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Oral history interview with Max Arbeiter

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.495.4 | RG Number: RG-50.061.0004

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    Oral history interview with Max Arbeiter
    Transcript
    This is Koby Rothstein.
    This is November 3, 1981, and I'm
    interviewing Mr. Max Arbeiter in Newton, Massachusetts.
    Mr. Arbeiter, would you describe those
    who comprised the members of your household before the war,
    who was actually in your house?
    My family comprised of my father, Yitzchak, my mother,
    Haggadah, and four brothers, Eliyahu, me, Mordechai, Israel,
    and the youngest, Joseph.
    What is the family's social status
    as far as religious, cultural background,
    educational background?
    What sort of status was the family?
    The family was a middle-class family.
    My father owned a tailor shop.
    He employed--
    This was in--
    In Plock.
    In Plock, Poland.
    In Plock, Poland.
    We employed some people.
    He was making suits to order, uniforms for police and people
    working for the post office and officers for the Polish army.
    What was the--
    And he was making a very good living off that.
    We belonged to the--
    because it was a large Jewish community in my city consisting
    of something around between 10,000 and 15,000 Jews,
    and so the most of the people were religious people.
    And there was many synagogues and temples
    and Hasidic temples.
    Your particular family-- was it religious or--
    My family was not very religious, but we would go--
    Traditional?
    --but traditional.
    We was going to the temple every Saturday
    for prayers, every Friday and Saturday, on the holidays.
    A little bit--
    It was a kosher house, and everything was--
    we were observing all the Jewish holidays.
    Education-wise, were you sent to religious schools,
    all the children?
    Yes, all the children was going to--
    --to cheder?
    --to cheder, and after that they was
    going to the public schools.
    My older brother went to the gymnasium,
    and I had a few years of lyceum.
    Did anyone start to work before the war, anyone of you
    or [INAUDIBLE]?
    In the--
    Up until the war.
    In mine city, anybody that could work was working.
    I started to do some tailoring when I was about 10 or 11,
    and I was helping out after school.
    After school, I was helping out my father.
    Everyone did the same?
    The other brothers--
    Everyone.
    Everybody was helping out.
    Were there any antisemitic experiences
    that you can remember as a young child, any incidences--
    There was very-- there was a few antisemitic happenings which
    are worth to remember.
    One specially-- we had a cathedral in mind town where
    the bodies of the two Polish kings--
    it was Kazimierz Wielki and the King Krzywousty.
    This was the nicest place in our city, on a high hill,
    and at the bottom of the hill the largest Polish river,
    the Vistula, was flowing by.
    There was gardens there with flowers.
    So every Saturday after the prayers
    and after the meal, Jews used to come
    there and having a nice time congregating in this place.
    One day, the students from the near gymnasium--
    we had two gymnasiums in our city--
    decided to beat up the Jews.
    And a couple of them came with sticks and iron clubs,
    and they were starting to--
    most of the people coming there was not the youth.
    The youth that afternoon was busy with other things,
    with other--
    and the older generation was going in this place.
    And they came, and they beat really badly
    up the women, the children, and the older men in that area.
    You saw this?
    Yeah.
    What age were you?
    What age were you at the time?
    What age were you--
    About 16.
    The police was around, but they didn't intervene.
    So then the next day, the leaders of the Jewish community
    went to the Polish starosta complaining about that.
    He said, if our children don't want you there, then don't go.
    Find you another place that you congregate.
    But the Jewish youth organized in different Jewish clubs
    like the Maccabi, the Hakoah, the Dror,
    decided that it's our country like theirs,
    and we are not going to be pushed around,
    let our people be beaten up.
    So we organized themselves a couple hundred of us,
    and the following Saturday, we went there and with--
    we had pieces of wood and different--
    all kinds of stuff to protect ourselves.
    And when the students came, we really gave them
    a beating good.
    There was more of us than them.
    They didn't expect that.
    And we really gave them a beating,
    that we brought some arms and really beat them badly up.
    And the police came.
    Then the police came, and they arrested--
    they arrested some of our people.
    So I remember, too, there was once
    a case that an older Jew was killed
    right in front of our house.
    He was going to prayer on Saturday morning,
    and he was killed.
    There was--
    What was the reason?
    Just antisemitic thing.
    He just-- a Christian just--
    How much time before the war?
    A Christian just ran over-- this is before the war.
    It was about, let me see, maybe a half a year before the war.
    The situation started to get bad about a year before the war.
    They started to boycott the Jewish stores.
    There was a Christian organization named
    [NON-ENGLISH],, and this was the Polish fascists.
    And they organized groups, and they
    was standing in front of Jewish stores
    with signs saying, "Don't buy from Jews,"
    "Jews, leave the country," "You're eating our bread,"
    things like that, and preventing Christian customers
    to go in the Jewish stores.
    Or there was a few cases that was beating up
    students in the gymnasiums.
    I had once a very--
    I had once a fight in the school where I was going.
    There was a classroom, about 40 students in the class,
    and there was three Jews.
    And we was being bothered every day was coming to school.
    One day, I was sitting in my desk, and the student behind me
    took the pen and put it in the ink
    and just went over my back of the pen of the side of my face.
    I turned around, and I told him to stop it.
    You'll do it once more, you'll have a fight.
    He didn't do it.
    I was sitting and waiting, keeping
    my pen ready with the point towards him, and not long
    after, he again put a piece of paper in that ink
    and went over it again over my neck.
    I just twisted and hit him with the pen right in the eye.
    It was a very big commotion.
    I was thrown out from--
    I was thrown out from school.
    And there was other--
    there was other--
    Incidents.
    As closer to the war, the--
    It became worse.
    That became worse, and the antisemitism
    was getting stronger.
    And there was a telling by the government
    official to leave, to go to Palestine,
    and we felt that the situation for the Jews
    is getting worse day by day as closer it come to the war.
    The closer it got to the war, what sort of options
    did your family have closer to the war it got?
    Did they have options of leaving or staying?
    Did they have those sort of options as the war came closer?
    There was no-- there was no options.
    We had relatives in the United States, my uncle,
    and we have here two aunts and other relatives too.
    And they was trying to take us-- to help us
    to come to the United States.
    When, '38, '39?
    Yeah, '38, '37, really.
    They started '37.
    And we got quota numbers from the American government,
    but the quota was so huge that the war broke out,
    we never had the chance to--
    But you were thinking about leaving?
    Yeah, we was planning to leave.
    It was just not in time.
    Yeah.
    How old were you when the war broke out,
    when the war started?
    Probably 18.
    And what happened?
    How did the family respond?
    What exactly happened when the war broke out?
    The war broke out in September '39, and in about seven days,
    the Germans--
    --overtook the town.
    --overtook the town.
    When they was coming close to it, all the youth--
    the Polish government announced on the radio
    that people which--
    the youth should cross the river, the Vistula,
    to the other side, because Poles didn't give any resistance
    on this side, that we are going to resist the Germans
    from the other side.
    We won't let them cross the river.
    So me and most of the youth of my city
    crossed the river to the other side, which the name of it
    is Radziwie.
    But the Poles were so disorganized
    that I never got a gun.
    This is now the Polish army.
    You were not in the Polish army, were you?
    I was in Polish Przystosowanie Wojskowe, which means--
    A youth organization of some sort or--
    It's preparation--
    --for the army?
    --military preparation before the army.
    So I used to go with the Polish-- with the Polish army
    to learn how to shoot, how to use guns,
    going through military equipment.
    We used military equipment.
    So I was expecting there to get a uniform to get to me, but--
    Nothing happened.
    Yeah, nothing.
    It was so disorganized that the Germans was coming
    with airplanes and was bombing.
    All the highways was blocked with Polish--
    the Polish army which crossed that river, and they
    are supposed to give resistance.
    So they blocked all the highways,
    and thousands and thousands of people, of young people,
    crossed the river too.
    There was a terrible crowd there.
    No one could move any place.
    And the Germans came, and they were just
    throwing bombs and machine-gunning
    and killing thousands of people.
    There was no-- the Poles was shooting back a little bit with
    cannons, but--
    Not much resistance.
    But the whole-- they was holding them
    back maybe for another week or so, maybe 10 days.
    And they crossed it finally.
    They blow up the--
    there was two bridges there.
    The Poles blew up the--
    blew up the bridges.
    But finally, the Germans made pontoon bridges,
    and they crossed.
    And when they crossed there, they
    started to chase us we should go back to our places
    where we came.
    So then we--
    --went back home.
    We tried to cross the river back,
    which wasn't one of the easiest thing
    because the bridges was destroyed.
    So we was trying to use little boats, and it took me a week--
    To cross?
    --to cross the river.
    It was a week on the other side because the Germans was--
    they was picking up women and children,
    and all the men was waiting for less.
    So I was a week waiting for that opportunity to--
    --to get back.
    --to get back.
    What did your family do when it started?
    My parents was still-- they're doing--
    still running the tailor shop.
    As if nothing happened?
    As if nothing happened.
    It didn't affect them that much in the beginning?
    In the beginning?
    No, it didn't affect them at all.
    So was the first change actually that took place?
    After a while, the Germans announced
    that the Jewish people have to give
    a huge contribution of foreign currency,
    and they arrested about 60 Jewish people.
    They put them in jail, threatening
    that if the money will be not delivered
    in a week or two weeks, all of the Jews--
    those people will be killed.
    So the families of those people, the Jews,
    was just getting money together to make that contribution,
    which was a huge contribution which emptied all the pockets--
    all the money what the people had.
    And after they received the contribution, they killed--
    they shot the people they--
    they shot the people anyway.
    One of them was my neighbor next door by the name of Kerstein.
    What else change as far as jobs and school--
    Then they organized a Jewish committee--
    The Jews?
    --with the name Judenrat.
    The Germans.
    They used to come in the houses and grab Jews
    for work and in a very brutal way.
    There was beating and killing Jews
    while grabbing them to work, coming in the house
    and breaking up things.
    So the Jews decided that it would be better to do it--
    if they need-- if the want Jews to work,
    they do it in a civilized way.
    So they organized the Jewish committee named the Judenrat,
    and the Germans used to come every morning and say,
    we need today 500 Jews, or we need 200 Jews.
    So the Jewish Judenrat just called and ordered
    Jewish people to come to the Judenrat,
    and it was done voluntarily.
    And so some of the work was needed, but most of the work
    was not needed at all.
    It was just-- it was just to--
    They created work.
    Yeah, they created things just to-- and it was--
    on the work, there was--
    they just mistreated the Jews.
    I, as a tailor--
    they--
    --work for the SS Obersturmführer.
    --occupied the gymnasium named after Jagiello.
    And over there was the headquarters of the SS.
    So they came to the school, to the community [NON-ENGLISH],,
    and they asked-- they need a tailor.
    So they knew that we are tailors,
    and they came to my house.
    And my father was scared, seeing an SS man,
    so I volunteered, and I went.
    Your father didn't want to go?
    He got scared, seeing the guy with the machine gun,
    and they know how they mistreating people.
    So I volunteered, and I went.
    I said, I'm a tailor, and I went.
    And the SS man with the machine gun
    was taking me over to that gymnasium, Jagiello,
    and took me up to the second floor.
    And there that SS general was, and he gave me his pants
    to-- his uniform to press.
    I was pressing his uniform, and he was telling me that from now
    on, every 7:30 in the morning, I have to be here
    to press his uniform.
    He asked that every day--
    Every morning?
    Yeah.
    Every day before he put on this uniform, I have to press it.
    So every morning, I was going to there and pressing his uniform.
    So he was giving me other things to make for him after.
    Yes, I had a boat on the river, on the Vistula.
    I made for him some swimming trunks and other things
    that he needed.
    While I was looking there in the window,
    they brought in some Jews sort of for work,
    and they gave them to clean out the ovens.
    They was burning coal there.
    It was in the winter, and they was to clean out the ashes--
    the ashes were still red--
    to make the new-- this is from the night,
    to make new fire for the day.
    And I was looking through the window how
    they was tying up some Jews there
    and there are some trees there.
    They put the ashes, the hot ashes on their heads.
    And they was very badly burned.
    And they was beating them.
    I noticed there how the Jews was carrying
    the-- they ordered the Jews to carry a very big wooden box.
    They asked them to put the nails in it, all around on all the--
    on all the panels nails.
    And then they took two Jews and pushed them in in that box,
    and they locked up that--
    they nailed up that box.
    I seen ordering other Jews--
    asked them to carry that box, and they carry it
    up two flights of stairs, and they asked them to dump it.
    Those two Jews lying in that box--
    they died from being--
    the nails was just--
    I came back later on to the Jewish Community
    Council or the Judenrat.
    I told them what I seen there.
    What could I do?
    I don't know if they mentioned anything
    or they mentioned at all.
    It was part of the--
    just the [INAUDIBLE] life of the Jews, and the Jews were living.
    This thing was going on until they ordered again
    that the Jews have to write down all their possessions
    for a certain date, and if this wouldn't
    be written on paper in a certain date-- like our place,
    that all the machines we have, all the Singers we have,
    all the material we have, and all the people that
    have businesses, stores, everything of their merchandise
    has to be written down.
    If everything would be skipped, they'll be shot.
    So everybody done this.
    They gave an order that they should be delivered
    to the magistrate, which is--
    and a week later, there was a new order,
    that if any of the stuff will be missing-- from now on the Jews
    had not the right to sell it.
    If this would be--
    [INAUDIBLE] are missing, the Jew will be killed.
    They came after that with--
    they asked them to-- they asked the Jews to hold this.
    And then they came with trucks, and they took everything away.
    They came to our house, to our shop,
    and they took away all the machines
    and everything of any value.
    And that's what they done with other things from Jews.
    After that, they just gave an order
    that all the Jews living from the city have
    to gather in a certain section, a few of the streets
    which are the most dilapidated streets, not the good streets,
    have to live just in one area, and they call it the ghetto.
    And they announced that anybody who would be found out
    of the ghetto will be shot.
    When was that?
    When was it set up, the ghetto, what year?
    Well, this is about 1940.
    A year later, the ghetto was set up?
    Yeah.
    And the Jews from all the city was
    dragging in any position they had like beds and mattresses.
    Was it closed off?
    It was not closed off, but there was--
    they made a map.
    They put it on the walls of the city
    that everybody should know where the area--
    --where the ghetto is.
    --where the Jews-- where the ghetto is, and anybody
    will be shot, will be-- like I mentioned,
    if you were found outside, will ever go out of ghetto
    will be shot.
    So people was crowding into that--
    became very crowded there, and there was scarce of food.
    There was no food.
    Food started-- Jews started to smuggle in food from--
    Where did you finally find the place?
    What kind of place did you find?
    Our place was in the ghetto.
    So you didn't have to move.
    No, it was the first house.
    Our house was in the first-- the first house from the ghetto.
    So we didn't have to move.
    We stood in our place.
    And what was it like to be enclosed?
    The only change was that it was crowded,
    and there was not much food.
    There was not much food, and--
    Any medical attention?
    We had-- there was Jewish doctors, which was--
    which was there from the other places.
    They was in the ghetto, and they was helping Jews.
    There was no much medicine, so we done--
    we done with the services there was there.
    Any schooling at all or religious life?
    The religious life was going on.
    And school?
    What happened to--
    Jews couldn't go anymore to the--
    there was not-- all the schools was closed--
    Within the ghetto?
    On the outside of the ghetto.
    In the ghetto, there was still cheders going on.
    There was this school going on.
    There was a HaZamir, which is a choir which was performing,
    and there was a Jewish paper going out.
    The cultural life was quite rich.
    Even in the ghetto.
    Even in the ghetto, yeah.
    Was is there any smuggling going on or food or--
    Yeah, there were kids without--
    like five, six, seven years old and which--
    they looked more not Jewish, but were blond.
    So they was sending them out from the--
    To get food?
    To get food.
    At that time, I got a job in--
    I got a job in a German--
    in a German company.
    You did it?
    Yeah.
    It was through that SS general.
    There was-- all the merchandise which was taken away from
    the Jews--
    outside of the ghetto, they took a few buildings.
    And they made a giant department store,
    and all the merchandise like shoes and clothing was--
    trucks was bringing it in there, and this was for Germans,
    for Germans only, and the Germans
    was getting it on coupons.
    It was rationed, rationed like.
    I got a paper from the owner from that place which
    was Mrs. Lee, which was the sister of the Wirtschaft
    Ministerium in Berlin, and she was the manager of this place.
    And while being there, I was helping a little in smuggling.
    There was-- the store was on the border of the Jewish ghetto,
    so I broke the wall, made a hole in the wall,
    and I was taking merchandise from there.
    I was carrying out-- every day, after the day of shopping,
    there was empty boxes, so I was supposed to take those empty
    boxes and bring it to the end of that--
    of that place for the garbage to take away.
    So I was filling up every day some boxes and merchandise
    from there, and I was bringing cover to that wall.
    And I made--
    I broke one of the walls, and I was pushing it
    through the other side.
    My younger brother was coming from the other side
    and was taking it away.
    It helped us to--
    it helped us to make a living.
    No one saw this?
    No one--
    I was taking-- I was taking--
    I was taking a risk, but I was doing it.
    How much was it guarded, the ghetto?
    How well was it guarded?
    Guarded?
    There were just patrols.
    There were just patrols walking back and forth on the outside,
    not too--
    Not too well.
    Not too well-guarded, no.
    If anybody wanted to go out of it, I assumed they could,
    but the threat of death was enough to keep the people in.
    But to live, there was-- we had to do-- we had to manage.
    So that's why everybody was trying
    to do something to stay alive.
    How long did this sort of lifestyle go on?
    How long was that for?
    What were you-- what were your brothers doing
    at the time and your family in the ghetto at the same time?
    They was doing the same thing.
    There was no--
    They worked--
    Yeah, there was-- they took away the-- they took away the--
    --machine.
    --the machine for us, from us.
    [? --or the guns. ?]
    But in the next-- our next door neighbor, which was a doctor--
    feldsher, we called him in Plock-- they had a machine.
    So your father worked?
    Yeah, so we couldn't work in our place, but they couldn't--
    because they couldn't find out that we didn't give them
    everything.
    It would be like ours, so they would've shot.
    So they gave us a room in their apartment.
    And your father worked there and your brothers?
    Yeah, we was working there.
    Tailoring?
    Yeah, and they doing tailoring in their apartment,
    and in the place where I was, they
    took away all the equipment, and I smuggled back
    some material, silk, needles, all kinds of threads.
    So we have--
    So you were able to continue sewing.
    So we continued to--
    How long did this last for?
    This--
    This lasted until February 27, 1941.
    And on that day, thousands of Germans surrounded the ghetto.
    February '41?
    Yeah, February 27, '41.
    And they very brutally came in Jewish houses,
    screaming "Juden raus," beating and killing people
    and pushing them-- hitting them to leave their apartment
    or not giving a chance anybody to take anything.
    And--
    --loaded that-- was pushing in, beating the Jews to--
    --get on the trucks.
    --to get on the trucks, hitting them with the guns,
    and packing in those trucks the Jews like sardines
    the Jews were very crowded there,
    and those trucks took the Jews to the Polish-Prussian border
    near Konigsberg.
    This is you and your family as well?
    Yeah.
    You were on the trucks as well?
    Yeah.
    Where were they taking you to?
    To a place of the Polish-Prussian border.
    Used to be there the Polish border army.
    Or the border police used to live in those barracks.
    There was the military-- a military camp,
    a Polish military camp.
    And they made a camp of it.
    While they came there, there was these empty blocks,
    empty buildings.
    We had to-- we were there for a few weeks, laying on the floor,
    down, without any heat.
    Everybody from your town, all the Jews from your town.
    All the Jews-- all the Jews from my-- all the Jews
    who survived from the town.
    And they was just giving us just water with potato skin
    and a piece of black [INAUDIBLE]..
    And what were you doing there, nothing in the day time?
    No, there was just--
    they ordered that the Jews had to go through a screening,
    and there was two boxes there, two wooden, big boxes.
    And there was two SS men with machine guns staying
    near the box, and every Jew have to go by in the middle
    and through in all these valuables in the boxes.
    And one box was for watches, but in the-- watches and gold
    and other things.
    The other box was for foreign currency.
    Those Jews that went through to that screening after that
    was transported to the train and transported
    to the Russian border.
    Or at that time, the German government organized sort
    of a miniature Poland, which they called [NON-ENGLISH]..
    And Frank, General Frank, was the--
    he was the leader of-- he was the manager on that place.
    And so the place where they took us--
    they was taking Jews to all kinds of places in that area,
    to Warsaw too.
    The place where they took us was the name Starachowice.
    Starachowice, another place was the Wierzbnik.
    This is you and your family?
    They took the whole--
    Yeah, they took us there, and they put us in the market.
    And they ordered the Jews there that the Jews had to--
    the Jewish people living there have to divide--
    have to take-- every Jewish family
    have to take some Jews from the market home.
    So our Jewish family took our family,
    and we was living together with them in their apartment.
    In what town?
    Where--
    Starachowice.
    It's in Poland?
    In Poland.
    So I would say between Radom and Warsaw.
    What was the purpose of it?
    The purpose was to clean up the area of Plock,
    it was near Prussia.
    And they wanted to make it Judenrein
    to make it a German province.
    And later on, some Germans was moving in the town
    because they wanted to make this area clean of Jews.
    So they brought you to an area where they wanted other Jews
    to take you in?
    Yeah, yeah.
    And those Jews took us in.
    And was again-- there was a ghetto there.
    They made a ghetto there, and they was living together
    with the other Jews.
    With another family?
    Another Jewish family.
    All the--
    So who's living-- was your whole family together
    still at that time?
    Yeah.
    All your brothers?
    Yeah.
    It was a large, rich Jewish family at that time.
    They owned a baker shop.
    They still owned the baker shop at that time,
    and they had-- they owned-- they occupied
    the whole building, the family, a three-story building.
    And we got we got--
    Your parents were still there?
    Yeah, we got-- we was living with them together,
    and we're eating together.
    And we was cooking together.
    How was that?
    We become one large family.
    How was that ghetto in comparison to the one in Plock?
    How were the conditions there?
    Oh, the condition there was--
    Worse or--
    --in beginning, better than it was in Plock for a while.
    And they-- the Germans ordered there that there was no--
    they wasn't giving any Jews--
    any food to the Jewish ghetto.
    But in this place, they had ammunition factories,
    Starachowice.
    And they was making there parts for U-boats.
    They was making bullets.
    They was making cannons, all kinds of--
    they was making iron.
    So they announced that any Jew that wants food--
    they still go to work, work in those-- then it was factories.
    And they will get a card.
    They will get coupons, and they'll
    be able to get some food.
    So I and my brothers went to work,
    and I was working in a factory making parts for U-boats.
    And my other brother was working making bullets.
    He was making 55 for cannons.
    And what did your parents do?
    My parents again found--
    Something to do?
    The family had a machine, so they were still tailoring.
    And we sort of--
    You managed.
    --managed.
    There wasn't too much of food, but we managed to--
    How long did go on, this ghetto?
    And on October 27, 1942, the Germans
    surrounded this ghetto in a very vicious way,
    beating and killing and shooting.
    They was just beating and chasing the Jews
    up to the market.
    Just one day, they came in and started to shoot?
    Yeah.
    And they gathered all the Jews on the marketplace
    and announced that those people which
    are employed in any of those ammunition factories
    should step out.
    So me and my brothers--
    we worked there.
    We just stepped forward, and they gathered us in one group,
    and they asked us to march.
    And they marched up to a place called Zimnica, which was again
    a Polish army camp, and put us in wooden barracks,
    a military place.
    And the other-- or my parents--
    they all the rest of the Jews.
    They packed in cattle wagons, on a train
    and sent them to a extermination camp called Treblinka.
    And they gassed them there.
    This is what you heard?
    Yeah.
    It was--
    How far was that?
    Not far.
    I don't know exactly the mileage,
    but it was in the area.
    And when we was living in those barracks,
    and continue to march.
    It was marching every morning back to the factories,
    and we used to work making a--
    on the same jobs that we had before,
    working on the same work, and living in those
    barracks with the small rations of a piece of bread a day
    and again potato skin in water and a cup of chicory.
    The four brothers and you were always together?
    Not the four brothers.
    The older brother, Eliyahu--
    the first month when the Germans came in, he was taken to work,
    and he was very beaten-- he was very badly beaten and injured.
    After he came back from work, he just decided--
    he just decided that he couldn't take it anymore,
    and he crossed the--
    he crossed the river Vistula and was traveling
    to the Russian border.
    And he crossed to-- he crossed to Russia.
    What happened?
    He went to the city of Lemberg, Lwów, and he went there to--
    he went there to school.
    And after that, he was sent to the Urals in Russia,
    and he was teaching English there.
    He was an English teacher.
    And after the war, my brother went to Russia
    to find out what happened.
    We never heard-- in the United States,
    my relatives were getting letters from him and contact
    from those places, from Lwów and from--
    the city named Ufa in the Ural Mountains.
    That's why we knew that he went there.
    And after the war, we just never heard of him.
    My brother went to Russia to find out.
    He was told by the Russian authorities
    that voluntarily he left his job as a teacher in the school
    there and he went to--
    he disappeared someplace.
    No one knows where he went.
    You don't know where he is now?
    We still don't know where he is.
    The youngest brother, Joseph, went with my parents
    to the extermination camp.
    OK.
    So there are two of you left.
    Three.
    There was five of us.
    Five brothers.
    The three of us.
    Three of us are left.
    When Eliyahu left, was any of the other-- any of you--
    others of you thought about doing the same thing as him,
    leaving to Russia?
    We thought that we're going to hear from him.
    Then he left, he said he'll get in contact with us.
    And anything will be able to tell us how it is there--
    Then you'd go.
    --tell us how to do it.
    But how would you have heard from him?
    Where would he have written to you, in the ghetto?
    Well, we didn't know-- we didn't know how it's going to be.
    This was in the beginning, when the Germans just came in.
    I see.
    Yeah, this was still this was still 1939.
    But no one else thought about going with him?
    He was--
    With our family?
    No, he went with a few friends from the gymnasium.
    But we never heard of him, and we don't know--
    --where he is.
    --don't know were he is.
    And what happened to the three of you, the two brothers?
    You continued to work?
    We still continued-- we was working in the cylinder--
    in the ammunition factory in Starachowice.
    It was-- and we got a new commandant there,
    and he stopped-- and he was very--
    a very bad, sadistic guy.
    And he had a pleasure of shooting Jews.
    Every morning, his biggest pleasure
    was he shot at Jews, the first Jew he
    met when he came to the camp.
    He was living outside the camp, and he
    was mistreating-- the Germans was
    mistreating very badly people.
    And this was going on until August 1944, when--
    Two years you--
    Yeah.
    Approximate two years you were working in the munitions camp?
    It was in the munitions camp.
    And what were what were your conditions
    physically, health-wise, you and your brothers?
    What was the physical condition?
    We was getting, I would say, skinnier, but we managed.
    We managed.
    It was tough.
    We was working hard, and--
    Any medical attention?
    No.
    There was really no medical attention.
    If someone got sick, they just did away with them?
    Or what did they do with people that they--
    Yeah, if someone got sick, they got shot.
    And this was two years?
    What happened afterwards?
    And so in August of '44, we heard rumors that the camp is
    going to--
    that they're going to liquidate that camp,
    and so we organized--
    How big was that camp?
    How many people?
    I would say probably 15,000 to 20,000 people.
    Just men?
    No, the most was men, but there was a few women.
    Mostly Jews or--
    All Jews.
    All Jews.
    All Jews.
    And then in 1944, we start to organize ourselves
    a little bit whatever we could.
    We got a few guns, so we had decided that--
    How'd you get the guns?
    It was smuggled in.
    While I was working in the ammunition factory,
    there was Christians working there too, professionals.
    And there was German engineers there
    and German professionals, so for money we got a few guns.
    And we decided we're going to break out.
    So there was four posts with Germans and machine guns
    in four corners of the camp, so we
    have decided that we're going to send over
    four Jewish policemen-- in the camp was Jewish policemen which
    was taking care of us.
    The Germans was outside the camp.
    Most of them-- there were some coming in the camp, too,
    and the four guards was in the four corners of the camp.
    We decided that the best thing to do to take the four--
    to take four Jewish policemen and try to send them over
    to the place where the guards are and try to talk to them--
    --occupy them.
    --occupy them and, if possible, to shoot them or--
    and then we'll be able to break out.
    We prepared some iron pieces that we
    smuggled in from the ammunition factory, iron bars, and--
    Was that camp closed off?
    This place was closed off, yeah, with a fence,
    with a double fence, two fences.
    You would have to climb over it?
    We have to climb or break it.
    And when they started to--
    it seems that the organization--
    because there was a few families there with women and children,
    those were the families of the policemen.
    And the rumor spread very fast between the Jews
    that this is going to happen.
    Everyone wanted to be the first one to get out.
    So not waiting for the signal, not--
    it was at night.
    It was in the dark, and we couldn't
    see what's going on, what the policemen are doing there,
    if they got rid of the guards.
    Someone said go, which-- the signal was not right.
    We thought that something happened, that the guards was
    taken care, and they started to run against the walls,
    against the fence and hitting it with iron bars and other thing.
    We broke it.
    We broke the fence in one big place.
    They broke a big hole, and people started to--
    --run out.
    --run out.
    Were you in the middle?
    Yeah.
    And those guys on the towers had the machine guns.
    There was one of them was--
    the signal was because one of the guards was shot.
    I see.
    This gave the signal there was a misstrike
    but the others was still there.
    Just this one was taken care of.
    This was at night, in the dark, when the people
    couldn't see what happened.
    They thought that this is it.
    And they started to run, and the other three
    started to machine-gun them.
    It didn't take long over there in the barracks,
    those barracks with other, some more Ukrainians and SS men,
    and they heard the shooting.
    And hundreds and hundreds of trucks
    came, and they surrounded--
    they surrounded the camp, and they
    surrounded all the area there.
    And I noticed someone was laying on the ground,
    and they shoot with the machine gun that was going on.
    And then the machine-gunning stopped.
    So I was maybe a few yards out of the fence.
    I--
    --continued to run.
    No, I pushed back.
    Back to the camp?
    I heard shooting in front of me.
    It was the guard, the trucks with the other SS men,
    the other--
    so to me, it didn't make any sense to run towards them.
    So I backed into the camp.
    So a lot of-- most of the people which was close--
    --went back.
    --went back to the camp.
    And were they shot?
    Anybody they found out of the camp they shot.
    Where were your brothers?
    My brothers was still in the camp.
    I don't know how-- if they were out, if they wasn't out,
    but they were shot there.
    The main [INAUDIBLE] and after that, the next day,
    the chief of the Gestapo came by the name Baker, and he--
    and they surrounded the ghetto with SS and Ukrainians
    and all kinds of military units.
    And they make us march to the trains.
    And I could just mention it, that after the war,
    a few years ago, I went to Germany as a witness, me
    and my brother.
    Three of us went to Germany for the trial.
    I mentioned here to the Jewish organization,
    to Mr. Robinson, about this Gestapo chief Baker and--
    You testified against him.
    And all three of us went to--
    Berlin?
    No, Bremen, Bremerhaven, to testify against him.
    The trains pulled up, and we all was packed in the trains.
    And--
    Do you know whether this instigated that whole--
    the reasoning for why people wanted to escape?
    They wanted to run to the woods to become partisans.
    Any particular reason for that time?
    Did you get a sense that the war won't stop or--
    No.
    So there was a rumor that at that time--
    that was after the Warsaw Ghetto,
    and after they liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto,
    they send some of them to Auschwitz and some of them
    to Treblinka.
    And a group of people from the Warsaw Ghetto came to our camp,
    to Starachowice.
    And the people from the Warsaw Ghetto
    told us that they killed all the Jews.
    I see.
    And they told us what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto
    and they're killing Jews in other places,
    so we decided to break out.
    It's time to break out and go in the woods and join partisans.
    But it didn't work for me.
    A few people-- a few people escaped in that breakout.
    I don't know how many, but I know some escaped.
    And what happened the next day?
    Then they packed us in the cattle trains
    again and was traveling towards Auschwitz.
    What was that like?
    Oh, when we came--
    The trip.
    The trip?
    Oh, we were so packed in those--
    they told us when we was coming in the train
    that we should behave, that we're
    going to another place like this one, ammunition factory,
    and we're going to--
    we was very good workers.
    The war is going on.
    The Germans are winning the war.
    We need workers.
    We have so much experience working a few years for them,
    and we are very valuable.
    So we should behave, and nothing will happen to us.
    Everyone got a piece-- got a huge piece of bread.
    Before you went on the train?
    Before we went on the train, and they--
    And what was that like?
    And they said that we'll come to another place,
    and we will to continue to work, and nothing will happen to us.
    No one believed-- people believed that or--
    No, we didn't believe, and there were some people
    who jumped from the--
    I was-- there was--
    they packed in all the cattle trains with people,
    but then there was still a group of maybe 50 or 60.
    There was no place where to them,
    so they brought another car, which was an open one like they
    transport coal.
    And we went in the--
    --open one.
    --in the open one.
    But in the open one, there was two--
    there was two SS men with machine guns.
    They was staying in two corners of that thing.
    And while we--
    And your brothers were in the open one?
    Yeah.
    We was always trying to--
    --stay together.
    --stay together.
    And we was traveling to--
    the train was going towards Auschwitz.
    We didn't know where it was going,
    but we're going to find out.
    And while we was on the way someplace,
    it was in the middle of the night.
    The train was attacked by partisans.
    We didn't know.
    It was just-- machine guns started
    to shoot against the train, and on the train
    was-- one car was filled with SS men.
    They all jumped off the train, and they
    started to pursue them, to pursue them to--
    that they stop.
    And they started to shoot back.
    Did you see anything?
    Were you able--
    It was a dark night.
    We couldn't see anything.
    We can just see the fire coming from the-- was woods there.
    It was coming out from the woods,
    and we can see that they was shooting.
    The SS men was shooting back.
    And there wasn't so many people on the other side,
    but there must have been a few.
    It was just some-- just a few--
    the whole thing lasted maybe five minutes.
    Within the five minutes, some of us
    started to jump from that open car.
    They tried to escape?
    They tried to escape, yeah.
    And they was all shot.
    You didn't--
    But I could see them laying.
    They was laying right in front of the--
    they didn't go far because the SS men was laying underneath.
    The laying stretched out underneath the car,
    and as soon as someone jumped off of the car--
    I wanted to run too, but I see my friend--
    I see jumped up just from the train, started to run.
    He was shot on maybe 10 feet from the car.
    I was right behind him, going to jump up already.
    But then it was already--
    he was laying there.
    So in five minutes, things quiet down,
    and then the thing continued.
    And then we went through a sign.
    And it says Oswiecim.
    How long it take to get there?
    I really don't know remember the--
    Days or hours?
    I would say probably--
    maybe two days.
    You were two days [CROSS TALK]?
    I don't remember.
    What?
    Any food or drink?
    No, just the bread, just the bread what we got.
    Or maybe less than-- maybe a day and a half.
    I don't remember exactly how much.
    It didn't take long.
    And we came-- the train pulled in through the gate
    in Auschwitz.
    It was at night, and we pulled in there.
    And they asked us to--
    when they opened the car, to lay down on the floor,
    not to stand up, just to lay down,
    not to look out out from it.
    So they started to get out with a light.
    I raised up, and I looked out because the two SS
    man went out, left--
    when we came into Auschwitz, inside, they left our--
    --car.
    --our car.
    And I see all the people in striped uniforms
    in the-- they're far away.
    The next morning, they opened all the cars, and we marched.
    There was staying there are few SS men.
    One of them was Dr. Mengele, and he was looking at us.
    And he was-- most of us then went to the--
    went to the right.
    He was-- some of them--
    the women, the children, and some people that looked pale
    or they looked small or they--
    he just pointed with the finger to the left.
    But the majority of the group--
    I would say probably 90% of us-- went to the right.
    Did people know at the time what the selection was?
    No.
    We didn't know.
    It looks that-- they took the majority because those people
    was workers.
    I don't know if you knew about that because people
    came from working camp and they've
    seen that those are people which are good for work.
    But the most of us went to the right,
    and the women and children went to the left.
    And they asked-- they told us to march to a building
    there to take showers.
    And they took away our clothes for disinfection.
    We went through showers.
    They shaved off our hair every place
    and covered us with carbol against lice
    and other things, infection lice.
    And we came out from the other door, and they gave us
    --the yellow striped uniforms, and I yelled
    and we marched to the camp.
    They call it Zigeuner camp.
    Geuner?
    Zigeuner camp.
    Zigeuner.
    Zigeuner.
    Those are the Gypsies, the Gypsy camp.
    We came in that-- we marched in that place,
    and we could see all Gypsies, all women and children,
    and they was very good dressed, and they felt them--
    they looked to be good nourished and quite happy to have
    their own leaders there.
    And they picked us in a few barracks.
    They chased out from the few barracks the Gypsies,
    asked them to-- chased them out to the field in the camp,
    and they chased us in in those barracks
    and asked us to lay down, lay down face down
    on the floor in the barracks.
    This was in the evening, and we heard terrible screaming
    through the walls, just terrible, horrible screaming.
    It just shake up-- it just shook me up,
    listening to those screaming like people screaming for life.
    We heard machine-gunning and dogs barking.
    And this was going on maybe for a couple of hours
    until everything quiet down.
    And in the morning, when he came out from the barracks,
    there was plenty bloodstains on the place there,
    and we find out that they took out all the Gypsies from that,
    which-- they was there for quite a while, for a few years,
    I think, and they put them on trucks
    and threw them in the gas chambers.
    So this was the liquidation of the Gypsies there.
    Those were German Gypsies and-- mostly German Gypsies and some
    for Romania, and they divided us and the rest of the blocks.
    They tattooed the-- gave us numbers, tattooed
    on the left arm, put us in lines and gave us tattoos on the arm.
    And they marched in another camp,
    the camp of the workers, which was the next to that field
    it was and so put us in barracks there until the next morning.
    We was going to different-- to work.
    Your brothers were still with you?
    Yeah.
    What is physically-- what did the camp look like physically?
    How big was it, Auschwitz?
    Oh, it was a tremendous complex of fields,
    like A, B, C, D. And I don't know exactly the number of it,
    but I heard it consisted of hundreds of thousands
    of people.
    This was Birkenau.
    Auschwitz was a few miles away.
    And they had-- every field had barracks on both--
    on two sides.
    In the middle was like a highway.
    There was one men's room, a huge building which was--
    there was a washroom there.
    There was some water to--
    for washing.
    Every morning, before we went to work,
    we'd run out there and you washed your face and--
    Was it well-guarded?
    Was it well-guarded?
    Every field was electric--
    --wiring?
    --electric wiring, and from the--
    there was some posts with the SS sitting there
    with heavy machine guns.
    What was your work?
    What sort of work did you do?
    My first job was--
    they was asking for mechanics, and I never
    was a mechanic in my life.
    But I figured-- but they told me, if you work--
    I found out that I came to Auschwitz the first day--
    I found out that there are gas chambers and crematoriums here
    from people which was there before,
    and they told me that if you don't work here--
    if you work, you have a chance to live a little bit.
    But if you don't work, you're going to the gas chambers.
    So then they announced if any are mechanics.
    They need mechanics.
    So I raised my arm that I'm a mechanic.
    So they marched us out on a field
    with hundreds of airplanes because it
    was a German Messerschmitts and the Russian planes--
    I could tell by the markings on them--
    and English airplanes, French airplanes.
    And there was some German engineers.
    We got tools, and we was dismantling those planes.
    Those was planes which were shot down
    or that was bombed on different airfields.
    And they was bringing it-- the trains
    was coming in to the field, a large field, with hangars
    there maybe because I helped in there.
    I don't know.
    And they-- and we got tools and was taking out the motors.
    Using the parts.
    Yeah, used the parts, and then we was loading it on--
    the aluminum was loading on certain trains,
    and certain trains came for the motors. [? And I-- ?]
    it was packed to be for metals.
    They trained you, or you just found out what to do?
    How did you know what to do?
    There was put into each plane about 10, 15, 20 people.
    So you just--
    There was no--
    It wasn't a technical--
    It was not technical at all.
    All we had to do, there was screws.
    You just screw it off.
    If it was not-- if there was nails,
    you just chopped it off with the hammer,
    with the tools what we have, just broke off pieces, not--
    they didn't ask us to be careful with this thing as long they--
    they wanted to really-- what they really
    wanted is to have separated the aluminum from the iron.
    The brothers volunteered for this as well?
    No, they was in the camp.
    What did they do?
    I really-- I really don't know.
    Did they find another job or--
    they get some other job.
    Oh, yeah.
    Well, one of my brothers got a job to clean the toilets.
    So they had a truck there, and the Jews was the horses.
    And there was a group there called the Kanalreiniger.
    It means the Toilet Cleaners.
    And they were scattered around over the-- not just our camp
    but--
    All the other camps.
    --all the other camps.
    Cleaning them.
    And that was just cleaning the toilets.
    Were there kapos around there?
    Yeah.
    What were they like?
    There was there German criminals.
    There was not just Jews but all kinds of nationalities,
    and which nationality had a different mark,
    the black mark was the criminals.
    This was mostly Germans, but those Germans--
    the German criminals was the kapos.
    They were sort of responsible of running the blocks.
    There's a blockalteste and stubendienst.
    There was others which was going out with us to work,
    making sure that they were--
    What were they like?
    It has to do, I would say, with the person.
    Some of them was bad, wanted to prove themselves
    for the Germans, to show they was--
    Show off.
    --to show off.
    And others just-- other was just interested
    that everything was to be done what they ordered to do.
    It should be done.
    And if anything wasn't or anybody went out of line,
    you got hit.
    They didn't have any guns.
    They just--
    No, they had sticks.
    So those was the kapos.
    You didn't have any bad incidences with them?
    Oh, just-- I was always a good worker.
    It was always a kick or a push or a--
    nothing to give me an injury.
    Was there was any attempts for resistance
    in this camp, Birkenau?
    And so there was--
    the resistance was in the crematorium,
    in the gas chambers.
    There was a group of Jews there which
    they called the Sonderkommando.
    They took out people from the camp,
    strong, healthy individuals, and they
    performed to work in the gas chambers
    by helping the people go into the gas chamber,
    by removing the-- cleaning out later
    the bodies because after the gassing,
    the bodies become very dirty, bloody.
    Some people were fighting for life to try to climb,
    so they scratch-- they were scratching from the crystal.
    The Zyklon B, which was thrown in,
    was make people blood coming down out from the mouth
    or from the noses.
    So there was all covered with blood and dirt.
    So the Sonderkommando, after the gassing,
    when they opened to ventilate in the place,
    the Sonderkommando went in with hoses,
    and they washed the bodies off.
    The Sonderkommando then pulled out the bodies from there
    and brought them to the crematorium.
    And other Sonderkommando groups was working in the crematorium.
    They was putting the bodies in the oven
    and later cleaning out the ashes, putting it on trucks,
    then they was bringing into the river.
    The Vistula wasn't far from there.
    They was bringing it to the river, to the Vistula,
    and they were dumping the ashes in the river.
    That was the--
    Eichmann was so efficient in his work by delivering--
    especially 1944, the trains was coming so--
    so many trains was coming that there
    was long, long lines of people in the gas chambers, and all
    what the gas--
    what the crematorium can burn was 6,000 people in 24 hours.
    But they could get more, so there was-- accumulated
    all the bodies there.
    And there was even more--
    even the gas chambers could not keep up
    with the trainloads of people coming in and all over Europe
    that there was a place there were trees
    called brzoza was growing.
    They call it because of the name of the tree.
    They called Brzezinki, and they was chasing people.
    The overflow of people that they could not gas and burn
    in the gas chambers in the crematorium they was chasing,
    bringing them over to the those-- in the woods,
    there were Brzezinki.
    And those alive was shot.
    The other bodies-- they burned everything.
    The overflow-- they was burned them there.
    And what happened after?
    How long did this last?
    I was there-- then in 19--
    at the end of 1944, the war was getting very bad.
    It was getting bad for the Germans.
    The Russians started to--
    --to get closer.
    --to go closer, so they started to clean out--
    to clean out Auschwitz.
    And every week and every few days,
    they was making transports of thousands of people [INAUDIBLE]
    came out to deep in Germany to different concentration camps,
    to ammunition factories, to--
    I was in the last group in Auschwitz.
    I left Auschwitz in January the 5th, 1945.
    The only left when I left Auschwitz was the sick people
    in the hospital.
    I remember seeing how the SS closed up--
    closed the gates from, and it was
    a very bad winter, that January, very cold, with heavy snows.
    And I tore my regular shoes.
    I tore my shoes.
    So me and a lot of people got wooden shoes
    that they got in Poland.
    And--
    Where did you get the wooden shoes
    they gave me because I lost-- my shoes got torn.
    The Germans you you?
    Yeah, in Auschwitz.
    So they got-- because I was going to--
    I was worker.
    I was going to work, so they gave me those shoes.
    And the last few thousand which was in Auschwitz came out--
    went out in Birkenau, left in that--
    left in that January the 5th, 1945.
    When we was leaving, we heard cannons,
    cannon fired in the very far distance, looks like--
    I don't know, maybe 15, 20 miles, maybe further.
    But you could hear the Russians coming.
    Yeah.
    They put us in columns.
    I don't know, thousands.
    And we marched.
    The snow was high, and the highest was, I think--
    in the snow was 3, 4, 5 feet, winter for the months
    or so which was snowing.
    And we was marching, and at night-- was
    marching during the day, and at night, they
    pushed us-- they chased us on the fields on both sides,
    cleaned up the highway, and go in the fields,
    and asked us to lay down in the snow.
    We laid all night in the snow.
    And they had guards.
    We were very close to the highway,
    and about 50 feet away from us some Germans.
    The SS men were standing with machine guns,
    and they were watching us.
    And--
    How big was the group?
    Thousands, many thousands.
    I don't know, maybe 5,000, 6,000 or something, maybe more.
    It was for miles.
    It was, this column was going for miles.
    Did people feel kind of glad at the fact
    that you knew that the Russians were so close?
    What kind of feelings did you have?
    Oh, we was--
    As you were marching.
    We had a good feeling that the Russians are coming,
    but we was going in the opposite direction.
    You could see that the Russians are coming,
    but we're going-- but that we're going away from there, so it
    was a very bad feeling.
    Some people started to run.
    Anybody just move away of 2 feet from the column,
    right away they got a bullet in the head.
    The morning-- when we woke up in the morning,
    there's hundreds and hundreds laying frozen in the snow.
    And marching in the snow, people got tired.
    This march took about two weeks.
    There was--
    No food?
    There was-- every day, there was walking,
    marching by some military barn there
    which had warm water and a piece of black bread.
    That's it?
    This was for the day.
    And one was marching--
    people was getting-- from the cold--
    They were sick?
    They was just sick and tired out.
    So they just-- some collapsed.
    Some just couldn't walk any further, I guess.
    And the Germans just left them there?
    So the Germans just asked them to go
    on both sides of the highway, those--
    how do you call it?
    Ditches.
    So they ask them to go and sit in the ditch.
    And many people are in front of me.
    They sat down and came over.
    Because on both sides was the SS man
    with machine guns and German shepherds was watching us.
    And while walking-- while marching like that,
    a German came over with a machine gun and grabbed me
    and just pulled me out, come in here.
    He pulled out another four five men,
    and he asked us to march back.
    The column was going forward, but we
    was going the opposite direction until we reached
    the end of the column, and there was there two trucks
    like in Poland the peasants used to transport
    hay or straw, those giant ones.
    And they was loaded high with military equipment,
    with machine guns, and boxes of ammunition,
    and uniforms, all kinds of things like that.
    And there was an SS man sitting on those trucks.
    They was changing.
    Some of them was marching with us, and after a few hours,
    they went up on the trucks.
    They were sitting there, and they went to watch us.
    And I came over to the truck, and there
    was about 20 or 30 Jews was there
    tied up with ropes to the truck, and they was pulling the truck.
    Pulling the truck?
    Pulling the truck, like .
    And there was two Germans on both sides,
    and they were sitting in the groups.
    And of course, it was ice.
    The snow was very, very, very high, and it was a heavy load.
    It was-- they was dragging with all their strength,
    but they picked us out to help out--
    they couldn't-- it's up the hill.
    They couldn't pull it.
    So they took us, and they tied us up with ropes there.
    We was helping them pull this.
    It was pulling.
    And two Germany was staying with whips and was whipping us.
    And if we hit something, whipped him over the head, and the Jew
    fell.
    And he fell.
    He just grabbed him and pulled--
    dragged him over to the ditch and took out the
    and gave him a bullet in the head.
    While we was pulling this through--
    we was close to the top of the hill,
    and down the hill was already fine.
    It was good.
    The men was pulling it.
    There was-- between us and the column was probably,
    I would say, maybe 200, 300 feet.
    We fell behind.
    They was marching.
    We fell behind because we was pulling up the hill.
    They walked up a certain--
    they walked away a certain distance.
    There was Germans with guns, walking near the ditches.
    The ditches was packed with people.
    Some of them-- most of them was tired out or sick.
    They couldn't walk.
    And some of them just decided that--
    the Russians are coming, so maybe
    they figured that, I'll sit--
    they told me to sit in the ditch, they're walking away.
    So I'll sit, and maybe the Russians will come.
    But the people in the front-- they didn't know that.
    But when I came over to that-- when I was pulling the truck
    and I could see that on both sides of the highway
    was going-- an SS man was walking around
    with machine guns and with other guns,
    and he was going go to each one.
    Shooting them.
    Yeah, was putting the gun right to the head, boom, boom,
    and shooting him right in the head and killing all
    those, hundreds and hundreds.
    Those ditches and miles--
    I was pulling this--
    I don't know, maybe for 5 miles or so.
    In all those 5 miles, I was just--
    they was right in front of us, and they was shooting everyone
    sitting in those ditches.
    Again, we came to a hill, and that [INAUDIBLE]..
    I could see that this would be my end.
    Another fella fell.
    He grabbed him by the neck and pulled him over to the ditch
    and gave him a bullet in the head.
    So I say, eventually, I'll die too,
    so I figured I have to find a way how to get out of here.
    He came back again and brought another five Jews
    and put them on the ropes, and the fellas,
    from those fellas which were shot, took their place.
    And we came again to a hill, and I
    was screaming to the fellas, fellas, let's go.
    Let's pull that thing up to the hill.
    And then we came down to the--
    we came to the top of the hill, and we started going down.
    I said, fellas, let's come pull closer to the column.
    And we started to--
    there was a hill--
    a good hill down.
    And the wagon started to go pretty fast with us.
    And we came pretty close to the--
    almost touching them to the column.
    The column was really-- maybe we reached it
    because the column was standing.
    They didn't go.
    It was lunchtime.
    So everyone was standing, and they was getting that food.
    And so we stopped too, and we're supposed to go over to and take
    that warm water and that bread.
    And then I took that water and that bread.
    I didn't go back anymore to that.
    I was walking with that bread, eating it,
    and keep moving forward, fast, between the people.
    The people were standing.
    They're standing, and I was walking.
    And I probably walked up--
    I don't know-- a couple thousand people ahead.
    And when I came there--
    I was there, maybe there for an hour or so,
    and then, again, everybody make a column and march.
    So I--
    You got out of it.
    I got out of it.
    I joined that group, and we was marching.
    What happened in the back--
    I understood what happened.
    There was plenty of days of marching there,
    so I assume probably those which was there with me
    probably all got--
    I'm sure they all got killed because no one--
    --survived.
    Yeah, no one was there--
    no one was there changed.
    If they got weak, they shot them,
    and they brought other ones.
    So I'm sure that all those who stayed before--
    I'm sure that no one survived.
    They was all shot there.
    And until we came--
    until we came to Austria, to Mauthausen, and in Mauthausen,
    they again came in a big building
    and again take off all the clothes
    and shower and shave again.
    But this time we didn't get any clothes, and it was winter.
    It was just the--
    it was two weeks in January, and it was very bitter cold there.
    It was snowing.
    And they came out to the other door from the building.
    They asked us to stay and wait until our larger group
    there accumulates.
    Then we're going to march to the barracks there.
    I came out.
    It was about three of us there.
    It was so bitter cold we were shivering,
    staying naked, without shoes, just naked.
    And so we started to--
    very close to-- very close to each other
    to hold one the other.
    We got to keep--
    to get some warmth.
    As more came out from there, something it was getting,
    a bigger group was just--
    one bunch of people, one crowd, and you should see.
    It was coming out--
    steam was coming out from the people
    like you would see in a cattle.
    Steam was coming out.
    It was-- you could see that steam coming out
    from that group of people.
    A few hundred people accumulated there,
    and then we marched in the snow, complete naked.
    We marched up a hill there, and it was empty, empty building.
    And all there was in the building
    and lay down on the floor.
    So we filled up that place--
    the whole place like sardines.
    There was pushing in people and just--
    and it was-- and this was not just Jews.
    There was all kinds of people.
    They was emptying Auschwitz.
    In Auschwitz there was all kinds of people there.
    So we was laying on the floor there.
    I was in that place for about 10 days,
    laying naked on that floor.
    Then they took me out and another few people,
    and a lot of people died there while they're laying there.
    They took out me and another few people,
    and we got wooden boxes with handles.
    And it was taken to the--
    any time at night, when someone died,
    or in the day, those people--
    they could have just threw it.
    They just threw them out of the building.
    So they ordered us, me and the other two guys,
    that we should take those bodies, two to a box.
    It was like a box and handles, two
    handles in the front and two in the back, just [INAUDIBLE]..
    And they put up the bodies in this
    and walk over to the crematorium there,
    and there was a window right on the ground.
    We came in there.
    There was a window there.
    I just took that, and I was carrying it.
    I covered it with a piece of white cloth,
    and they just put the box against the window
    and just raised it up.
    And the body just slipped in the window.
    There was there a piece of wood covered with metal on it.
    The body just came in contact on that and just slide
    down to the basement.
    In the basement it was almost there, and it was burning.
    It was burning bodies there.
    After being there about 10 days, I
    got I got a civilian suit and a pair of pants
    and a little jacket and a pair of shoes.
    And I was sent to a camp, to another working camp,
    and the name of it is Melk.
    Melk was a camp of Russians, Russian war prisoners,
    so they was--
    they sent in a small group of us between the Russian war
    prisoners.
    And they was building there--
    they was building a ammunition factory.
    There was the Alps, the mountains.
    That was in Austria, so there was mountains there.
    And we was digging--
    we was going every day in the morning to work,
    and there was--
    my job was to drill.
    I got an electric drill, and I was drilling holes
    in the walls, in the rock.
    And then a German was putting in dynamite in it, and that was--
    --blew it up.
    --blew it up.
    And after they blow it up, we had a iron cart like.
    It was loaded in-- it was a rail iron card.
    It was loading up those rocks and pushing it out,
    pushing it out.
    And there was building like a tunnel,
    and I was looking there for quite a while.
    So as soon as we digged out certain amount of it,
    they was bringing in machines that was making ammunition
    there, shells and [INAUDIBLE] they made an ammunition factory
    because the Americans was bombing
    Germany was already bombed at the time, the most of Germany.
    And they destroyed the ammunition factories,
    so they was building this--
    started to build ammunition factories in--
    From there, one day, I was put in another group,
    and I was transferred by truck to another place.
    And the name of this Ebensee in Austria.
    And this was closer to the mountains,
    deeper, and over there, when I came for the ammunition
    factory really going.
    What date was that?
    What month was that?
    The same thing.
    It was just enlarging and making the ammunition-- the tunnel,
    those tunnels-- there was a whole city in the mountains
    there.
    There was a very huge--
    a very huge tunnel and then was small tunnels
    going from that huge tunnels in different directions.
    And in all those tunnels they were saying--
    it was a machine there, and it was
    making shells and other equipment for the war.
    And the same thing--
    I got the same job there, electric drill.
    I was drilling.
    Most of the time, I was in water,
    and water was coming down from the walls.
    I was usually most of the time standing
    in the water to my knees.
    I was walking back wet.
    I was always wet.
    I got wet in the tunnel, and I had
    to walk for maybe an hour to an hour and a half,
    sometimes two hours.
    And it snowed.
    It was constantly-- it was the winter.
    There was snow there, and my shoes fell apart.
    So I didn't have no shoes.
    If you don't go to work, you don't get--
    you wasn't getting any food.
    I was working there.
    We was getting a piece of bread and some potato
    skins, water and potato skins.
    But if you don't go to work, you didn't get nothing
    and were starving to death.
    So I tore-- I had a blanket, so I tore pieces from the blanket,
    and I was rolling up the feet.
    And I was-- tie it up with some wire,
    and I was walking to work like that.
    I wasn't the only one.
    There was more people without shoes there.
    This time you wouldn't get any other shoes.
    You don't have.
    And I came to the work there.
    I was staying in the water again.
    So my clothes was constantly wet.
    I'm walking in the snow.
    The piece of bread got frozen.
    I felt that I'm going to--
    I think it's going to be an end of it for me.
    I was getting tired.
    My feet was starting to swell up.
    Until one day the--
    it was already-- it was already the end of April 1945.
    The Germans announced that--
    they didn't even go to work.
    No one went to work that day.
    And they told us that everybody should leave the barracks
    and go in one of the tunnels there.
    But there was-- one of the kapos just came in the block
    and said, we loaded up dynamite in that tunnel.
    Let's go.
    They're going to dynamite us.
    And that camp was maybe--
    I don't know, 5,000, 6,000 people.
    So they planned-- they wanted-- they asked everybody to come--
    was calling everybody to leave the barracks
    and go in the tunnel.
    So no one moved, so they asked everybody
    to come out on the field.
    We went out from the block, and all the thousands,
    maybe 5,000 6,000--
    and there was not too many Jews there left.
    Most of them was Russian war prisoners and Poles,
    the Yugoslav partisans.
    And this thing spread so fast around that they're
    dynamiting that thing, and the SS commandant stepped up
    on a chair, and he was talking to a loudspeaker
    that the war is coming to an end,
    that the Americans are not far away,
    and we survived all that bitter war.
    They want us-- the Germans want us to survive.
    We survived till now.
    Then they want us to survive.
    There will be fighting and there will be shooting here.
    We should all go going in the tunnel.
    After the shooting, the Americans will come,
    and then we will be free.
    But we knew that what the kapo said,
    that they unloaded dynamite there,
    so we all started to yell, no, no, we don't go,
    no, no, we don't go.
    And that German officer was so--
    he was so-- he couldn't believe it.
    He stood there.
    They couldn't believe that we're talking back.
    Before, in a situation like that, right the way
    he gave an order, and they machine us.
    They put the machine guns on us.
    But I think maybe they couldn't do that because there
    was about 6,000 of us, and there must have been maybe
    200 SS men there.
    So the people had the feeling already
    that it's coming to an end, and it looked to me that we
    was ready to jump at him.
    If they would start to shoot, we wouldn't lay there,
    just waiting for it, but we would just attack them.
    And they felt that this will be like that.
    So everyone was yelling-- all the thousands was yelling,
    no, no, we don't go, no, no, we don't go.
    He said, OK, you don't want to go?
    You want to be killed?
    OK, go back to the barracks.
    So we went back, went back to the barracks.
    For a week there was no food.
    And one night, we came out, and there was those--
    there was a machine gun standing around on the camp on those--
    and we came out, and it was quiet.
    We don't see no SS men in the camp,
    but all but we seen the SS men sitting
    on those wooden buildings, watching us.
    Something was unusual.
    It sounded something-- it felt something unusual.
    Then it wouldn't take long, and you could see on a hill
    there Jeeps--
    people in different uniforms.
    Americans.
    It was Americans, and they came over to the--
    when we seen them, we broke up the--
    when we see the Americans there, we
    didn't care that those guys are sitting.
    They were still sitting there with the machine guns,
    and we just broke--
    broke open the gate, and we--
    --ran out?
    We ran out.
    Then we run-- straight right away we started to run over
    and to--
    ran up and start dragging down the SS men from the top,
    but what it turned out, that there was old people.
    There was our men there sitting in one of the--
    to the one I ran over there, I wanted to kill him.
    He took off the helmet from his head.
    There was an old man maybe 70 years old or 80 years old.
    He started to beg, don't kill me.
    They came at night, and they took me out from my home.
    I see.
    They dressed with the machine gun.
    That machine gun has no bullets.
    They done this-- the purpose to--
    that they can go.
    They knew still go without--
    that this will keep us, that we will think really that
    that's machine guns, so we would not-- we would not run after--
    we would not attack them.
    So in the meantime, that night they left.
    They found uniforms there and empty guns and took the shells.
    They took-- maybe throw it someplace else.
    So we find the empty guns there, and then we
    came and tracked down all the four of those--
    they were old men from the next-- from the next village,
    yeah, from the next-- from the next little village.
    Did the Americans come into the camp?
    The Americans-- no, they just asked the people to go back
    to the--
    people went out.
    I went out too, out of the camp.
    I started going to hide, and they said, no, please go back.
    We just-- this patrol-- there was one with two Jeeps.
    There was, I think, eight soldiers.
    And he said, just wait here another half an hour,
    and our company is going to come with the officer,
    and he will say-- don't run away.
    Don't go no place, and we'll take care of everything.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    And when this happened, we started
    to run around the meantime and to look for kapos.
    There was the German that was still with us, the Germans.
    And then the killings started.
    Blood was just covering everything.
    We was hitting him with everything we had,
    with pieces of iron, stepping on him
    and choking him and hanging him.
    There was dozens of-- a few dozens of those kapos
    was killed at that time.
    And we went back in the back there of our barrack,
    and hundreds and hundreds of bodies was laying there.
    This was bodies from our people which died.
    They didn't have no time, and they didn't--
    there wasn't-- there wasn't mood already to continue the work,
    so they were just piling up the bodies there in the back
    of the--
    of our barrack there.
    And right after that, I just--
    I found a gun there which had an ammunition, a German belt,
    I put it around me.
    I found a bayonet.
    I put it in, ride it to the next town, to the next village.
    And I go to look for SS.
    You went out?
    You went to the village?
    I took another-- I took another fella with me.
    Yeah, in--
    I wasn't waiting for the other-- for the other Americans
    to come.
    I just went.
    And I'm not going to talk about this,
    what happened in that village there when I came.
    I just took a revenge.
    I took a gun.
    And not much because the Americans came right away,
    and they started to grab anybody who ran out from the camp
    and started to bring [INAUDIBLE]..
    Were there any SS men there?
    I got one SS man.
    He was in a civilian--
    civilian pants and had--
    all what he had--
    but I knew that they're supposed to have marks on the arm.
    I asked him to take off the jacket and the shirt.
    And the he didn't want to, but he did it.
    And I found the--
    I found the marks on his arms and this was his end.
    The Americans came.
    They found the body there, and they
    wanted to start to investigate who done it--
    very, very serious.
    It was a very serious matter there with them
    that they have to know who will killed the German, who
    killed the SS man.
    He was saying, look, this SS man,
    he was killing-- he was in the camp there.
    He was killing people.
    They just-- I don't know but no one was saying anything.
    It just probably better, then they did the [INAUDIBLE] there.
    Did you go back to camp afterwards?
    To this camp?
    No, I didn't--
    Where did you go?
    Were you in a DP camp?
    I went to another place there, and there was
    most Polish people from Poland.
    Yeah.
    A DP camp?
    Deportation camp?
    It was-- I don't know.
    The Americans organized this sort of--
    and then a few days later, the Jewish Brigade, a group--
    trucks from the Jewish Brigade came by,
    and I start to speak to one.
    You know, I was a halutz before the war.
    I was in a kibbutz for awhile in Grochow.
    Near Warsaw.
    And I met-- one of the guys that I remember from there--
    and he said to me, you know what what we're going to do now?
    We're going to Palestine.
    And I said, right.
    He said, pick up 30 of the young people
    here, healthy ones, strong ones.
    They can go to cross the Alps, and we're going towards Italy.
    And I organized-- I picked up some young people,
    and a truck came over from from the Jewish Brigade, only one,
    three, four trucks came, and there was two Israeli--
    two brigade soldiers on motorcycles.
    And we just jumped on the trucks.
    Where did they go?
    To the Alps.
    And then we--
    Through to Italy?
    Towards Italy, and then we came in the mountains.
    And went off the trucks, and they gave us
    English cans of food and bread and all kinds of things there.
    There was someone else there.
    We met someone there in the mountains,
    and we marched through the Alps towards Italy.
    We came to Brennero and Milano, and there they--
    there was a DP camp in Modena.
    And he asked us to go to that place in Modena,
    and he said, here are the Jewish Brigade group.
    It was under the English military supervision,
    which was-- this was a military-- the Italian Military
    Academy, a giant building.
    Mussolini used to speak from the balcony there.
    So a few thousand of us--
    it was bringing in other from Germany groups like that,
    and we went in this place.
    And--
    How long you were there?
    But then-- I was there maybe for two weeks,
    and at the beginning, we could go out.
    And then the English--
    the English army decided to close the gate.
    They wouldn't let us go out anymore.
    So I spoke to the group that I came with, and I said,
    we're going to--
    we have to escape from here.
    So we went to the back of the building, and we tied on--
    took our belts and some rope and the--
    Let down.
    We was just putting people down from our window, and we--
    --escaped.
    And we escaped.
    And then we went down the boot of Italy.
    This is the beginning.
    It's North of Italy.
    It was going to the South.
    And eventually, we got as far to the South as we could,
    which is Santa Maria, inside of the boot.
    And we organized that we could stay in kibbutz [PLACE NAME]..
    I met at that time in Bari, which
    was the biggest city there, with an officer from the Israeli--
    not Israeli but the Jewish Brigade
    had somewhere they had to put us there.
    And I went there to the head police.
    And I spoke to officer there, and he
    said, organize yourself there.
    And then we came to the Santa Maria,
    it was empty buildings from the fascists.
    There was a building there like a palace with the fascist--
    the fascist organization had meetings.
    There was a kitchen there, a dance hall.
    So we moved in there.
    There was no people.
    They ran away, the fascists, and we took over that building.
    There was plenty of room, so maybe 30, 40 empty rooms.
    So we-- it was-- organized kibbtuz and we
    gave it a name [PLACE NAME].
    And organized there a soccer team, and we got some machines
    and joined.
    And tailor and I made uniforms and the soccer team, and--
    Till when?
    So how long did this last?
    How long we was there?
    We was there probably around--
    during the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
    Three years you were there?
    Yeah, but not all the people.
    Now I got in contact with the people in Bari,
    in the Jewish Brigade, and then some people
    came from the Sochnut from Palestine.
    And they had some kind of some kind of a-- something
    in Bari, a headquarters, and they were sending in--
    and they were sending in people which
    was-- they was bringing over more people from Austria,
    from Germany, from both.
    And they were sending in here-- and after--
    from the [NON-ENGLISH], I got--
    it was over 200.
    And I was asked to be [NON-ENGLISH] at that place,
    and so I managed it.
    There was a kitchen there that the fascists
    used to make parties, and so we used the kitchen.
    And there was tomatoes growing in that place there.
    There were some chickens there.
    So we was getting-- and then we was getting--
    then the UNRRA organized a camp there in a little town.
    And they-- so we went to most of us,
    which was there at that time about maybe 50 or 60.
    We went and registered ourselves with the UNRRA.
    UNRRA was giving out rations, was giving us some food,
    was giving us straw for--
    it was-- I was making sacks like that to bring the straw
    to make mattresses to sleep.
    Because we would sleep on the floor.
    This was in '48?
    This was-- I was there--
    I was there in '45 already, so from '45--
    --until '48.
    --in the middle of 45, about June.
    I was there in June '45 until the establishment
    of the state of Israel.
    And then you went to Palestine?
    No.
    They did not let me go.
    Before I wanted to go, and they was sending in people
    all the time.
    They used to come in-- they told me,
    we have ready for that night 50 people.
    They shouldn't-- take away the documents.
    If they have any papers or any pictures or anything,
    take it away.
    You keep it.
    Send them to-- they'll get it in Palestine later on.
    And they're going to go--
    they're going to go in Italy or there
    was-- there was going to be a sheep,
    and this was in Santa Maria.
    It's on the ocean.
    It's a port on the ocean.
    So there'll be a sheep someplace.
    [NON-ENGLISH].
    And they said trucks were going to come from the Bricha,
    from the Jewish Brigade that we're going
    to take them to the ships.
    And so pick up really 50 from this group.
    There was about 200 there.
    And so I was doing that I picked up one by one and telling them,
    you want to go to--
    all those people was there wanted to go to Palestine,
    so it was very-- they have to keep it secret
    that others should not know because people
    were getting enough.
    They was jealous and was getting mad.
    So I was calling them one by one and telling them, OK, be ready
    for tonight, very quietly.
    Then I'll come over, and I'll just--
    you see them just walk out from there
    and down the corridor to the [INAUDIBLE] will be there.
    And trucks was coming like that, and 50
    again and 30 more and 40, and it was going back to the vehicle.
    And they left with me all the-- later on, I had a whole bunch--
    hundreds of documents, hundreds of pictures,
    hundreds of passports of different people
    from different countries in Czechoslovakia, from--
    a lot of them was not in concentration camps.
    They was hiding.
    Like people from Hungary was there, Romania.
    They did not-- there wasn't a concentration camp,
    but they had documents.
    They asked-- they left everything there.
    All what they took-- they told me what they took
    is a small package in the back.
    He was making there-- you know, in the back.
    They have to have their arms free
    to be able to climb the boat and things like that.
    What happened to you?
    And then after this was going on for about a year
    or a year and a half, I said to that man in Bari--
    I say, OK, I want to go to Palestine.
    He said, we need someone to run this thing here.
    You're doing it good.
    So we'll let you know.
    We'll let when you're going to go.
    And while this was going on, one fella came,
    and he said to me he wants to he wants to join a kibbutz.
    It had happened that I know him.
    He was a smuggler.
    He was smuggling cigarettes and heroin from--
    he was going to the mountains and bring it,
    Germany and Austria.
    And so I said to him, we don't need people
    like that in Palestine.
    He says, OK, you don't want me, I'm going back.
    And he went back to Germany.
    He went to Germany, and he met one of my brothers there.
    I didn't know that I am--
    if my brothers are alive.
    My brothers-- and he came back.
    He said, I have good news for you.
    Will you let me go to the kibbutz now?
    I said, what?
    I know where your brothers are.
    You have two brothers, and this is their name.
    He brought a picture of mine.
    When he met my brother on the train--
    he was coming on [INAUDIBLE] on the train.
    He wanted to go to Feldafing, which was a Jewish camp.
    And my brother was living in Feldafing.
    So he came on the train, and he sat on a bench there.
    My brother was sitting there, and he said to him,
    I want to go to Feldafing.
    How do I-- so he said they got a truck [INAUDIBLE] from Italy.
    He said, what's your name?
    He said, Arbeiter.
    He said, oh, I know Arbeiter, the guy
    doesn't want to me to the kibbutz.
    So he said, how does he look?
    What's his first name?
    He said, I don't know what his name is,
    but [INAUDIBLE] he took out a picture, and he said,
    my brother.
    And you'll go back?
    You're going back?
    He said, yeah, I'm going back in two weeks.
    If you go back, show him this picture,
    and tell him that his brother Ern is
    here and his other brother, Israel is here.
    So he came back on me, and said to me,
    if I'll tell you about your brother's, you'll
    let me go to the kibbutz?
    I said, don't play any tricks with me.
    You have anything for me?
    Yeah.
    Let's see it.
    He said OK.
    So he show me the picture, and he told me [INAUDIBLE]..
    I got in contact with my brothers.
    And I wanted to go to Germany to join them,
    and I was arrested in the Alps.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    By the Italian police, the Italian border police,
    the Italian border police on the Brenner Pass.
    I was crawling on the--
    I was in the middle of the mountains,
    and they hit me with a reflector.
    And they had some dogs there.
    [INAUDIBLE] dogs after me.
    I came down the mountain, and they started to investigate me,
    whether I was smuggling.
    I said, OK.
    Look what I'm smuggling.
    All what I have is oranges, oranges and bread.
    And they gave me-- there was an international commission there
    of English, American, and French officers,
    the Allied commission, and they--
    and I told them I'm a foreigner, and I didn't--
    I'm not smuggling anything.
    I was going to join my family.
    And they didn't happen to tell us they had no right to--
    they didn't have any jurisdiction on foreigners.
    So they brought me over to-- out from jail
    to the English commission.
    And the officers started asking questions about it,
    and I told them.
    I told them all my history.
    I told them--
    I showed them the number from Auschwitz,
    and I told them I went to my family.
    I find out I have some family there.
    And they told me, you have no right to cross borders.
    It's against the law.
    You have to wait until diplomatic relations will
    be established.
    Then it will be normalized and will go.
    You cannot cross borders.
    So they sent me back.
    They asked me to--
    I went back to the--
    go back where I came from.
    I left another fellow in charge in the meantime.
    I just wanted to go to talk to my brothers
    and to take them to-- bring them over to Italy
    that we should go together to Palestine.
    And so I went back to the kibbutz there,
    and I was talking to that man in Bari.
    And he said, you have to stay here.
    We'll let you know when you go.
    And this was going on until the establishment of--
    in the meantime, my brothers went to the United States.
    They told me that--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    I get in contact with them already.
    I got a letter from them.
    Another letter, they told me that they found the relatives
    and we have relatives in the United States.
    From there, contact with the relatives in the United States,
    and they go to the United States.
    We should meet in the United States
    that we won't go to Palestine.
    We'll go to the United States.
    So then in 1948, the Jewish state was established,
    and I remember the first boat came,
    The Negev, and all the rest from the kibbutz--
    I marched them over to the ship, and that was not--
    you have to go on little boats, but the ship
    was right parked in the Bari port, and that was all--
    looked up, and [INAUDIBLE].
    The Negev is still around, but they went-- this was the--
    I think one of these groups that went legally to Palestine.
    And after that, I went to the United States.
    From Italy?
    From Italy, from Napoli.
    '48?
    From Napoli.
    In '48?
    In '49.
    '49.
    So you were constantly working up
    until that time with people-- getting people organized?
    What were you doing until '49?
    Up to '49, the UNRRA made a factory
    that was making clothes for the refugees, which was coming
    from different countries.
    There were different camps, so I was
    running a part of the factory, making pens and making
    clothes for the people.
    So I was working there until 1949.
    I was teaching there some people tailoring.
    New people didn't know nothing.
    They just-- they was pay, not much,
    but the UNRRA was paying for working there.
    So I organized that place, and some people
    didn't have no idea about tailoring.
    I was teaching them how to do it,
    and it was an assembly line.
    And I was there until 1949, until I
    went to the United States.
    And there was family in the United States?
    Who was here?
    Yeah, I have here-- the two brothers was here already.
    Before them, who did they have before they came?
    I have here an uncle and two aunts.
    They came before the war.
    My mother's-- yeah.
    My mother's brother and two sisters.
    --were here before the war.
    Oh, yeah they came here from before the First World War,
    before the First World War, yeah.
    I see.
    Because I know that my uncle was serving in the American
    Army in the First World War.
    So they come there before.
    And though my dream to see Israel was as a tourist.
    As a tourist.
    Yeah.
    I came back to Israel, and I met a lot of those people which
    went illegally.
    I met those people.
    A lot of them got killed.
    Many of them I knew from the people that went illegally
    from those groups got killed right in the beginning
    when the Egyptians attacked.
    A lot of them.
    So they were sent right--
    they were sent right from the ships.
    As they came from the ships, I was
    told, it was the right to the front lines, right to-- they
    didn't have-- all the instructions they got
    on the ship, how to hold a gun.
    They didn't have too much--
    and they got one day with a big fella because [INAUDIBLE]..
    There was one girl from my account by the name Czyzyk,
    and she drowned when it came to the [INAUDIBLE]
    OK.
    Following the war, did you search for any family members,
    and how--
    This is [INAUDIBLE].
    Yes, it is.
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    Did you search for any family members
    that might have survived or not, and how did you do that?
    After being in Italy--
    Either in Italy or from here in the--
    Yeah, in 19-- in 1945, at the end of 1945,
    I found out that my brother's supposed to be in Germany.
    I found another friend of mine and ask him
    if he would like to join me to go to Germany to look
    for relatives.
    So we went to the Alps, to the--
    we tried to go to the border and cross the Alps
    to be able to go to Germany.
    We went by train to the--
    till about a few miles before the last station
    between Italy and the border, which the name is Brennero.
    And before the last stop, we jumped the train,
    and we start climbing the Alps, the mountains.
    And after a few 100 yards climbing,
    the Italian border guard threw reflector lights on us.
    And they ordered us-- they shoot in the air.
    They was shooting in the air.
    And the loudspeakers, there was ordering us to come down.
    So that ended that.
    That we came down and they threw us in jail.
    And being-- I explained them my reason for being--
    my reason for trying to cross the border
    to go to Germany to look for family.
    And they didn't want to believe it.
    They wanted to put me on trial.
    I come.
    I was objecting to it, and protesting,
    telling him that I am not a Italian citizen,
    and they have not right not-- not the right to try me.
    But in that time, Italy was still occupied by the Allies.
    So all the foreigners was under the Allies' jurisdiction.
    So they transferred me from, after being in jail for a week,
    they transferred me to the Allied command.
    And there was three Allied officers-- an American,
    a Englishman, and a Frenchman.
    And they-- and I was telling them what's about.
    They told me that it is illegal to cross borders.
    I told them the purpose, why I wanted to do it,
    and they told me that it's illegal to cross borders.
    I told them there is no--
    there is no consulates, there is no embassies, there is no--
    nothing is organized, yes.
    If I can get-- if I could have taken, find some kind of a way
    that I can go to Germany to look for my relatives.
    They told me I have to wait till everything will be settled,
    settled and be straightened out.
    And then there will be passports and visas.
    And they asked me to go back from the--
    to the place where I came from.
    Mm-hmm.
    And that was it.
    And from here, from the US, did you--
    were you able to find anything out at all?
    I found my brothers, two brothers, in the United States.
    And there is one--
    my oldest brother, as I mentioned before, ran away to--
    was running away to the Russian border.
    And he was taken over by the-- when the Russians came,
    the territories was taken over by the Russians.
    And he was in Lvov.
    And I was trying many times to try to find out something.
    Then, when Khrushchev came to the United States for a visit,
    I sent a telegram to the Russian United Nation representation
    asking to be delivered to Khrushchev
    to help me to find my brother.
    And I gave him the--
    I knew the address where he was.
    It was in Beloretsk, in Ural.
    And I begged him to help me to find my brother.
    I never had any answer from him.
    But a few years later, my brother, my younger brother,
    went to Russia.
    And in Moscow, my telegram was in the Russian Red Cross.
    And he tried to go to the address what I gave him,
    but the Soviet authorities didn't allow him,
    didn't give him any permission to go to Beloretsk, which is
    the city, the last address what I had of my brother.
    They told him that he can wait in the hotel,
    and they'll send over from there,
    which is a couple thousand miles from Moscow,
    they'll send over the person which is living now--
    which is occupies now the apartment where my brother was.
    And after a few days, the telephone rang,
    and a Russian came.
    And he spoke English.
    And he said that he is living in the apartment
    where my brother used to live.
    We don't-- till now, don't believe this is true.
    We believe it's a agent from Moscow.
    And he came in, and he showed my brother a picture.
    And he said, this is a picture from a document.
    And with a stamp on it, like it looks
    like he took it off for some kind of official paper.
    And he asked my brother, is this your--
    is this your brother?
    And he said, yeah, that's it.
    That's my brother.
    He said, I spoke to all the neighbors there.
    And they, the people who knew him,
    told me that he just one day, he just picked up himself
    and just left without telling nobody where he is going.
    Which we don't believe, again, because in Russian
    was just leaving places, leaving his work and just going.
    No one know where he went.
    So we tried.
    We tried a few more times, but there is no--
    this is all what the Russian authorities are saying.
    He just left.
    They say, samowolnie.
    And there is no trace.
    When you came here, where did you
    go, when you came to the US?
    To Boston.
    In Boston.
    Yeah.
    Family here.
    What sort of feelings did you have about your experiences
    in the war from that time?
    How did it-- what sort of feelings?
    How did it influence certain values that you had?
    Well, one of the most important things
    what is on my mind all the time, that we should keep alive
    the memory of our people, and we should do anything
    to fight Nazis and Nazism wherever it shows up, with any
    means possible, legal or illegal.
    And not to come to the point that it should ever
    happen again.
    What sort of things kept you going during the war?
    Where did you get your determination to keep on going?
    The most important thing was the idea
    that I'll go out, that they're going away
    with murder, killing thousands and thousands of people
    every day.
    And I was scared that no one will be left.
    The way I, being in Auschwitz, and I
    seen the bodies every day, and the people
    going in that gas chamber, and the disappearing
    of the Jewish people, of the Jewish--
    of the Jewish nation, just I knew that eventually, every Jew
    will go through that chimney.
    And this was the biggest scare that I had.
    I just wanted just to survive and be able to tell the world--
    especially when I was in Auschwitz, in the end of 1945,
    and when we took apart the gas chamber and the crematorium
    and tried to cover all of it, all the bestiality what they
    committed, it looked to me that they're
    going to kill to the last Jew, to clean everything away.
    That when the war will be over, there just be--
    no one will know nothing about it, and they'll just be nice--
    be a nice nation.
    And they just go away with murder without being punished.
    How religious were you after the war compared to before the war?
    Did it have any effect at all?
    And what sort of feelings did you have about being Jewish?
    Oh, I was more determined to be Jewish, but not too religious.
    The faith what I had, I lost.
    I remember in Auschwitz, when working, I
    was working on the railroad station in Auschwitz--
    in Birkenau, really.
    And transport was coming at that time from--
    a transport came from--
    I think it was from Hungary.
    And there was-- the people was from the train was yelling,
    what's the name of that place there?
    One woman asked, is this the--
    is this the [INAUDIBLE] place, the vacation place, Auschwitz?
    And I didn't answer.
    And later on, when they came down the train,
    on the first day, one of those Jews are a religious man.
    And he came in in the camp.
    And he seen that dust coming out from the chimneys.
    Said to me, such a huge bakery.
    Well, they're baking so much bread here.
    I told him I told him the truth.
    They're not baking any bread here.
    And he said, oh, it cannot be.
    God wouldn't allow to do a thing like that.
    But he did.
    And so I couldn't--
    I just couldn't believe it.
    Could not-- could not understand it.
    And I couldn't-- that there could be a God,
    and he could allow murdering people,
    little children which didn't have any sin.
    I would say grown ups maybe they had some sin.
    But there was little babies that was killed there,
    and they didn't have any sin.
    They took away my belief.
    Were you able to talk about your experiences
    at all when you came here, and to whom?
    Were you able to share any experiences?
    In the beginning, not.
    But eventually I came to the conclusion that we should.
    We should tell as much as we can.
    We should spread it out, and we should
    let everybody know about it.
    Let the world know about it.
    Let it not be forgotten.
    And let's try, if we can catch any Nazis,
    maybe this will help, by finding Nazis is responsible for that
    too, that they should pay for it.
    I went to certain schools, and I spoke
    to that to classes, and to anybody who is listening,
    and anybody who is interested, who wants to know,
    event if it hurts.
    But I'm but I'm doing it.
    What sort of motivation was there
    in having your first child, and how did you feel?
    What sort of values did you try to transmit?
    The Jewish people lost 6 million.
    It would be a crime just to--
    the Germans wanted to liquidate us.
    It will be the second crime if we would allow--
    if we will allow us to do that.
    We're supposed to build back the Jewish people.
    Did you try to transmit any certain values
    to your children?
    We don't ever think what we can to--
    even I don't believe that, to do everything to my children.
    They should believe.
    I believe it is a wonderful thing when people can believe.
    So my children went to Hebrew school,
    and in Hebrew Teachers College, and they speak Hebrew.
    I've done everything I could to bring them up
    in Jewish tradition.
    What sort of reception was there from the non-survivors
    in the community?
    We were you able to share any experiences with non-survivors
    here when you got here?
    Oh, yeah.
    I was-- the first year when I came here, this was sort of--
    no one really didn't know much about it.
    No one didn't talked about it.
    I mean, the American people.
    And I remember in the streets where I lived,
    there was there Professor Sarna.
    He was professor in the Brandeis University.
    When he heard about being in Auschwitz,
    he asked me if I would be willing to come to his house,
    and he's going to invite a lot of people.
    If I would be able to, willing to--
    Talk about it.
    --talk about it, and they could ask questions.
    And I done that.
    I done that in that house and many other places.
    And I told him what really happened.
    So you had no problems with speaking about it
    to non-survivors [INAUDIBLE].
    No, not at all.
    I do it.
    I do it for a purpose.
    You joined a survivors organization
    when you came here?
    Yes.
    What sort of reasons?
    Why did you do that?
    The New Americans.
    The New-- when I came, my brother and another few people
    organized the newcomers association.
    He become the first president.
    And the purpose was to do things, to what I believe in.
    And in this, the--
    let's never forget it.
    Do everything not to forget it, and to fight Nazism.
    I remember there was the leader of the Nazi party, Rockwell,
    American Nazi party, Rockwell came to Boston
    to demonstrate here.
    And at that time, he had just organized that New Americans
    association.
    And hundreds of us, with equipment,
    we went to demonstrate.
    And we practically almost killed him.
    We attacked him with anything we could.
    And there was a lot of police there,
    and they rescued his life.
    When they dragged him in the lobby in the theater,
    he said, for the first time in his life,
    he was scared that he will get killed.
    Rockwell said it.
    He got killed later.
    And we believe that Israel is the place for--
    that Israel is a necessity for the Jewish people,
    for all the Jewish people.
    We believe that--
    I believe if there would have been
    a Israel at the time of the--
    before the war and during the war, that most of these people,
    of the Jewish people, would be alive.
    The Jewish people was killed, the way I understand,
    because there was no place for them.
    If the-- in the first years of the war,
    the Nazis did not plan the murder of Jews.
    They wanted just to get rid of them.
    And there was talk about it, about Madagascar,
    about Kenya, about different places.
    And they was ready to let the people go, to let the Jews go.
    But there is no one, no country, no one wanted to--
    Accept them.
    Accept them.
    As a matter of fact, that there was--
    the Germans let Jews go on ships,
    and the ships were sent-- were sent back to-- like,
    one of the ships by the name Patria,
    was sent back to Germany.
    And the people was killed by the Germans in that.
    And so this was--
    so we believe that the Jews, for their own survival,
    before our generations still coming,
    the Jews must have a land.
    And as Israel is the land of our--
    Ancestors.
    --of the ancestors, this is the place.
    And we should do everything to protect it, and to support it,
    and to--
    any way we can.
    And the newcomers association is doing a lot of work
    to support Israel by going there, by supporting Histadrut,
    by sending an ambulance, by supporting
    Israel in many, many ways.
    Did you apply for reparations from the German government?
    Reparations?
    I did.
    And why?
    I got some injuries from in the concentration camp.
    And at that time, the German government was sending over--
    have here doctors which was examining.
    And they was supposed to pay for injuries, yeah.
    It was a justified move.
    For the injuries.
    And losses of the family members, or--
    This, I-- this is not a--
    they can never pay.
    They can never pay for lost life,
    and they can never pay for five years in Auschwitz.
    There is no money that can pay for that.
    But what were you able to communicate to each other
    about the Holocaust?
    And they know everything.
    I told him everything.
    You always were able to communicate
    with him about it, what--
    Yeah, yeah.
    Whatever they ask, I told them.
    There were no questions about it, though?
    No, I was told.
    What sort of feelings do you have about living here,
    about the US?
    About possibilities of something else like the Holocaust
    happening again?
    Do you feel safer here?
    I feel safe.
    The make-up of the United States is--
    is such, with so many minorities, that I
    believe it's a safe place.
    But we have to be vigilant, and we
    have to be alert, and not to--
    and not to listen to those Jewish leaders,
    which talking about quarantine.
    But whenever we see a Nazi, that hit them back.
    Just don't wait for--
    We had a quarantine.
    They quarantined the Nazis in Europe.
    And we are the witnesses what the quarantine done.
    So I believe people which went through the Holocaust
    believe that we wouldn't not allow any more quarantine.
    We're going to hit Nazis wherever we see them.
    No matter what kind of Nazis are--
    are American Nazis, or German Nazis, or any Nazi.
    Nazism is murder.
    So we're not going to wait till they're going to murder us.
    We're going to protect ourselves ahead of time.
    Do you think it's possible that it could happen again,
    something like the Holocaust?
    It's all possible.
    Who could believe that it could ever happen?
    Just murdering innocent people?
    Apparently you never know--
    if you can see now Nazis and all and in many countries
    in the world.
    But people are still going out idea of murdering others,
    and grab their--
    grabbed their-- everything what they own.
    So--
    It's possible.
    --it's possible.
    Especially when I'm listening to what's going on in Argentina.
    I think Argentina is a very dangerous place.
    And in other places too.
    So we have to be vigilant, and just fight back.
    Just don't take that stupidity from quarantine,
    what are some Jews who had never wented through--
    are talking about.
    How's the Holocaust affected the course of your life?
    In what ways?
    It's just never, never out of my mind.
    It's with me during the day and during the night.
    It's always.
    And I'm trying to, the best I can, to make up certain things,
    certain ways what I didn't--
    I lost during the years under the Nazis,
    which I missed the Nazis, which is reading, and other things,
    and in food too.
    I remember that in Auschwitz once,
    I said to a friend of mine-- he asked me,
    when you'll be liberated, what is the first thing what
    you would like to do?
    And I told him, I would like to get in my hands a whole bread,
    and to be able to eat it up, the whole thing.
    Because I never seen a white piece of bread, for years.
    And I'm trying to make up in other cultural things, which
    I--
    films and books and other things.
    Traveling.
    Is there anything which you'd like
    to add at this time, which we didn't cover, perhaps missed?
    Yeah, I probably would mention the uprising in Auschwitz.
    What was that like?
    In Auschwitz, the work of--
    in the gas chambers and in the crematorium
    was performed by Jews which was picked by the Nazis.
    And they called them the Sonderkommando.
    It's like "Special Commando."
    So their job was, when the Jews was in the gas chamber
    and they got gassed, they was taking out
    the bodies from there, and they was transferring
    the bodies to the crematorium.
    And they was working in the ovens,
    and burning them, and cleaning out the ashes,
    and putting them on trucks, and put it in [INAUDIBLE]..
    They done on all this under SS guards.
    And so they know all-- they know the secret.
    The Germans tortured the people in the camp.
    This place was surrounded with a fence, which
    was covered with blankets, that people shouldn't be able to see
    what's going in inside.
    So they thought that most of the people which wasn't existing
    too long in the camps, because they was getting
    killed, that they didn't know much about it,
    what's going on inside.
    But they knew, those people working inside,
    they know everything what's going on.
    And they didn't want none of them should be able to survive
    or should run away.
    So every six months they was changing them.
    They killed those inside, and they took in a new group.
    But they didn't-- was not killing them in Auschwitz.
    They told them that they worked long enough that they entitled
    to a rest, that they going for a vacation,
    or to go to Germany for working in other places, or to--
    told them to open up another place and another camp
    in another place in Germany.
    But they were-- took them to another place,
    and they killed them there.
    And in 1945, they took out a--
    they took out half of the-- the business was getting slower,
    and the war was coming to an end,
    and not too many transports was coming.
    So they decided they're going to take away half from the--
    I think there was 160 people in the Sonderkommando.
    They decided, like, 80, and get rid of them.
    And the other 80 would be enough to do the work.
    I think this is was the number.
    160 I think it was.
    And so they told the people in the Sonderkommando
    that they don't need so many now in the--
    to the work.
    The business is slow.
    But anyone who wants to go to work to Germany could--
    will tell we go.
    And they'll get some other work in Germany.
    So they took half of the--
    they took, I think 80 of those people.
    And they went.
    They gave them there, they gave them
    some bread and some food right in the crematorium there.
    And the other people seeing that they going on a transport.
    And they took them someplace and they killed them.
    But they made a mistake, that the naked bodies,
    they sent back to be burned, to be burned in the crematoriums.
    And some of the people, they recognized.
    Even there was-- there was blue from gas, and disfigured.
    But some recognized some bodies, that this thought
    they was working there before.
    So they realized what--
    they realized now what's happened,
    that there is no-- they don't go on any vacation.
    And they--
    --they talked about it.
    They have decided that that's it.
    They're not going to volunteer to go to [INAUDIBLE]..
    They're going to fight back.
    And they'll take every Nazi with them.
    So they decided that the next time,
    when they're going to call for volunteers,
    no one's going to go.
    It didn't take long.
    And there the SS men which has the challenge
    of the crematorium, of that--
    came again, and he said, OK, we don't need so many people here.
    Half will be enough.
    The things are slowing down.
    The was is coming to an end.
    And so we don't need.
    We just going to--
    And he said, whoever wants to, he can volunteer,
    and you'll go to Germany, to work in Germany, or rest up.
    The older people was lined up in front of the crematorium.
    And he was standing there, that SS officer.
    And three of them.
    And they was waiting.
    And no one volunteered.
    He got very upset.
    He got very mad.
    And he started to scream.
    He said, OK, if you don't volunteer,
    we don't need so many of you here.
    We need to-- and he took a-- he had
    a list of the number of the people by the number,
    and he started to call out numbers,
    that any number who call up, he just step in front.
    And those people are going on the-- to Germany.
    He called up the first number and no one stepped out.
    He called the second.
    No one stepped down--
    stepped out.
    He pulled out a gun.
    And he just-- should those the people should have stepped out.
    [NON-ENGLISH], I'll kill you.
    Then the older bunch, the 80 what was there,
    they just jumped at him, and just grabbed those three guys,
    and just the crematorium was working.
    And just with the boots and whatever, and they
    just took away their guns.
    And wherever it was, with the boots and whatever, then
    they just shoveled them in in the oven.
    There were three guards?
    What?
    There were three guards there?
    Yeah.
    But there was their guard standing on--
    On top.
    On top.
    And they started to--
    and the rest.
    Then they started to run against the fences.
    They started to break the fences to run out.
    And the guards started to use the machine guns from the--
    from that.
    But there was running.
    They just blocked to different places of the--
    different parts of the fence.
    They run out and started to run on the field.
    So more SS came, and they make an alarm.
    And hundreds of SS came from all directions.
    I was just happened that I was not far from that place.
    You witnessed this whole thing?
    Yeah, I didn't-- I was inside.
    I was from the outside.
    But I was working not far away.
    And they ordered us to lay down, to lay down on the ground.
    I was with a group maybe of 500 or so.
    To lay down on the ground.
    And because some of us, of our people,
    from the group, the working, started to run too.
    And they started the machine gun.
    And everybody who was running, open those machine gun.
    And the rest was laying on the ground.
    I was laying on the ground.
    And they was staying with machine guns over us.
    And they was just running, chasing the people, which
    was running away in the fields.
    I don't know if anybody escaped.
    I don't believe.
    I don't know if anybody escaped.
    And those who-- those who were not killed,
    when they grabbed them, they brought them back to the--
    in front of the gas, of the crematorium.
    And they laid them.
    They asked them to stretch out on the ground face down.
    And they machine gun them.
    They machine gun them in the heads.
    This was the end of the Sonderkommando.
    This was the end of the war?
    This was the--
    This is the end of--
    '45.
    '44.
    '44.
    Yeah.
    How did you feel about answering all these questions.
    I feel that it's a purpose.
    I'm not doing it with any pleasure.
    It hurts any time you start to go back to those things.
    But it has a purpose.
    And I think it's an important purpose.
    We wouldn't be here for forever.
    I think in another 20, 30 years, then
    no one will be left of this generation.
    And we wanted to--
    that no one no antisemite should be able to come and say
    it's a made-up story, that nothing what--
    nothing bad.
    This never happened.
    But now, in our lifetime, when there's still thousands of--
    tens of thousands of survivors in the world,
    And some antisemites are still coming out and telling now,
    telling us that there never-- a Holocaust never existed.
    We have to witness that.
    And that's what the reason why we
    went to Jerusalem for the gathering of the Holocaust
    survivors, which I attended, and to say to the world,
    here, you got witnesses.
    That's the way it was, and it's there for generations.
    And so maybe this will help another Holocaust should not--
    People should be educated, should see the truth.
    How did you feel about the conference?
    How was that?
    I think it was great.
    It was very important that so many thousands of newcomers
    came.
    And we, in front of the Western Wall,
    we was listening to Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
    And he was saying that Jews will now fight again
    back more than they did.
    We now had a Jewish country, and they
    are going to fight anybody who will try to kill Jews,
    and they will not allow any more Holocaust.
    He was talking at that time about--
    this was a few weeks.
    But then the Israelis destroyed the atom installation in Iraq.
    And he mentioned, in connection with the Iraqi,
    he said that time that the Iraqis was making--
    they're trying to make atom bombs to make
    another Holocaust of the Jewish people in Palestine, Israel.
    And we had a lesson once, what enemies of the Jews can do.
    So we're going to destroy.
    Any time anybody will try to raise our hand
    or do something to Holocaust, to Jewish people,
    we're just going to fight back, and we're
    going to destroy them.
    It was-- and it was very pleasureful to see,
    to find some friends there which we didn't see for so
    many years, 40 years or so.
    I seen people there I didn't see since 1938, 1939.
    They lived in Israel.
    They came from other places.
    It was very interesting reunions there.
    It was a worthwhile trip.
    Well, I thank you on behalf of one generation
    after for participating in our oral history project.
    You're welcome.
    Thank you so much.
    You're welcome.
    The qualifications for the two jobs are quite different,
    and you've got to know the range of ability
    that you have at your disposal.
    That's one part of it.
    The second part of it is knowing enough
    about the internal politics of all the countries
    around the world, to be able to make an informed
    judgment as to whether a proposed political action
    operation is worth undertaking, is feasible,
    it can be carried off.
    In other words, the man who has that job
    has to have in his head a computer
    file of a great many facts and judgments.
    It's not a place for on-the-job training.
    Meyer and other intelligence officers interviewed today
    said it would take at least 10 years in the agency
    to acquire the depth of knowledge Hugel
    would have needed for his job.
    Hugel was not entirely lacking in intelligence experience.
    He was a junior Army intelligence officer
    in World War II, and he had three months' experience
    as a middle level administrator at CIA headquarters.
    But Hugel's strongest asset was apparently his friendship
    with CIA Director William Casey.
    It was Casey who apparently saved Hugel
    from being fired from the Reagan campaign
    during the New Hampshire primary.
    Some insight into Hugel is provided
    in his 278-page unpublished autobiography,
    called, quote, The Making of a President, Brooklyn-Style.
    Yugel cites numerous misrepresentations
    he made to banks as well as his customers.
    He also wrote that during World War II he evaded infantry duty
    by telling a recruiter he spoke Japanese when in fact he
    didn't.
    Among his post-war exploits, Hugel
    describes how he sold 30 DeSoto taxicabs that were quote,
    "so rusty you could put your fist through a door
    without any effort," after he told the purchaser they
    were in fine shape.
    Hugel later became a multimillionaire electronics
    company executive with operations
    in more than 100 countries.
    Hugel's past record is perhaps most significant
    because of what it says about the CIA's own security
    investigations.
    The world's most sophisticated spy operation apparently
    failed to cover all the bases, and apparently never contacted
    the McNell brothers, who, if they are to be believed,
    say they were ready, indeed eager to tell
    their story to the government before they went to the press.
    The CIA's background investigations
    are likely to come up for some review.
    I'm Alan Berlow in Washington.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    All of the delegates to this week's special Congress
    of the Polish Communist Party passed
    through an entrance adorned with a huge portrait of Lenin,
    and that's about the only similarity
    between this meeting and the usual Communist Party Congress.
    For instance, these delegates were chosen by popular vote,
    not picked for their years of loyal service to the party.
    Most of them have never even been to a meeting like this
    before.
    And they're expected to ratify the reforms won
    by Polish workers during the last year, reforms
    that drastically reduced the power of the Party itself.
    More on today's session from Nina Darnton in Warsaw.
    The Party Congress opened today with a wrangle
    behind closed doors over what procedure to use
    to elect the First Secretary.
    Three propositions were before the delegates--
    to elect the First Secretary today, in a vote
    by all the nearly 2,000 party delegates,
    to elect the Central Committee and have those members choose
    the Party Secretary, as has always been done in the past,
    or to elect the Central Committee,
    have them present nominees from among their ranks for Party
    Secretary, and then take a vote of all the delegates.
    The first proposal seemed the most likely to succeed,
    and observers were predicting an easy victory
    for Mr. Kania, who would then be in control
    of the rest of the Congress.
    The catch is that the delegates voted for the third proposal,
    which delays the election and weakens Mr. Kania's hand,
    although it probably does not change the outcome.
    The third proposal is said to have won by 50 votes.
    But 100 delegates were not present,
    because of separate meetings.
    These delegates are now being rounded up,
    and there is a possibility of yet another vote on this issue.
    Mr. Kania officially opened the Congress
    with a three-hour speech, delivered
    in a droning monotone.
    It contained no surprises, and repeated many themes
    he has struck before.
    He attacked extremist forces in the party and in Solidarity,
    laid heavy emphasis on close relations
    with the Soviet Union, and attacked by name Poland's two
    dissident organizations--
    KOR and the KPN.
    But he also reaffirmed his commitment
    to Democratic renewal, a concept that
    has become as necessary to Polish politicians
    as defending freedom is in the United States.
    An interesting aspect of this Party Congress
    is the openness with which the differing factions in the party
    are described.
    This has never happened before--
    not that factions and power struggle
    didn't exist, but that they were never so open.
    The discussions here these days are startlingly
    similar to questions of parliamentary coalitions,
    and as of right now it is still not clear who will win.
    Perhaps the delegates who have never attended a party Congress
    before will deliver some surprises.
    For National Public Radio, this is Nina Darnton in Warsaw.
    The United Nations Conference on Cambodia, or Kampuchea,
    continued for a second day.
    The goal, to find a solution to the Vietnamese occupation
    of Kampuchea and the continued fighting there.
    Mike Shuster has more from the UN.
    From the start, there was no chance
    that any real negotiating could take place at this conference.
    Vietnam refused to take part, as did
    the Vietnamese-backed government in Phnom Penh.
    The only ones here who are directly
    involved in the fighting in Kampuchea
    are the representatives of the Khmer Rouge, the ousted
    government of Pol Pot, who have continued
    to receive official UN recognition since they
    were overthrown by the Vietnamese invasion
    in late 1978.
    None of Vietnam's allies or close friends,
    such as the Soviet Union, are participating either.
    So the debate is somewhat one-sided.
    Still, criticism of Hanoi has generally been muted.
    The foreign minister of Singapore,
    one of the five Southeast Asian Nations
    that has organized the conference,
    told the delegates that they had not gathered
    to put Vietnam on trial.
    It is not our intention to bring Vietnam to its knees.
    We only want to bring it to its senses.
    And in order to do that, most of the speakers
    have emphasized the need for negotiations, a political
    rather than a military solution.
    Hanoi so far has shown little willingness to negotiate,
    and one of the reasons is the UN's continued recognition
    of the Khmer Rouge.
    So far, though, more and more delegates,
    such as the foreign ministers of Singapore, and Australia,
    are disavowing support for the Pol Pot forces.
    The Vietnamese claim that their invasion and occupation
    have saved the Kampuchean people from the barbarous Pol Pot
    regime.
    No one here condones or excuses the acts of the Pol Pot regime.
    Australia does not deny that Vietnam
    has certain legitimate security interests of its own.
    However, that is no justification
    for their invasion of a neighboring country.
    Even so, we do not insist on an immediate withdrawal
    of Vietnamese troops from Kampuchea.
    A phased withdrawal would avoid the creation
    of a power vacuum, which could result in a return
    to power of the Pol Pot regime.
    The position of the United States in all this is unclear.
    When Secretary of State Alexander Haig
    addressed the conference yesterday,
    he seemed to be supporting the goal of a political settlement.
    Vietnam is paying a price for its blindness
    in the form of an ever-deepening diplomatic and economic
    isolation from the world community.
    Vietnam must recognize that participation
    in this conference provides the best opportunity to escape
    the dead end of international reproach
    and economic repression.
    And Haig also implied that if the Vietnamese showed
    some willingness to negotiate, they
    might expect eventual recognition from Washington,
    as well as renewed Western aid for their severely
    strained economy.
    We will also continue to question seriously
    any economic assistance to Vietnam from whatever source,
    as long as Vietnam continues to squander its scarce resources
    on aggression.
    But Haig made no mention of the UN's continued
    support for the Khmer Rouge.
    The United States has backed that position for the past two
    and a half years, and there appears
    to be little chance that position
    will change any time soon.
    For National Public Radio, this is Mike Shuster
    at the United Nations.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    It was 4:00 PM, and the sirens wailed today
    in the Palestinian refugee camps and
    guerrilla-controlled shantytowns along the southern edge
    of Beirut.
    Then the bombs began to fall, as Israeli jets carried out
    their third raid into Lebanon in five days.
    During the attack, a Syrian jet was shot down.
    The Israeli military command said the Syrian plane
    had tried to interfere.
    All this happened one day after the United States
    and Israel issued a statement saying the misunderstanding
    over Israel's use of American weapons
    to bomb Iraq's nuclear reactor had been cleared up.
    All Things Considered commentator Daniel Schorr
    says this statement was a prelude to the release of four
    F-16 fighters to Israel.
    Their shipment had been held up after the raid into Iraq.
    The suspension was never intended
    to be more than temporary, but little thought
    was given to how the lifting of the embargo
    would be orchestrated.
    That became urgent as July 17 neared,
    the scheduled date for transfer of the next six F-16s.
    It would be manifestly silly to hold onto the four after that.
    What was wanted was some commitment from Israel
    that would appear to justify lifting the embargo.
    On instructions from Secretary of State Haig,
    Ambassador Samuel Lewis met with Prime Minister Begin
    and asked for a promise of future consultation
    with the United States before American-made weapons
    were used outside Israel's borders.
    Begin told them that was absurd.
    Still, last week, Secretary Haig decided
    to send his ex-Marine officer friend,
    State Department Counselor Robert McFarlane to Jerusalem
    to try to extract some face-saving commitment
    from Begin.
    In executive session, Haig asked support
    for the McFarlane mission from the Senate Foreign Relations
    Committee.
    Chairman Charles Percy circulated a draft resolution
    calling for consultation with the US in the future.
    That ran into concerted opposition.
    Democratic Whip Alan Cranston put together
    an opposing resolution justifying
    the attack on the reactor.
    And that appeared to command a bipartisan majority.
    The maneuvering of Foreign Relations Committee
    having failed, MacFarlane flew to Jerusalem
    with no leverage at all, since resumption of plane deliveries
    appeared certain.
    MacFarlane will report on his "mission
    impossible" to the Foreign Relations Committee,
    but he appears to have achieved little more
    than Begin's acknowledgment of a misunderstanding.
    Meanwhile, the administration, having several times postponed
    submitting to Congress the sale of AWACS surveillance planes
    to Saudi Arabia, was planning to send up the plan this week,
    inevitably suggesting a link with the F-16s which
    the administration has denied.
    Now the AWACS program, still being strongly opposed,
    is being postponed once more.
    All in all, not a very good week for demonstrating
    steadiness and consistency of Reagan foreign policy
    in the Middle East.
    The comments of Daniel Schorr are a regular feature
    of All Things Considered.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    One part of the Reagan Mideast policy held over
    from the Carter administration is the so-called Rapid
    Deployment Force, an elite military unit designed
    to operate on a moment's notice in trouble spots,
    especially in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.
    Well, as it happens, history has a little-known model
    for such a force.
    Julius Caesar at the peak of his empire
    maintained military power with advanced units
    in Gaul, then divided into three parts,
    now known as France, Switzerland, and Germany.
    Allan Goodman, an associate dean of the School
    of Foreign Service at Georgetown University,
    says the success of Caesar's rapid deployment
    force depended on more than just brute strength.
    What most people don't know about Caesar
    was that he was a superb diplomat as well
    as a strategist.
    In retrospect, he probably negotiated
    the most secure base rights agreements in history.
    Uh-huh.
    Base rights.
    That's--
    And the bases were really what led
    Caesar to stay as long in inhospitable Gaul
    as possible, to cross the Rhine about midway in his campaigns,
    and also to cross the Channel and invade Britain.
    Now that becomes quite relevant for the considerations
    at the moment with the development
    of an American rapid deployment force.
    Are there any lessons for the United States
    from Caesar's experience in establishing bases?
    I think there are, especially in the diplomatic realm.
    The critical issue with Caesar's experience
    was did the people with whom he was allied,
    did the people with whom he had the base rights
    agreements, find themselves more secure or more
    threatened by Caesar's presence, more vulnerable by his troops?
    I think uniformly the experience of those
    who were allied with Caesar was that they found
    themselves more vulnerable.
    I think that goes a lot to explaining
    how leaders in the Third World today
    might look at American bases, especially
    for a rapid deployment force, in their own territory.
    And I think they question, from the standpoint
    of vulnerability, the costs and benefits
    of having a US presence.
    There is another aspect to the question of base rights--
    how close do you need to be to operate effectively
    in a combat area, a sensitive area, a contingency area?
    And I think our experience has been very, very close.
    The problem with the bases that we're looking at now in Egypt,
    and Somalia, and Oman, and Kenya is that they're still much too
    far away from, let's say, the oil
    fields of Saudi Arabia that we might, in a contingency,
    want to protect.
    Too far for Caesar, maybe, but with F-15s and things
    like that, the United States is able to move very far very
    fast, isn't it?
    Well, I'm surprised at how this is not the case.
    In fact, the Congressional Budget Office
    looked at the number of troops that the Rapid Deployment
    Force could move into the Persian Gulf in a crisis.
    And it's 1,000 troops a day in the first through the second,
    almost up to the ninth day of any kind of contingency.
    Only after the ninth day does the rapid deployment force
    concept really move substantial numbers of troops.
    How many troops could Caesar move in what period of time
    with his force troops?
    He could move-- his probably, his most famous campaign
    against tribes in Belgium occurred,
    and he moved a legion of troops in about 24 hours.
    A legion being how big?
    Gosh, 9,000 troops, I think.
    Well, then he could move them faster than we can now.
    Not the same distance.
    His predecessors, the people with whom he was fighting,
    could move troops.
    Oh, it would take them two or three weeks
    to move in the space of a day, what
    he moved in the space of a day.
    Allan Goodman is Associate Dean of the School
    of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    This is NPR, National Public Radio.
    Earlier today, Secretary of State
    Alexander Haig delivered a major foreign policy address
    that was covered and recorded by National Public Radio.
    We'll be bringing that address to you
    in its entirety starting at 6 o'clock.
    That's a half hour from now here on WBUR.
    We'll be preempting the third half
    hour of All Things Considered this evening in order to bring
    you that special broadcast.
    Once again, that's coming up at 6 o'clock,
    an address by Alexander Haig here on WBUR in Boston.
    [THEME MUSIC]
    Aerial pesticide spraying has begun in California,
    sending some local residents to what
    they hope will be safe shelter.
    I'm Sanford Ungar.
    I'm Jackie Judd.
    Also in this part of All Things Considered,
    Florida officials defend the use of the pesticide malathion.
    That state has been using it for years.
    More on the ethical fight over genetic screening in abortion.
    The baseball strike.
    It may still be on, but there was an all-star game anyway--
    sort of.
    No spikes, but dancing shoes for the baseball boogie--
    --on All Things Considered.
    [THEME MUSIC]
    At midnight, helicopters will start a second night
    of spraying against Mediterranean fruit fly
    infestation in California's Santa Clara Valley.
    Last night's aerial operation was cut short
    when the pump spraying the controversial pesticide
    malathion malfunctioned.
    Today, the federal government extended a quarantine
    of agricultural products to include three full counties
    south of San Francisco, as 11 southern states imposed a ban
    on the sale of fruits and vegetables
    from the infested areas.
    Amanda Hawes lives in San Jose with her husband, a new baby,
    and two older children.
    And her family plans to stay with relatives
    when the spraying begins in her neighborhood
    at the end of this week.
    What they've talked about doing is spraying in each spray area
    a total of six times at intervals of seven to 10 days.
    What we're thinking we'll do is be away each time for at least
    a day.
    The kinds of effects that concern me most
    are those that threaten very, very young children,
    the possibility that this material is
    carcinogenic to people, that it's capable of causing
    mutations, birth defects.
    That's not a problem for our family
    at this time, although, believe me, during the last six months,
    every time they talked about aerial spraying,
    and I was carrying a child, I thought about that.
    Those are the things I don't want to be a Guinea pig over.
    What are your neighbors planning on doing?
    One of my neighbors is an asthmatic.
    I would assume she's going to be leaving
    whenever they're spraying, including ground spraying.
    Another of our neighbors is a very, very old man
    who likes to be outdoors, and bicycles around when he can.
    My assumption is that he's not going to be doing that.
    But by the same token, because he doesn't drive,
    doesn't have a car, he's not really,
    unless someone can assist him, not
    going to be able to go anyplace.
    And--
    So you didn't--
    --these are not hysterical people.
    These are sane people who are trying
    to live their lives free of an unnecessary danger,
    an unnecessary risk.
    Where can you do that nowadays, though?
    Good question.
    Is there any safe place?
    Well, where we lived used to be called
    the Garden of Heart's Delight.
    And it really was.
    About 20 years ago the Santa Clara Valley
    was an orchard, a beautiful place.
    It's not that way anymore.
    There's an awful lot of bitter talk
    about the federal government promising to get government
    off our backs.
    Well, now it's coming down on our heads.
    The notion that local control means something--
    People are somewhat puzzled over what in the world it does mean.
    If all of our cities, as they have,
    had opposed aerial spraying in our county government,
    only to find out that if you go higher up,
    that effort to exert some local controls had no meaning.
    Amanda, you sound tired to me.
    I'm exhausted.
    It's very wearing to be in the middle of this.
    Last night, everyone was on the edge of his or her seat
    while the court proceedings wound down, which
    is exactly where they ended up.
    No restraining order was issued.
    That meant that the legal avenues had been exhausted.
    And that then meant a watch or a vigil
    overnight, as the first round of aerial spraying
    was about to begin.
    Amanda Hawes.
    She's a lawyer and a community activist
    in San Jose, California.
    Although the use of malathion has
    caused a controversy in California,
    a number of southern states have used the chemical
    to kill mosquitoes for years.
    Charlie Wade of member station WFSU
    filed this report from Tallahassee.
    [ENGINE STARTING]
    In 1980, over 1,300,000 pounds of malathion
    were sprayed in Florida to control mosquitoes, most of it
    sprayed in residential neighborhoods
    from pumps on the backs of pickup trucks.
    The rest is sprayed from World War II bombers
    flying in formation over suburban rooftops.
    Mosquitoes are often a health hazard
    in Florida, carrying diseases like yellow fever
    and encephalitis.
    Controlling them is a priority for health officials,
    and malathion is the pesticide of choice,
    according to Florida's Office of Entomology director, Dr. John
    Mulrennan.
    I think it's safe.
    I think their record of use in Florida
    would pretty well substantiate its safety.
    We've been using it to control mosquitoes
    in Florida for nearly 30 years.
    And to my knowledge, we have never
    had any problems and health problems
    associated with its use.
    And while some Californians are now
    upset over the use of malathion, Gene Baker,
    the director of Leon County's mosquito control
    in North Florida says residents here
    get upset when the pesticide isn't used.
    The majority of our work is responding to complaints
    that mosquitoes are bothering them,
    and they would request a spray truck.
    I think when the malathion crisis
    is over and reviewed in California,
    that it will be to everyone's advantage,
    working in the area of applying the malathion,
    because I think they're going to find out
    that it's unwarranted hysteria.
    There are a lot of chemicals that should not be--

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Max Arbeiter
    Date
    interview:  1981 November 03

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    3 sound cassettes (60 min.).

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Arbeiter, Max.

    Administrative Notes

    Holder of Originals
    One Generation After
    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The interview with Max Arbeiter was conducted on November 3, 1981 by One Generation After, a Boston based group of children of Holocaust survivors, for the One Generation After oral history project. The tapes of the interview were received by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on January 7, 1990.
    Record last modified:
    2024-01-25 11:44:14
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn510149

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