other relatives?
635
00:31:01,760 –> 00:31:04,840
Oh yes, I have, yes I have my
636
00:31:04,840 –> 00:31:10,000
cousin, he was a second cousin, lived
637
00:31:10,000 –> 00:31:16,600
across the street. And we had to start to work.
638
00:31:16,600 –> 00:31:22,360
I start to work and know the machines trade, I had
639
00:31:22,360 –> 00:31:24,679
to go to school, we went a little to give
640
00:31:24,679 –> 00:31:26,639
us a little schooling and a little
641
00:31:26,639 –> 00:31:28,639
working in the beginning
642
00:31:28,639 –> 00:31:31,960
because we had to work to get
643
00:31:31,960 –> 00:31:34,480
support and get food – we had to
644
00:31:34,480 –> 00:31:35,480
work for the Germans.
645
00:31:35,480 –> 00:31:38,240
My mother used to start working
646
00:31:38,240 –> 00:31:41,320
making those big from straw shoes from
647
00:31:41,320 –> 00:31:43,360
the Germans in Russia
648
00:31:43,360 –> 00:31:45,000
standing guard, they used to have on the
649
00:31:45,000 –> 00:31:46,159
shoes the straw.
650
00:31:46,159 –> 00:31:50,440
My sister worked as secretary
651
00:31:50,440 –> 00:31:53,320
in the tailor department who used to make
652
00:31:53,320 –> 00:31:55,720
clothes for the German uniforms. In the
653
00:31:55,720 –> 00:31:58,120
ghetto, they said you can come in naked
654
00:31:58,120 –> 00:32:00,880
and come out dressed from head,
655
00:32:00,880 –> 00:32:04,279
everything, head – the hat and shoes and
656
00:32:04,279 –> 00:32:06,000
everything was done over there
657
00:32:06,000 –> 00:32:09,279
there was everything – used to be 100,000 Jews
658
00:32:09,279 –> 00:32:12,760
in the ghetto when I went. When the ghetto
659
00:32:12,760 –> 00:32:15,679
was liquidated, there was only 20,000 left
660
00:32:15,679 –> 00:32:17,880
people who were actually in Łódź. There
661
00:32:17,880 –> 00:32:21,279
was 80,000 in September 1944, but the
662
00:32:21,279 –> 00:32:24,120
other thousands came from Germany, from
663
00:32:24,120 –> 00:32:26,200
Czechoslovakia, from other small towns, they
664
00:32:26,200 –> 00:32:28,679
used to bring in. But in the four years
665
00:32:28,679 –> 00:32:32,679
actually 80,000 Jews, originally from Łódź
666
00:32:32,679 –> 00:32:35,360
Jews, died from starvation, from
667
00:32:35,360 –> 00:32:38,720
hunger, from when they took them out
668
00:32:38,720 –> 00:32:42,479
for selection, took him out to death
669
00:32:42,480 –> 00:32:45,159
or send him to work another place.
670
00:32:45,159 –> 00:32:49,240
And in the beginning,
671
00:32:49,240 –> 00:32:51,679
like every good Jewish family we had
672
00:32:51,679 –> 00:32:54,159
little gold pieces, Russian gold
673
00:32:54,159 –> 00:32:57,159
pieces, and safe over the bad
674
00:32:57,159 –> 00:33:00,480
times and then we had a Polish
675
00:33:00,480 –> 00:33:05,639
family what before the war the man, the
676
00:33:05,639 –> 00:33:08,120
woman, used to make a wash for us.
677
00:33:08,120 –> 00:33:10,080
At that time you didn’t send it out to wash
678
00:33:10,080 –> 00:33:14,320
like Chinese laundry. You had to upstairs on
679
00:33:14,320 –> 00:33:16,639
top, you have this big tub, and used
680
00:33:16,639 –> 00:33:19,679
to come a woman every month, every three
681
00:33:19,679 –> 00:33:21,279
months, I don’t know and she used to wash
682
00:33:21,279 –> 00:33:23,600
the wash and you have this partition
683
00:33:23,600 –> 00:33:25,120
over there where you hang it to dry it
684
00:33:25,120 –> 00:33:28,080
out. And the same thing was –
685
00:33:28,080 –> 00:33:31,080
for heating we used to use coal, and
686
00:33:31,080 –> 00:33:33,279
the coal was – there used to come a truck and put
687
00:33:33,279 –> 00:33:35,440
the chute down into the cellar, but the
688
00:33:35,440 –> 00:33:38,000
coal has to be brought up the four floors
689
00:33:38,000 –> 00:33:42,279
to a special – like a “komora” they used to call it
690
00:33:42,279 –> 00:33:45,440
like a room where you hold your
691
00:33:45,440 –> 00:33:48,200
provisions – apples and coals –
692
00:33:48,200 –> 00:33:49,840
and her husband used to bring the
693
00:33:49,840 –> 00:33:52,799
coals up and also before
694
00:33:52,799 –> 00:33:55,480
Passover, we used to take all the
695
00:33:55,480 –> 00:33:57,919
carpets downstairs and
696
00:33:57,919 –> 00:33:59,799
beat them up, dust them out
697
00:33:59,799 –> 00:34:01,840
it’d be like work for us
698
00:34:01,840 –> 00:34:05,279
from time to time – and those people,
699
00:34:05,279 –> 00:34:08,399
I was a kid – in the Jewish cemetery over there –
700
00:34:08,399 –> 00:34:11,639
even though it was a ghetto, there was no guard over there
701
00:34:11,639 –> 00:34:13,399
and you could could sneak out to
702
00:34:13,399 –> 00:34:15,679
the Polish side – and we had –
703
00:34:15,679 –> 00:34:18,959
make up with him, and we gave him the gold
704
00:34:18,960 –> 00:34:20,679
and they gave us a little food.
705
00:34:20,679 –> 00:34:23,719
The first two years, we managed
706
00:34:23,719 –> 00:34:25,760
a little better than the average Jew.
707
00:34:25,760 –> 00:34:29,199
Because rations were very – you get
708
00:34:29,199 –> 00:34:36,240
a bread, a kilo – actually, you got 100 grams of bread a day.
709
00:34:37,839 –> 00:34:41,879
And a little brown sugar, little
710
00:34:41,879 –> 00:34:44,560
oil. The only thing, for some reason, you
711
00:34:44,560 –> 00:34:48,239
had – I don’t know why – was they called it a
712
00:34:48,239 –> 00:34:52,000
“zast coffee” – this was actually some kind
713
00:34:52,000 –> 00:34:54,480
of wheat that was burned and was
714
00:34:54,480 –> 00:34:56,839
roasted, and you cook it with water
715
00:34:56,839 –> 00:34:58,640
and you had some brown coffee. I don’t know –
716
00:34:58,640 –> 00:35:02,280
this was in supply – it was
717
00:35:02,280 –> 00:35:04,920
in any amount you wanted, you can buy it.
718
00:35:04,920 –> 00:35:07,960
If you didn’t have enough sugar,
719
00:35:07,960 –> 00:35:11,359
you had saccharine …
720
00:35:11,520 –> 00:35:16,839
In the ghetto, the famous supplement,
721
00:35:16,839 –> 00:35:18,599
if you were lucky, we had some
722
00:35:18,599 –> 00:35:19,960
connections with the kitchen, you had
723
00:35:19,960 –> 00:35:21,040
soup kitchens over there, like in the
724
00:35:21,041 –> 00:35:24,320
… in the factory where I worked,
725
00:35:24,320 –> 00:35:28,359
you get a soup – lunchtime
726
00:35:28,359 –> 00:35:30,040
But interesting – the soup was only a
727
00:35:30,040 –> 00:35:32,280
little water and four pieces of
728
00:35:32,280 –> 00:35:35,280
potatoes – and you always used to
729
00:35:35,280 –> 00:35:36,640
be amazed
730
00:35:36,640 –> 00:35:39,880
like, she picked up the shovel –
731
00:35:39,880 –> 00:35:41,760
it was a liter – she picked up
732
00:35:41,760 –> 00:35:43,440
and you said “oh so many potatoes I’m
733
00:35:43,440 –> 00:35:46,400
lucky!” She put it in – everybody got those four,
734
00:35:46,400 –> 00:35:48,880
three pieces – and she was an expert, the
735
00:35:48,880 –> 00:35:52,359
woman, she gave – how she did it?
736
00:35:52,359 –> 00:35:55,760
But the other supplement was, if we
737
00:35:55,760 –> 00:35:57,160
were lucky, you had somebody in the
738
00:35:57,160 –> 00:35:59,920
kitchen, they give you the potato peels
739
00:35:59,920 –> 00:36:01,720
and the potato peels were so thin – the
740
00:36:01,720 –> 00:36:03,359
people who peeled the potatoes were like an
741
00:36:03,359 –> 00:36:05,400
artist – you wouldn’t believe – but even you
742
00:36:05,400 –> 00:36:07,400
get a kilo or two of the potato peels,
743
00:36:07,400 –> 00:36:09,240
you put it through the grinding machine
744
00:36:09,240 –> 00:36:12,960
and you took the coffee,
745
00:36:12,960 –> 00:36:15,480
the wheat, the coffee, whatever you had, you
746
00:36:15,480 –> 00:36:17,960
cooked it, and you throw the water out
747
00:36:17,960 –> 00:36:20,160
because it was bitter and you took with
748
00:36:20,160 –> 00:36:22,599
the potato peels – you mixed together – you
749
00:36:22,599 –> 00:36:25,440
put a little oil, a little saccharine in it
750
00:36:25,440 –> 00:36:28,079
and you put a little
751
00:36:28,079 –> 00:36:32,040
flour, whatever you have, and you cooked it all
752
00:36:32,040 –> 00:36:34,040
night in another pot and in the
753
00:36:34,040 –> 00:36:37,400
morning, when it was cooled off, it was like a cake.
754
00:36:37,400 –> 00:36:40,640
That’s what you took as a supplement.
755
00:36:40,640 –> 00:36:43,839
Did it have any taste to it?
756
00:36:43,839 –> 00:36:46,400
Can’t imagine – no talk about taste.
757
00:36:46,400 –> 00:36:50,400
The ration was – then me and my mother –
758
00:36:50,400 –> 00:36:56,040
in 1943 especially – all the people –
759
00:36:56,040 –> 00:36:58,400
they got all …
760
00:36:58,400 –> 00:37:01,400
And they had some from the
761
00:37:01,400 –> 00:37:03,720
black market over there – they had some –
762
00:37:03,720 –> 00:37:06,480
they called it Vigantol, some kind of fish oil, I don’t
763
00:37:06,480 –> 00:37:08,359
know – it was very expensive to get …
764
00:37:13,880 –> 00:37:16,040
You have to have a little
765
00:37:16,040 –> 00:37:17,200
connection – if you have a little
766
00:37:17,200 –> 00:37:19,960
connection, like I had, somebody
767
00:37:19,960 –> 00:37:23,640
who works – he was a policeman in a
768
00:37:23,640 –> 00:37:25,560
bakery – you have special
769
00:37:25,560 –> 00:37:28,000
police – Sonderpolizei – who used to keep on
770
00:37:28,000 –> 00:37:32,160
the bakeries over there – not to steal – and
771
00:37:32,160 –> 00:37:34,040
they had a little garden and I used to
772
00:37:34,040 –> 00:37:36,359
go in the garden over there and help him.
773
00:37:36,359 –> 00:37:38,800
They give me some pieces of bread
774
00:37:38,800 –> 00:37:42,040
before I went to work.
775
00:37:42,040 –> 00:37:44,160
You have to have connection – after you used
776
00:37:44,160 –> 00:37:46,319
to get vegetables, sometimes you
777
00:37:46,319 –> 00:37:48,440
used to have potatoes or radish, but
778
00:37:48,440 –> 00:37:50,000
everything was frozen for some reason.
779
00:37:50,000 –> 00:37:51,500
Whatever was frozen – not good –
780
00:37:51,501 –> 00:37:52,990
they sent to the Jews in the ghetto.
781
00:37:53,000 –> 00:37:54,200
Was there anybody there
782
00:37:54,200 –> 00:37:56,200
who knew your father, who was able maybe
783
00:37:56,200 –> 00:37:58,720
to help you or anything like that?
784
00:37:58,720 –> 00:38:01,640
What do you mean my father?
785
00:38:01,640 –> 00:38:03,760
Who knew him when he was a druggist?
786
00:38:03,760 –> 00:38:06,359
Yes, that’s what I’m telling you –
787
00:38:06,359 –> 00:38:08,160
We had some customers,
788
00:38:08,160 –> 00:38:10,520
they were prominent before the war,
789
00:38:10,520 –> 00:38:12,839
they were also prominent in the ghetto.
790
00:38:12,839 –> 00:38:15,440
Because the people of
791
00:38:15,440 –> 00:38:18,599
cultivated, educated people.
792
00:38:18,599 –> 00:38:21,160
I remember one was named Sztewi – he helped my
793
00:38:21,160 –> 00:38:25,440
mother to get the work.
794
00:38:25,520 –> 00:38:28,880
The only thing – what you had to do
795
00:38:28,880 –> 00:38:32,119
was they pulled out all the bricks and
796
00:38:32,119 –> 00:38:33,839
you started your own garden, like in
797
00:38:33,839 –> 00:38:36,000
England, the Victory Gardens – you
798
00:38:36,000 –> 00:38:38,800
grow on your own vegetables.
799
00:38:38,800 –> 00:38:43,599
You grow anything, like radish, you had
800
00:38:43,599 –> 00:38:46,920
the radish has a big leaf – you eat
801
00:38:46,920 –> 00:38:48,880
the leaf too. You put it in water, you
802
00:38:48,880 –> 00:38:51,240
take the bitterness out, and you make
803
00:38:51,240 –> 00:38:53,480
like spinach – you wouldn’t believe.
804
00:38:53,480 –> 00:38:57,560
Coal – I remember I worked
805
00:38:57,560 –> 00:38:59,520
at that time, but I worked like a night
806
00:38:59,520 –> 00:39:02,480
shift, or second shift, we had over there
807
00:39:02,480 –> 00:39:03,880
before the war they used to take from
808
00:39:03,880 –> 00:39:06,119
the factories, it used to be fired – the ovens –
809
00:39:06,119 –> 00:39:08,040
used to be fired by coal. They used to collect all
810
00:39:08,040 –> 00:39:11,079
the residue and throw it over in the fields.
811
00:39:11,079 –> 00:39:12,880
It was in the ghetto – we used to go
812
00:39:12,880 –> 00:39:15,640
as kids over there and and dig and find
813
00:39:15,640 –> 00:39:18,839
pieces of coal and burn it.
814
00:39:18,839 –> 00:39:22,960
The ingenuity – it’s impossible to even imagine.
815
00:39:22,960 –> 00:39:26,160
You had to. You had to. But same thing, the
816
00:39:26,160 –> 00:39:28,959
big eaters, they starved – they died first.
817
00:39:28,960 –> 00:39:30,560
The strong, the big,
818
00:39:30,560 –> 00:39:32,920
the people – I was always – my
819
00:39:32,920 –> 00:39:34,839
mother always complained how such a bad
820
00:39:34,839 –> 00:39:37,040
eater I was – and I went for three
821
00:39:37,040 –> 00:39:39,880
months vacation – I gained 100 grams.
822
00:39:39,880 –> 00:39:43,680
I was always a skinny kid but I
823
00:39:43,680 –> 00:39:47,799
remember they said that the strong people
824
00:39:47,800 –> 00:39:51,560
in the Jewish population all died first because
825
00:39:51,560 –> 00:39:54,399
they just starved to death – there was no food.
826
00:39:54,400 –> 00:39:58,599
They gave me from time to time …
827
00:40:00,760 –> 00:40:03,560
How did your mother do?
828
00:40:03,560 –> 00:40:07,640
My mother – I told you – she worked and
829
00:40:07,640 –> 00:40:11,160
we came home – and we divide the
830
00:40:11,160 –> 00:40:15,000
food – and make sure that at the end of
831
00:40:15,000 –> 00:40:19,680
the week, the bread was gone.
832
00:40:19,960 –> 00:40:22,760
What can I tell you?
833
00:40:22,760 –> 00:40:27,640
We had a big mischief because they had
834
00:40:27,640 –> 00:40:30,990
the names of all the middle class and wealthy Jews –
835
00:40:30,991 –> 00:40:35,039
there was a Kripo – a Kriminalpolizei – in Łódź
836
00:40:35,040 –> 00:40:38,440
and the main honcho, his name was Suder.
837
00:40:38,440 –> 00:40:41,599
And he grew with Jews together –
838
00:40:41,599 –> 00:40:43,599
he spoke with Jews like a Jew – you wouldn’t
839
00:40:43,599 –> 00:40:45,240
even believe – he used to go in the ghetto
840
00:40:45,240 –> 00:40:49,760
and ask them in Jewish, the people,
841
00:40:49,760 –> 00:40:53,800
“When is Hitler going be dead?”
842
00:40:53,801 –> 00:40:56,960
“When do you think those goddamn Germans are going to lose the war?”
843
00:40:56,960 –> 00:40:58,680
Some people didn’t know, it might get
844
00:40:58,680 –> 00:41:02,160
them involved, they arrest them.
845
00:41:02,160 –> 00:41:05,440
And they arrested my mother too.
846
00:41:05,440 –> 00:41:08,119
And she said she was over there for
847
00:41:08,119 –> 00:41:10,800
three weeks, she came back a broken woman
848
00:41:10,800 –> 00:41:13,400
completely. Not only mentally, but
849
00:41:13,400 –> 00:41:15,319
physically, you wouldn’t recognize her. She lost
850
00:41:15,319 –> 00:41:18,160
a tremendous amount of weight – besides
851
00:41:18,160 –> 00:41:21,319
what she already was – and she said
852
00:41:21,319 –> 00:41:23,640
he came to her and he had a
853
00:41:23,640 –> 00:41:26,319
…
854
00:41:26,319 –> 00:41:28,060
Yes, and slapped her and beat her up, and said
855
00:41:28,061 –> 00:41:30,059
where do you have the “harter” and the “vaykhe”
856
00:41:30,060 –> 00:41:36,079
“Harter” was hard dollars, coin dollars, “vaykhe” is paper money.
857
00:41:36,079 –> 00:41:38,040
He knows all the Jewish expressions.
858
00:41:38,040 –> 00:41:40,760
“I know you have” and my mother
859
00:41:40,760 –> 00:41:41,839
said “I have nothing”.
860
00:41:41,839 –> 00:41:45,319
They came to my house, to our
861
00:41:45,319 –> 00:41:48,280
house, and they took my –
862
00:41:48,280 –> 00:41:50,920
called my sister out from where she
863
00:41:50,920 –> 00:41:52,520
was and and they looked the house and
864
00:41:52,520 –> 00:41:55,760
we had a scale home from brass –
865
00:41:55,760 –> 00:41:58,160
they took this – and and they found a golden
866
00:41:58,160 –> 00:42:00,800
ring, but it was missing – my sister had a ring
867
00:42:00,800 –> 00:42:03,079
with a ruby in it – and they found
868
00:42:03,079 –> 00:42:04,880
the ruby was misplaced some place and
869
00:42:04,880 –> 00:42:08,200
she didn’t know. And he said “where is
870
00:42:08,200 –> 00:42:10,920
the diamond?” – my mother says “no diamond, it was
871
00:42:10,920 –> 00:42:14,880
a cheap ruby” – luckily, they found it – otherwise
872
00:42:14,880 –> 00:42:18,440
you never know. But this was very, very and she
873
00:42:18,440 –> 00:42:20,800
never really recuperated after that. She was
874
00:42:20,800 –> 00:42:22,760
a long time, she couldn’t go to work, she
875
00:42:22,760 –> 00:42:27,920
had to stay in bed, and she became very bad.
876
00:42:27,920 –> 00:42:32,760
And then in 1942, there was a big “Gehsperre” they called it
877
00:42:32,760 –> 00:42:36,400
there was a big – they took the people, they
878
00:42:36,400 –> 00:42:39,920
closed up each part of the
879
00:42:39,920 –> 00:42:43,440
town, and they selected the people –
880
00:42:43,440 –> 00:42:47,720
who has to live and who has to go.
881
00:42:47,720 –> 00:42:51,480
I had an aunt and my uncle he
882
00:42:51,480 –> 00:42:54,680
was sent out before, years before, he was
883
00:42:54,680 –> 00:42:57,880
sent out for work, another camp,
884
00:42:57,880 –> 00:42:59,680
he never came back, but she stayed
885
00:42:59,680 –> 00:43:04,520
with a small child and the version, the rumor was –
886
00:43:04,520 –> 00:43:09,520
and I went over there to bring it over to us
887
00:43:09,520 –> 00:43:12,559
and she saw the Germans coming, she just
888
00:43:12,559 –> 00:43:15,880
jumped from – with the child – from
889
00:43:15,880 –> 00:43:18,240
I don’t know how many stories and
890
00:43:18,240 –> 00:43:20,079
she killed herself.
891
00:43:20,079 –> 00:43:23,480
They came to us too and my
892
00:43:23,480 –> 00:43:27,480
mother, my sister amazingly looked very
893
00:43:27,480 –> 00:43:29,599
well – she was a young girl, 18,
894
00:43:29,599 –> 00:43:32,280
19, 20 – she kept herself very
895
00:43:32,280 –> 00:43:34,240
good, even with that little food, what she had.
896
00:43:34,240 –> 00:43:37,160
And I and my sister we pass and my
897
00:43:37,160 –> 00:43:40,599
mother was arrested and she was – should
898
00:43:40,599 –> 00:43:45,280
be sent out. But I tell you the mensch, Sztewi, was
899
00:43:45,280 –> 00:43:49,040
our customer and a friend of ours.
900
00:43:49,040 –> 00:43:50,440
When you had somebody there,
901
00:43:50,440 –> 00:43:53,400
in the Polish, not German,
902
00:43:53,400 –> 00:43:57,839
but in the Polish, Jewish police, they had a
903
00:43:57,839 –> 00:43:59,400
place where they held the people
904
00:43:59,400 –> 00:44:02,559
and he came and for some reason they released my
905
00:44:02,559 –> 00:44:04,119
mother back – and she survived.
906
00:44:04,119 –> 00:44:06,240
That was a very bad time
907
00:44:06,240 –> 00:44:08,699
because we didn’t get nothing – no food,
908
00:44:08,700 –> 00:44:11,640
we shouldn’t even go out in the street.
909
00:44:11,640 –> 00:44:14,200
But what I had over there, the place
910
00:44:14,200 –> 00:44:16,960
where I lived, in Łódź, was the
911
00:44:16,960 –> 00:44:20,520
outskirts of the city and we have over
912
00:44:20,520 –> 00:44:23,720
there the ghetto administration, used to raise
913
00:44:23,720 –> 00:44:28,960
over there vegetables, potatoes, carrots.
914
00:44:28,960 –> 00:44:31,540
And I was standing in the window
915
00:44:31,541 –> 00:44:36,119
and people are taking from the fields and I
916
00:44:36,119 –> 00:44:40,640
went also, and I brought a little food in
917
00:44:40,640 –> 00:44:44,440
But this was the end – my mother,
918
00:44:44,440 –> 00:44:47,400
she was released and they came to
919
00:44:47,400 –> 00:44:49,800
our thing and we had everything prepared
920
00:44:49,800 –> 00:44:52,359
and we waited downstairs, we went in
921
00:44:52,359 –> 00:44:54,319
hiding over there in the fields.
922
00:44:54,319 –> 00:44:59,079
And we hope maybe we survive,
923
00:44:59,079 –> 00:45:02,200
we stay, but we were not arrested even by –
924
00:45:02,200 –> 00:45:05,720
we were arrested by the German gendarmerie,
925
00:45:05,720 –> 00:45:08,640
military personnel, took care
926
00:45:08,640 –> 00:45:11,800
besides the SS, and they took us out and
927
00:45:11,800 –> 00:45:14,480
he says – we’re asking “can we, go home?”
928
00:45:14,480 –> 00:45:17,880
And take our things, go home and we
929
00:45:17,880 –> 00:45:21,160
take our rucksack, the backpack
930
00:45:21,160 –> 00:45:22,520
and that’s it.
931
00:45:22,520 –> 00:45:26,539
We came, he said like Biebow before –
932
00:45:26,540 –> 00:45:30,199
you’re going to be – don’t worry
933
00:45:30,200 –> 00:45:32,400
the Russians were only –
934
00:45:32,400 –> 00:45:35,760
in September, I told you, in August
935
00:45:35,760 –> 00:45:38,400
1944, when the Russian used to stand 100
936
00:45:38,400 –> 00:45:40,839
kilometers from the Vistula and they stopped
937
00:45:40,839 –> 00:45:42,920
the offensive and he says “the Russians
938
00:45:42,920 –> 00:45:45,119
are going to kill you – you’ll work for
939
00:45:45,119 –> 00:45:47,079
the German government – and now we’re
940
00:45:47,079 –> 00:45:48,839
going to bring you back to Germany” he says
941
00:45:48,839 –> 00:45:50,960
“nothing is going to happen, we want to
942
00:45:50,960 –> 00:45:54,040
protect your life – take big pots” he says
943
00:45:54,040 –> 00:45:56,599
and “take only what you need” but
944
00:45:56,599 –> 00:45:58,839
“take big pots and we’ll go over there, we
945
00:45:58,839 –> 00:46:00,920
have plenty of food, now the good times
946
00:46:00,920 –> 00:46:03,520
are here” and that’s what he believes – he
947
00:46:03,520 –> 00:46:05,400
took us to the station, he gave us only
948
00:46:05,400 –> 00:46:08,880
a loaf bread and a little sugar
949
00:46:08,880 –> 00:46:10,760
and, like I told you, they give for some
950
00:46:10,760 –> 00:46:14,599
reason everybody a head of cabbage.
951
00:46:14,599 –> 00:46:17,119
People were so hungry,
952
00:46:17,119 –> 00:46:18,520
they ate everything, but they save like –
953
00:46:18,520 –> 00:46:20,079
hungry people always save the
954
00:46:20,079 –> 00:46:23,119
bread and eat the cabbage and
955
00:46:23,119 –> 00:46:25,559
they took us – 50, 40 people
956
00:46:25,559 –> 00:46:28,480
in those cattle, they called it
957
00:46:28,480 –> 00:46:31,280
the cattle train – closed, only the small windows
958
00:46:31,280 –> 00:46:35,519
with one pile over there – it was unbearable
959
00:46:35,520 –> 00:46:36,680
what was going on
960
00:46:36,680 –> 00:46:41,200
people, so stomach, used to throw out,
961
00:46:41,200 –> 00:46:43,920
so they grab the food, they try to eat,
962
00:46:43,920 –> 00:46:45,240
and everything.
963
00:46:45,240 –> 00:46:48,760
We lined up one day we came
964
00:46:48,760 –> 00:46:51,640
instead of jamming, and the good life,
965
00:46:51,640 –> 00:46:55,559
and the big pots, we wind up in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
966
00:46:55,559 –> 00:46:58,479
How long did you travel from Łódź to Auschwitz?
967
00:46:58,480 –> 00:47:00,960
I don’t know, maybe two, three days
968
00:47:00,960 –> 00:47:03,880
In total darkness with just that
969
00:47:03,880 –> 00:47:06,480
little bit of light? Yeah, from the small
970
00:47:06,480 –> 00:47:10,000
window and we had the light.
971
00:47:10,680 –> 00:47:15,440
Yeah. And that’s it, in Auschwitz,
972
00:47:15,440 –> 00:47:18,079
I came to Birkenau.
973
00:47:20,599 –> 00:47:23,680
There were many “Häftling” it was called,
974
00:47:23,680 –> 00:47:26,160
prisoners, they took us out and
975
00:47:26,160 –> 00:47:27,839
the SS was standing there – it was the middle of the night
976
00:47:27,839 –> 00:47:33,280
big lights, projectors, and German dogs – the SS
977
00:47:33,280 –> 00:47:37,119
with the machine guns and everything – and the
978
00:47:37,119 –> 00:47:41,520
prisoners, they call them “Kanada”, used to call those prisoners.
979
00:47:41,520 –> 00:47:44,319
They had the better prison, better treatment
980
00:47:44,319 –> 00:47:46,040
they should take from the people,
981
00:47:46,040 –> 00:47:47,680
income people, throw all the
982
00:47:47,680 –> 00:47:50,880
people’s thing’s out and everything – and they
983
00:47:50,880 –> 00:47:54,040
separated myself from my mother
984
00:47:54,040 –> 00:47:57,920
and my sister. Men here, women here.
985
00:47:57,920 –> 00:48:00,000
Auschwitz over there, in Birkenau there
986
00:48:00,000 –> 00:48:02,839
used to be the Polish cavalry used to
987
00:48:02,839 –> 00:48:04,960
hold the horses, used to be long barracks
988
00:48:04,960 –> 00:48:06,359
in the middle of the barrack used to be
989
00:48:06,359 –> 00:48:08,760
like from cement
990
00:48:08,760 –> 00:48:10,920
with hooks, where they tie the horses
991
00:48:10,920 –> 00:48:13,920
put the … over there. And they brought
992
00:48:13,920 –> 00:48:16,319
all of us – this was the last time I
993
00:48:16,319 –> 00:48:19,119
saw my parent – my mother and my sister.
994
00:48:19,119 –> 00:48:21,400
And they brought us in.
995
00:48:21,400 –> 00:48:25,319
And the SS used to go around –
996
00:48:25,319 –> 00:48:27,200
everything give up – you have gold, you have
997
00:48:27,200 –> 00:48:30,000
watches, you have fountain pens,
998
00:48:30,000 –> 00:48:33,960
everything give them away. I didn’t have nothing.
999
00:48:33,961 –> 00:48:39,000
I just have nothing to give. I was a kid. I was,
1000
00:48:39,000 –> 00:48:42,800
at that time, I was 16 years old, 17
1001
00:48:42,800 –> 00:48:45,160
years old. I looked like 14. I always looked
1002
00:48:45,160 –> 00:48:47,760
younger than I was actually, my age.
1003
00:48:47,760 –> 00:48:50,079
I was skinny – I could go
1004
00:48:50,079 –> 00:48:52,079
through the hole of a needle
1005
00:48:52,079 –> 00:48:55,799
through – the four years of ghetto.
1006
00:48:55,799 –> 00:48:57,480
I can say one thing.
1007
00:48:57,480 –> 00:49:00,059
I was never sick one day in the ghetto.
1008
00:49:00,060 –> 00:49:03,480
People die from typhus, dysentery, these things you can’t even
1009
00:49:03,480 –> 00:49:07,200
believe. I was never sick. Not even a cold.
1010
00:49:07,200 –> 00:49:09,799
Nobody in our family, actually, was sick.
1011
00:49:11,040 –> 00:49:14,559
That maybe helped us because
1012
00:49:14,559 –> 00:49:16,920
if you were sick and you were
1013
00:49:16,920 –> 00:49:18,960
deteriorated it was always a …
1014
00:49:18,960 –> 00:49:20,920
You couldn’t survive. People just died in
1015
00:49:20,920 –> 00:49:22,799
the street. You walked over in the
1016
00:49:22,799 –> 00:49:28,000
street in the ghetto and just picked them up.
1017
00:49:28,200 –> 00:49:30,799
We came over there and after they took
1018
00:49:30,799 –> 00:49:32,960
some prisoners and started to beat them up.
1019
00:49:32,960 –> 00:49:35,200
“Oh, he hid a diamond in his rectum”
1020
00:49:35,200 –> 00:49:39,520
“We know you have diamonds in your rectum”
1021
00:49:39,520 –> 00:49:42,839
They used to just pick up people and beat them up.
1022
00:49:42,839 –> 00:49:46,958
After, they put us three days on “Appell”
1023
00:49:46,959 –> 00:49:48,359
I don’t know how many,
1024
00:49:48,359 –> 00:49:50,119
a thousand, was over there.
1025
00:49:50,119 –> 00:49:53,879
We stood for three days. We didn’t get any food, nothing.
1026
00:49:53,880 –> 00:49:56,720
Everybody who fell down – that’s it.
1027
00:49:56,720 –> 00:50:00,359
You weren’t allowed even to help him.
1028
00:50:00,440 –> 00:50:04,440
That’s it. They counted us. They count,
1029
00:50:04,440 –> 00:50:06,799
and count, and count, and for some reason
1030
00:50:06,799 –> 00:50:09,119
if two are missing, they count again,
1031
00:50:09,119 –> 00:50:11,040
they count again, they count again. It was
1032
00:50:11,040 –> 00:50:13,240
day and night, and day and night – I was
1033
00:50:13,240 –> 00:50:14,960
standing over there and they count and
1034
00:50:14,960 –> 00:50:17,640
that was September. September in Poland,
1035
00:50:17,640 –> 00:50:23,359
the beginning of September gets very cool.
1036
00:50:23,359 –> 00:50:29,359
After, they put us in Barrack #2, I remember.
1037
00:50:29,359 –> 00:50:32,520
They put all the people on the
1038
00:50:32,520 –> 00:50:35,559
right side. There was a stone floor.
1039
00:50:35,559 –> 00:50:39,000
Everybody on the right side – and they cover us with those big
1040
00:50:39,000 –> 00:50:46,520
like you cover horses – big, big blankets, not for people.
1041
00:50:46,520 –> 00:50:49,319
And can you imagine, in September,
1042
00:50:49,319 –> 00:50:57,040
you sleep on a wood floor and the wake up was 5:00
1043
00:50:57,040 –> 00:50:59,319
in the morning and everybody has to go
1044
00:50:59,319 –> 00:51:01,440
people couldn’t go to the bathroom
1045
00:51:01,440 –> 00:51:03,119
in the night you’re not allowed
1046
00:51:03,119 –> 00:51:05,440
to leave the barrack because they’d shoot you
1047
00:51:05,440 –> 00:51:07,559
imagine what was going on over there
1048
00:51:07,559 –> 00:51:10,160
they defecated, they urinated, everything
1049
00:51:10,160 –> 00:51:11,040
under themselves.
1050
00:51:11,040 –> 00:51:14,160
And in the morning, who could,
1051
00:51:14,160 –> 00:51:16,079
everybody was in a big barrack
1052
00:51:16,079 –> 00:51:20,799
with the men’s room over there.
1053
00:51:20,799 –> 00:51:23,960
Did you have thoughts at that time
1054
00:51:23,960 –> 00:51:26,319
that you were determined to survive?
1055
00:51:26,319 –> 00:51:28,200
Or didn’t you? That’s what I’ll tell you.
1056
00:51:28,200 –> 00:51:30,000
I was always determined to survive.
1057
00:51:30,000 –> 00:51:31,880
I was like a ghetto kid.
1058
00:51:31,880 –> 00:51:34,760
I was ghetto smart, street smart.
1059
00:51:34,760 –> 00:51:37,559
Four years you – I had a friend over there
1060
00:51:37,559 –> 00:51:39,640
a kid who I worked with, was sitting
1061
00:51:39,640 –> 00:51:43,280
over there. Now, what I’ll tell you, the next day
1062
00:51:43,280 –> 00:51:45,920
they gave us – and this is the psychology of the
1063
00:51:45,920 –> 00:51:49,720
Germans. They gave us food for the first time.
1064
00:51:49,720 –> 00:51:53,480
They brought big vats with hot soup,
1065
00:51:53,480 –> 00:51:56,799
big vat, and they took like a washing basin,
1066
00:51:56,799 –> 00:51:59,000
the small washing basin, one, two, three,
1067
00:51:59,000 –> 00:52:02,599
four people. No fork, no spoon, no nothing.
1068
00:52:02,599 –> 00:52:05,119
People didn’t eat for three days, they gave you
1069
00:52:05,119 –> 00:52:08,799
here – four people boom, boom, boom – eat.
1070
00:52:08,799 –> 00:52:14,200
Can you imagine – how can you eat hot soup without having
1071
00:52:14,200 –> 00:52:19,240
no spoon, no fork, and 400 people fighting over there.
1072
00:52:20,960 –> 00:52:23,680
I don’t know, if I look back,
1073
00:52:23,680 –> 00:52:25,799
how I survived, I don’t know. Only a will.
1074
00:52:25,799 –> 00:52:28,040
You had to have the will to survive. I’ll tell you about
1075
00:52:28,040 –> 00:52:29,520
the kid who was sitting next to me and
1076
00:52:29,520 –> 00:52:33,119
he says “Szalek,” my name in Polish was Szalek.
1077
00:52:33,119 –> 00:52:36,400
“We’re not going to survive it.”
1078
00:52:36,400 –> 00:52:37,920
You stop talking like that – you’re a
1079
00:52:37,920 –> 00:52:40,240
young kid, you’re only 17 years old.
1080
00:52:40,240 –> 00:52:42,559
You have old men here who want to live.
1081
00:52:42,559 –> 00:52:44,319
You have all your life, the war is
1082
00:52:44,319 –> 00:52:46,200
going to end, we’re going to survive,
1083
00:52:46,200 –> 00:52:48,119
you have to be strong.
1084
00:52:48,120 –> 00:52:50,640
The next day, I looked at him, he was
1085
00:52:50,640 –> 00:52:54,240
dead. Because the will was gone.
1086
00:52:54,240 –> 00:52:56,280
He said “I want to be dead, I want to die”
1087
00:52:56,280 –> 00:52:59,400
and he died without even somebody touching him.
1088
00:52:59,400 –> 00:53:01,880
But, like in any place, you have
1089
00:53:01,880 –> 00:53:05,119
to find a way. There was across
1090
00:53:05,119 –> 00:53:08,880
women, Russian women prisoners
1091
00:53:08,880 –> 00:53:11,400
over there and I saw there was a piece of
1092
00:53:11,400 –> 00:53:12,880
glass and I said to the
1093
00:53:12,880 –> 00:53:15,920
women – during the day in Auschwitz, in Birkenau,
1094
00:53:15,920 –> 00:53:18,359
you didn’t do nothing. That was like a
1095
00:53:18,359 –> 00:53:21,760
death camp. Over there in Birkenau
1096
00:53:21,760 –> 00:53:23,359
they sent you only to
1097
00:53:23,359 –> 00:53:25,440
the crematoriums or they sent you out to work.
1098
00:53:25,440 –> 00:53:26,960
But meantime we just sat over there
1099
00:53:26,960 –> 00:53:28,400
around, just doing nothing, just sitting
1100
00:53:28,400 –> 00:53:30,680
and waiting for the
1101
00:53:30,680 –> 00:53:32,799
piece of bread and a little soup or you
1102
00:53:32,799 –> 00:53:35,559
got a little coffee, watered, and she gave
1103
00:53:35,559 –> 00:53:37,720
me, I found a piece of wood,
1104
00:53:37,720 –> 00:53:41,200
and I was already a skilled machinist after four
1105
00:53:41,200 –> 00:53:44,000
years – I made from the wood and a
1106
00:53:44,000 –> 00:53:46,079
piece of glass, I made like a spoon
1107
00:53:46,079 –> 00:53:47,920
with a sharp point on the other side
1108
00:53:47,920 –> 00:53:49,960
that I can – if they give the four people
1109
00:53:49,960 –> 00:53:51,960
the piece of – I have something to
1110
00:53:51,960 –> 00:53:54,000
eat with. I can help myself.
1111
00:53:54,000 –> 00:53:57,720
And the other trick was to get at
1112
00:53:57,720 –> 00:54:00,839
2:00, they used to call “hey, four people,
1113
00:54:00,839 –> 00:54:04,040
eight people, 10 people, 12 people bread, bread”
1114
00:54:04,040 –> 00:54:06,920
Bring the bread from the
1115
00:54:06,920 –> 00:54:10,000
the baker over there, from the magazine.
1116
00:54:10,000 –> 00:54:12,119
We used to get each, four people, used to get
1117
00:54:12,119 –> 00:54:14,400
a blanket, and used to hold the
1118
00:54:14,400 –> 00:54:15,720
edge, and used to go over there and pick
1119
00:54:15,720 –> 00:54:18,079
up the bread. The bread was mostly –
1120
00:54:18,079 –> 00:54:22,240
they throw the bread, it used to fall apart.
1121
00:54:22,240 –> 00:54:24,720
What I used to do, and I used to
1122
00:54:24,720 –> 00:54:26,960
come to the block, everybody has the same
1123
00:54:26,960 –> 00:54:30,559
face – how can you see who – I used to grab a
1124
00:54:30,559 –> 00:54:33,359
piece and just run away.
1125
00:54:33,359 –> 00:54:35,440
Take my chance. You had to do something.
1126
00:54:35,440 –> 00:54:39,559
Even that kid, you had to do something.
1127
00:54:39,559 –> 00:54:41,599
Mr. Biezunski, we’re going to have to pause now and
1128
00:54:41,599 –> 00:54:43,000
we’ll take a break and then we’ll get
1129
00:54:43,000 –> 00:54:47,599
back to your story. Okay. Thank you.
1130
00:54:56,599 –> 00:54:59,720
Mr. Biezunski, we would like to go back to an
1131
00:54:59,720 –> 00:55:02,000
earlier part of your life when you were
1132
00:55:02,000 –> 00:55:04,040
involved in a strike in a metal
1133
00:55:04,040 –> 00:55:06,559
working factory in Łódź.
1134
00:55:06,559 –> 00:55:09,920
Yes, there was a time, where we worked
1135
00:55:09,920 –> 00:55:12,359
and there was some disapproval about the
1136
00:55:12,359 –> 00:55:16,000
second, the night shift, and most of the workers used
1137
00:55:16,000 –> 00:55:20,040
to be young boys like myself. And we
1138
00:55:20,040 –> 00:55:22,240
stood up with the fellows and we decide that
1139
00:55:22,240 –> 00:55:24,039
the other shift, they’re going to strike
1140
00:55:24,039 –> 00:55:26,079
and to support the other people
1141
00:55:26,079 –> 00:55:30,160
involved in the conflict.
1142
00:55:30,160 –> 00:55:33,039
Being young we didn’t really understand
1143
00:55:33,039 –> 00:55:34,400
the consequences, what a
1144
00:55:34,400 –> 00:55:36,640
strike means in the German occupation.
1145
00:55:36,640 –> 00:55:40,480
But the ghetto was run
1146
00:55:40,480 –> 00:55:44,319
by Jewish police and it was a Jewish
1147
00:55:44,440 –> 00:55:47,400
“Ältester”, like the head of the
1148
00:55:47,400 –> 00:55:51,039
community. His name was Chaim Rumkowski.
1149
00:55:51,039 –> 00:55:54,440
And actually police came and
1150
00:55:54,440 –> 00:55:57,599
arrested all of us and brought us
1151
00:55:57,599 –> 00:56:01,119
to the police station, and he came over there,
1152
00:56:01,119 –> 00:56:03,880
and talked to us, and explained
1153
00:56:03,880 –> 00:56:07,039
that we are lucky that the Germans, the Gestapo,
1154
00:56:07,039 –> 00:56:10,240
didn’t get wind of it because we
1155
00:56:10,240 –> 00:56:13,359
might be all shot and that was really true
1156
00:56:13,359 –> 00:56:16,760
And we decide to give it up
1157
00:56:16,760 –> 00:56:19,160
and go back to work and settle
1158
00:56:19,160 –> 00:56:23,640
the matter. But this was
1159
00:56:23,640 –> 00:56:26,920
really a moment where we were really –
1160
00:56:26,920 –> 00:56:29,640
if the Germans found out about it, there
1161
00:56:29,640 –> 00:56:31,240
was no question, they would’ve taken us out
1162
00:56:31,240 –> 00:56:34,599
over there to the square and shot or
1163
00:56:34,599 –> 00:56:38,000
hanged like they did with other people.
1164
00:56:38,000 –> 00:56:40,280
So this was the only time that
1165
00:56:40,280 –> 00:56:41,760
you were involved in any type of
1166
00:56:41,760 –> 00:56:44,319
resistance? Yeah. Is that true? There was
1167
00:56:44,319 –> 00:56:47,559
no resistance because, like I told you,
1168
00:56:47,559 –> 00:56:49,880
because there was no way to resist.
1169
00:56:49,880 –> 00:56:52,240
We didn’t have any weapons. We were
1170
00:56:52,240 –> 00:56:54,240
surrounded by a hostile Polish
1171
00:56:54,240 –> 00:56:56,240
population where they just
1172
00:56:56,240 –> 00:56:58,280
laughed at us through the – we had
1173
00:56:58,280 –> 00:57:01,480
like a – when I walked to work I walked along
1174
00:57:01,480 –> 00:57:03,839
the street and all the street there was
1175
00:57:03,839 –> 00:57:10,440
a fence with steel wires
1176
00:57:10,440 –> 00:57:13,480
a wooden fence, and each
1177
00:57:13,480 –> 00:57:16,839
few hundred meters you had a guard
1178
00:57:16,839 –> 00:57:20,200
the German … but the trolley used to go
1179
00:57:20,200 –> 00:57:22,760
over there and the Poles used to travel
1180
00:57:22,760 –> 00:57:27,640
through the trolley, through the ghetto,
1181
00:57:27,641 –> 00:57:31,000
they used to laugh at us, make a sign, and
1182
00:57:31,000 –> 00:57:32,720
show like that, and you cut your throat.
1183
00:57:32,720 –> 00:57:35,680
The Jew in Poland has
1184
00:57:35,680 –> 00:57:38,599
no protection at all. There wasn’t a
1185
00:57:38,599 –> 00:57:40,640
concentration camp – it was known that
1186
00:57:40,640 –> 00:57:45,119
if you escape you have no way to
1187
00:57:45,119 –> 00:57:47,119
survive only if you really have somebody
1188
00:57:47,119 –> 00:57:49,760
you know somebody who really wants
1189
00:57:49,760 –> 00:57:52,520
to help you out. If you don’t have
1190
00:57:52,520 –> 00:57:55,240
the means to pay him for it in gold or
1191
00:57:55,240 –> 00:57:57,200
diamonds, they’re not going to do it because
1192
00:57:57,200 –> 00:57:59,160
the Germans offered them for each Jewish head
1193
00:57:59,160 –> 00:58:02,520
a kilo of sugar and a bottle of vodka.
1194
00:58:02,520 –> 00:58:04,880
That was the price, the worth of a
1195
00:58:04,880 –> 00:58:09,280
Jewish life. That was after hundreds
1196
00:58:09,280 –> 00:58:11,440
of hundred of years which the Jews
1197
00:58:11,440 –> 00:58:14,079
gave to Poland and did for Poland and
1198
00:58:14,079 –> 00:58:17,640
fought for Poland. That’s how the Polish
1199
00:58:17,640 –> 00:58:21,359
population paid them back in a time of need.
1200
00:58:21,359 –> 00:58:23,240
They just deserted the Jews.
1201
00:58:23,240 –> 00:58:25,720
Not only they deserted the Jews,
1202
00:58:25,720 –> 00:58:27,520
they were happy to get rid of them
1203
00:58:27,520 –> 00:58:29,920
because they took their houses, they took
1204
00:58:29,920 –> 00:58:32,880
their goods, they took their businesses,
1205
00:58:32,880 –> 00:58:37,640
they took everything. And if you saw The Shoah,
1206
00:58:37,640 –> 00:58:43,119
you see over there that the Polish woman says “yes, I was
1207
00:58:43,119 –> 00:58:46,440
happy to get rid of them. Before I was a maid”, she
1208
00:58:46,440 –> 00:58:52,680
says, “I used to pick potatoes. Now, I’m a businessman.”
1209
00:58:52,680 –> 00:58:55,200
She spoke out fair and square.
1210
00:58:55,200 –> 00:58:59,200
Yeah, people were aware.
1211
00:58:59,200 –> 00:59:02,640
While you were in Auschwitz, did
1212
00:59:02,640 –> 00:59:06,559
you see anyone attempt to escape or did
1213
00:59:06,559 –> 00:59:10,000
you see anything, any resistance?
1214
00:59:10,000 –> 00:59:14,240
In Auschwitz, and I told you, we’ll
1215
00:59:14,240 –> 00:59:17,440
continue in Birkenau over there. And in Birkenau
1216
00:59:17,440 –> 00:59:19,680
we came to Birkenau, we stayed over there. The only
1217
00:59:19,680 –> 00:59:22,240
way out was through the crematoriums, what you can see,
1218
00:59:22,240 –> 00:59:23,839
you didn’t see it actually because it
1219
00:59:23,839 –> 00:59:26,720
was surrounded by a fence and the fence
1220
00:59:26,720 –> 00:59:29,280
was all made of blankets but
1221
00:59:29,280 –> 00:59:31,720
you see the chimney and
1222
00:59:31,720 –> 00:59:35,240
a smoke, dark smoke coming out and it was a
1223
00:59:35,240 –> 00:59:37,760
terrible stink, a smell was
1224
00:59:37,760 –> 00:59:40,960
terrific in there. And the … over there,
1225
00:59:40,960 –> 00:59:42,839
There was a road and they said the road is all
1226
00:59:42,839 –> 00:59:45,799
made of crushed bones or ashes
1227
00:59:45,799 –> 00:59:48,520
because they get rid of the –
1228
00:59:48,520 –> 00:59:52,119
There was no way out –
1229
00:59:52,119 –> 00:59:56,200
Birkenau was a “Zigeuner” camp, they called it
1230
00:59:56,200 –> 00:59:58,200
because that was a Gypsy camp, they
1231
00:59:58,200 –> 00:59:59,640
called it. Because the Gypsies, they brought
1232
00:59:59,640 –> 01:00:01,520
back the Gypsies and they exterminated
1233
01:00:01,520 –> 01:00:03,760
them over there. When I came
1234
01:00:03,760 –> 01:00:07,319
to Auschwitz, before us came
1235
01:00:07,319 –> 01:00:10,440
Jews from Hungary … they came
1236
01:00:10,440 –> 01:00:12,920
I don’t know how many, 100,000, 150,000
1237
01:00:12,920 –> 01:00:14,799
I don’t know how many they killed over there
1238
01:00:14,799 –> 01:00:18,998
in Auschwitz – Hungarian Jews – we came after that.
1239
01:00:18,999 –> 01:00:22,280
They had a number A and I have
1240
01:00:22,280 –> 01:00:23,520
a number B.
1241
01:00:23,520 –> 01:00:26,480
You see, the B transport,
1242
01:00:26,480 –> 01:00:29,880
and they have an A, in the beginning. Yeah.
1243
01:00:29,880 –> 01:00:32,359
My number was – when you were in the
1244
01:00:32,359 –> 01:00:33,720
concentration camp, they gave you all a number.
1245
01:00:33,721 –> 01:00:35,720
B6901.
1246
01:00:35,720 –> 01:00:38,919
This was your name, your birth, your everything.
1247
01:00:38,920 –> 01:00:40,240
You were not known as a person,
1248
01:00:40,240 –> 01:00:42,280
you were only a number.
1249
01:00:42,280 –> 01:00:45,440
Everything commuted to you was by
1250
01:00:45,440 –> 01:00:47,920
calling your number. They will not call you Mr.
1251
01:00:47,920 –> 01:00:53,359
Solomon Biezunski. B6901 – that’s what was your number.
1252
01:00:53,359 –> 01:00:56,559
And the only way to get out
1253
01:00:56,559 –> 01:00:59,680
was, if you’re lucky, you went to work or
1254
01:00:59,680 –> 01:01:02,880
you stayed over there, because this was
1255
01:01:02,880 –> 01:01:05,039
it was known at that time already, it was known after,
1256
01:01:05,039 –> 01:01:06,640
it was a death camp.
1257
01:01:06,640 –> 01:01:09,760
Every day, people used to come,
1258
01:01:09,760 –> 01:01:11,720
the SS used to come with some private
1259
01:01:11,720 –> 01:01:17,400
people and the whole block used to
1260
01:01:17,400 –> 01:01:22,640
disrobe and keep your hands up and
1261
01:01:22,640 –> 01:01:25,359
march by those Germans, march by,
1262
01:01:25,359 –> 01:01:26,480
completely naked.
1263
01:01:26,480 –> 01:01:29,280
And they used to look at it, how
1264
01:01:29,280 –> 01:01:33,200
you survived, the notion was when you had
1265
01:01:33,200 –> 01:01:37,079
on your cheeks here, some meat, you’re
1266
01:01:37,079 –> 01:01:39,400
workable, you can work a little more.
1267
01:01:39,400 –> 01:01:41,160
You can make it. If you had
1268
01:01:41,160 –> 01:01:43,760
no meat here, on your cheeks,
1269
01:01:43,760 –> 01:01:46,079
then you’re a “Muselmann”. I don’t know how
1270
01:01:46,079 –> 01:01:48,760
they named it, just know that a “Muselmann” was a
1271
01:01:48,760 –> 01:01:51,039
name for a man who has to be exterminated.
1272
01:01:51,039 –> 01:01:52,720
They would call it – in the beginning
1273
01:01:52,720 –> 01:01:55,359
they called “Muselmann”, I thought maybe
1274
01:01:55,359 –> 01:01:57,079
they meant Muslim.
1275
01:01:57,079 –> 01:01:59,559
But they said “No, no, no, don’t you
1276
01:01:59,559 –> 01:02:01,640
go, the Muselmann is someone who is going to be
1277
01:02:01,640 –> 01:02:05,720
exterminated.” Another way to call it. Maybe they
1278
01:02:05,720 –> 01:02:08,200
I don’t know – they meant like the
1279
01:02:08,200 –> 01:02:10,200
Bedouin, the very skinny –
1280
01:02:10,200 –> 01:02:11,520
Was this what was meant by The
1281
01:02:11,520 –> 01:02:13,599
Walking Dead when they spoke of The Walking Dead?
1282
01:02:13,599 –> 01:02:15,720
Yeah, Walking Dead was a Muselmann.
1283
01:02:15,720 –> 01:02:18,440
I don’t know where they got it – if it has any
1284
01:02:18,440 –> 01:02:21,880
connection to the Muslim religion or like the Bedouin,
1285
01:02:21,880 –> 01:02:24,319
the Muslims, the skinny desert people.
1286
01:02:24,319 –> 01:02:27,359
I don’t know, but this was the name.
1287
01:02:27,359 –> 01:02:30,480
And they looked at it and I came and they
1288
01:02:30,480 –> 01:02:32,520
said they’re looking for strong people
1289
01:02:32,520 –> 01:02:36,960
and craftsmen. And I, like everybody else,
1290
01:02:36,960 –> 01:02:39,799
I was not a big much of a person,
1291
01:02:39,799 –> 01:02:42,160
you can imagine of me, but I stood up
1292
01:02:42,160 –> 01:02:45,720
naked and there was an SS officer and
1293
01:02:45,720 –> 01:02:47,359
another few officers over there and
1294
01:02:47,359 –> 01:02:48,559
there was a civilian.
1295
01:02:48,559 –> 01:02:53,559
And the civilian asked in German
1296
01:02:53,559 –> 01:02:56,359
“what are you?” I said “I am a lathe hand.” but
1297
01:02:56,359 –> 01:02:59,200
the SS looked at me, my figure, and he says “No.”
1298
01:02:59,200 –> 01:03:03,279
But the civilian says, in German “No, we need him.”
1299
01:03:03,279 –> 01:03:07,960
And this was my ticket to life, actually.
1300
01:03:07,960 –> 01:03:12,160
Because they picked up 360 people
1301
01:03:12,160 –> 01:03:16,160
and put us on lorries and brought us
1302
01:03:16,160 –> 01:03:21,119
in the vicinity of Auschwitz to Furstengrube, it was a coal mine.
1303
01:03:21,119 –> 01:03:26,440
We came over there, it was maybe 3 in the afternoon.
1304
01:03:26,440 –> 01:03:28,839
And they disrupt us again, they put us in
1305
01:03:28,839 –> 01:03:31,640
a big open space, “Appellplatz” is what they called it.
1306
01:03:31,640 –> 01:03:34,279
The drill place, over there.
1307
01:03:34,279 –> 01:03:36,880
And can you imagine 360 people, naked,
1308
01:03:36,880 –> 01:03:39,039
standing around? They deprive you
1309
01:03:39,039 –> 01:03:41,559
of all your human rights, digging into
1310
01:03:41,559 –> 01:03:43,160
everything. You don’t even have –
1311
01:03:43,160 –> 01:03:45,298
I would say “where to put my hands?”
1312
01:03:45,299 –> 01:03:47,198
I’d put them in my pockets, but I –
1313
01:03:47,199 –> 01:03:49,398
I had, at that time, I had civilian clothes
1314
01:03:49,399 –> 01:03:50,680
what I got in Auschwitz,
1315
01:03:50,680 –> 01:03:53,200
they took my old clothes, and gave me a set
1316
01:03:53,200 –> 01:03:56,319
of clothes from a grown-up man, pants,
1317
01:03:56,319 –> 01:03:58,920
and a shirt, and a big jacket and it’s good I
1318
01:03:58,920 –> 01:04:00,758
had a belt, but they left me the shoes.
1319
01:04:00,759 –> 01:04:03,880
I had a belt and –
1320
01:04:03,880 –> 01:04:06,839
we came over there – now, yes,
1321
01:04:06,839 –> 01:04:09,359
before we came in Auschwitz, too, they
1322
01:04:09,359 –> 01:04:10,839
changed our clothes after we came out from
1323
01:04:10,839 –> 01:04:13,599
the train – change the clothes – they took us out
1324
01:04:13,599 –> 01:04:16,279
before went – the first day, they
1325
01:04:16,279 –> 01:04:20,039
shaved all your hair and they took Lysol
1326
01:04:20,039 –> 01:04:26,480
all on your – there and here and here – and all they
1327
01:04:26,480 –> 01:04:29,279
hair and they took Lysol and
1328
01:04:29,279 –> 01:04:31,640
they rubbed it in and this was burning
1329
01:04:31,640 –> 01:04:34,119
especially here, it was a terrible pain.
1330
01:04:34,119 –> 01:04:40,720
The first night, stinging in all all sensitive places.
1331
01:04:40,720 –> 01:04:43,240
We survived that too.
1332
01:04:43,240 –> 01:04:46,000
Now, we came over there, they disrobe you,
1333
01:04:46,000 –> 01:04:47,960
and you stand for two, three hours
1334
01:04:47,960 –> 01:04:49,680
and people are coming from the second
1335
01:04:49,680 –> 01:04:52,960
shift, they came back from work, like 5:00 they
1336
01:04:52,960 –> 01:04:56,200
… as they mixed with the naked people standing
1337
01:04:56,200 –> 01:04:58,440
It was 8:00 in the evening, yet already dark,
1338
01:04:58,440 –> 01:05:02,359
was already September in Poland, it’s very cold, can you imagine?
1339
01:05:02,359 –> 01:05:07,640
And they gave us those striped clothes and they gave us
1340
01:05:07,640 –> 01:05:11,799
wooden shoes and they left us only the belt
1341
01:05:11,799 –> 01:05:14,039
and they gave us different concentration …
1342
01:05:14,039 –> 01:05:18,200
And they gave us soup, the first good meal,
1343
01:05:18,200 –> 01:05:21,039
each one, and gave each one
1344
01:05:21,039 –> 01:05:27,039
a soap, and a nice piece of bread.
1345
01:05:27,680 –> 01:05:32,760
This was like paradise again after over there
1346
01:05:32,760 –> 01:05:34,720
two weeks, I was only two weeks
1347
01:05:34,720 –> 01:05:39,119
in Birkenau. I said “If I don’t go to work,
1348
01:05:39,119 –> 01:05:40,960
that’s it, you’re dead here.” And there was no way.
1349
01:05:40,960 –> 01:05:46,400
It was known that’s a “Deathlager”, death camp
1350
01:05:47,520 –> 01:05:51,960
Over there, in Furstengrube,
1351
01:05:51,960 –> 01:05:56,359
they put me in a block and
1352
01:05:56,359 –> 01:06:00,119
got you a bunk, to sleep on.
1353
01:06:00,119 –> 01:06:06,400
And they sent me to work in the mines.
1354
01:06:06,400 –> 01:06:10,319
I worked in – there was only 1,800
1355
01:06:10,319 –> 01:06:15,559
people over there. The “Lagerältester”, the civilian, was a
1356
01:06:15,559 –> 01:06:18,680
he had a red triangle – he was a political [prisoner].
1357
01:06:18,680 –> 01:06:21,240
His name was Josef Hermann or
1358
01:06:21,240 –> 01:06:26,119
Herman Josef. The “Lagerführer”, the SS man, was a
1359
01:06:26,119 –> 01:06:27,440
lieutenant, SS lieutenant,
1360
01:06:27,440 –> 01:06:31,559
he was Josef Schmidt. He was a very young
1361
01:06:31,559 –> 01:06:34,039
person, he was maybe 20, 23 years old.
1362
01:06:34,039 –> 01:06:39,960
After the war, a prosecutor came from Kiel to
1363
01:06:39,960 –> 01:06:44,340
Israel, from Kiel, Kiel is northern, Schleswig-Holstein,
1364
01:06:44,400 –> 01:06:49,039
and he asked for people who were in Furstengrube.
1365
01:06:49,039 –> 01:06:52,160
And the police contacted me because
1366
01:06:52,160 –> 01:06:53,799
they knew the people who were
1367
01:06:53,799 –> 01:06:56,960
over there, in Furstengrube, when I gave my –
1368
01:06:56,960 –> 01:06:59,160
and he asked me if I know – he showed me a picture
1369
01:06:59,160 –> 01:07:01,000
do you know Josef Schmidt
1370
01:07:01,000 –> 01:07:04,079
Lagerführer, he showed me a picture.
1371
01:07:04,079 –> 01:07:06,720
This was after maybe 15 years and I
1372
01:07:06,720 –> 01:07:09,559
said “this is the man” he said “you’re right”
1373
01:07:09,559 –> 01:07:12,240
He was hiding for 20 years.
1374
01:07:12,240 –> 01:07:15,920
And he came out now and
1375
01:07:15,920 –> 01:07:18,440
gave himself up. You wouldn’t believe how
1376
01:07:18,440 –> 01:07:20,680
he looks now, the difference, with a beard and everything.
1377
01:07:20,680 –> 01:07:24,039
He asked me only one thing.
1378
01:07:24,039 –> 01:07:28,160
“Did he kill anything? Did you see the man actually kill somebody?”
1379
01:07:28,160 –> 01:07:31,359
I remember my father
1380
01:07:31,359 –> 01:07:34,000
always use to tell me that if somebody is a
1381
01:07:34,000 –> 01:07:36,119
murderer, you don’t have right to be a
1382
01:07:36,119 –> 01:07:37,319
murderer yourself.
1383
01:07:37,319 –> 01:07:40,440
And in fact all the people who were
1384
01:07:40,440 –> 01:07:43,240
interviewed from Furstengrube, everybody said,
1385
01:07:43,240 –> 01:07:46,520
all the Jews, he didn’t discriminate because
1386
01:07:46,520 –> 01:07:48,799
he was SS, he was a German, he was
1387
01:07:48,799 –> 01:07:50,960
in charge of them. They didn’t try
1388
01:07:50,960 –> 01:07:54,000
to lie and to lie to their
1389
01:07:54,000 –> 01:07:57,200
conscience and say “yes, he was a murderer.”
1390
01:07:57,200 –> 01:08:00,119
Everybody said the same thing. “No, he was
1391
01:08:00,119 –> 01:08:03,520
not. He never killed anybody.” And it was true.
1392
01:08:03,520 –> 01:08:07,559
Because the story was,
1393
01:08:07,559 –> 01:08:09,720
before, I was not there,
1394
01:08:09,720 –> 01:08:13,480
the January before I came,
1395
01:08:13,480 –> 01:08:16,759
a year before, in January, we had Arbeitsdienstführer Moll
1396
01:08:16,760 –> 01:08:20,779
was his name, he was a Lagerführer, second in command,
1397
01:08:20,780 –> 01:08:24,799
and Moll was a mass murderer, he was such a
1398
01:08:24,799 –> 01:08:26,479
murderer that they put him after in charge
1399
01:08:26,479 –> 01:08:28,479
him they put in charge in Auschwitz, he was so good
1400
01:08:28,479 –> 01:08:32,000
at murdering people. And on Christmas night
1401
01:08:32,000 –> 01:08:34,279
all the officers over there, they had a
1402
01:08:34,279 –> 01:08:36,880
a party going on and the night
1403
01:08:36,880 –> 01:08:38,880
shift came back, the second shift came
1404
01:08:38,880 –> 01:08:40,920
at 11:00 night, back, or 1:00, I don’t
1405
01:08:40,920 –> 01:08:44,479
remember the time, 11:00 anyhow. They came
1406
01:08:44,479 –> 01:08:47,158
back and one German Kapo was missing.
1407
01:08:47,158 –> 01:08:48,279
And they don’t know why, because they used
1408
01:08:48,279 –> 01:08:49,920
to go through a corridor with barbed wires
1409
01:08:49,920 –> 01:08:51,319
on the side, and they don’t know how
1410
01:08:51,319 –> 01:08:54,600
he escaped. Moll lined up all
1411
01:08:54,600 –> 01:08:56,880
the Lager, all the camp, in the middle of the night.
1412
01:08:56,880 –> 01:08:58,399
People had to go out,
1413
01:08:58,399 –> 01:09:00,880
winter, there was snow, everything, and they
1414
01:09:00,880 –> 01:09:03,759
picked out 1, 2, 3, 4 and just machine gunned
1415
01:09:03,759 –> 01:09:07,319
Jews! The guy who escaped was a German!
1416
01:09:07,319 –> 01:09:11,120
And they said, the rumor was said, that he stopped him,
1417
01:09:11,120 –> 01:09:14,799
Schmidt, says “listen, it’s Weihnachten, it’s Christmas,
1418
01:09:14,799 –> 01:09:17,799
enough killing for one night.”
1419
01:09:17,799 –> 01:09:22,279
And he was transferred to
1420
01:09:22,279 –> 01:09:25,880
Auschwitz, up there, and he actually got his job
1421
01:09:25,880 –> 01:09:28,560
being connected well
1422
01:09:28,560 –> 01:09:31,679
because we built a new coal mine and the
1423
01:09:31,679 –> 01:09:33,960
guy in charge of the old cold mine was
1424
01:09:33,960 –> 01:09:36,880
his father-in-law and in fact his wife
1425
01:09:36,880 –> 01:09:38,640
lived over there with her sister too, two
1426
01:09:38,640 –> 01:09:40,158
blonde girls used to even come –
1427
01:09:40,158 –> 01:09:41,740
she used to see him.
1428
01:09:41,741 –> 01:09:44,479
This was Schmidt’s father-in-law? Schmidt’s father-in-law, yeah.
1429
01:09:44,479 –> 01:09:48,040
And everybody said the same.
1430
01:09:48,040 –> 01:09:51,198
No, he didn’t kill anybody.
1431
01:09:51,198 –> 01:09:54,400
And he wanted me to go to Germany, back,
1432
01:09:54,400 –> 01:09:56,759
to be a witness.
1433
01:09:56,760 –> 01:09:58,400
This, I don’t know, don’t want to go
1434
01:09:58,400 –> 01:10:00,280
to Germany, I don’t want no German
1435
01:10:00,280 –> 01:10:02,080
court, I don’t want, I have enough of it.
1436
01:10:02,080 –> 01:10:04,480
I said “you asked me the truth” I said “I’m not
1437
01:10:04,480 –> 01:10:06,560
a murderer, I’m not going to take the man’s
1438
01:10:06,560 –> 01:10:10,400
life because of what they did to us” I said
1439
01:10:10,400 –> 01:10:12,080
“I can only tell you that” saying “I didn’t
1440
01:10:12,080 –> 01:10:15,480
see him – nobody shot”. That’s it.
1441
01:10:15,480 –> 01:10:18,360
We came to Furstengrube over there
1442
01:10:18,360 –> 01:10:22,100
they sent me to work in a group with a Polish miner
1443
01:10:22,101 –> 01:10:25,880
like his helper, we used to fix the rails over there
1444
01:10:25,880 –> 01:10:30,520
there is a long hammer, with a wrench, and used to –
1445
01:10:30,520 –> 01:10:33,480
that Pole, he liked me for some reason,
1446
01:10:33,480 –> 01:10:37,000
he always said “Szalek, after
1447
01:10:37,000 –> 01:10:39,040
the war, you’ll stay here with me
1448
01:10:39,040 –> 01:10:41,199
you’ll go to marry my daughter
1449
01:10:41,199 –> 01:10:45,679
you’re a nice guy, I like you.” And the
1450
01:10:45,679 –> 01:10:47,920
most important thing, after I worked with
1451
01:10:47,920 –> 01:10:50,159
him two weeks, three weeks he used to
1452
01:10:50,159 –> 01:10:52,280
bring a breakfast for me. His wife
1453
01:10:52,280 –> 01:10:54,679
used to prepare a breakfast for myself too.
1454
01:10:54,679 –> 01:10:59,280
Two pieces of bread with butter – God!
1455
01:10:59,280 –> 01:11:02,840
I even didn’t believe – how could it happen
1456
01:11:02,840 –> 01:11:05,679
I didn’t eat anything like that in my life.
1457
01:11:05,679 –> 01:11:08,600
But I didn’t work with him, I worked
1458
01:11:08,600 –> 01:11:11,719
with him for three or four weeks, and one
1459
01:11:11,719 –> 01:11:14,000
day on we came back for work and they
1460
01:11:14,000 –> 01:11:16,480
called my number – you go to the Arbeitsdienst-
1461
01:11:16,480 –> 01:11:18,320
the man who was in charge of the work details.
1462
01:11:18,320 –> 01:11:23,120
You call your number in the concentration camp,
1463
01:11:23,120 –> 01:11:26,159
this is a very tricky affair.
1464
01:11:26,159 –> 01:11:28,440
You never know what they’re going to do with you.
1465
01:11:28,440 –> 01:11:31,199
But I go over there and the fellow
1466
01:11:31,199 –> 01:11:34,960
says to me you’re going to work with a
1467
01:11:34,960 –> 01:11:39,920
machine – in a machine shop, next Monday.
1468
01:11:39,920 –> 01:11:43,199
And I came to the machine shop and
1469
01:11:43,199 –> 01:11:45,120
who was in charge of the machine shop – that
1470
01:11:45,120 –> 01:11:48,080
fellow, the German engineer, who picked me up
1471
01:11:48,080 –> 01:11:54,320
to go to work. And this man, for some reason, at that
1472
01:11:54,320 –> 01:11:56,880
time Germany didn’t have any craftsmen.
1473
01:11:56,880 –> 01:12:00,040
They needed every man who knew something,
1474
01:12:00,040 –> 01:12:01,800
machine, to do something, for he
1475
01:12:01,800 –> 01:12:03,719
was very concerned about the victory.
1476
01:12:03,719 –> 01:12:06,159
At that time, he didn’t know, he didn’t
1477
01:12:06,159 –> 01:12:08,239
believe they were going to lose the war.
1478
01:12:08,239 –> 01:12:10,360
But, for me, that was good, because
1479
01:12:10,360 –> 01:12:15,278
he tried to do anything to make my –
1480
01:12:15,279 –> 01:12:18,989
Your life bearable? My life bearable – because people outside,
1481
01:12:18,990 –> 01:12:23,320
they used to work, dig
1482
01:12:23,320 –> 01:12:26,159
shafts, in the water, used to keep
1483
01:12:26,159 –> 01:12:30,600
steel, without the gloves,
1484
01:12:30,600 –> 01:12:32,960
and steel, frozen, you pick up
1485
01:12:32,960 –> 01:12:36,199
a piece of steel, you pick it up,
1486
01:12:36,199 –> 01:12:38,080
you can lose all your skin
1487
01:12:38,080 –> 01:12:40,360
get glued to the steel, frozen
1488
01:12:40,360 –> 01:12:43,239
steel is very dangerous and we
1489
01:12:43,239 –> 01:12:46,239
had over there a Kapo in charge
1490
01:12:46,239 –> 01:12:49,639
of the whole work detail, used to call him Wilhelm,
1491
01:12:49,639 –> 01:12:52,060
the Kaiser, his nickname was “the Kaiser”
1492
01:12:52,061 –> 01:12:54,680
he was a mass murderer, he killed his mother-in-law, his father-in-law,
1493
01:12:54,681 –> 01:12:56,989
I don’t know how many people, and he used to beat them up,
1494
01:12:56,990 –> 01:12:59,679
but in the machine shop, he
1495
01:12:59,679 –> 01:13:01,280
was not allowed to go in and
1496
01:13:01,280 –> 01:13:02,639
when you go in you had to behave,
1497
01:13:02,639 –> 01:13:05,000
as a skilled worker, he was not allowed to
1498
01:13:05,000 –> 01:13:06,880
touch you because he
1499
01:13:06,880 –> 01:13:10,520
compromises the German –
1500
01:13:12,320 –> 01:13:15,960
industrial might – he was worried
1501
01:13:15,960 –> 01:13:18,639
that that German was very –
1502
01:13:18,639 –> 01:13:21,400
keep an eye on him, that he don’t beat –
1503
01:13:21,400 –> 01:13:23,719
there were 20 Jewish prisoners working over there.
1504
01:13:23,719 –> 01:13:25,800
We had Italians working over there,
1505
01:13:25,800 –> 01:13:28,199
prisoners of war, we had French
1506
01:13:28,199 –> 01:13:30,800
civilian workers over there, many people, and it
1507
01:13:30,800 –> 01:13:32,520
was very helpful because if you
1508
01:13:32,520 –> 01:13:34,000
work with foreigners they had more
1509
01:13:34,000 –> 01:13:35,880
access to fruit, to some potatoes, they
1510
01:13:35,880 –> 01:13:39,960
give you, this give you,
1511
01:13:40,719 –> 01:13:44,159
And I worked over there until January
1512
01:13:44,159 –> 01:13:47,480
1945, January 1945
1513
01:13:49,239 –> 01:13:53,080
but what was my luck then by having a
1514
01:13:53,080 –> 01:13:57,000
little more food, this was a camp for
1515
01:13:57,000 –> 01:14:00,040
hard workers and the hard workers and
1516
01:14:00,040 –> 01:14:03,320
the camp used to be under contract to
1517
01:14:03,320 –> 01:14:04,719
…
1518
01:14:04,719 –> 01:14:08,360
You had – it’s a big German …
1519
01:14:08,360 –> 01:14:13,520
…
1520
01:14:14,040 –> 01:14:16,760
And I worked over there
1521
01:14:16,760 –> 01:14:20,080
they gave me a bit of a piece of soap,
1522
01:14:20,080 –> 01:14:23,120
a wash cloth, what you don’t have, in the concentration camp
1523
01:14:23,120 –> 01:14:25,280
you didn’t have a towel, nothing, your shirt
1524
01:14:25,280 –> 01:14:27,760
was a towel and that’s it.
1525
01:14:27,760 –> 01:14:30,760
And we used to get – what the best
1526
01:14:30,760 –> 01:14:32,800
thing we used to get – a soup a day, but we
1527
01:14:32,800 –> 01:14:36,639
used to get three times 350 grams of bread and
1528
01:14:36,639 –> 01:14:40,000
four times 700 grams of bread. This was
1529
01:14:40,000 –> 01:14:44,600
from my – I used to stand over there
1530
01:14:44,600 –> 01:14:47,080
next to the lathe all the time chew, chew
1531
01:14:47,080 –> 01:14:49,960
whatever I get. And foreman, Adam was
1532
01:14:49,960 –> 01:14:53,040
his name, he says “why you eating like a
1533
01:14:53,040 –> 01:14:56,320
like a …, like a cow, you chew,
1534
01:14:56,320 –> 01:14:58,840
I said listen, I’m hungry,
1535
01:14:58,840 –> 01:15:00,080
four years I didn’t have a piece of
1536
01:15:00,080 –> 01:15:02,679
bread. I’m hungry. I store bread from
1537
01:15:02,679 –> 01:15:05,880
everybody, and this spot – and those
1538
01:15:05,880 –> 01:15:08,560
few months over there, they brought me,
1539
01:15:08,560 –> 01:15:11,560
back to my strength. And I always thinking
1540
01:15:11,560 –> 01:15:13,719
that my mother might see me
1541
01:15:13,719 –> 01:15:16,000
that I have my life and I’m doing,
1542
01:15:16,000 –> 01:15:18,239
compared to the circumstance,
1543
01:15:18,239 –> 01:15:19,120
I’m doing better, well –
1544
01:15:19,121 –> 01:15:21,119
You didn’t have any idea that she was –
1545
01:15:21,120 –> 01:15:23,400
No. I said, I’m the only kid,
1546
01:15:23,400 –> 01:15:25,560
the only son, she maybe
1547
01:15:25,560 –> 01:15:27,880
even while dying, she was
1548
01:15:27,880 –> 01:15:29,920
thinking about her kid. And I said:
1549
01:15:29,920 –> 01:15:34,400
I wish she, she shouldn’t –
1550
01:15:59,320 –> 01:16:02,040
Yeah. And this just was –
1551
01:16:02,040 –> 01:16:04,199
that I came a little to –
1552
01:16:04,199 –> 01:16:08,320
my strength, over there. In January 1945,
1553
01:16:08,320 –> 01:16:12,160
the big retreat began.
1554
01:16:12,161 –> 01:16:15,579
From Auschwitz, they started to take all the people out.
1555
01:16:15,580 –> 01:16:19,440
Somebody tried to hide and
1556
01:16:19,440 –> 01:16:22,040
maybe they survived. In Auschwitz they
1557
01:16:22,040 –> 01:16:24,239
killed all of the people, maybe only a few
1558
01:16:24,239 –> 01:16:28,880
survivors when the Russians came. And we were, actually,
1559
01:16:28,880 –> 01:16:30,639
normally a strong bunch of people, only
1560
01:16:30,639 –> 01:16:33,040
1,800 of us, and we started to march.
1561
01:16:33,040 –> 01:16:35,880
We started to march and I remember
1562
01:16:35,880 –> 01:16:38,560
the guy from the … gave me
1563
01:16:38,560 –> 01:16:41,600
a … I don’t know it what was.
1564
01:16:41,600 –> 01:16:44,960
And we walked over there, and we had
1565
01:16:44,960 –> 01:16:48,159
some carriages that we had to push, and
1566
01:16:48,159 –> 01:16:51,280
I had a friend, his name is …, he
1567
01:16:51,280 –> 01:16:53,400
still lives in Israel, they gave us two
1568
01:16:53,400 –> 01:16:55,679
sticks, the SS, and put his … on it, and
1569
01:16:55,679 –> 01:16:58,440
we had to carry it for him – and we
1570
01:16:58,440 –> 01:17:01,000
marched from Kattowitz to Gleiwitz, I think maybe 80
1571
01:17:01,000 –> 01:17:03,080
kilometers, I don’t know, but –
1572
01:17:03,080 –> 01:17:06,040
the snow, and people had
1573
01:17:06,040 –> 01:17:08,960
those wooden boots, but I was lucky – in
1574
01:17:08,960 –> 01:17:11,639
the concentration camp when I worked in a
1575
01:17:11,639 –> 01:17:15,239
machine shop, they had to give you leather shoes.
1576
01:17:15,239 –> 01:17:17,760
I couldn’t work with the
1577
01:17:17,760 –> 01:17:19,400
old shoes. They gave me
1578
01:17:19,400 –> 01:17:22,320
leather shoes. And the snow
1579
01:17:22,320 –> 01:17:25,080
didn’t stick to it, you can walk. And we
1580
01:17:25,080 –> 01:17:26,760
walked over there
1581
01:17:26,760 –> 01:17:30,000
and all the time, they’re shooting in the back,
1582
01:17:30,000 –> 01:17:32,480
they shooting everybody who’s left behind,
1583
01:17:32,480 –> 01:17:34,080
they just killed him.
1584
01:17:34,080 –> 01:17:37,040
You have to go for forward, there was no
1585
01:17:37,040 –> 01:17:39,480
way, some people maybe escaped, but I tell
1586
01:17:39,480 –> 01:17:42,400
you, I never had – I always, I don’t know,
1587
01:17:42,400 –> 01:17:44,560
I never tried to escape, I don’t know why.
1588
01:17:44,560 –> 01:17:47,320
But we were carrying those
1589
01:17:47,320 –> 01:17:48,480
sticks with a …
1590
01:17:48,480 –> 01:17:53,280
And even the SS, a that time, the SS,
1591
01:17:53,280 –> 01:17:57,360
even they couldn’t make it.
1592
01:17:57,360 –> 01:17:59,199
But I said to the friend, listen we’re
1593
01:17:59,199 –> 01:18:00,840
not going to make with this …
1594
01:18:00,840 –> 01:18:03,480
here on – just throw it away and
1595
01:18:03,480 –> 01:18:04,960
just run forward and that’s it, because
1596
01:18:04,960 –> 01:18:07,280
we all have the same green hat like
1597
01:18:07,280 –> 01:18:09,320
that with the stripe overcoat
1598
01:18:09,320 –> 01:18:11,199
who knows – he’s going to look?
1599
01:18:11,199 –> 01:18:12,989
Did you have any idea where you going?
1600
01:18:12,990 –> 01:18:17,920
No, no they just moved us, the SS.
1601
01:18:17,920 –> 01:18:20,920
We came, and then we threw it away, we
1602
01:18:20,920 –> 01:18:22,840
ran away, and he was hollering over there
1603
01:18:22,840 –> 01:18:24,960
“where are my things”
1604
01:18:24,960 –> 01:18:29,920
We forget it. Then, we found, over there
1605
01:18:29,920 –> 01:18:33,480
we rested a little, we found one of the
1606
01:18:33,480 –> 01:18:35,440
lorries that we had, that we pushed,
1607
01:18:35,440 –> 01:18:36,679
the small lorries.
1608
01:18:36,679 –> 01:18:38,880
And on the lorry, in the
1609
01:18:38,880 –> 01:18:42,880
concentration camp, they make
1610
01:18:42,880 –> 01:18:45,719
soup, pea soup, from powder
1611
01:18:45,719 –> 01:18:47,320
you’ll add water
1612
01:18:47,320 –> 01:18:50,800
I saw that thing, I said you’ll
1613
01:18:50,800 –> 01:18:53,080
never know, it’s some food.
1614
01:18:53,080 –> 01:18:55,400
I took – I had an extra shirt, I took
1615
01:18:55,400 –> 01:18:58,639
the shirt, and made from – tore off those
1616
01:18:58,639 –> 01:19:00,880
arms, I made like sacks and
1617
01:19:00,880 –> 01:19:04,080
put the powder in, and put under my –
1618
01:19:04,080 –> 01:19:08,120
I said to my friend, Franz over there, Henryk
1619
01:19:08,120 –> 01:19:10,120
maybe we’ll need it, we’ll take it.
1620
01:19:10,120 –> 01:19:14,400
Now we came to Gleiwitz – Gleiwitz, now the Polish
1621
01:19:14,400 –> 01:19:17,760
call it Gliwice, now it’s Poland, at that time it was German.
1622
01:19:17,760 –> 01:19:23,080
… we come to the
1623
01:19:23,719 –> 01:19:27,120
there was a station, the station, you
1624
01:19:27,120 –> 01:19:31,520
come in the station, and bodies like wood logs.
1625
01:19:31,520 –> 01:19:34,560
This way, this way,
1626
01:19:34,560 –> 01:19:39,000
5, 6 feet high. Just people,
1627
01:19:39,000 –> 01:19:41,760
human bodies, laid out like – corpses,
1628
01:19:41,760 –> 01:19:43,800
not just throwing – like laid out nice
1629
01:19:43,800 –> 01:19:45,719
like wooden logs, like you
1630
01:19:45,719 –> 01:19:48,719
store wood – stacked – yeah, and stacked and
1631
01:19:48,719 –> 01:19:51,040
they put chloride, or something – white
1632
01:19:51,040 –> 01:19:53,639
powder on top of it. Lime?
1633
01:19:53,639 –> 01:19:55,960
And they put them all in the station –
1634
01:19:59,120 –> 01:20:02,080
There was a cabinet over there – all night
1635
01:20:02,080 –> 01:20:04,000
I stood in the cabinet and slept. There was no
1636
01:20:04,000 –> 01:20:08,040
place to lay down. In the morning,
1637
01:20:08,040 –> 01:20:10,719
they said everybody on the railroad – up
1638
01:20:10,719 –> 01:20:12,040
There were open lorries –
1639
01:20:12,040 –> 01:20:14,840
not closed, this time open.
1640
01:20:14,840 –> 01:20:17,840
Like you move coal, anything. Okay – open
1641
01:20:17,840 –> 01:20:21,159
lorries and yes, what I had, when I went
1642
01:20:21,159 –> 01:20:25,199
from the concentration camp – I took one of the,
1643
01:20:25,199 –> 01:20:27,199
I had a good blanket, it was a
1644
01:20:27,199 –> 01:20:29,199
woolen blanket from the rich Jews.
1645
01:20:29,199 –> 01:20:31,360
They took it away, they gave it –
1646
01:20:31,360 –> 01:20:33,440
and I made a whole poncho, like a
1647
01:20:33,440 –> 01:20:36,199
Mexican, I put it on myself and wore it like that,
1648
01:20:36,199 –> 01:20:40,320
protect you from the wind, it was January in Poland.
1649
01:20:40,320 –> 01:20:44,920
Open lorries, my friend – we had a …
1650
01:20:44,920 –> 01:20:48,520
Like food, and pot, and he has a pot,
1651
01:20:48,520 –> 01:20:51,679
and we come out and we sit down in the lorries,
1652
01:20:51,679 –> 01:20:56,000
oh it’s nice, we’re going to go –
1653
01:20:56,000 –> 01:20:58,280
we cannot sit anymore, more people, more
1654
01:20:58,280 –> 01:21:00,080
people – we cannot stand anymore,
1655
01:21:00,080 –> 01:21:02,840
they packed the people like herrings
1656
01:21:02,840 –> 01:21:05,560
and you had to be lucky, you
1657
01:21:05,560 –> 01:21:08,040
had your back against the wall, because
1658
01:21:08,040 –> 01:21:10,320
people in the middle they got crazy
1659
01:21:10,320 –> 01:21:13,199
jumped about, they got all crazy. You wouldn’t
1660
01:21:13,199 –> 01:21:15,800
believe what was going on on that train.
1661
01:21:15,800 –> 01:21:17,679
They put the train – they couldn’t go
1662
01:21:17,679 –> 01:21:20,320
through Poznań to Germany that way.
1663
01:21:20,320 –> 01:21:22,918
You had to go through Czechoslovakia,
1664
01:21:22,919 –> 01:21:26,679
for seven days we traveled in that train.
1665
01:21:26,680 –> 01:21:29,840
We came, the first time, there was –
1666
01:21:29,840 –> 01:21:31,600
we had a Croatian SS.
1667
01:21:31,600 –> 01:21:34,040
I will never forget, we came the
1668
01:21:34,040 –> 01:21:36,520
first time, and he says to us “we have no food.”
1669
01:21:36,520 –> 01:21:38,639
They didn’t give us – they gave us a
1670
01:21:38,639 –> 01:21:42,120
piece of bread and that’s it.
1671
01:21:42,120 –> 01:21:43,960
After two days you didn’t have any food
1672
01:21:43,960 –> 01:21:48,400
how are you – I was lucky, I used to take
1673
01:21:48,400 –> 01:21:50,719
with our belts, we used to take
1674
01:21:50,719 –> 01:21:52,520
the pot and we used to pick up some
1675
01:21:52,520 –> 01:21:55,639
snow and I had that powder, I mixed it
1676
01:21:55,639 –> 01:21:58,918
together and we ate it and it was – so salty!
1677
01:21:58,919 –> 01:22:01,239
What you ate, you want to drink,
1678
01:22:01,240 –> 01:22:03,560
but we were lucky, we went – next,
1679
01:22:03,560 –> 01:22:06,880
you were protected – your back.
1680
01:22:06,880 –> 01:22:10,239
The people in the middle, they had –
1681
01:22:10,239 –> 01:22:12,440
they ate their belt, they ate their shoes.
1682
01:22:12,440 –> 01:22:14,840
You wouldn’t believe. There was nothing to eat,
1683
01:22:14,840 –> 01:22:17,419
nothing to drink. They went mad, they got crazy.
1684
01:22:17,420 –> 01:22:19,719
Then after two days we stopped and
1685
01:22:19,719 –> 01:22:22,419
then the SS says “throw out the bodies.”
1686
01:22:22,420 –> 01:22:25,299
We said “what bodies?”
1687
01:22:25,300 –> 01:22:26,219
“There’s no bodies.”
1688
01:22:26,220 –> 01:22:29,760
“Look down.” We looked down, and we didn’t
1689
01:22:29,760 –> 01:22:31,519
believe it – we were standing on dead people.
1690
01:22:31,520 –> 01:22:34,439
What did the people do, they starved to death, the people.
1691
01:22:34,440 –> 01:22:36,760
At first, we start looking, can you
1692
01:22:36,760 –> 01:22:38,440
believe that the people after two
1693
01:22:38,440 –> 01:22:40,199
days over there they still have the bread,
1694
01:22:40,199 –> 01:22:42,520
they didn’t eat the bread, they saved it.
1695
01:22:42,520 –> 01:22:44,239
We used to rob them of what they had,
1696
01:22:44,239 –> 01:22:47,480
maybe they had some food.
1697
01:22:47,480 –> 01:22:51,239
We had to open up, line up
1698
01:22:51,239 –> 01:22:53,800
in a line over there, next to the stop –
1699
01:22:55,480 –> 01:22:58,360
And I remember he says “everybody up” and
1700
01:22:58,360 –> 01:23:01,280
we went up fast, and one guy didn’t make
1701
01:23:01,280 –> 01:23:03,560
it, and he took his gun and shot him.
1702
01:23:03,560 –> 01:23:06,639
And we all ducked, but we, saw his hands,
1703
01:23:06,639 –> 01:23:09,080
like he grabbed his hands inside,
1704
01:23:09,080 –> 01:23:11,880
and he shot him again.
1705
01:23:11,880 –> 01:23:15,639
This was a Croatian SS, in
1706
01:23:15,639 –> 01:23:19,520
our concentration camp.
1707
01:23:20,080 –> 01:23:25,280
We drove through Czechoslovakia.
1708
01:23:25,280 –> 01:23:28,800
Czechoslovakia – the people were great.
1709
01:23:28,800 –> 01:23:31,080
You have the train, the overpass going, they were
1710
01:23:31,080 –> 01:23:33,520
standing over the overpass and throwing in bread
1711
01:23:33,520 –> 01:23:36,199
and fruit and speck and everything. They
1712
01:23:36,199 –> 01:23:38,400
used to run along the thing with water,
1713
01:23:38,400 –> 01:23:41,080
really – kids. And the SS used to not
1714
01:23:41,080 –> 01:23:44,159
shoot, but they scared them away. But the
1715
01:23:44,159 –> 01:23:46,199
only place what you really – they knew,
1716
01:23:46,199 –> 01:23:50,639
miles away they knew, the Czechs, that there
1717
01:23:50,639 –> 01:23:53,600
were prisoners, a camp, and you see – every
1718
01:23:53,600 –> 01:23:55,600
place there was an overpass, they just threw everything
1719
01:23:55,600 –> 01:23:58,520
that they had, dumped and –
1720
01:23:58,520 –> 01:24:01,159
We came to Prague.
1721
01:24:01,159 –> 01:24:04,000
We came to Prague, and the train is
1722
01:24:04,000 –> 01:24:06,000
standing over there, and at that time it was
1723
01:24:06,000 –> 01:24:11,280
already seven, six days with maybe
1724
01:24:11,280 –> 01:24:15,280
60 people – it was already one
1725
01:24:15,280 –> 01:24:18,639
third full, it was two thirds empty.
1726
01:24:18,639 –> 01:24:22,880
And I, myself slept a little and my
1727
01:24:22,880 –> 01:24:25,280
friend used to watch me, that nobody –
1728
01:24:25,280 –> 01:24:27,639
because people just –
1729
01:24:27,639 –> 01:24:32,199
got mad – you could,
1730
01:24:32,199 –> 01:24:33,960
you fought all the time. I went from
1731
01:24:33,960 –> 01:24:35,679
the train, I was all scratched, I didn’t
1732
01:24:35,679 –> 01:24:38,120
even believe, from fighting.
1733
01:24:38,120 –> 01:24:40,719
He protected me, I protected him – so nobody
1734
01:24:40,719 –> 01:24:45,080
grabs us or takes us – you couldn’t just
1735
01:24:45,080 –> 01:24:49,920
We came to Prague, we came to Prague.
1736
01:24:49,920 –> 01:24:52,960
On the main station – but there was
1737
01:24:52,960 –> 01:24:54,960
already a place for everybody, because so
1738
01:24:54,960 –> 01:24:57,400
many we left, so many dead over there.
1739
01:24:57,400 –> 01:25:00,480
They said they had 10,000 people on the
1740
01:25:00,480 –> 01:25:03,000
transport, and only 2,000 arrived, actually.
1741
01:25:03,000 –> 01:25:06,000
He tells me, just died on the –
1742
01:25:06,000 –> 01:25:08,920
I’m telling you, you had to have the will, you cannot
1743
01:25:08,920 –> 01:25:11,560
even believe, and I was lucky I had a few months
1744
01:25:11,560 –> 01:25:13,320
where I was in the concentration camp, with the six
1745
01:25:13,320 –> 01:25:15,199
months, I get a little strength, I was not
1746
01:25:15,199 –> 01:25:18,520
like I came from the ghetto,
1747
01:25:18,520 –> 01:25:21,040
I grew, I don’t know what happened.
1748
01:25:21,040 –> 01:25:24,040
I don’t know. Maybe it was just a lust for
1749
01:25:24,040 –> 01:25:26,760
life, who knows. Can you believe, they’re
1750
01:25:26,760 –> 01:25:31,119
standing over, whole lorries over there, luggage –
1751
01:25:31,119 –> 01:25:33,679
filled with the German bread, the
1752
01:25:33,679 –> 01:25:36,119
military bread, and this soldier is standing over there,
1753
01:25:36,119 –> 01:25:37,960
this old guard, old German.
1754
01:25:37,960 –> 01:25:41,360
And I said to him in German, I said “Sir,
1755
01:25:41,360 –> 01:25:43,080
we didn’t eat for five days. Can you give
1756
01:25:43,080 –> 01:25:45,440
us a piece of bread?” Would you believe, he
1757
01:25:45,440 –> 01:25:48,639
took a bread and gave it to me.
1758
01:25:48,960 –> 01:25:55,280
I only had a piece of it because,
1759
01:25:55,280 –> 01:25:57,400
all the rest –
1760
01:25:57,400 –> 01:26:02,119
he brought a few more for those people in there.
1761
01:26:02,119 –> 01:26:10,280
And we arrived in Nordhausen, Dora.
1762
01:26:10,280 –> 01:26:13,480
Nordhausen was in Thuringia, it was not East
1763
01:26:13,480 –> 01:26:17,040
Germany. This was a concentration camp.
1764
01:26:17,040 –> 01:26:20,960
There was all buried, the people, just straight up.
1765
01:26:20,960 –> 01:26:25,760
And they manufactured the V-1, V-2 bombs,
1766
01:26:25,760 –> 01:26:28,440
they used to make over there. Everything was manufactured
1767
01:26:28,440 –> 01:26:31,400
inside. One of the scientists here
1768
01:26:31,400 –> 01:26:33,040
was later in the news, he was in
1769
01:26:33,040 –> 01:26:34,920
charge over there, in Nordhausen.
1770
01:26:34,920 –> 01:26:37,000
Now, I want to tell you another thing.
1771
01:26:37,000 –> 01:26:39,320
In Furstengrube, what happened before
1772
01:26:39,320 –> 01:26:46,719
we left. In Furstengrube, the camp had
1773
01:26:48,520 –> 01:26:52,080
a stone wall and there was a barrack
1774
01:26:52,080 –> 01:26:54,239
here and on the other side there was a
1775
01:26:54,239 –> 01:26:57,679
railroad going. Then, five Polish guys, or
1776
01:26:57,679 –> 01:26:59,639
four Polish guys, and a
1777
01:26:59,639 –> 01:27:02,639
Jewish fellow, they dug a tunnel, under
1778
01:27:02,639 –> 01:27:06,280
the wall, to reach the station over there.
1779
01:27:06,280 –> 01:27:08,679
The railroad – always used to go,
1780
01:27:08,679 –> 01:27:11,639
the trains with coals used to go.
1781
01:27:11,639 –> 01:27:15,840
And each barrack had a big bin,
1782
01:27:15,840 –> 01:27:17,840
like a wooden bin, where you used
1783
01:27:17,840 –> 01:27:20,000
to bring coals over there – put it – each
1784
01:27:20,000 –> 01:27:21,560
one, used to come from their shift, used to
1785
01:27:21,560 –> 01:27:23,920
bring a piece of coal to heat the barrack.
1786
01:27:25,040 –> 01:27:27,320
And the guys, from that bin they
1787
01:27:27,320 –> 01:27:29,520
made a double – and they dig out.
1788
01:27:29,520 –> 01:27:33,440
And they almost were finished, then
1789
01:27:33,440 –> 01:27:36,520
the train came around and they brought a new,
1790
01:27:36,520 –> 01:27:38,840
for the bathroom, we had over there a big
1791
01:27:38,840 –> 01:27:40,320
bathroom because the people, coming from the
1792
01:27:40,320 –> 01:27:42,159
shift, from the night shift, they used to take a
1793
01:27:42,159 –> 01:27:44,040
shower, because they were all back –
1794
01:27:44,040 –> 01:27:47,560
There they brought a big pressure
1795
01:27:47,560 –> 01:27:50,320
stove, I don’t know what, big
1796
01:27:50,320 –> 01:27:52,800
steel piece and dumped it
1797
01:27:52,800 –> 01:27:55,280
from the truck, from the
1798
01:27:55,280 –> 01:27:58,880
railroad car, and everything collapsed.
1799
01:27:58,880 –> 01:28:01,560
And then the SS found out.
1800
01:28:01,560 –> 01:28:07,920
No – there was, next few weeks Sunday
1801
01:28:07,920 –> 01:28:11,520
morning, all the big SS came from
1802
01:28:11,520 –> 01:28:15,760
Auschwitz, they gave us extra good soup,
1803
01:28:15,760 –> 01:28:18,199
because normally the SS used to steal from our food too,
1804
01:28:18,199 –> 01:28:19,840
but that time to show off how
1805
01:28:19,840 –> 01:28:21,800
good they treat us they gave us a
1806
01:28:21,800 –> 01:28:24,639
piece of borscht in it, like –
1807
01:28:24,639 –> 01:28:28,960
pea soup, and everything in big this – and they
1808
01:28:28,960 –> 01:28:33,280
took, out scaffolding, and hanged all five of them.
1809
01:28:33,280 –> 01:28:36,199
Everybody has to stand up on
1810
01:28:36,199 –> 01:28:38,040
the pillar, everybody had to look up.
1811
01:28:38,040 –> 01:28:40,239
Because they tried to escape, and this
1812
01:28:40,239 –> 01:28:45,880
is the punishment.
1813
01:28:47,600 –> 01:28:50,199
But that was one, what I already,
1814
01:28:50,199 –> 01:28:53,199
face to face, so
1815
01:28:53,199 –> 01:28:56,400
like people in the ghetto, also was one –
1816
01:28:56,400 –> 01:28:59,040
they hanged a person who tried to escape,
1817
01:28:59,040 –> 01:29:01,360
it was a German Jewm he tried to escape and
1818
01:29:01,360 –> 01:29:05,679
he went through, out of the ghetto,
1819
01:29:05,679 –> 01:29:07,920
he spoke good German –
1820
01:29:07,920 –> 01:29:10,520
but for some reason, they must’ve
1821
01:29:10,520 –> 01:29:12,840
left something on it, and the Poles saw it, and
1822
01:29:12,840 –> 01:29:15,880
they gave him to the Germans, and
1823
01:29:15,880 –> 01:29:17,360
they brought him back to the ghetto and they
1824
01:29:17,360 –> 01:29:19,639
hanged him also – show what
1825
01:29:19,639 –> 01:29:21,199
happens when somebody escaped. It was
1826
01:29:21,199 –> 01:29:23,600
no party, there was no monkey business.
1827
01:29:23,600 –> 01:29:26,520
Your life was nothing.
1828
01:29:26,520 –> 01:29:29,639
You were nobody.
1829
01:29:29,639 –> 01:29:31,560
The Germans, they show such a big love
1830
01:29:31,560 –> 01:29:34,719
for animals, their dogs, their cats – the Jew,
1831
01:29:34,719 –> 01:29:39,800
for him, it was not a human being at all.
1832
01:29:39,800 –> 01:29:43,960
And we came over there in Nordhausen,
1833
01:29:43,960 –> 01:29:47,080
we stayed for a few days.
1834
01:29:47,080 –> 01:29:50,679
Also the luck was, when we came to Nordhausen
1835
01:29:50,679 –> 01:29:54,159
we were lucky, we came from the train to a big wash
1836
01:29:54,159 –> 01:29:56,800
room, and people were standing over there
1837
01:29:56,800 –> 01:29:59,520
in the washroom for hours drinking water.
1838
01:29:59,520 –> 01:30:02,880
They hydrated – I myself, for a half
1839
01:30:02,880 –> 01:30:04,880
hour I drank water. Just the water,
1840
01:30:04,880 –> 01:30:07,400
I didn’t drink water, I don’t
1841
01:30:07,400 –> 01:30:10,360
know, only the snow for seven days, for eight days.
1842
01:30:10,360 –> 01:30:12,880
And this was lucky, they put us in
1843
01:30:12,880 –> 01:30:16,400
the washroom, we could –
1844
01:30:18,760 –> 01:30:23,159
we went over there, and we came and
1845
01:30:23,159 –> 01:30:27,960
we hung out for a few days and
1846
01:30:28,080 –> 01:30:32,040
make a big – at that time, the SS
1847
01:30:32,040 –> 01:30:35,880
they looked for a business to go on.
1848
01:30:35,880 –> 01:30:38,440
If they didn’t have the business to
1849
01:30:38,440 –> 01:30:41,159
go on, they were sent to the Russian front
1850
01:30:41,159 –> 01:30:42,840
to protect the Fatherland.
1851
01:30:42,840 –> 01:30:46,480
And now, Lagerführer, was always in a clique
1852
01:30:46,480 –> 01:30:48,840
over there, they had 10, 15 SS men,
1853
01:30:48,840 –> 01:30:51,040
they looked for ways out. They have
1854
01:30:51,040 –> 01:30:52,520
to have Häftling, they have to have
1855
01:30:52,520 –> 01:30:54,639
prisoners, to guard them,
1856
01:30:54,639 –> 01:30:56,320
so they’re not going to send them –
1857
01:30:56,320 –> 01:30:57,119
he’s not free.
1858
01:30:57,119 –> 01:31:01,080
And over there, I met my
1859
01:31:01,080 –> 01:31:04,880
sister’s friend, Judenherz. He had a
1860
01:31:04,880 –> 01:31:07,280
broken arm.
1861
01:31:07,280 –> 01:31:09,880
I wanted to help him, or to stay with
1862
01:31:09,880 –> 01:31:11,719
him, together, and see what’s
1863
01:31:11,719 –> 01:31:14,320
going on. And I’m going over there, we
1864
01:31:14,320 –> 01:31:19,040
had a guy, SS, who used to bring us
1865
01:31:19,040 –> 01:31:21,080
all every day to work. It was an Austrian
1866
01:31:21,080 –> 01:31:23,239
actually, a short fellow, but he was not
1867
01:31:23,239 –> 01:31:25,400
so bad, he never mistreated nobody. He was
1868
01:31:25,400 –> 01:31:27,880
an older fellow, maybe in the forties. Because at
1869
01:31:27,880 –> 01:31:30,639
that time, already many changed, the SS
1870
01:31:30,639 –> 01:31:32,560
became older. They took the young SS
1871
01:31:32,560 –> 01:31:33,880
and sent them to the front, they brought
1872
01:31:33,880 –> 01:31:36,159
older people and put them in guard.
1873
01:31:36,159 –> 01:31:39,280
But – the murderer, the Croatian he
1874
01:31:39,280 –> 01:31:42,400
was second in charge of the Lagerführer – he stayed
1875
01:31:42,400 –> 01:31:44,920
all the time, to the very end – the one
1876
01:31:44,920 –> 01:31:46,520
who shot that fellow.
1877
01:31:46,520 –> 01:31:50,000
And that Austrian, and I’m standing over
1878
01:31:50,000 –> 01:31:54,719
on … and he says “oh, everybody …” and he,
1879
01:31:54,719 –> 01:31:57,000
I wanted to go with my –
1880
01:31:57,000 –> 01:32:01,400
the guy Judenherz. And he says “Du kleiner Dreher”,
1881
01:32:01,400 –> 01:32:04,040
says “hey, you small hand lathe”, he grabbed me
1882
01:32:04,040 –> 01:32:07,199
here by the – you come with us. And they
1883
01:32:07,199 –> 01:32:10,199
had from 1,800 left to maybe 100, maybe
1884
01:32:10,199 –> 01:32:12,920
it was already 800 or 1,000 died on the way,
1885
01:32:12,920 –> 01:32:15,679
through all the ordeals of the seven days,
1886
01:32:15,679 –> 01:32:18,679
where maybe 800 people, 400, 500,
1887
01:32:18,679 –> 01:32:21,440
I don’t remember, but he remembers that I was a
1888
01:32:21,440 –> 01:32:24,320
craftsman, I was a skilled worker,
1889
01:32:24,320 –> 01:32:26,760
then they picked up 300 people, and brought
1890
01:32:26,760 –> 01:32:29,679
us to … also Tuttlingen.
1891
01:32:29,679 –> 01:32:33,239
Over there we, built the new plant
1892
01:32:33,239 –> 01:32:37,000
under, in the mountains.
1893
01:32:37,000 –> 01:32:40,000
It was very primitive, they have …
1894
01:32:40,000 –> 01:32:41,280
they have nothing,
1895
01:32:41,280 –> 01:32:44,960
with 15 SS and then 300 people.
1896
01:32:44,960 –> 01:32:48,159
When everybody worked over there, dig a little, it was
1897
01:32:48,159 –> 01:32:50,560
not actually – it was nothing much to do,
1898
01:32:50,560 –> 01:32:53,320
I used to work, they gave me in –
1899
01:32:53,320 –> 01:32:56,199
one of the corridors, in the
1900
01:32:56,199 –> 01:32:58,040
mine – it was like a mine, they
1901
01:32:58,040 –> 01:32:59,600
dig out the mountain – they wanted
1902
01:32:59,600 –> 01:33:03,159
to bring all the war production underground, that cannot be
1903
01:33:03,159 –> 01:33:05,440
bombed. And that’s what they used to do and
1904
01:33:05,440 –> 01:33:08,480
there was over there a machine shop with
1905
01:33:08,480 –> 01:33:12,600
Ukrainians working, Ukrainian civil workers.
1906
01:33:12,600 –> 01:33:17,840
And I used to do, it was not much to do.
1907
01:33:17,840 –> 01:33:22,239
This was in April. They were hanging over there for
1908
01:33:22,239 –> 01:33:25,679
a month, maybe five, six weeks.
1909
01:33:25,679 –> 01:33:28,800
And the war is going on,
1910
01:33:28,800 –> 01:33:31,360
and the Ukrainian, we had with the
1911
01:33:31,360 –> 01:33:33,280
Ukrainian, we’re going home.
1912
01:33:33,280 –> 01:33:37,280
They tried to prepare everything to go
1913
01:33:37,280 –> 01:33:41,560
home. And we didn’t know what will happen to us.
1914
01:33:42,119 –> 01:33:46,960
One day, they take us, and we march,
1915
01:33:46,960 –> 01:33:51,800
start marching. We’re marching – Magdeburg,
1916
01:33:51,800 –> 01:33:53,960
big city, and I marched over there in the
1917
01:33:53,960 –> 01:33:56,119
street with the SS, and I see young
1918
01:33:56,119 –> 01:33:59,480
kids, going on, my age – boys and girls,
1919
01:33:59,480 –> 01:34:02,119
free, going in the city and
1920
01:34:02,119 –> 01:34:04,440
I’m here like a prisoner under guard,
1921
01:34:04,440 –> 01:34:06,880
going on the side of the road,
1922
01:34:06,880 –> 01:34:08,960
in the middle and under gun,
1923
01:34:08,960 –> 01:34:11,960
like “what did I do to those people?”
1924
01:34:11,960 –> 01:34:14,119
“why do they treat me like that?” I said,
1925
01:34:14,119 –> 01:34:16,440
“all my youth wasted”
1926
01:34:16,440 –> 01:34:18,800
The best years, best five years that a
1927
01:34:18,800 –> 01:34:21,199
young man has, go to high
1928
01:34:21,199 –> 01:34:23,760
school, girls, dating.
1929
01:34:23,760 –> 01:34:25,360
You fight for your life, all
1930
01:34:25,360 –> 01:34:28,400
the time, you’re starved, you’re beaten, your
1931
01:34:28,400 –> 01:34:30,520
parents are gone.
1932
01:34:30,520 –> 01:34:33,840
You didn’t think about it. You didn’t think.
1933
01:34:33,840 –> 01:34:36,480
I remember, when I was liberated, I was
1934
01:34:36,480 –> 01:34:39,520
sure that the whole world would be at my hands.
1935
01:34:39,520 –> 01:34:42,119
They would kiss me on the hands, like that.
1936
01:34:42,119 –> 01:34:45,159
That there’s nobody who would refuse me.
1937
01:34:45,159 –> 01:34:47,800
What I went through, what
1938
01:34:47,800 –> 01:34:49,840
they did to me, for what?
1939
01:34:49,840 –> 01:34:53,520
We marched to Heiligenstadt, another city,
1940
01:34:53,520 –> 01:34:55,520
we marched for days, marched too.
1941
01:34:55,520 –> 01:34:59,719
They brought us to the Elba river.
1942
01:34:59,719 –> 01:35:03,400
And they put us on a big ship,
1943
01:35:03,400 –> 01:35:08,639
in a tow boat.
1944
01:35:08,639 –> 01:35:10,600
In front of it, and used to schlep two of them,
1945
01:35:10,600 –> 01:35:12,840
two big, how they call them?
1946
01:35:12,840 –> 01:35:15,440
Lorries, the big lorries and
1947
01:35:15,440 –> 01:35:18,600
up front is an engine
1948
01:35:18,600 –> 01:35:23,920
and we go for two, three,
1949
01:35:23,920 –> 01:35:26,119
I don’t know how many days, we went all the
1950
01:35:26,119 –> 01:35:28,960
way to Northern Germany, to the Kaiser –
1951
01:35:28,960 –> 01:35:33,800
from the Elba in the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, and we
1952
01:35:33,800 –> 01:35:39,600
end up in Lübeck on the Ostsee. The canal goes to Lübeck on the Ostsee.
1953
01:35:40,920 –> 01:35:44,560
And they took us out
1954
01:35:44,560 –> 01:35:52,440
and what it was is that they took us out, and said Josef Schmidt,
1955
01:35:52,440 –> 01:35:57,600
his parents, had a big farm in Schleswig-Holstein, Anspeck,
1956
01:35:57,600 –> 01:36:00,600
the small town was called Anspeck, and they
1957
01:36:00,600 –> 01:36:03,040
were farmers – he came from that place, and
1958
01:36:03,040 –> 01:36:04,960
he says what am I going to do, I’m going –
1959
01:36:04,960 –> 01:36:07,400
I keep my business
1960
01:36:07,400 –> 01:36:10,159
upright and then I go take
1961
01:36:10,159 –> 01:36:11,840
the people with me that we have to
1962
01:36:11,840 –> 01:36:14,159
guard them all the time and he saw the
1963
01:36:14,159 –> 01:36:16,159
Russians are coming in Thuringia
1964
01:36:16,159 –> 01:36:18,280
and we have to go some place and he took
1965
01:36:18,280 –> 01:36:20,719
us to his place, where he
1966
01:36:20,719 –> 01:36:23,199
lives over there, and they put
1967
01:36:23,199 –> 01:36:26,440
us in a big building over there on
1968
01:36:26,440 –> 01:36:31,080
the road, and we, the 300 people, maybe 250
1969
01:36:31,080 –> 01:36:33,960
already, on one side and the 15 SS on the
1970
01:36:33,960 –> 01:36:36,960
other side guarding us, and he went with
1971
01:36:36,960 –> 01:36:39,280
his wife and his father, and wife too and
1972
01:36:39,280 –> 01:36:41,440
his sister went with him all the time –
1973
01:36:41,440 –> 01:36:43,440
they went over there to live on
1974
01:36:43,440 –> 01:36:44,760
on the big farm.
1975
01:36:44,760 –> 01:36:47,320
Now, what do you do with those Jews, you
1976
01:36:47,320 –> 01:36:48,880
don’t have nothing to do with the Jews,
1977
01:36:48,880 –> 01:36:51,159
what you do with the Jews – you send them to
1978
01:36:51,159 –> 01:36:53,880
work, to the farmers. You take
1979
01:36:53,880 –> 01:36:57,480
like five guys, used to take some to women.
1980
01:36:57,480 –> 01:36:59,960
She had to dig up a garden
1981
01:36:59,960 –> 01:37:02,080
for the spring, then we used to dig up the garden,
1982
01:37:02,080 –> 01:37:04,000
she used to give us a little fruit.
1983
01:37:04,000 –> 01:37:07,080
One farmer –
1984
01:37:07,080 –> 01:37:10,159
after the war I was for a few
1985
01:37:10,159 –> 01:37:11,360
years, over there,
1986
01:37:11,360 –> 01:37:14,119
in Neustadt. And I used to go to Anspeck every
1987
01:37:14,119 –> 01:37:17,760
Sunday to drive to him, was he was a
1988
01:37:17,760 –> 01:37:20,239
Dutch farmer who lived in Germany, Dutch or German,
1989
01:37:20,239 –> 01:37:22,960
he was a very nice person. We worked
1990
01:37:22,960 –> 01:37:25,159
for him, the five people, he used to give us food,
1991
01:37:25,159 –> 01:37:26,679
he used to give us potatoes for the
1992
01:37:26,679 –> 01:37:29,400
other guys, he treated us, I’m telling you, he
1993
01:37:29,400 –> 01:37:32,480
didn’t know what to do – and also
1994
01:37:32,480 –> 01:37:34,159
he wanted me to marry his daughter – I don’t
1995
01:37:34,159 –> 01:37:36,719
know why, for some reason everybody – but she schlepped
1996
01:37:36,719 –> 01:37:39,320
the fruits, she was a little thing.
1997
01:37:39,320 –> 01:37:41,560
But the one daughter – very rich – and there
1998
01:37:41,560 –> 01:37:44,159
were two Polish girls, I’ll never forget, working over
1999
01:37:44,159 –> 01:37:48,000
there and they found out I’m Polish – they
2000
01:37:48,000 –> 01:37:50,159
said “why don’t you stay in the
2001
01:37:50,159 –> 01:37:52,520
nights, with us here?” – they lived on
2002
01:37:52,520 –> 01:37:55,520
the top of the house over there. They wanted
2003
01:37:55,520 –> 01:37:58,040
to have some love, I said “you’re
2004
01:37:58,040 –> 01:38:00,639
crazy, I’ll stay here. They’ll shoot me.” I want
2005
01:38:00,639 –> 01:38:03,199
to hide you, stay here, don’t go back.
2006
01:38:03,199 –> 01:38:06,639
But I tell you, I never had the guts. But we
2007
01:38:06,639 –> 01:38:09,239
had an SS man, he was an old man already, and
2008
01:38:09,239 –> 01:38:11,239
I was the speaker between the two guys,
2009
01:38:11,239 –> 01:38:13,480
I knew German from home,
2010
01:38:13,480 –> 01:38:15,599
and he says, “Listen,
2011
01:38:15,599 –> 01:38:18,400
no monkey business. Don’t make
2012
01:38:18,400 –> 01:38:20,719
any pulls. The war is going every day, it’s
2013
01:38:20,719 –> 01:38:23,920
going to end. Just make sure you
2014
01:38:23,920 –> 01:38:26,440
survive. Don’t run away. Don’t ask.. “
2015
01:38:26,440 –> 01:38:31,760
Anyhow, on the 2nd of May 1945,
2016
01:38:31,760 –> 01:38:36,920
Mr. Schmidt, our Lagerführer, brought us to Neustadt,
2017
01:38:36,920 –> 01:38:40,400
Neustadt used to be a base, a U-boat base, one
2018
01:38:40,400 –> 01:38:43,719
two … U-boat base, military base.
2019
01:38:43,719 –> 01:38:47,599
And in Neustadt we saw from far
2020
01:38:47,599 –> 01:38:50,599
away a big ship standing, the big ship
2021
01:38:50,599 –> 01:38:52,760
was named Cap Arcona. Used to – before the war,
2022
01:38:52,760 –> 01:38:54,880
used to be the Hamburg-New York line, Hamburg-
2023
01:38:54,880 –> 01:38:58,360
America line, used to go, travel –
2024
01:38:58,360 –> 01:39:02,360
it was about a 27 or 26,000 ship, a passenger ship.
2025
01:39:02,360 –> 01:39:05,040
And he says “we’re going to bring
2026
01:39:05,040 –> 01:39:08,000
you on the ship and you’re
2027
01:39:08,000 –> 01:39:14,199
going to Sweden” – now before we came to
2028
01:39:14,199 –> 01:39:16,920
Neustadt we were in that place, the same
2029
01:39:16,920 –> 01:39:19,199
place, and they came – the Red Cross
2030
01:39:19,199 –> 01:39:21,360
International Red Cross – came.
2031
01:39:21,360 –> 01:39:24,360
What was humiliating –
2032
01:39:24,360 –> 01:39:26,320
Westjuden – they looked for Jews from
2033
01:39:26,320 –> 01:39:29,800
Western Europe, who speak Dutch
2034
01:39:29,800 –> 01:39:32,480
French, English foreign language.
2035
01:39:32,480 –> 01:39:34,000
Even if you were Polish-Jewish you might get
2036
01:39:34,000 –> 01:39:35,960
away, they took them away. In fact they
2037
01:39:35,960 –> 01:39:38,360
took the Western Jews away, the Eastern
2038
01:39:38,360 –> 01:39:40,599
Jews like myself, the Polish Jew has no rights
2039
01:39:40,599 –> 01:39:42,440
to live – nobody wants to even protect him.
2040
01:39:42,440 –> 01:39:44,800
They just gave us a
2041
01:39:44,800 –> 01:39:46,199
few cigarettes and a few pieces of
2042
01:39:46,199 –> 01:39:48,080
chocolate and they took away –
2043
01:39:48,080 –> 01:39:50,040
Who were these, the Americans?
2044
01:39:50,040 –> 01:39:52,719
No, they were Swedes or Swiss, I
2045
01:39:52,719 –> 01:39:55,440
don’t know, not American. This was an international –
2046
01:39:55,440 –> 01:39:58,760
I think Swiss Red Cross.
2047
01:39:58,760 –> 01:40:02,119
The rest of the people, they ignored they
2048
01:40:02,119 –> 01:40:05,199
picked a few people who knew a foreign language,
2049
01:40:05,199 –> 01:40:09,880
they said yeah I’m a Frenchman, parlez francais, oui, and they got away.
2050
01:40:09,880 –> 01:40:13,159
He comes to us and we, with the rest of us,
2051
01:40:13,159 –> 01:40:16,719
about 300 people, they took us to
2052
01:40:16,719 –> 01:40:19,360
the harbor over there,
2053
01:40:19,360 –> 01:40:22,239
we see there’s a German Marine,
2054
01:40:22,239 –> 01:40:23,920
the Navy over there, guarding,
2055
01:40:23,920 –> 01:40:25,440
and the big ship and they took us off the
2056
01:40:25,440 –> 01:40:28,320
tow boat, tug boat, about 150 each one. And they
2057
01:40:28,320 –> 01:40:30,520
brought us over there to the ship.
2058
01:40:30,520 –> 01:40:34,639
We come to the ship and the SS says,
2059
01:40:34,639 –> 01:40:36,360
this officer standing guard over there,
2060
01:40:36,360 –> 01:40:38,159
and put a big spotlight he says “what’s
2061
01:40:38,159 –> 01:40:40,719
wrong?” – “We have here 300 people,
2062
01:40:40,719 –> 01:40:43,040
you have to take them.”
2063
01:40:43,040 –> 01:40:44,880
He says I cannot take those 300 people, I have
2064
01:40:44,880 –> 01:40:46,679
8,000 prisoners here on board, where do
2065
01:40:46,679 –> 01:40:50,639
you want me to take them. He went back and
2066
01:40:50,639 –> 01:40:52,599
the port commandant gave him a call
2067
01:40:52,599 –> 01:40:54,840
and he went back and he took us and the
2068
01:40:54,840 –> 01:40:58,400
luck was that we – all the prisoners were
2069
01:40:58,400 –> 01:41:00,199
under deck and we were the last one
2070
01:41:00,199 –> 01:41:03,320
on the highest spot, they put us
2071
01:41:03,320 –> 01:41:09,719
10 people in a small cabin for one person.
2072
01:41:09,719 –> 01:41:11,920
And the ship was anchored
2073
01:41:11,920 –> 01:41:13,800
maybe 5 kilometers out because it was a big
2074
01:41:13,800 –> 01:41:15,840
ship, and it was a small port, for
2075
01:41:15,840 –> 01:41:18,199
fishermen – we cannot go. And we were
2076
01:41:18,199 –> 01:41:20,119
standing over there in the morning on
2077
01:41:20,119 –> 01:41:21,320
May 3rd.
2078
01:41:21,320 –> 01:41:24,800
Oh, boom, shooting, what’s going on.
2079
01:41:24,800 –> 01:41:28,239
You wouldn’t even believe. And the
2080
01:41:28,239 –> 01:41:30,000
planes are coming and the Germans are
2081
01:41:30,000 –> 01:41:34,000
shooting in and for some reason they saw
2082
01:41:34,000 –> 01:41:35,840
such a big target they didn’t
2083
01:41:35,840 –> 01:41:38,239
know what was on it – the British,
2084
01:41:38,239 –> 01:41:40,000
they bombed the ship.
2085
01:41:40,000 –> 01:41:43,719
And can you imagine the
2086
01:41:43,719 –> 01:41:47,679
ship, 8,000 prisoners on it, and then
2087
01:41:47,679 –> 01:41:50,440
SS on top of it – machine guns –
2088
01:41:50,440 –> 01:41:53,920
and the 8,000 people the ship burns on
2089
01:41:53,920 –> 01:41:55,760
top, all the buildings on top
2090
01:41:55,760 –> 01:41:58,679
start burning from the bombs what they throw over there.
2091
01:41:58,679 –> 01:42:02,119
And most were Poles and Russian prisoners,
2092
01:42:02,119 –> 01:42:05,520
we were actually the only Jews,
2093
01:42:05,520 –> 01:42:07,520
300, 250 peoples.
2094
01:42:07,520 –> 01:42:11,440
And you couldn’t open the door – the door
2095
01:42:11,440 –> 01:42:15,440
opened outside in the cabin –
2096
01:42:15,440 –> 01:42:17,920
you couldn’t open the door outside
2097
01:42:17,920 –> 01:42:21,040
because it was all full with people
2098
01:42:21,040 –> 01:42:24,920
trying they fought the Germans, the fought the machine guns,
2099
01:42:24,920 –> 01:42:27,040
they fought the SS, everybody tried to escape
2100
01:42:27,040 –> 01:42:29,560
and they go out and –
2101
01:42:29,560 –> 01:42:34,840
the screaming, and we didn’t see nothing, we didn’t know
2102
01:42:34,840 –> 01:42:37,040
nothing, we couldn’t get out. 10 people
2103
01:42:37,040 –> 01:42:39,159
trapped over in the cabin and we
2104
01:42:39,159 –> 01:42:45,840
only feel the ship – listing.
2105
01:42:45,840 –> 01:42:51,800
And in the very end, four Russian and one
2106
01:42:51,800 –> 01:42:54,199
Jewish guy, Stefan, from our concentration camp,
2107
01:42:54,199 –> 01:42:58,480
for some reason, they swam the 5 kilometers, May, in the Ostsee,
2108
01:42:58,480 –> 01:43:03,360
to the port. The whole ship went down, only
2109
01:43:03,360 –> 01:43:05,679
a small spot, you know a ship
2110
01:43:05,679 –> 01:43:08,440
goes like that, and it was not so deep, only
2111
01:43:08,440 –> 01:43:10,719
a small spot on the top.
2112
01:43:10,719 –> 01:43:13,920
And looking we see the skies.
2113
01:43:13,920 –> 01:43:17,360
We see the skies, we didn’t know
2114
01:43:17,360 –> 01:43:19,360
what’s happening, he opens the round, you
2115
01:43:19,360 –> 01:43:21,960
know – the window. One guy
2116
01:43:21,960 –> 01:43:23,679
wants to go out – he cannot go out, almost
2117
01:43:23,679 –> 01:43:25,280
broke his bones, they started to
2118
01:43:25,280 –> 01:43:27,520
push him out – he can’t, he was –
2119
01:43:27,520 –> 01:43:30,560
I was always a slim person
2120
01:43:30,560 –> 01:43:34,520
and I went out and I go out and the ship
2121
01:43:34,520 –> 01:43:38,040
burned was terrible, but what the ship was
2122
01:43:38,040 –> 01:43:40,760
anchored to was big wooden post,
2123
01:43:40,760 –> 01:43:43,199
tremendous big, like that. It was
2124
01:43:43,199 –> 01:43:47,119
with a big anchor to the post
2125
01:43:47,119 –> 01:43:53,760
like big lines …
2126
01:43:53,760 –> 01:43:56,040
And I was all naked because I
2127
01:43:56,040 –> 01:43:57,560
had to take the clothes off,
2128
01:43:57,560 –> 01:43:59,840
and all naked, like a monkey, I went to
2129
01:43:59,840 –> 01:44:02,560
the big line, walk through, and
2130
01:44:02,560 –> 01:44:05,840
sat on the middle – there was, each one was
2131
01:44:05,840 –> 01:44:07,719
heavy like that like five, six, 10 of them,
2132
01:44:07,719 –> 01:44:09,679
like a small island, that would
2133
01:44:09,679 –> 01:44:12,199
anchor the ship. And I was
2134
01:44:12,199 –> 01:44:17,280
sitting up there and here, you don’t hear a sound.
2135
01:44:17,280 –> 01:44:22,719
The people – after hours – almost got
2136
01:44:22,719 –> 01:44:27,080
dark, the British got wind and it was a
2137
01:44:27,080 –> 01:44:30,119
ship with prisoners on it. And they took
2138
01:44:30,119 –> 01:44:33,119
the fishermen, they came out, and they
2139
01:44:33,119 –> 01:44:36,599
took 37 people off and I was the one kid.
2140
01:44:36,599 –> 01:44:39,520
I was like a monkey over there. And they
2141
01:44:39,520 –> 01:44:41,280
took me on the boat, I was completely
2142
01:44:41,280 –> 01:44:44,320
naked, they gave me a blanket.
2143
01:44:44,320 –> 01:44:46,840
I never remember – my sister in school,
2144
01:44:46,840 –> 01:44:49,400
she learned a little English, and started –
2145
01:44:49,400 –> 01:44:51,440
And there was a Navy – there was one of
2146
01:44:51,440 –> 01:44:54,360
the tanks, there was a big beret, he was a tank –
2147
01:44:54,360 –> 01:44:56,840
he gave me a whole bag of biscuits,
2148
01:44:56,840 –> 01:44:59,800
like a tin can, and was a
2149
01:44:59,800 –> 01:45:01,920
Navy officer came, with a staff …
2150
01:45:01,920 –> 01:45:05,000
another officer, and he came down and
2151
01:45:05,000 –> 01:45:08,400
I said to him, he said “how do you feel?”
2152
01:45:08,400 –> 01:45:11,119
in English, I don’t know, I understood a little,
2153
01:45:11,119 –> 01:45:13,760
I said “sir”, I kissed his hand I said “we
2154
01:45:13,760 –> 01:45:16,800
waited 5 years for you.”
2155
01:45:17,599 –> 01:45:21,679
and I had pneumonia, I was cold, I was –
2156
01:45:21,679 –> 01:45:24,080
they took me to the hospital
2157
01:45:24,080 –> 01:45:26,880
over there, and as the war ended it was
2158
01:45:26,880 –> 01:45:28,599
like nothing happened – the Germans,
2159
01:45:28,599 –> 01:45:31,040
right away, treat you like a patient –
2160
01:45:31,040 –> 01:45:36,960
it’s the – the change was so drastic, the
2161
01:45:36,960 –> 01:45:39,639
racial policies, you see after the war the
2162
01:45:39,639 –> 01:45:42,520
German women with black soldiers,
2163
01:45:42,520 –> 01:45:46,440
it’s like everything – like there was no
2164
01:45:46,440 –> 01:45:49,520
Hitler, was no Nazis, nobody was a Nazi,
2165
01:45:49,520 –> 01:45:51,159
everything was like “Mitgang” as they
2166
01:45:51,159 –> 01:45:53,520
call it, like they have to run after him,
2167
01:45:53,520 –> 01:45:55,599
everybody denies it – we didn’t know nothing, we
2168
01:45:55,599 –> 01:45:58,639
didn’t know nothing, we were – it was not
2169
01:45:58,639 –> 01:46:01,080
our fault. I went to the hospital, it was all
2170
01:46:01,080 –> 01:46:03,480
German staff, they treated me like a real patient.
2171
01:46:03,480 –> 01:46:07,639
Maybe they were afraid of the British.
2172
01:46:07,639 –> 01:46:11,360
And this was my ordeal that I survived.
2173
01:46:11,360 –> 01:46:13,320
How I survived, I don’t know, but that’s
2174
01:46:13,320 –> 01:46:15,679
what I’m telling you – from 8,000
2175
01:46:15,679 –> 01:46:18,920
people, 37 they took off the boat, and the rest all
2176
01:46:18,920 –> 01:46:22,000
drowned like mice. Only the five swam. The next
2177
01:46:22,000 –> 01:46:24,119
year, I was over there in Neustadt and we used to
2178
01:46:24,119 –> 01:46:25,920
go, it was normal after a year, we used
2179
01:46:25,920 –> 01:46:27,880
to go swim – you couldn’t swim, you’d get a
2180
01:46:27,880 –> 01:46:31,560
terrible rash. And the next spring,
2181
01:46:31,560 –> 01:46:34,239
the bodies used to swim out all blown up
2182
01:46:34,239 –> 01:46:36,280
like that and the British used to take the German
2183
01:46:36,280 –> 01:46:38,400
prisoners of war to pick them up,
2184
01:46:38,400 –> 01:46:41,000
the bodies over there.
2185
01:46:41,000 –> 01:46:43,000
The same year, the next year, they brought
2186
01:46:43,000 –> 01:46:45,440
underwater divers with special cutting
2187
01:46:45,440 –> 01:46:47,639
tools and they opened up the ship,
2188
01:46:47,639 –> 01:46:49,599
the whole of the ship, and started
2189
01:46:49,599 –> 01:46:54,840
taking out the –
2190
01:46:55,119 –> 01:46:58,280
and I understand there’s a guy,
2191
01:46:58,280 –> 01:47:01,280
Adam my foreman and everything,
2192
01:47:01,280 –> 01:47:03,080
his brother, his two brothers with him,
2193
01:47:03,080 –> 01:47:05,360
they all died over there by trying to get out.
2194
01:47:05,360 –> 01:47:08,480
For some reason, if the ship would go to
2195
01:47:08,480 –> 01:47:12,360
the other side, I don’t know –
2196
01:47:12,360 –> 01:47:20,520
I believe – I don’t know – and that’s what
2197
01:47:20,520 –> 01:47:23,119
I also told you. I was sure after the war,
2198
01:47:23,119 –> 01:47:25,320
the world is going to hold on my hands and
2199
01:47:25,320 –> 01:47:27,560
nothing were they going to refuse you.
2200
01:47:27,560 –> 01:47:31,320
What they did to you, they put you in a DP camp,
2201
01:47:31,320 –> 01:47:33,800
and they gave you a soup a day and said
2202
01:47:33,800 –> 01:47:35,840
“my dear friend you’re on your own, that’s
2203
01:47:35,840 –> 01:47:39,199
it be happy, be happy you survived.”
2204
01:47:39,199 –> 01:47:41,440
Yes, they gave you every night, it was a
2205
01:47:41,440 –> 01:47:43,080
military camp they have a big cinema,
2206
01:47:43,080 –> 01:47:44,480
every night they give you a German –
2207
01:47:44,480 –> 01:47:47,639
these comedies, a movie and that’s
2208
01:47:47,639 –> 01:47:50,679
what it – and Jews were
2209
01:47:50,679 –> 01:47:53,000
lucky because we have the …
2210
01:47:53,000 –> 01:47:55,639
the United Jewish Relief, and they sent
2211
01:47:55,639 –> 01:47:57,840
everything, they – a cigarette
2212
01:47:57,840 –> 01:48:01,840
they had coffee, …
2213
01:48:01,840 –> 01:48:04,719
Was the DP camp in Neustadt? Yes. And how long
2214
01:48:04,719 –> 01:48:11,400
were you there? I was there for about 2 and a half years.
2215
01:48:11,400 –> 01:48:15,440
I worked for the Jewish Relief Unit, it was a
2216
01:48:15,440 –> 01:48:18,239
British, Mr. Cart was in charge, it was a
2217
01:48:18,239 –> 01:48:21,000
British unit. Also I was like an
2218
01:48:21,000 –> 01:48:23,599
interpreter, all these Jewish
2219
01:48:23,599 –> 01:48:26,719
to English, and we
2220
01:48:26,719 –> 01:48:29,239
had some stuff from Ireland Jewish …
2221
01:48:29,239 –> 01:48:31,920
And one Rosenberg she was from
2222
01:48:31,920 –> 01:48:39,880
South Africa. But I could go to
2223
01:48:39,880 –> 01:48:41,560
Britain, be adopted by a Jewish
2224
01:48:41,560 –> 01:48:44,440
family, go to Britain. But I decide no.
2225
01:48:44,440 –> 01:48:47,440
After what I went – I’m going to go to Israel
2226
01:48:47,440 –> 01:48:52,520
you know to be my own, it’s time –
2227
01:48:52,520 –> 01:48:54,159
Israel started fighting
2228
01:48:54,159 –> 01:48:57,840
for independence and I decide that my
2229
01:48:57,840 –> 01:48:59,639
future would be with the Jewish
2230
01:48:59,639 –> 01:49:04,400
people. Did you go into the Haganah? Yes, in Bergen-Belsen I joined.
2231
01:49:04,400 –> 01:49:09,679
I went to the Kibbutz, and over there I joined the Haganah.
2232
01:49:10,560 –> 01:49:14,679
And you lived in Israel how long?
2233
01:49:14,679 –> 01:49:16,280
For 19 years.
2234
01:49:16,280 –> 01:49:18,840
Where and what did you do?
2235
01:49:18,840 –> 01:49:23,199
First I worked in the electric
2236
01:49:23,199 –> 01:49:26,239
company, in the Israeli electric company.
2237
01:49:26,239 –> 01:49:29,440
And I was two years in the military, 1948 I
2238
01:49:29,440 –> 01:49:31,639
fought the 1948 war.
2239
01:49:31,639 –> 01:49:41,920
After, I worked in the Palestine electric company for five years.
2240
01:49:41,920 –> 01:49:46,000
After, I had my own shop for 10 years.
2241
01:49:46,000 –> 01:49:49,880
Until 1967, I fought in the 1956 war,
2242
01:49:49,880 –> 01:49:52,920
and I fought in the 1967 war in November
2243
01:49:52,920 –> 01:49:56,480
1967 I came here to the United States.
2244
01:49:56,480 –> 01:49:58,880
And your family – you married in Israel?
2245
01:49:58,880 –> 01:50:02,919
I married, my children are born in Israel, my wife is Israeli born.
2246
01:50:02,920 –> 01:50:09,239
So you haven’t been far from war all of your life?
2247
01:50:09,239 –> 01:50:13,880
Yes, you see, you can imagine that it
2248
01:50:13,880 –> 01:50:15,840
took many people decide different
2249
01:50:15,840 –> 01:50:18,159
because I was not so idealistic they
2250
01:50:18,159 –> 01:50:20,840
think different because after all I lost
2251
01:50:20,840 –> 01:50:23,880
everybody and I – war, a
2252
01:50:23,880 –> 01:50:27,119
bullet has no address – you go to
2253
01:50:27,119 –> 01:50:29,800
war you can get killed and wiped out
2254
01:50:29,800 –> 01:50:32,880
and then – 6,000 died only in the
2255
01:50:32,880 –> 01:50:34,880
Independence war – can you imagine, at that time
2256
01:50:34,880 –> 01:50:37,040
10% of the population – many of them were
2257
01:50:37,040 –> 01:50:39,560
new immigrants that no brother, no sister, nobody
2258
01:50:39,560 –> 01:50:41,920
knows about. I had some cousin over there
2259
01:50:41,920 –> 01:50:44,239
in Israel, at least somebody would
2260
01:50:44,239 –> 01:50:45,960
cry a little after me,
2261
01:50:45,960 –> 01:50:49,119
remember me. But that’s it – I
2262
01:50:49,119 –> 01:50:52,000
just disregarded everything – I
2263
01:50:52,000 –> 01:50:58,599
said no, after I went wrong, and this was a big plus
2264
01:50:58,599 –> 01:51:02,040
psychologically – they give you a big boost
2265
01:51:02,040 –> 01:51:05,800
because I know people who
2266
01:51:05,800 –> 01:51:07,560
went to other countries, who went to
2267
01:51:07,560 –> 01:51:09,480
concentration camps, they had nightmares,
2268
01:51:09,480 –> 01:51:13,560
they can’t forget – they feel they didn’t
2269
01:51:13,560 –> 01:51:15,719
feel good in the environment, there
2270
01:51:15,719 –> 01:51:19,800
was a strange –
2271
01:51:19,800 –> 01:51:23,199
Israel gave you the pride,
2272
01:51:23,199 –> 01:51:25,960
give you a prospect, give you an
2273
01:51:25,960 –> 01:51:29,560
outlook, give you – a meaning to your life.
2274
01:51:29,560 –> 01:51:32,599
You were proud – you didn’t go – in
2275
01:51:32,599 –> 01:51:35,880
1956 war, my son was born, only a month old,
2276
01:51:35,880 –> 01:51:38,960
he wasn’t even – he was circumcised
2277
01:51:38,960 –> 01:51:42,280
Wednesday and Thursday I took
2278
01:51:42,280 –> 01:51:44,280
my kit bag and I went to war, that’s it.
2279
01:51:44,280 –> 01:51:47,599
Kiss my wife and this is not a
2280
01:51:47,599 –> 01:51:49,800
thing, you’re a soldier, you’re
2281
01:51:49,800 –> 01:51:53,119
in your own country, that’s it.
2282
01:51:53,119 –> 01:51:54,960
Over the years have you found
2283
01:51:54,960 –> 01:51:58,119
it easier to talk about the Holocaust or
2284
01:51:58,119 –> 01:52:00,040
to talk about the things you talked
2285
01:52:00,040 –> 01:52:02,719
about here or is it hard for you to?
2286
01:52:02,719 –> 01:52:06,480
I don’t talk because you
2287
01:52:06,480 –> 01:52:08,920
talk about it –
2288
01:52:08,920 –> 01:52:12,800
it’s – you have kids and
2289
01:52:12,800 –> 01:52:16,560
it can bring resentment toward
2290
01:52:16,560 –> 01:52:18,560
other people, you know how it is.
2291
01:52:18,560 –> 01:52:21,960
I don’t want to poison their life.
2292
01:52:21,960 –> 01:52:24,719
I went through it, it was a –
2293
01:52:24,719 –> 01:52:28,079
but I told them always, don’t
2294
01:52:28,079 –> 01:52:32,159
forget, you were born a
2295
01:52:32,159 –> 01:52:35,159
Jew, you will live a Jew, you will die a
2296
01:52:35,159 –> 01:52:37,280
Jew. Nothing going to – don’t try
2297
01:52:37,280 –> 01:52:39,679
even to forget it, because others don’t let
2298
01:52:39,679 –> 01:52:42,119
you forget it. That’s it. You
2299
01:52:42,119 –> 01:52:45,560
stand up for who you are and be proud of it.
2300
01:52:45,560 –> 01:52:47,520
If you think you change your name, you
2301
01:52:47,520 –> 01:52:49,040
change you’ll manage, you change your
2302
01:52:49,040 –> 01:52:51,760
friends – nothing is going to help you.
2303
01:52:51,760 –> 01:52:53,920
Just stand up for your rights and that’s it.
2304
01:52:53,920 –> 01:52:57,679
And if somebody tries to tell
2305
01:52:57,679 –> 01:52:59,679
you something, that he’s better than you,
2306
01:52:59,679 –> 01:53:02,159
then let them know that he’s not. You don’t
2307
01:53:02,159 –> 01:53:04,920
have to feel …
2308
01:53:04,920 –> 01:53:07,480
human being, and you …
2309
01:53:07,480 –> 01:53:09,000
if you want to have your rights,
2310
01:53:09,000 –> 01:53:10,960
you have to fight for it, and if you have
2311
01:53:10,960 –> 01:53:14,159
to take a gun, and fight for it,
2312
01:53:14,159 –> 01:53:16,320
then you take a gun and fight for it.
2313
01:53:16,320 –> 01:53:19,199
Because that’s it or you get killed or
2314
01:53:19,199 –> 01:53:22,119
you kill somebody. There’s no way out.
2315
01:53:22,119 –> 01:53:25,280
Because the Jews, what the Jews went through,
2316
01:53:25,280 –> 01:53:28,000
they always accommodate
2317
01:53:28,000 –> 01:53:31,119
everybody, they always try to
2318
01:53:31,119 –> 01:53:33,320
smooth things out, they always try to pay
2319
01:53:33,320 –> 01:53:35,599
off to let them live, they always make –
2320
01:53:35,599 –> 01:53:39,360
find peace, and it doesn’t work.
2321
01:53:39,360 –> 01:53:42,040
It hasn’t worked for 2,000 years and it’s
2322
01:53:42,040 –> 01:53:45,199
not going to work now. That’s it.
2323
01:53:45,199 –> 01:53:47,520
Thank you very much, Mr. Biezunski, for a very
2324
01:53:47,520 –> 01:53:50,719
informative and interesting story. And thank
2325
01:53:50,719 –> 01:53:55,599
you for sharing it with us. You’re welcome.