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Oral history interview with Rose Murra

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.495.17 | RG Number: RG-50.061.0017

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    Oral history interview with Rose Murra
    Transcript
    Make sure the values are.
    Maybe we should talk and then take it back.
    Today is Friday, May 29, 1981.
    My name is Fran Gutterman.
    I'm at the home of Rose Murra--
    M-U-R-R-A-- who resides in Brookline, Massachusetts.
    And I'm here to conduct an oral history interview.
    OK.
    Mrs. Murra, where were you born?
    Could you tell me where you were born?
    I was born in Poland, Radzyn Podlaski May 16, 1923.
    OK.
    Could you talk up a little bit, if you can?
    If it's difficult then we'll--
    Yeah, OK.
    So you were born May 16, 1923 in Radzyn--
    Podlaski.
    Podlaski--
    Poland.
    --in Poland.
    OK.
    What kind of place was Radzyn Podlaski?
    It was a little city with 4,000 Jewish people lived there.
    About 1,000 Jewish people?
    4,000.
    Oh, 4,000.
    4,000 Jewish people.
    It was a nice community, Jewish community.
    Was it mostly a Jewish community?
    No, it was a lot of Gentile.
    No, in the city, mostly lived Jews and around the city.
    But the Gentile-- it just happened we
    didn't live in the city.
    We lived on a highway, away, a mile and a half
    away from the city.
    From the center of the city, you mean.
    Yeah, from the center of the city.
    We lived in a Gentile section.
    My grandparents used to own a windmill.
    They used to make flour.
    OK.
    And is that why you lived in that section
    because that's where the flour mill was?
    Yeah, it used to be.
    But then it wasn't--
    when I was growing up, we didn't have a flour mill.
    My parents were in business in grain business.
    And we have a grocery.
    And I lived there with my parents.
    I had a little brother, Shlomo and a little--
    and a brother a little younger than me, Moshe.
    When was Shlomo born?
    Shlomo was six years younger than me.
    So he was born like in 1917?
    No.
    Six years younger, oh, sorry, 1930.
    So sorry, he-- I was thinking older.
    So he was born in 1929.
    Yeah, probably.
    Yeah.
    And my brother was about year or a year
    and a few months younger than me.
    And that was young Moshe?
    Moshe, yeah.
    He was born in 1924?
    Yeah, that's right.
    OK.
    Could you tell me what your parents did for a living?
    Yeah.
    We had a grocery store.
    And in the grocery store, we used
    to have fruit and other things, a lot of things.
    You had a grocery store?
    Yeah, a grocery.
    In Radzyn?
    Yeah, in Radzyn.
    And my father used to buy grain from the farmers
    and bring it to the mill for flour.
    And then in the wintertime, we had a--
    it's like a--
    I don't know how you call it.
    They had to make oil.
    We used to make oil from the grain,
    like from [INAUDIBLE] or other things, made oil.
    That's what they used to do in the wintertime.
    We used to make for the stores the oil or the farmers used
    to come and make the oil for themself
    and pay us so much for doing it.
    What was your father's name?
    Srul Hersh Zysman.
    Oh, and your mother's name?
    Rivka Grodowczk Zysman.
    And you said you were born in 1923.
    How old were your parents?
    My parents, when the war broke out,
    they were, I think, about 39 years old.
    About 39?
    39 years old.
    The war lingered on through six years.
    Well, that's the way it was-- six hard years
    we lived by the Nazis.
    When you were growing up in Radzyn,
    you went to school there?
    Yeah.
    I used to go to public school.
    And my brothers went to Hebrew school.
    It was a better school, the Hebrew school.
    Public was very antisemitic.
    It was really bad.
    They used to beat up the Jewish kids.
    Why did they go to Hebrew school and you went to public school?
    Well, because we had to pay a lot of money for Hebrew school.
    And three kids at one time to send
    was too much for my parents then.
    Now, then after quite a few years,
    my parents were very sorry.
    They always-- every time, they used to talk,
    why we didn't send Rachel to Hebrew school?
    They were really sorry.
    At this time, couldn't afford it because it was then
    after the war too until my parents came on the feet.
    It took at the time.
    You mean after World War I?
    Yeah, they married after World War I. They married.
    So it was not easy for them.
    Everything was broken down.
    Like my mother's parents were rich before the war.
    And then they were poor.
    My grandmother died, the children died.
    So it was difficult. Were your parents Orthodox?
    Or what kind of religious--
    level of religiousness?
    They were not Orthodox to the sense
    my father to wear a big payos or a big beard, no.
    You see, my father was a modern Jew.
    He believed in Judaism.
    And did--
    A Zionist-- he was a very good-- he was a Zionist.
    Were they modern Orthodox then?
    Yeah, a modern, yeah.
    And we believed in Shabbos.
    Our business was closed Shabbos and all the holidays.
    And their dream was someday to go to Israel.
    The children going to grow up, and going to be peace.
    They were thinking to settle Israel to settle in Israel.
    So Hitler made a different kind of dream.
    When you went to school, you went to a public school?
    Yeah, I went to the public school.
    Did you have Poles--
    so you were in a classroom with other Polish--
    Yeah, with other Polish.
    --girls and boys?
    Yeah.
    And the other Jews?
    Yeah, was Jewish people too, sure.
    Did you have any friends who were Polish?
    Yeah.
    Any girlfriends?
    Yeah, I had a lot of friends Jewish
    because I belonged to like a summertime boys--
    girl scouts, yeah.
    Hashomer Hatzair?
    Yeah, Hashomer Hatzair.
    I belonged to organization.
    What was that?
    What kind of organization was it?
    It's like a Girl Scout team.
    And when I came home, I had all Polish girls and boys
    playing with them because around us didn't live too many Jews.
    It was just a few Jewish families.
    So we were friends with them too.
    Some were older, some were younger.
    No, most of my friends were Polish girls and boys--
    used to go together to school every day.
    We used to walk a mile and a half
    to school every single day.
    So I made pretty good friends.
    I was thinking they're my friends.
    And came a holiday, we invite them to our house.
    And came Christmas or other holidays,
    they invited us to their house.
    And we lived very good with them.
    And my father used to borrow them money
    when they were in a tight spot.
    Oh, you lent them money.
    Yeah, lent them money when they were in a tight spot,
    help them out.
    And we lived very good until the war broke out.
    Then we saw who our friends are.
    You said, your father used to lend them money.
    Were your parents-- you said they
    had it hard in the beginning.
    But how were they social--
    I mean, economically?
    They were like in middle class, the Jews.
    Yeah.
    They-- my father used to deal with grain and all the things.
    And like our neighbor, he had pigs.
    And he had to feed them.
    And he didn't have the money to buy.
    They were not farmers, those people.
    He worked like a city worker.
    And sometimes, they were lay off.
    And they didn't have this much money.
    So sometimes, they went through a few months bad months.
    And my father always pitched in.
    And they were really good to us.
    And we were good to them.
    We lived like brothers together on one parcel.
    As a matter of fact, this neighbor lived with us.
    My grandfather sold him a piece of land.
    So he built this house there, his home.
    Did-- when you were growing up and you had your Polish friends
    that you would play with, did you ever
    encounter any antisemitic experiences with them,
    either playing with them or in school?
    Yeah, this was the funny thing.
    See, the Poles, they play with you.
    They-- I didn't feel any antisemitism.
    Now, the other Poles, when you--
    when I walked in the street, was written on the fences,
    Hitler's coming.
    Don't buy anythings from the Jews.
    Be against the Jews.
    Hitler going to come and going to kill all the Jews out.
    And we going to have a Poland without Jews, all brothers.
    This was written all over the place.
    And we didn't understand what it is.
    We were thinking it's just like a fairy tale,
    I mean, hoodlums playing around.
    It's nothing.
    But this wasn't a hoodlum.
    This was the government.
    The government was all behind this whole thing
    was the government.
    He didn't stop them it.
    He let them do all those things.
    And so then the Poles really were
    very happy if Hitler going to come in.
    They were thinking, they're going to come only
    to kill out the Jews.
    We used to tell them, if they come,
    they're going to destroy your country too and do this.
    When you-- as the years got on, and Hitler came into power,
    did your relationships with your Polish friends change at all?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    It changed drastically, drastically.
    They were afraid to talk to us.
    They're afraid to associate with us.
    They didn't want us to come into their houses.
    This was before Hitler invaded Poland, right?
    No, this was when Hitler just came in, just came in.
    How about even right before then?
    Before then it was a antisemitism, no, not
    those what they lived near you.
    The girl what I was going to school,
    she talked Jewish better than me.
    She was--
    A Polish?
    --a Polish girl, she was reading Jewish and talking Jewish just
    like me.
    Why is that?
    She was brought up in my house.
    We were in one house living.
    And we came home from school always.
    Or I went to her house or she came in my house.
    And we played.
    So the antisemitism was very big.
    Or we didn't let us touch us.
    We were thinking, it's not us, it's there.
    They-- those Polacks, where they were good to us,
    they weren't good to the next Jew.
    I like you.
    You a nice Jew.
    I don't like the other Jews.
    In other words, they knew you individually.
    So they liked you.
    But Jews in general--
    Yeah.
    They liked you.
    No, they didn't.
    They didn't.
    As a matter of fact, the Polish mothers, the minute
    the little girl, the little boy just
    start talking, they used to tell them
    stories about Jewish people, how bad they are.
    And they use blood for matzos and all those things,
    just to poison their minds.
    Sometime, a Polack, he didn't see what a Jew is.
    He lived someplace and he didn't know what Jewish people are.
    He heard about him.
    So when he met a Jewish girl or a Jewish boy,
    he said, you don't look bad.
    You just look like me.
    That's the poison they gave him.
    The antisemitism was very bad.
    I mean, in Poland was not too many other nationality, only
    Jews and Gypsies.
    Were there a lot of Gypsies in Poland?
    Yeah.
    There was a lot of Gypsies.
    And they were prosecuted too by the Polish.
    Prosecuted.
    Yeah.
    And then by the Nazis, yeah.
    As the war got closer and closer,
    like in '37, 1937 and 1938, when things started getting worse,
    was there ever any talk in your family of leaving Poland?
    Yeah.
    It was a lot of talk.
    It was a lot of talk.
    We should leave.
    We shouldn't stay here.
    On there lived such millionaires,
    real millionaires, Jewish millionaires.
    And they didn't budge.
    They didn't.
    They said, that's my Poland.
    I'm not moving.
    That's mine.
    That's mine.
    I'm a patriot here.
    I fight for this country.
    And the same thing with us, my parents talked.
    My uncles talked.
    Everybody talked.
    Where are we going to go?
    Where are we going to go?
    Was no place to go.
    No country wants to take it in.
    To Israel?
    Israel was not so good either then, was depression.
    And the English didn't let in.
    You have to smuggle.
    And you have to--
    I mean, you go out from a home.
    You have a home established for hundreds of years.
    And you have to pick up a few little things and go.
    So we decide, no, we're going to stick out.
    And I heard my parents talking, the Germans
    weren't so bad in the First War.
    They weren't so bad.
    They were better with the Poles.
    I mean the Jewish--
    They were worse with the Poles?
    They were better with the Poles, the Germans,
    in the First World War.
    They were better.
    And they were living with the Jews very good.
    They understood each other very good.
    And they didn't see no reason why we--
    couldn't be the Germans are so bad.
    Why they painting the Germans?
    See, that's what it is.
    People don't want to take it in if something is bad.
    They don't want to face it.
    They don't want to see it.
    So you think people were denying what was going on?
    Yeah, denying, that's right.
    It was written every place, papers were writing.
    And lecturers came, and they talk big lectures,
    they were talking, and telling how bad Hitler is,
    and what he is doing in Germany.
    He throws out all the German people what
    they said they're not Jewish.
    They're German.
    And they throw them out.
    They have just a little blood of Jew-- of Judaism,
    they throw them out from there.
    And still, we didn't want to believe it.
    It can't be a thing like this.
    That's our land.
    We are born in Poland.
    We don't have no other country.
    We fight.
    Our children fight for freedom for Poland.
    And where are we going to go?
    Where are we going to go?
    And that's what the question, that's what the answer,
    and that's the way the Germany came in.
    OK.
    How old were you when the war broke out?
    I was just 16 years in May.
    I was 16 years old, 1939.
    War broke out in September '39?
    Yeah, September.
    And how did you first hear about the invasion?
    The radios and the streets, was radios, loudspeakers.
    And the Poles were talking how strong they are.
    They never going to give up.
    We so strong.
    We don't going to give even a button from our uniform,
    never mind our country, even a button.
    And they talk very strong into unite,
    and everybody should unite.
    And we're going to win the war.
    We're going to beat the Germans.
    And we're going to beat Hitler, and that, and that.
    And we hear that every day, every day the same thing
    till the bombs come-- stopped coming.
    And the bombs stopped coming from our planes, Polish planes.
    We saw the Polish planes.
    And we pulled out our hands.
    The Polish planes are coming.
    And the Polish planes were bombing.
    Because see--
    They were bombing Poland?
    They were bombing because it was Volksdeutschen
    were being in the government, Volksdeutschen.
    Actually, they were Germans in the Polish government?
    They were German in the Polish government.
    And the they picked up the bombs to go to Germany.
    And they land-- they throw them out all in Poland.
    They bombed all the city, the Polish Germans.
    They were Polish Germans.
    Volksdeutschen, they called them.
    See, a Jew couldn't be in the government in a high office.
    A Jew couldn't be in the military,
    couldn't be a high officer.
    He could fight in the front, but were not being somebody.
    So the Volksdeutsche, they were [INAUDIBLE]..
    And that's what happened.
    They were traitors to Poland.
    Yeah.
    Poland was taken just in a day or two.
    And as it they start bombing in Friday,
    and the next Friday, all the war was over.
    The war was over.
    Was no more war.
    What happened when the war started in terms of the men?
    Did they organize an army?
    Or what did they do?
    What did Poland do?
    Yeah.
    All the men, sure, went to the army before the war broke out.
    My cousins went to the army.
    All my cousins were in the army.
    As a matter of fact, they were in prison in Germany.
    Then later, they came--
    one came back.
    Now, doesn't live anyway.
    So they took all-- all the Jewish people went fighting
    just with the Poles together.
    It just took a few days.
    And the armies were deserting.
    The armies were running away, taking off the mandyas,
    and putting on civilian clothes.
    It was nobody to fight to.
    I mean, the Germans were right away in Poland.
    They didn't have to go to Germany fight.
    They were right away in our soil because that's
    the way the war was organized.
    We were betrayed.
    What did your family do when the war broke out?
    Well, we finally-- they hide because of the bombs.
    Then we came back from the hiding places.
    And the Germans started coming in our side, the German,
    and the other side, the Russians.
    So who was lucky, the Russians came in.
    We were not this lucky.
    So in our place, the Germans came in.
    I don't understand.
    When Germany invaded Poland, Russia also invaded Poland?
    Yeah, the Russians start coming the other side, yeah.
    And we escaped the Russian.
    Mostly, we-- no, right away, in the beginning,
    they didn't come.
    They came just in White Russia.
    They were there.
    And the Russians, it used to be theirs.
    They didn't come military.
    They were there.
    And we Jews escaped there, to White Russia.
    We escaped.
    So like Bialystok and Brzesc nad Bugiem, we had a family there.
    So my mother sent out my younger brother.
    And my uncle went there with my brother.
    He's going to take good care on him.
    This was in Russia, the Russian part?
    Yeah, this was like-- see, like Poznan was the German part.
    So the other side was near to the Russian border.
    So the Jews concentrate more to the Russian border.
    Maybe they go over more to the Russian side
    before Germany going to invade all Poland.
    So a lot of people ran away there to Brzesc, Bialystok, all
    those--
    Ukraine places, they ran away.
    And the Germans came in just like they--
    we were told they're going to come in.
    They came in with a big storm right away on the Jews,
    right away.
    All the Jews raus from the houses.
    And they start cutting beards.
    And they start beating kids and beating children.
    Germans were doing this to Jews?
    To Jews, yeah.
    Yeah.
    And right, right the first moment they came in,
    and they gave order, all the Jewish men
    to come tomorrow morning to work for the Germans.
    So the Jewish people went to work.
    They were thinking, listen, we're going to work.
    This was still in 1939?
    That's 1939, yeah.
    So we all went to work.
    We worked for them.
    They beat.
    They did terrible things.
    They cut beards.
    And they cut hair.
    And they--
    But you continued to live in your home?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    I continue living my home 1939 to 1940, the beginning of 1940.
    We had to move in our house.
    So we moved to a little city there near the Russian border,
    closer to the Russian border, to escape to the Russian border.
    Why did you decide to do that?
    Well, we saw we couldn't live in Germany.
    It was just impossible.
    They took away.
    Yeah, we had the store.
    They took away everything from the store.
    They took everything away.
    And we couldn't walk in the street.
    We couldn't walk after 6:00, all those things.
    We had to be in the house.
    How about Poles?
    The Poles had all the rights.
    They had-- they gave them card, rationing.
    They had food.
    They had everything.
    They had meat.
    They had fat.
    And the Jews were taken away.
    Nothing was given to the Jews.
    Jews couldn't own any property then?
    No, no property.
    Everything was taken away.
    They took--
    Your father's store was taken away?
    My father's store was all given away, taken away
    with the horse and buggy.
    Some things, we took it away ourselves
    before they came into the store.
    We hide it in basement in some places they couldn't find.
    If we had to live another year or two,
    we still would have food to eat if we lived in this house.
    When we moved out, we had to leave everything again.
    We couldn't take.
    That's all we could take is just the clothes on the back
    and a little bundle to carry.
    That's all we could take.
    So you moved to a town?
    Yeah, Slawatycze, called Slawatycze.
    Slawatycze?
    Yeah, it's near the Russian border,
    near to Brzesc nad Bugiem.
    How far away is that from Radzyn?
    Oh, it's-- I think they were going a day and a night
    by buggy, day and a night.
    And so we came to this little town.
    It was a lot of Germans there too
    because it was on the border.
    A lot of people escaped on the other side of the border.
    It was still considered to be in Poland, though, right?
    Yeah, this was Poland still, yeah, was the other side.
    So they used to shoot.
    And I don't know.
    I was afraid.
    And my little brother was afraid.
    And we saw a lot of people laying in the water shot
    with the heads off.
    The water was practically red.
    And then we waited till the winter going to come.
    Maybe it's going to freeze, going to be easier.
    So it was the same thing.
    The water was frozen.
    And still was a lot of Germans, every few feet.
    Yeah, few yard, it was Germans.
    And we still couldn't.
    Jews would try to get across the river and go over to Russia.
    A lot of did.
    A lot of did.
    And a lot of got killed, I mean, both ways.
    A lot escaped.
    My cousin escaped.
    And she is now in Canada.
    She escaped in the same time we wanted to escape.
    And a lot of people got shot we know.
    How long were you there?
    We were there about three-four months.
    When the spring came, in March, we came back to Poland.
    We came back to our city, to Radzyn Podlaski.
    And we worked there for the Germans.
    We had to work on a--
    they built a new airport.
    Radzyn didn't have a good airport, was small, very small.
    So the Germans built a big one with the Jewish people working.
    And my father went there a few times.
    He worked so hard and was beating all the time.
    So I said, I'm going in your place.
    So I used to go in my father's place.
    I used to come there to do the work.
    Was bad.
    The Germans used to beat the Jewish boys and the Jewish men.
    It was a few Jewish girls.
    So they didn't beat me.
    They didn't beat the few girls.
    They were very nice to us.
    How about your two brothers?
    One brother went to the Russian side with my uncle.
    And we didn't know what's going on there.
    And he was there with my uncle.
    And my little brother was home.
    He was a little brother.
    He was growing very fast.
    And even close to wear my father's clothes
    because he really grew up, got terrible fast.
    And my brother was still home because he was too young.
    They didn't take.
    Till about 12 or 13, they started taking to work.
    Till then, they didn't take.
    So I worked most of the time for my father, for the airport,
    around the city.
    Every place, I went to work for my father.
    And one time, a German came in in the house.
    He used to go by your house all the time to another village.
    And he was a murderer.
    He murdered my two cousins and another girl.
    He murdered them cold blood.
    So he took out my father from the house.
    And he chased him.
    He was on the horse.
    And he chased my father all over the fields.
    He just came into your house for no reason?
    Yeah.
    Did he know your father?
    No, he didn't know my father.
    He was just going by every day.
    And probably, somebody said, Jewish people living here.
    Probably the Polish people must telled him
    because otherwise, he wouldn't know.
    And I was working then.
    And I came home, my father was so beaten,
    so beaten, strain and crying.
    He was not so much afraid of himself.
    He said, listen, I lived my life.
    I know what life is.
    I feel so bad for you kids.
    I feel terrible.
    I can't help it.
    I'm so helpless.
    He felt very helpless.
    Felt very helpless.
    He felt ashamed.
    He felt what, ashamed?
    Of what?
    What?
    Because he was so helpless, he couldn't help.
    There was no place to escape, no help, no nothing.
    It was-- we were trapped, just like in a mouse trap.
    We couldn't do anything--
    no place you could run.
    We ran to the woods a few times.
    We stayed in the woods.
    Now, how long can you stay in the woods
    without food, without shelter, without anything?
    And I mean, the war wasn't just like a week, or two, a month,
    a year.
    It's continue.
    And the Germans did more things, more things to the Jews.
    Every day was a different kind of orders given Out one day
    was ordered not to go out after 6:00.
    The next day, all the Jews must go and work, come out
    on the Platz every morning and go to work without food,
    without pay, without nothing, beating, and working.
    The next day was you have to give away all your silver what
    you have, all your gold--
    no gold rings, nobody can wear nothing--
    gold, silver, diamonds, everything
    has to be bring there and give it
    away to this place where the Germans were there.
    The next day was another order.
    Nobody can wear furs.
    If somebody's going to be catched wearing a fur, silver,
    gold, diamonds, they're going to be shot right on the spot.
    And they did shot a woman.
    She didn't even wear it.
    They said, she has a fur.
    And she didn't give it.
    And they shot her right in the middle of the town.
    Everybody saw it.
    They shot her.
    So we gave everything away.
    If somebody had a little fur collar on the coat,
    you have to take it off and wear it just
    like this, without anything.
    And we had to give away.
    Somebody lives in nice homes, we have to move.
    Like my cousins had nice new homes built,
    they had to move out.
    And the Poles took it over.
    And they moved into a place.
    And they lived in this place what I told you,
    we used to make oil there.
    And they lived in this place.
    They lived in this silo where we used to buy grain and leave it
    there for some time.
    So they lived there.
    That's what they did.
    A Jew couldn't own anything, couldn't work no place,
    couldn't go to school, couldn't go to library.
    We used to come together at night,
    and talk, and sing, and try to give some humor in life.
    [CRIES] There was no humor.
    My parents--
    OK.
    You were saying about your parents?
    Yeah, my parents, they tried to give us humor, to laugh,
    to tell us jokes, and things like this.
    But the end was we were sitting always, and crying,
    and being afraid, the next morning we be killed.
    And lay in the beds, we used to listen to the noises,
    to everything, afraid of touching the door.
    The only hope was maybe we children are going to survive.
    Somebody should survive in the family to tell the story.
    They knew what was going to happen.
    They said many times to me, I know,
    if somebody going to be alive, I hope you,
    Shloime are going to be alive.
    Moshe is away in the Russian zone.
    Maybe he's going to survive.
    Somebody going to be alive to tell what happened,
    how a thing like this can happen.
    I know you're going to have a hard time if you
    live to tell the story because nobody going to believe it.
    And that's what it is.
    It's already 35, 36 years since we liberated--
    not since the war, since we liberated.
    We-- the only one inside of us [CRIES]..
    We didn't tell the story because nobody wanted to listen.
    Nobody was interested.
    When I first came in this country and I want to tell,
    they said, no, it couldn't be.
    It couldn't be.
    Who's doing things like this?
    And they didn't want to listen.
    And we used to come together.
    Between us, we used to sit, and cry, and tell each other
    those stories, and cry.
    So it came a time we couldn't take it.
    We stop talking.
    So we lay at night.
    We sleep at night with dreams, with movies.
    You see everything in color-- the blood.
    The blood is so red, the faces so white.
    When you were in Poland.
    People were afraid, how people looked the last minute
    before they get shot, how they look, with the eyes open,
    and look for some help, for some miracle.
    It's not there.
    The miracle never came.
    When you-- you said one time that this German had
    come into your house and had chased your father.
    And he had been injured badly.
    What happened?
    This was in 1940?
    Yeah, this was in 1940--
    1941-- 1940.
    In the summer 1940.
    You were still in Radzyn, Poland?
    Yeah, I was there in Poland.
    Yeah.
    And so what happened after that?
    What happened?
    So my father was sick, was laying in bed.
    And we comfort him.
    And we told him, going to come a better day.
    Did you continue to work out in the field?
    Yeah, I continued to work.
    I worked with a Polish woman in the fields.
    I worked even better with them, faster with them.
    He was staying over me with a big--
    those things.
    Whip?
    Whip, yeah.
    No, he never gave him a reason to hit me somehow.
    Things got-- he didn't hit me.
    Because those where they got hit, was very bad to survive,
    because they really damaged people.
    You were building an airport there?
    Yeah, we were building an airport there.
    Yeah.
    So why don't you just tell me what
    happen, how things progressed.
    Yeah, so my father used to say, they never can win, never.
    I know, I'm not going to survive.
    I know a lot of people aren't going to survive.
    They not going to win.
    Somebody, some place, a Jewish person going to live through.
    And he's going to tell what kind of bandits they are.
    The world never knew things like this what they did.
    I will never-- they took Poland, and they took Czechoslovakia,
    they took Hungarian, and they took all around the countries--
    France.
    They took everything.
    Still, I don't know.
    The Jewish people used to tell themselves and the kids,
    they don't going to win.
    The end, they have to lose.
    We used to tell them, Father, how can you talk like this?
    How can you say this?
    How can you say what, that they're going to lose?
    They're going to lose.
    They're always winning, they're winning.
    He said, he's going to eat lunch in Moscow.
    He eats, he said, breakfast in Paris, supper in Belgium,
    every place what he says, he does.
    And he does.
    And he kills innocent people.
    He kills.
    He kills people without any resistance.
    See, when he came into Poland, right away--
    He being Hitler?
    Yeah, Hitler, Hitler.
    And Hitler came into Poland, right away,
    he took away all the intelligent people--
    doctors, lawyers, big organizations,
    the heads from big organizations.
    He all killed them out.
    Is that the air conditioner?
    Yeah.
    Why did-- just went on by itself?
    Yeah.
    It hasn't got it.
    Want to shut this?
    Yeah.
    So you were saying Hitler.
    So the Jewish people were left, just
    like sheeps without a master.
    They were left broken down.
    They took away-- some of the kids,
    they took away in Arbeitslagers, they called it.
    It was not concentration camps then--
    Arbeitslagers.
    They took them away someplace, a little field,
    and they make a concentration camp.
    And they took the Jews to work here, there,
    every place without food, without nothing.
    They used to die every single day.
    Then they took away your pride, your ambition.
    They took away-- they strip you of everything.
    They stripped you like you are naked person, go out
    in the world.
    Could you?
    Could you go out naked and wander around the world?
    That's the way a Jew was stripped of everything.
    And we couldn't raise.
    We couldn't raise ourselves up to anything.
    Then they start those camps.
    And then they start building concentration camps.
    So Jewish people were talking between them.
    They're building concentration camps.
    They're going to take us all to concentration camps.
    Everybody was thinking, well, I'm
    going to take me concentration camp.
    The war is going to stop.
    Any day, the war is going to stop.
    It doesn't continue so long.
    And until they're going to build,
    until they're going to take us--
    What did people think concentration camps were?
    Killing.
    They knew they were death camps?
    Yeah, yeah, yeah they knew it too.
    How did they know this?
    They knew.
    Listen, the people worked to build them-- crematoriums,
    they build.
    Words came out.
    In the first transport, they went to Treblinka,
    some few boys came out.
    I don't know by what kind of miracle.
    They came in in the clothing.
    They took all the clothing, they throw it on on trucks.
    And the trucks went out from the camps.
    Was some miracle because it's really-- it's not.
    I was there.
    You can't really escape.
    This is just like a dream never going to come true.
    Now, somehow, they came out.
    And they came back to the cities.
    And they told the people what's going on.
    Or we couldn't help ourself.
    We couldn't do anything.
    We were so surrounded by them.
    We couldn't do anything.
    See, that's what I'm going to start.
    When the concentration camp starts-- and my uncle,
    they took to Arbeitercamp.
    He never came back.
    What kind of camp?
    Arbeitercamp, to work.
    He never came back.
    Then they started taking more about the camps.
    And nobody came back.
    And we didn't hear a word from them.
    So we knew, that's it.
    It's finished.
    Now, they did it with such a concentration,
    with such a mind, this was the--
    Intensity, you mean.
    Yeah.
    This was organized by such a minds,
    you never could think of it.
    See, they stripped you from everything.
    Now, they start in all the cripples,
    all the people mental health people,
    sick people, everything, we should bring it out
    to the Platz, called Platz.
    The plaza?
    The place, like the place.
    Center of town?
    Yeah, the center of town.
    We should bring out those people there.
    Then starting older people, like my grandfather.
    My father went and cried all night there with my father,
    with my grandfather.
    Your grandfather was living with you?
    He was living with my aunt, my father's sister--
    my grandfather.
    So we-- you had to come there.
    They went from house to house looking for all the old people.
    If you hide them, they take him tomorrow.
    This was your father's father?
    Yeah, that was my father's father.
    Yeah.
    So they have to bring him out to this Platz.
    OK.
    So the sick, the mental retired, the old already not there--
    all young.
    Or the oldest was 45.
    When was this?
    This was in '42.
    So you were still in Radzyn in '42?
    Yeah, I was still in Radzyn till '42.
    Still going out and working every day?
    No, no, '41.
    I'm sorry.
    '41.
    This was '41.
    Yeah.
    '41, we didn't go to the ghetto.
    It was a ghetto already.
    Miedzyrzecz was a ghetto.
    Miedzyrzecz, right.
    This was already.
    Yeah, was a ghetto.
    And we didn't go yet to the ghetto.
    So one day, came all the Jews have to come out to this place.
    It's going to be judenrein, no more Jewish people.
    We're going to leave just, let's say, 20 or 25.
    They're going to be in one place those people.
    They're going to work for us.
    They cannot go free where they want to go.
    They're going to stay in our barracks.
    Only those people going to be in Radzyn.
    And the rest, everybody has to go to Miedzyrzecz
    to the ghetto.
    Miedzyrzecz was another town?
    Yeah, it was another town, 27 miles away from our town.
    Was there a Judenrat in Radzyn?
    Yeah, was a Judenrat.
    Was that formed right away?
    It was formed in 1940--
    by the end of '41.
    No, '40.
    No, '40-- 1940, right away, it was formed the Judenrat.
    Right.
    All the workers were-- they had to come.
    If they didn't come out, so the Judenrat
    used to send out the Jewish police to get them,
    to bring them to work.
    And they made sure everybody's working.
    I mean, they make sure in town everybody's working.
    Everybody has food, nobody cared.
    No, everybody has to work for nothing.
    It come the wintertime, they used
    to chase them out naked without shoes
    to shovel the snow because--
    Who used to come?
    The Judenrat.
    The Judenrat used to come and tell all the Jews
    to go with the Germans.
    They used to come and tell, from door to door,
    out, out, shoveling the snow.
    So in our city, the train was 12 kilometers away from the city.
    And they had to transport coals and other things
    for the German use.
    So we had to clean all the highways till the train.
    And all the snow was more blood than snow.
    Everything was red-- the killing and the beating.
    And the people were frozen naked, it was so cold.
    Even the hair on the--
    Eyebrows.
    --eyebrows were frozen, so cold was.
    And they were beating them and beating them.
    And they had to work.
    Who was beating them?
    The Nazis, the German was beating the Jewish people
    because they stayed and took care of them,
    they should work faster, and faster, and faster.
    The Poles saw this happening?
    Yeah, the Poles-- the Poles were very happy about it,
    all of them, very happy.
    This has happened to the Pole-- to the Jews.
    As a matter of fact, my good friends,
    what I lived with them, and eat with them, and sleep with them,
    the minute the German used to come by with a horse,
    they used to come and run and oh, the Germans
    are coming, the Germans.
    So we used to hide or do something not to go out.
    So they used to grab things, like they
    saw where we hide the money or things, and steal it from us.
    Your friends would do this?
    My friends, yeah, my friends.
    I remember, my father throw some money under the head of the bed
    there, between the head on the bed and the wall.
    And this Polish girl, my good girlfriend, went in.
    And she took away all the money there.
    They were happy seeing us going.
    So they went in.
    They took our furniture.
    They took our things.
    And some things, we gave them ourself.
    My mother had a beautiful tablecloth like this
    and fisherman's net with bigger holes,
    with beautiful big roses and beautiful leaves, green leaves.
    So my mother gave it to this Polish girl
    to keep it for till the war is over or somebody comes to us
    and wanted for souvenir, to give it.
    I came back to Poland.
    I'm going to tell you the story later.
    OK.
    OK.
    So in 1941, they decided to move people from Radzyn
    to Miedzyrzecz?
    Yeah, Miedzyrzecz.
    Miedzyrzecz.
    This is 1941.
    Everything should be judenrein here in Radzyn.
    So what does judenrein mean?
    Judenrein?
    No Jewish people should live in this city.
    Free of Jews.
    Free of Jews, that's judenrein.
    So we lived not far from the woods.
    So we figured, instead to go to the Platz,
    we're going to go to the woods.
    And we're going to hide.
    We're going to hide.
    And that's what we did.
    We hide for a few days.
    We were in the woods, running around,
    sleeping around the woods, cold, and tired.
    We were very tired.
    So one day, we decided to go home because it was too much.
    We had to change clothes.
    And we didn't take no clothes with us.
    And it was really tired.
    My brother was crying.
    And we had cousins with us.
    And my father, my mother, and I have a boyfriend, a lover,
    which I don't want to tell the story, it's too painful.
    During the war, I was in love.
    I was young, and we were in love.
    You went back to Radzyn?
    Yeah.
    This was in Radzyn in the woods, in Radzyn woods.
    And he came back to our house at night.
    And we washed, we undressed, and we ate.
    And we want to go to sleep for a few hours.
    We figured, we're going to go out
    from the house before 5 o'clock, maybe if the Germans come
    in the morning.
    At night, what German going to come?
    Meanwhile, the Poles where they live near us told them,
    we're going-- we are hiding in the woods.
    We didn't go to the ghetto.
    We're hiding.
    And probably, we're going to come back at night.
    So by 11 o'clock at night--
    this was October the 27th.
    1941?
    1941-- no, this was 1942.
    I get mixed up with the years.
    That's quite all right, 1942.
    1942, right.
    This was 1942, judenrein.
    They came.
    And they took around our house.
    They surrounded your house?
    They surround our house all around.
    My little brother was sleeping on the bed with my father.
    See, we had a hiding place in our house.
    And my mother begged us.
    She begged us.
    Please, this night, please, let's go down with covers,
    with everything.
    We had made beds to sleep, I mean, on the floor, the covers.
    She begged us.
    And we didn't want to go there to sleep.
    My mother went down by herself with a stepsister.
    She had a little sister.
    She was about 12 years old.
    So she went down with my stepsister or so.
    And we said, no, we're not going to go down.
    We're going to sleep here.
    And when the Germans came around our house, they start shooting.
    And they start coming through the doors
    and through the windows.
    Oh, and my little brother was in the bed laying
    with my father and my cousins.
    They just start shooting, and shooting, and shooting.
    My father jumped to the window and was shot right away, took--
    all the stomach was taken apart.
    They were shooting with the called [? uprise. ?]
    The kind of bullet.
    Explosive, explosive.
    So your father was killed?
    My father was killed right away.
    And I was running.
    And I yelled to my little brother, come.
    And he woke up.
    And he started running after me.
    He jumped right after me.
    And we were running through the field.
    And then near us was a new house.
    They're just building this new house.
    Sometime, we used to play around there.
    We used to say, someday, if we have to really run, and escape,
    and hide, we're going to hide in this house.
    We're going to find someplace to hide.
    And that's what my brother did.
    He was running after me to this house.
    I ran in in this house.
    And I hide under some wood, between wood someplace.
    Was this Shlomo, your brother Shlomo?
    Shlomo, yeah, Shlomo, my little brother Shlomele
    was running after me.
    And right away, I heard uhh.
    And that's it.
    He was shot.
    The Nazis shot him.
    And fell down right away.
    And I was laying right under.
    And the German came in with machine gun, buh-buh-buh,
    all over with the machine gun.
    [GERMAN]---- another dog ran in here.
    Called us dogs.
    Another dog came in here running.
    And I was laying.
    I looked right at him with my eyes.
    I looked at him.
    And he didn't see me.
    I looked at him.
    And I was thinking, should I go out?
    Because what is life already?
    It would be better if he shot me.
    And I would lay nice and quiet.
    I wouldn't have to suffer so much.
    Then another boy said to me, don't you do it.
    Don't you ever do a thing like this.
    Stay here.
    Don't go out.
    Don't go out.
    And he was yelling and shouting.
    And I hear so much voices screaming,
    my cousins, my uncles, my aunts.
    Everybody was screaming.
    It was such a war.
    And the dogs were barking all over the villages.
    So all your relatives were with you
    when you had been hiding in the woods.
    And they were with you in the house.
    Yeah, yeah, they were with us all day.
    Yeah.
    How many people altogether?
    11 were shot, 11 were shot.
    And I escaped.
    My mother, of course, with her sister in the bunker,
    she came out later from the bunker.
    And one of my cousins escaped.
    And one little girl, I'm going to tell you,
    my cousin's little girl, it's another story.
    So I was laying.
    And he was shooting in me.
    And I couldn't imagine he doesn't see me.
    I see him.
    And how come he doesn't see me?
    And he didn't see me.
    He went out.
    And the killing was going on, and on, and on.
    And I fall asleep.
    I fall asleep.
    In my sleep, I had a dream, I'm going to survive.
    You're going to survive.
    You just hold on.
    You're going to survive.
    I had different kind of dream.
    I don't want to say it here, it's too painful.
    In the night, I went out.
    I don't know what time it was.
    I was in my nightgown.
    I went out.
    And I looked.
    I looked down at my little brother,
    was all stretched out with a puddle full of blood.
    So your brother was dead.
    My little Shlomo, yeah, I saw him dead.
    I Saw He was all stretched out.
    Such a good boy, such a [? darling ?] boy.
    What he been through, listening, little boy,
    listening to all those stories talking and begin to live here,
    to finish it so fast.
    So the barking stopped.
    The noise stopped.
    Everything was quiet.
    I said to myself, I'm going to go.
    When I go-- where I'm going to go?
    So I went up to the attic in this same house.
    I went up to the attic.
    And then were another--
    the wood, what you may--
    how you call it?
    The wood in the?
    The wood chips.
    Wood chips?
    Wood chips.
    Was a big pile of wood chips.
    So I went in in this pile of wood chips.
    This was this house that you had run away to?
    Yeah, that's a house, a newly built--
    it wasn't finished.
    It was start building up.
    I mean, it was almost finished.
    So I went in in those wood chips, lie down.
    And I don't know.
    I think I was covered.
    I don't know if I was covered.
    I know my eyes were covered.
    I don't know if they could see me.
    If they come by there, I really don't know.
    I know I was there laying during the day.
    Then the Germans came back.
    The Germans came back.
    They took our house apart.
    Yeah.
    And my mother at night, when the noise stopped,
    my mother took the little sister.
    She came out.
    She saw my father dead.
    And she started running to the woods.
    She ran with my sister to the woods.
    She was in the woods.
    With her sister?
    With her sister, little stepsister.
    She was all day there in the woods.
    And I was hiding there in the top.
    And then in the morning, was all the Germans came back
    with wagons, so many Germans, yelling,
    with dogs, with dogs, with the German Shepherds, so
    much yelling.
    And I heard, like--
    the house has been taken apart.
    They took our house apart.
    When my father falled, they started looking,
    maybe something there.
    And this was there, the place where my mother went in
    through the wall.
    She went in.
    It was so nicely done, you couldn't see it.
    So they went in there.
    They ripped everything apart.
    And they looked.
    They ripped our house apart to pieces.
    They said, a lot of things is hidden, which it wasn't.
    It was hidden things to eat, like we--
    my mother baked some biscuits and things in case
    we need some food, we should have it for a longer time.
    And then they came to the house.
    And they took out my brother.
    And I heard the Polish woman, which she lived near us,
    she was standing.
    And she cried a little bit over him.
    She said, she never saw such a nice little boy like he was.
    He was really nice.
    He didn't talk loud to people.
    He didn't do no damage like other kids,
    climbing trees, and breaking things, never.
    Never.
    He was such a good boy.
    She admired him how good he was.
    And it's too bad this happened, and so many people killed,
    she was saying, and talking to herself--
    You could hear her?
    --or to somebody.
    Yeah, I heard her talking.
    I don't know if she talked to somebody else.
    And I know she made a cross because she
    said the prayer with the cross.
    This was going on all day.
    At night, when it got dark, I came down from this place.
    And I couldn't stand on my feet.
    I went to my Polish girlfriend.
    I had there coats, and dresses, and shoes.
    She gave me a big shoes.
    She gave me schmatta, things to put on.
    She didn't want to give me my good stuff.
    So I went to another Polish woman, where we concentrate.
    And my cousin came back.
    My mother came back.
    Were these Poles that you felt you could trust?
    Yeah, yeah, those Poles were nice.
    They were very nice.
    And I know my cousin knew them very well.
    If they're going to come back, they
    would come back to those Poles, not
    to those where the whole thing happened.
    So 11 people were shot--
    was my brother, my father, and nine cousins.
    One family was a mother.
    The father was taken away to Treblinka already--
    a mother and five daughters, beautiful young daughters,
    from ages 17 to age six, five.
    And they were shot, my mother's-- another aunt with
    a little boy.
    When she saw them coming, she start yelling.
    So they took the rifle from the other side.
    And the chopped off the little boy, the whole jaw,
    they chopped him off with the rifle.
    So she starts screaming.
    She took her hair, she pulled out all her hair from the head.
    They shot her.
    How we know this?
    Little girl, she was six years old.
    She was in the cupboards.
    They throw her up and down with the cupboards.
    And she was in the cupboards, rolled in.
    And they didn't see her.
    So she came out.
    And she told us the story how this happened
    to her mother and her brother.
    Your cousin?
    Yeah, it was my mother's cousin, my second cousin.
    So then we were in a hiding place.
    I got together with my mother and my cousins what was there.
    Did your mother know you were alive?
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    When she went into the woods.
    Yeah, we met.
    Then later, we met this Polish woman.
    We met.
    And my mother knew I'm alive.
    I was with my mother till 1943.
    I was with my mother.
    This was '42 in October.
    And I was till May with my mother, 1943.
    Now, I'm going to remember more the dates because I'm
    so mixed up in my head--
    Well, you are doing-- you're remembering very well.
    --with those dates.
    So I came back with my mother.
    And I was with my mother all the time.
    You were in hiding.
    In hiding.
    In Radzyn?
    Yeah, in Radzyn hiding.
    By Poles?
    By Poles.
    In halos outside, on the fields in halos,
    and at night, going to Poles, begging a piece of bread.
    Haylofts?
    Haylofts, yeah.
    In barns?
    Yeah, hay, with stacks of hay.
    It was very warm there to sit in it.
    It was warm.
    It was nice till the Poles discovered us.
    And they told us to go to the ghetto.
    It's a better life there.
    At least you go out free in the ghetto.
    You can walk around, so which we did.
    We did go to the ghetto finally.
    And when was this that you went to the ghetto?
    I went to the ghetto in '43, the beginning of '43.
    This was like Christmas, New Year's time.
    This was New Year's time.
    You went to mid--
    Miedzyrzecz, to the ghetto.
    Yeah.
    So going to the ghetto was plenty--
    listen, I can't take this forever.
    And you wouldn't tape my story forever.
    No, I have to cut it short.
    It was a lot of Poles.
    They want to give us to the Germans.
    It wasn't easy to walk to the ghetto
    because a lot of Jewish people were shot.
    And trying to get to the ghetto?
    To the ghetto, was shot on both sides of the highways
    were a lot of Jews--
    girls, boys, and men, and all kind
    shot because the Poles gave them out.
    And they were shot.
    For five kilos of sugar, they gave a Jew to the Nazis.
    Poles that were hiding Jews would give them away?
    Or just if they saw them?
    Just saw them walking.
    See, the Germans didn't really know who was a Jew.
    They would never know I'm Jewish, never
    in a million years.
    They wouldn't know I'm Jewish.
    But the Poles always gave me out.
    A lot of times, they gave me out,
    I was a few times to be shot.
    How did the Poles know you were Jewish?
    They know.
    They lived with me.
    I mean, they know.
    See, when I came here in America,
    I didn't know who was American, who was Jewish either.
    I didn't know.
    To me, all people look the same.
    I didn't know the difference.
    So now, I know the difference, who's a Jewish person,
    more where I did before.
    So it's same thing.
    When you come in a strange country,
    you don't know the people.
    No, the Poles, even little Polish boys or girls
    used to tell, the Jude--
    that's all they knew German is Jude to say.
    That's all they-- the one and only, that's all they knew.
    And the Poles lived pretty nice.
    They used to go to the churches, and theaters, and movies,
    and schools.
    Everything was for them, not for us.
    For us was nothing.
    And they had the rationing of food.
    They lived pretty good.
    And they were happy.
    We used to tell them, when they go--
    they're going to get through with us,
    they're going to start with you.
    I mean, once a bandit is a bandit.
    OK.
    So you and your mother went to--
    Yeah.
    We decided we have to go to the ghetto.
    We have no other way.
    We don't have a place where to stay.
    And a person cannot live like a mouse.
    We have to wash.
    We have to dress.
    We have to feed.
    A person needs a lot.
    You really don't know how much a person needs till you
    get to the stage where we were.
    So you take it for granted, you mean.
    Yeah.
    We have to go to the ghetto.
    So we went to the ghetto.
    And we came in in the ghetto.
    No human imagination can imagine what a ghetto is.
    No.
    Filthy, sick, no food, no medicine--
    people lived in a room, five, six families almost
    on top of each other, misery.
    Everything was really bad-- children laying in the streets
    and crying, children I knew the parents were taken away
    to Treblinka.
    I knew it.
    And I couldn't help them.
    I didn't have myself what to eat--
    begging for a piece of crumb, for a piece of clothing,
    naked in the streets.
    It was unbearable.
    It was just-- no person can imagine what this going to look
    like--
    people laying and dying.
    The house where-- in the room where I was,
    a man was laying and dying slowly.
    I watched him, every minute, I seen him dying, and dying,
    and dying, and dying two days till he really died.
    How did people get food?
    I mean, did the--
    Just by smuggling.
    And it was a lot of killing.
    And they had to buy this.
    Was a lot of killing, but smuggling,
    going out from the ghetto.
    The only way people could eat was to steal the food?
    There was no food that was coming in at all?
    No, no, no food coming in at all.
    No food was reaching ghetto.
    Was no food coming in.
    I know, I was there from January till May, didn't get nothing,
    no food.
    I lived practically on nothing.
    Some Jews, what they had money, and they
    came in with money, or people where
    they lived there and the organized some food,
    they had that hidden food, so they eat.
    When we came in the ghetto, I had a bread, me
    and my mother, a big Polish bread, about three-four pounds.
    We ate crumb by crumb this little piece of bread.
    We didn't let it go from our hands.
    It was really tough.
    And then we got sick on typhus.
    And I was laying and burning, maybe this temperature here
    is about 105-106.
    I was really burning up.
    My mother had it a little lighter because she had it
    in the First World War.
    So she didn't had it so bad.
    And I really had it bad.
    And that's all I lived is with a little water.
    You had typhus?
    Typhus, yeah.
    And that's all I had is a little water.
    What did people do every day?
    They took them out to work from the ghettos.
    They were going by columns, let's say, 20-30 in one group.
    They took them out in this group and they brought them back
    in the group.
    So those where they went out, they
    could catch a piece of food someplace.
    Or maybe a Nazi gave him a little crumb someplace.
    Or those what they stayed in the ghetto, they really suffered.
    They didn't have anything.
    And those where they--
    that's what their city like.
    If I would live in Radzyn, I would never die for hunger.
    I would have always had food.
    Now, when you transported in another place,
    and you don't the people, you don't know nobody,
    and you come without money, you come without anything,
    you don't have nothing.
    So you didn't have any contacts?
    No, no contacts, no nothing.
    Me and my mother, we didn't have no contacts.
    And we got sick on this typhus.
    And we were really sick.
    And then I got better.
    So we cooked for boys what they went out from the ghetto
    to eat-- to work.
    So when they came back, they used
    to bring a little flour, a few potatoes, and things like this.
    So my mother used to cook for them.
    So I ate with my mother.
    We used to get one portion, both of us, to eat from those boys.
    So that's the way I start eating.
    Because till then, that's all I lived
    is on water and a crumb of bread what I still hold on like I
    never going to see it again.
    And then it was in May, May the 1st.
    They said, they're going to clear the ghetto again,
    going to take us all to Treblinka or Lublin,
    go to the gas chambers.
    We didn't know where we're going to go.
    And they start clearing the ghetto.
    So we went to hiding places.
    We went to a hiding place, me and my mother.
    They were going to clear the ghetto?
    They want to clear the ghetto to concentration camps
    or to gas chambers.
    They're going to take us.
    And at that point, you knew about?
    Oh, we knew, sure.
    At this point, we knew already what's coming.
    Before, we heard, and people told us,
    and we didn't believe it.
    And now, we believe it.
    We know, we're going to go.
    So I used to sit and talk to my mother.
    I said, listen.
    Life is life.
    We lived.
    We lived a life.
    Don't have the father.
    We don't have the brother.
    We don't have any relatives.
    Everybody's dead.
    So what is life to live for?
    And we have to suffer like this-- no food, in hiding,
    and any minute, they're knocking your door.
    A lot of nights, they used to come in and shoot a husband,
    shoot a wife, shoot a child, shoot, shoot, shoot.
    In the ghetto?
    Yeah, in a room, in a house.
    We used to run up to the attics and hide.
    I said, you know, Ma?
    It's better to be dead.
    I would feel much better to be dead.
    I can't take it no longer.
    I have nobody.
    I don't have-- my love is killed already.
    I don't have my relatives.
    I don't have nobody, just me and you suffering and suffering.
    For what's life to hold on for it?
    It's nothing.
    My mother used to tell me, OK.
    I don't care about myself.
    I'm older.
    I lived.
    I know what it is.
    You young.
    You didn't start to live.
    I would give anything in the world, you should survive.
    You the only one should survive.
    Maybe Moshe is still alive in the Russian zone.
    You going to get together with them.
    I don't mind going to the gas chambers
    if I know you're going to be alive.
    And I used to tell her, I'm going willingly with you.
    I don't care.
    See, my cousins wanted me to go.
    See, my cousins didn't come to the ghetto.
    My cousins wanted me to go with them, hiding in the woods,
    running around in the partisans or other places.
    I said, listen, I can't leave my mother alone.
    I'm going to go where my mother is,
    as much I love you and everything,
    I'm going with my mother.
    And that's what I did.
    I went with my mother.
    To the concentration camp?
    To the ghetto.
    Yeah.
    Oh, to the ghetto.
    I see.
    Yeah, to the ghetto.
    This was before going to the ghetto,
    my cousins said goodbye to me.
    And they want me to go with them.
    And I said, no, I'm going with my mother.
    So I said, Ma, we hiding.
    We want a hiding place.
    Any minute, they're going to come.
    They're going to discover us.
    And what's going to be is going to be.
    They're going to shoot us, they're going to shoot us.
    They going to take us to the gas chambers,
    they going to take us.
    We can't do nothing.
    We helpless, can't do nothing.
    They can do anything they want to us.
    We are their property.
    And that's the way it was.
    The days before, they took out some people
    from the hiding places not far from us.
    They heard terrible noises.
    Was this--
    Shouting with guns.
    They took them out from hiding places.
    Was this before you went to the ghetto?
    This is in the ghetto.
    This is in the ghetto.
    This is in the ghetto.
    OK.
    That's in the ghetto.
    In the ghetto, we used to have hiding places.
    Let's say they made a double wall.
    And we were in the wall.
    They made a double cellar in the wall--
    in the cellar, hiding there.
    So they really couldn't get it there.
    Everything was double built. And they couldn't.
    No, they did.
    They did.
    So a few days before they took out from the hiding place,
    they had a order to shoot on spot.
    And you take out from there, shoot on the spot.
    Don't take no Platz, no transportation, nothing.
    So that's what they did.
    They shot all the people they took it out.
    And when they took us out, it was already the last day.
    That was 3 of May.
    We went, I think, the last day of Pesach.
    I don't know what was the last day, the last of April.
    Because I came to Majdanek the 4th of May.
    So the gendarmerie came in.
    They knocked out the wall.
    [GERMAN]
    And with us was a little child.
    The mother used to hold the pillow over the mouth,
    he shouldn't breathe, the little baby.
    The mother would?
    Yeah, the mother used to hold the pillow.
    And she didn't suffocate the child.
    Just so the baby wouldn't cry, you mean?
    Yeah, cough, or cry, or breathe.
    The baby was maybe about two and a half years old.
    But the baby understood to be quiet because the Nazis going
    to shoot.
    So they came.
    And they took us out.
    There was another woman.
    And her little boy was about 13--
    12 or 13 years old.
    And they came, and took us out, beat us with the thing,
    and took us out.
    We were there three or four days without food, without drinking,
    without nothing.
    And it was full of blood in the street.
    They told us to sit in the blood.
    So we sit down in the blood.
    I hold my mother's hand very tight, I squeeze it tight.
    And we were waiting for the shot of the gun.
    Then they said, [GERMAN].
    Stand up.
    So we stand up.
    They took us to the wall.
    They put us to the wall with the face to the wall.
    And we stayed like this to the face to the wall.
    The head goes boom, boom, boom, the heart.
    You hear everything knocking, everything
    is the last minute look.
    They didn't shoot.
    They didn't shoot.
    They said, OK.
    We're going to go to the Platz.
    So they took us to the Platz.
    Even though they were-- what they-- weren't they
    ordered to shoot you?
    No.
    This day was no order to shoot.
    It looks like they didn't shoot.
    They took everything-- when we came to the Platz,
    was already a lot of people there sitting in the Platz.
    And then we had to form fives in a row, five in a row,
    and walk to the trains.
    So we walk to the trains.
    I don't even remember how far the trains are there
    in this reach.
    No, I know we walked.
    It was a lot of shooting during the walking.
    A lot of people fell a lot of people
    didn't have the strength.
    We were three, four days without food,
    laying there in those hiding places.
    We didn't have any strength.
    And we walked, and we walked.
    We walked to the trains.
    We came to the trains.
    And the beating was--
    I mean, I'm telling you, walking is walking--
    a beating.
    It wasn't just walking, and the dogs,
    and the beating, and the shouting,
    and the blood running, and all those things.
    We came to the trains, and they pushed us into the trains,
    like cows with the yelling--
    [GERMAN],, and all those remarks what they have.
    Pushed us into the train like cattles, almost one
    on top of the other, and shut down the trains tight.
    And we stayed till all the trains were loaded.
    All the trains were loaded, the trains started moving.
    Were some young boys with us, and I said, we knew them.
    They watched where we going, if we go on to Lublin
    or we going to Treblinka.
    See, Treblinka is gas chambers, they gassing.
    Lublin is a-- they're going to take out the younger people.
    Lublin's Majdanek.
    Majdanek-- they're going to take out the younger people to work.
    And the older people, they're going to gas.
    We knew what everything.
    It's not like people coming out from other countries,
    they don't know what's going on.
    We knew what's going on.
    And we knew what's going to be.
    Now, still, the mind doesn't want to take it.
    So when we came to Majdanek, we were all around barbed wires.
    Majdanek was in Poland?
    Yeah, in Poland, Lublin.
    That was not far from our city.
    And we were sitting there, waiting.
    Then everybody stand up.
    And the SS men was going by and looking everybody over-- right,
    left, right, left.
    And so my mother was near me.
    And when he came close to her, this SS man, she said,
    [GERMAN].
    Which means?
    I'm young, I can work.
    She was 40--
    42 years old.
    She wants to work.
    He said, [GERMAN]---- one voice I hear from you again,
    I'm going to beat you to death, [GERMAN]..
    So that's all I heard of my mother.
    He gave her a throw away from my side, me on this side.
    And that's all I saw my mother.
    And that's all I heard about my mother.
    So you went to the right side?
    Yeah.
    And your mother went to the left side?
    My mother went to the left side.
    And when I came there to the shower and we showered,
    I was looking for my mother.
    I was looking for my mother every place.
    And that's it.
    I didn't see her.
    They gave us clothes, shabby clothes.
    It wasn't me.
    It was very cold day in Majdanek.
    In May?
    Terrible cold.
    Yeah, in May.
    Did you want to say something?
    No, I don't want to say that.
    So we got those clothing.
    And they took us to the barracks.
    Did you--
    And we went the barracks there.
    When-- were you aware when he said right, left, right,
    left of what that meant?
    Yeah.
    I knew it's what-- yeah.
    Yeah.
    I was talking with my mother all the time.
    Even in the train, it was a sticky--
    they were shooting in the train.
    A boy got shot in the train.
    See, this is a story six years to--
    even how long I'm going to tell, I cannot tell the story, never.
    Never, I can tell everything what really happen.
    You just can't.
    I try to say.
    Do you remember how long you were on the train
    before it reached Majdanek?
    Do you have any sort of recollection?
    I really don't know.
    I think we were about all day there.
    And then we came in and then in the night.
    And we were--
    In closed cars?
    Yeah.
    And we were till the next morning.
    I know we stayed in one place for a longer time
    because was night.
    And they didn't want to take us out at night
    to wait for the morning.
    And everybody was screaming.
    It was stuffy, and was stinky, and was terrible.
    And many times, the door was open, people were jumping.
    A lot of people jumped from the train.
    I supposed to jump too now.
    To try to escape, you mean?
    Yeah, yeah.
    So I said to my mother, OK.
    I'm going to jump.
    If I have luck, they don't going to shoot me.
    And if I don't, they shoot me right there to death.
    And if I jump and I escape, well, I'm
    going to go where I'm going to go.
    Who's going to take me?
    I'm going to come back in concentration camp.
    So what is there to running again?
    No.
    They have me, let them have me.
    Let them do with me what they want.
    That's all.
    I can't do nothing anyway.
    So I'm going to let them do anything they want with me.
    And that's the way it was.
    We came thousands, and thousands,
    and thousands of people, children,
    small children crying.
    I lay at night, I hear the voices children crying, Ma,
    why you let me that the Germans should kill me?
    Why you let me by myself?
    See, the Germans used to grab the mothers
    on one side, the children on to the other side.
    And some went with the children.
    Some went with the children.
    Some left the children.
    It was a chaos.
    What do you remember about your first day in the camp?
    First day in the camp?
    Just awful, stripped from everything-- no belongings.
    Not a person no more, you're a animal.
    You're in their hands.
    You cannot go.
    You cannot run.
    I used to look out and see the Poles walking.
    I used to stay cry, just a plain walk where you want to walk,
    this was a luxury to us.
    We were under barbed wires with the Nazis
    always with the rifles, beating us and screaming at us.
    Here, I look down, see, it was just like here, looking down
    the street, look down, see the Poles
    with the little baskets under their arms,
    going shopping, running--
    the children laughing, running.
    So the Poles knew about the camps?
    Yeah, the Poles knew.
    The Germans knew too.
    See, the Germans used to--
    and that was another thing.
    The Germans used to say, oh, we didn't know this going on.
    We didn't know.
    The only thing-- the minute we got
    liberated, we didn't know what is going on.
    They was so pure.
    They didn't know.
    Now, came out another thing.
    It never happened.
    See?
    We should be used to it because we know
    what it is, how much it hurts.
    When they said they didn't know, people
    disappeared in the millions.
    Germany was so many Jews.
    Where they disappeared?
    Where are they?
    Intelligent Jews.
    Well, that's one of the reasons why we do things
    like this, so that--
    Yeah, that's why I'm doing that.
    It's not easy for me.
    And I know that.
    I'm doing it.
    I want generations to know and be-- and learn from this.
    With this my learn how to believe when somebody tells you
    something is bad coming.
    Believe it.
    Do something about it.
    Don't just hide your head and let your behind out.
    If we would listen to the first signs, the first words,
    maybe we could find a place to go, to hide, to escape,
    and not to wait in all this little property.
    Let's say, my house now, somebody
    says, it's going to come, somebody going
    to kill out all the Jews here.
    I leave this house just like it is.
    I don't care.
    I run.
    Then my mother, her property.
    When you were in the camp, they put you in a bunk with women?
    Yeah.
    And what was that like?
    I mean, it was--
    Yeah, it was a bunk with women, very little food,
    a lot of beating, Appells we had to stay.
    Did they shave your head?
    No, not Majdanek.
    No, Majdanek, they just cut somebody has long hair,
    they cut.
    And how about this number that I see on your arm?
    Then this is Auschwitz.
    You got that number?
    Yeah, shaved.
    I-- no, they just cut, cut hair if somebody has long hair.
    They cut it.
    In Majdanek.
    They didn't shave their heads, no.
    So you went-- you came to Majdanek in May of 1943?
    Yeah, 1943 in May, I came to Majdanek.
    And there I was till--
    I think I was just two months in Majdanek.
    I'm not too sure-- two or three months in Majdanek.
    It seemed like I was maybe 30-40 years there.
    No, it was just three-four years.
    And we lived a lot through.
    We lived through hangings, and killings, and beatings,
    a lot of beatings.
    Everybody had blue marks.
    Everybody was beating.
    I had-- I was beating over the head with a rubber thing.
    A rubber whip or something?
    Yeah, rubber whip, I was beating.
    And till today, my head is here red.
    Who, the German guards would beat you?
    Yeah, the German guards, yeah, the German woman guards.
    There was women guards, not men guards, all women.
    And they beat us to death, to death, for nothing.
    We did everything they want.
    And we obeyed everything.
    We were nothing against.
    But still, we got beaten.
    It was one day, we called a cow, one
    we called a mother, like a mother, a matke, you know,
    big one.
    They beat us to death till it came the transport.
    Yeah, and the Appells.
    Were there just Jews in the camp?
    It was some Poles, not much.
    Poles, they were politicians or something like that, bit of--
    Political prisoners?
    Political prisoners, yeah, or gangsters, or--
    Gypsies?
    --stealers.
    In Majdanek, I didn't see so many Gypsies, no.
    I didn't come across too much Gypsies in Majdanek, no.
    In Auschwitz, I saw a lot of Gypsies.
    Majdanek was a lot of prisoners.
    Yeah, prisoners was in Majdanek.
    Would you tell me a little bit about the daily routine
    in the camp?
    In Majdanek.
    In Majdanek.
    We used to drag stones, carry stones
    from one place to the other, sand
    from one place to the other.
    Was there a point to the work?
    It didn't make no sense, no, not to me.
    Not to me.
    When I got beaten, I was between the barbed wire.
    See, here was barbed wire, here was barbed wire.
    In the middle was empty and some weeds were growing there--
    not beautiful grass, weeds, who knows what.
    So they chased us on the-- all in.
    It was one opening, where you open up to go in.
    So between-- I used to take out the weeds.
    So I did a very nice piece of weeds there.
    I did it fleissig.
    I didn't want to get beaten by the Nazis.
    So I worked.
    I sit there.
    Instead of sitting, I worked.
    So everybody did work very nicely.
    No, she just had the ambition to hit everybody over the head.
    So a girl near me, she split her head in half.
    And blood was running all over, blood.
    So she said to me, you see what I did there?
    If one voice is going to come out from your mouth,
    you're going to get the same thing.
    So she gave me one big [? bang ?] on my head.
    And I put my teeth with my lips together.
    You bit your mouth.
    I bit my mouth.
    I bit my mouth.
    And I hold my teeth together and my everything
    together not to scream.
    And I didn't scream, but she gave me one more.
    She gave me two, even I didn't scream.
    And she went further and did the same thing.
    It was a--
    She was German?
    Yeah, yeah, she was German.
    It was not work.
    What was her name?
    Do you remember her name?
    Yeah, do we know her name?
    Do we ever could look up at them to see her face?
    See, people say now the names, the faces.
    We didn't.
    We didn't.
    They were like gods, like who knows.
    They were so high up us.
    We were just like little snakes.
    We couldn't even-- we didn't know the names.
    We didn't know the faces, even, mind the names.
    That's the way it was.
    We were prisoners.
    We were nothing.
    We were just there to beat us.
    And work, they didn't do no work.
    I mean, I worked.
    Maybe other people worked in different places.
    Where I worked, was senseless work.
    Was a lot of beating and senseless work.
    And we were cold.
    And we were hungry.
    And we were--
    The camp was already all set up?
    Yeah, it was all set up.
    Yeah, was set up a camp.
    In other words, it was all totally
    built by the time you got there.
    Yeah, totally built with barracks and everything.
    Yeah.
    Do you remember how big the camp was?
    It was pretty big.
    I mean, to my imagination then, as far I could see,
    I saw the camp, and I see the civilian side like this side.
    See the camp and the civilian side.
    Civilian side meaning where the Poles were.
    Yeah, where the Poles live, not in camp, where they were free.
    Would you tell me a little bit about your living conditions,
    like the food, the clothing, sanitary conditions, situation,
    stuff like that?
    Yeah, the living conditions was like this.
    They gave us clothes that didn't fit us.
    They gave us shoes, didn't fit us, torn shoes.
    Mostly, we got the wooden shoes, couldn't walk in them,
    big ones, wooden big shoes.
    And the clothes were very shabby, torn, shabby.
    Because the good clothes, they used
    to take to Germany to their people.
    They used to give us rags.
    So when we were staying in the Appells,
    we used to stay four, used to hold each other.
    The one would stay in the front or the back
    was frozen to death.
    So we used to change around the front and the back to warm us.
    And the Appells were very long.
    They used to hold us hours and hours.
    The what?
    The Appell.
    How you call it?
    Roll call?
    Roll calls, yeah, roll calls.
    We used to stay hours and hours.
    And if somebody escaped--
    How often did they have these roll calls?
    In the morning and the night, and sometime during the day.
    And sometimes, somebody escaped, we
    used to stay till they got them back and they hanged them.
    And then we had to stay and watch hanging.
    And then they hanged for days and days.
    And go by and you see this hanging.
    It was really bad.
    So when they took us to the transport to Auschwitz,
    I was going with the first transport.
    I always were in the first.
    I don't know what it is.
    Really?
    Yeah.
    I just wanted to ask a little bit more about Majdanek.
    How about food?
    The food, they give us very little food, very little--
    plain water.
    And you could fish for potato, I don't know, or found it.
    So it was like a soup or something?
    Yeah, some soup cooked.
    Yeah.
    Must have been grass.
    Grass?
    Must be grass.
    In Auschwitz, mostly, I ate grass.
    I don't know.
    I really don't remember.
    I know, we were hungry.
    We were always hungry.
    And no food came in.
    See, in the other lagers, we could a little bit
    organize a little food.
    No, not in Majdanek, no, no nothing, just what
    they gave us.
    That's what we ate.
    And they gave us a little piece of bread,
    one little piece of bread.
    So one used to steal from the other.
    And the beating at the blocks were terrible.
    What happened when people got sick?
    If people got sick, they took them to the crematorium.
    That's one thing.
    No sickness there, was no places where to go.
    Did Majdanek have a crematorium?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, my mother was gassed in Majdanek.
    Yeah.
    It wasn't on the bigger scale.
    It was a crematorium.
    Yeah.
    And people knew that the crematorium was there.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Did you have--
    It was more when people came to go to work, where to burn.
    No, people where there were over 30, like 36-37
    very seldom had the chance to go to the concentration camp--
    to the working camp.
    They mostly went to the crematoriums.
    And children, children under 16, they all
    went to the crematoriums.
    Did you ever have any opportunity
    to have any contact with the men in the concentration camp?
    No, not in--
    In Majdanek?
    --not in Majdanek.
    No.
    Majdanek, my cousin was there.
    He died there, I think, from beating.
    No, no contact, not even over the wires,
    and not even when we went to work.
    We couldn't because those Nazis where they watched us,
    the women, they were just bad.
    They were so bad, it's unbelievable bad.
    Yeah.
    When we came to Auschwitz, they couldn't get over.
    We all were black, all behinds were black from beating.
    So it wasn't just even one woman, it was a lot of them
    there.
    Yeah, all of them, all of them, all of them what they took
    care of the camp.
    It mostly was women.
    The men didn't take care in this camp.
    They sound like pretty sadistic.
    Sadistic, yeah, very sadistic, right.
    Were there kapos in Majdanek?
    Do you remember?
    Not in mine, no.
    Not-- I was on the lager.
    Maybe those where they went out from the inside,
    maybe when they work on fields or other places.
    I see.
    You worked inside.
    Yeah.
    I was-- in Majdanek, I never went out from there.
    No, I worked inside.
    So I didn't have a kapo.
    I just have a Stubenalteste there for the barrack,
    but not no kapo there for me.
    I don't know, other maybe had when they
    went to work some other places.
    I was going to ask if there were any attempts at resistance.
    But you did mention that some people did try to escape.
    Oh, yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Because see, Lublin--
    I mean, we lived around there.
    And a lot of people lived right near Lublin,
    where they in the camps.
    And they knew all the places.
    And they tried to escape.
    A lot of tried to escape.
    Did they often succeed?
    Not many times, no, not many times.
    Like I told you, if they succeed,
    they were brought back in a month or two months
    later anyway.
    Nobody really escaped to escape.
    I don't believe it.
    We were talking about resistance.
    And in one word, I can tell you.
    I was very glad to leave Majdanek, very glad.
    It was a hard camp.
    Very hard camp.
    And the minute they said, it's going to go out transport,
    I really didn't care where because I didn't
    know where it's going to go.
    It could even go to gas chambers.
    I really didn't care.
    My mother wasn't there.
    And I really cried for my mother.
    I cried a lot, almost every night.
    I used to lay and cry, Mother, Mother.
    And then I really-- sometime, I really gave up.
    I said, any place--
    this was really bad.
    I mean the Nazi woman used to walk around in camp
    and any time she want to beat and kill, she could do it.
    I know, she didn't have to have no orders to do things.
    She did it on her own.
    So I really talked to the girls from my city, asked
    some other girls, I said, listen,
    a transport going to come, I don't
    care where it's going to come.
    These were--
    I'm going to go.
    --girls in camp with you?
    Yeah, they were in camp with me.
    Did you talk much to the other people
    in the camps, the other prisoners, the other countries?
    In other cities?
    Well, people that you shared--
    Oh, yeah, we talked.
    Did you feel comfortable talking with--
    I mean, was there any fear?
    No, I wasn't afraid.
    What, are you going to go to Nazis
    and tell them what I'm saying?
    No, no, no.
    Was no fear.
    What did you talk about?
    We talked-- mostly, we talked about food.
    We talked about food a lot.
    It's interesting that of all the people
    I've interviewed, everyone says that,
    that you talked a lot about food.
    Yeah, they do?
    Yeah, about food.
    And the bread-- bread was such a thing.
    This was like a dream.
    When you going to have a loaf of bread,
    you going to hold in your hand a loaf of bread,
    this was the biggest dream.
    And then after this, I don't care, you going to get killed,
    what's going to happen.
    I want to have a whole loaf of bread and eat.
    And that's the dream.
    And then we were talking, the cooking, the traditions
    in the house, parents--
    talk a lot about parents, brothers, mother, and fathers.
    You cried a lot together?
    Cried a lot together.
    Yeah, cried a lot together.
    We talk with people from our city,
    we talk with people from other cities.
    I was with Warsaw with girls.
    And they knew some of my family.
    In Warsaw, they were very rich people.
    Did you-- was there any kind of religious activity
    that went on in the camps?
    Religious activities-- when came Pesach,
    we didn't have no matzos.
    I know that.
    But I mean like, were you aware?
    Yeah, we were aware sometimes.
    We were not aware even of days.
    We didn't know if the day's Monday or Tuesday.
    Just Sunday, we didn't go to work.
    Sundays, we-- in the blocks, washed, we combed,
    and we did things for ourselves.
    Sunday, we didn't work because the Nazis didn't
    want to go out to work Sunday.
    So we didn't work, we knew it's Sunday.
    Now, sometimes, sometimes, we knew, it's a holiday.
    I don't know about feelings or something, by Yom Kippur.
    Look, my father, my brother, my other cousins were killed.
    I didn't know the date.
    And in concentration camp, it went into my mind this day,
    October 27.
    And when I was liberated, I wrote to the Poles
    to tell me the date.
    And they wrote me the date.
    They wrote me the date, exactly the same date.
    So we had feelings.
    I mean, this time of the year with Shavuos and the rest, I
    mean, the holidays, we used to sit and talk
    a lot about the holidays.
    OK, we couldn't go and pray, but we
    talked and how was a holiday in the house, how
    the children react.
    And how Shabbos was, with the gefilte fish,
    and cholent, and all those things.
    We talked a lot.
    We talked about not surviving.
    We talked a lot.
    OK.
    OK.
    So you decided to become-- to go on one of the first transports
    to leave Majdanek.
    Yes, yes, the first transport they're going to announce,
    I'm there.
    I don't care where I'm going to go.
    I'm going to go.
    And that's the way it was.
    They wanted girls to come to this block.
    We're going to go for transport.
    So I went.
    I went.
    And we came-- we went by railroad.
    We went and went.
    I don't know how many days.
    I don't know anything about this,
    how far from Majdanek to Auschwitz, this I don't know.
    Did you know were going to Auschwitz?
    No, I didn't know.
    We came to Auschwitz.
    They took us-- then it wasn't the train going in
    like later years.
    We had to walk.
    And then they took us by big--
    Wagons?
    --wagons, yeah, you know, the army kind
    what put up the soldiers.
    Yes.
    They took us to Auschwitz--
    Majdanek, I said-- to Birkenau, to Auschwitz.
    Auschwitz was really in the city.
    This was Birkenau, called Birkenau.
    So they took us there.
    And when we came there, we came in, it was a beautiful--
    they call it [NON-ENGLISH]---- how you call it there--
    like a big arch.
    A big arch, yes.
    Arbeit macht das leben süss written.
    Work--
    Work makes life--
    Free.
    --free-- sweet, macht das leben süss.
    [GERMAN]
    And an orchestra was sitting, orchestra in the side.
    Everybody was dressed in white blouses with dark skirts,
    like navy or black skirts, with nice kerchiefs on the heads.
    They looked so beautiful.
    It looked to me like it's a resort place.
    We came.
    And we came in with those trucks.
    We came all in a big, long highway going in-- this side,
    concentration camp, this side--
    and the houses looked beautiful too.
    It looked like little brick houses, nice ones--
    I mean, comparatively where it was in Majdanek, little black--
    little block houses.
    And there, the houses was--
    what the people standing on the--
    how you call it?
    Podium?
    I say Appell.
    I mean, but the counting, when they have to be counted out.
    Oh, the roll call.
    The roll call, yeah, I forget this.
    They were standing on the roll call.
    Some were dressed in red kerchiefs, some in blue,
    and some in white.
    Everything looks so beautiful.
    And the Blockovas, the Altestes in the blocks look nice too.
    Every-- we looked, we said, look at him.
    They took us in in a resort place.
    It's really gorgeous here.
    I was admiring.
    I never saw anything like it in my life--
    clean, everything so clean, everything so nice.
    So they took us to the zone, where
    we're going to have shower.
    And we have to shower and change our clothes,
    give away those schmattas.
    And they're going to give us other clothes.
    So when we came in there and they cut off our hair,
    we couldn't recognize each other right away.
    You were bald.
    Yeah, Bald and then they gave us clothes, schmatta clothes too.
    We came then 3,000 girls, we came in--
    3,000 girls.
    So they give us such a schmatta clothes.
    And they took us to a barrack.
    And we were fighting for this little place
    to get in in this bunker.
    We were fighting.
    It wasn't the same.
    It didn't look so nice outside.
    It was a different kind of bigger block.
    This is a quarantine, they call it, or something, probably.
    And everything, we had to fight for it-- for the space,
    we had to fight, and for everything, fight.
    And it seemed entirely different.
    And the Blockalteste came in right away.
    And she said to us, [GERMAN].
    We dirty pigs.
    And we these [GERMAN].
    Polish swines, they call us.
    We're not Polish, we Jewish.
    The Jewish have a place.
    All of a sudden, we become Polish here?
    Polish swines-- she was from Czechia, Czechoslovakian.
    And they were before us--
    they were already better people there
    in this concentration camp.
    So they throw us in in those barracks.
    And all night, we didn't sleep.
    One slept on the other.
    We fight, fight.
    OK.
    The next day came another Blockalteste.
    And they separated us.
    They took us to other blocks, were four on one bed,
    on a bunk, four was laying on the bunk,
    and was three high the bunks.
    And was a little bit better.
    And they took us to a Kommando.
    It was called [GERMAN] Kommando.
    It was going a lot of girls there,
    in the thousands, in the thousands.
    I think our Kommando, what we came out, it was 3,000.
    It was more than other--
    I don't know.
    It was a lot of people.
    And then men was working there too.
    And you know what we did?
    We digged.
    We digged ditches.
    And we built railroads that--
    we carried big stones.
    We carried-- and what is [NON-ENGLISH],, those things--
    tracks.
    Railroad tracks?
    Yeah, we carried railroad tracks.
    In terms of your work that you did every day?
    Yeah, yeah, the work, did everything.
    When did you have your number put on your arm?
    Oh, yeah, this when we came.
    They put on the number.
    Was very painful.
    Now, your number is 47404?
    Yeah.
    And then this is Jewish.
    Underneath is a star.
    A star.
    A half a star, that's Jewish.
    The other people didn't have this, just numbers.
    And the Jewish people, they gave this thing.
    A star.
    A star, yeah.
    They put on the numbers on us.
    Had green stars, was-- forget what it was,
    was for the gangsters.
    Poles had just the triangle.
    We had to take the star.
    You had the star?
    So the Jews had a Star of David?
    And political prisoners or Poles just had--
    Green.
    --the green?
    Yeah, the political prisoners had green,
    and the gangsters had black, the thieves had black.
    They had different kind of styles
    for different kind of people what
    they were there for something.
    I wasn't there-- I was there because I'm Jewish.
    But other people did things.
    And they came there.
    So you were in Birkenau?
    So I was in Birkenau.
    And I was going out to this commander every single morning
    and come back every single night, beaten, hungry.
    They gave two people a big shissel, they call it, a pot.
    A pot?
    Yeah, a red one, a big one.
    And they gave you a little bit water.
    And it was cooked with some weeds.
    They call it poison ivy.
    They call it [POLISH] in our language, in Polish.
    Poison ivy?
    Yeah.
    You would eat poison ivy?
    That's right, poison ivy.
    You had to-- you have to grab it in one way not to get poison.
    What would happen if you would eat it?
    It wouldn't hurt you?
    They cooked us.
    They cooked it.
    They cooked it and that's what we ate.
    They stopped the periods.
    We didn't have no periods during all the concentration.
    How did they stop your periods?
    They gave you--
    By giving us things.
    --shots?
    No, in the food was something, putting in some chemical.
    They didn't have the periods all the time
    I was in concentration camp.
    I didn't have it.
    And we were going to Entlausungs.
    They used to Entlaus us.
    We shouldn't have any lice.
    Delouse you.
    Delouse you.
    So they had to put in all the clothes
    in a bucket of green water.
    And then they gave a-- throw the water and you.
    Do you want me a stop this?
    OK.
    So what kind of work did you do in Auschwitz
    and when you were in Birkenau?
    Yeah, that's the work we did.
    We built the railroad, it should go from the station--
    from the railroad station to the crematorium.
    We built this whole railroad.
    And the people shouldn't have to walk.
    Or they should transport them by trucks.
    So the railroad came right into the crematorium.
    That's what it was.
    That's what we built, all those railroads.
    And they worked.
    And the men worked so hard.
    They were beating the men.
    The men hardly could walk.
    Did men and women work together?
    No, no.
    They worked separately.
    We could see them.
    We could see them not far.
    The men were with other posts.
    And we were with other posts.
    The German Nazis staying over us.
    Did you have kapos there?
    Yeah, yeah, there we have kapos, Anweisers.
    And they were Jewish guards?
    No, my kapos were not Jewish.
    My kapo were German kapos.
    They were prostitutes.
    That's why they were there.
    These, again, were women guards?
    Yeah, women.
    Women prisoners had women guards.
    And men had men guards?
    Yeah, men guards--
    And that was the it always was?
    --for the prisoners, Yeah.
    No, the Gestapo was men.
    This time, the Gestapo was men, not women.
    And the men was guarding us.
    So I was going to this Kommando for a while, day in and day
    out, working hard, and beating, and no food.
    We made noise, they stopped the food.
    They didn't give us food all day.
    We had to work without food.
    Can you imagine 3,000 people with everybody
    has one shissel, three a person or two to a person,
    and everybody hungry, how they eating without noise?
    Can you imagine this?
    Oh, you couldn't eat with noise.
    With the noise.
    You couldn't make noise.
    Yeah, we should eat quiet, not talk, not eat.
    I mean, listen, 3,000 people, you have to hear some noise.
    So the kapo said, no food.
    She throw it out in our eyes.
    She throw it out on the ground all the food,
    giving us no food.
    So I said to myself, this Kommando,
    if I'm going to go on, I'm not going
    to survive too long if I really want to survive.
    So it came in a German woman.
    And she said, I mean, from the concentration camp,
    there was SS women too in the concentration camp, not just
    men.
    And she said, she need--
    she came with a kapo.
    And she said she need 120 girls for a Kommando
    to work every day outside of the concentration camp,
    in the fields, to go on the fields--
    120 girls to take out from this block?
    It has to be a lot of head split.
    And it was a lot of head splits.
    The kapo was fighting, and the Blockalteste was killing,
    and everybody were killing the girls.
    Everybody wants to go to this kapo to work for--
    120 is better to work for 3,000.
    So and I was staying there.
    And I was just hoping.
    I was afraid to run through this whole mess.
    And the kapo called me over.
    [GERMAN]
    Come on, small one.
    So I went over.
    And she took me, she said, you better come tomorrow.
    I said, I'm afraid, I'm going to get in.
    And you'll be here.
    And she took another one from my city
    what I was together with her.
    And she lives in Chicago, so two of us.
    And we used to go out.
    Yeah, in the morning, when comes--
    we had to stay in fives for this Kommando.
    120 girls, was a lot of beating again,
    the same thing, till it went a few weeks till we really went
    organized.
    That's the girls.
    And that's the girls.
    Otherwise, the other girls wanted
    to come in because they knew it's a good Kommando.
    See, we went out.
    We had those kind of what I just told you, the ivy.
    Poison ivy.
    The poison ivy.
    Yes.
    You would cut the plants.
    In baskets, in baskets without gloves,
    without gloves in those baskets.
    And we bring them to the concentration camp.
    And then they cook it.
    And that was your job?
    And that's a soup, yeah.
    And that was our job, the 120 girls.
    So the poison ivy grows in places where apple trees grows,
    where other things grows to eat.
    So if we couldn't bring it into the concentration camp,
    at least we could eat.
    I mean, what was there to eat?
    We throw them in the mouth, and we ate.
    A lot of times we got beaten from this kapo.
    She used to kill us if she find we eat something
    and we grab something.
    So we had to do-- she shouldn't see it.
    So we had a apple, a rotten apple fall down from the tree.
    Or we had other things what we could eat,
    so we ate during the day when we really
    weren't so hungry when we came home and back
    to the concentration camp.
    So we were going out for a while to this Kommando.
    And everything was fine.
    And that's the everyday life was.
    And sometime, I snatch apple.
    I throw it in my--
    hide it between my clothes.
    And I bring it into the other girls, my girls what I knew,
    what I slept with them.
    I want to give them something too.
    And then came another kapo to this block.
    And she said, she needs 16 girls--
    16.
    And I want to be between the 16.
    I want to be.
    I didn't want to go out no more to this thing.
    I taste already the good stuff.
    You got spoiled now.
    I got spoiled.
    And I don't want to suffer now.
    I want to eat.
    And I want to trade a apple for a pair shoes.
    I want to trade something to eat and to live
    a little bit better.
    So I tried to go in in this Kommando.
    And I did go in.
    It wasn't easy.
    And I did go in.
    And she took in this girl what she was with me too,
    what she's now in Chicago.
    She's in four years, five years younger than me, very nice
    girl, very intelligent.
    And we were going out, 15 girls, a kapo, and a post.
    And we had it marvelous, we had it.
    What would you do?
    We-- they worked on the Wisla.
    You know the Vistula, Wisla, the water that goes to the Bug?
    Which goes to the brook.
    What would you do?
    To the big Bug, to the big water.
    We used to cut the vine, the things
    to make baskets, make baskets.
    You would cut vines.
    Yeah, we would cut those vines, and put them in bushels,
    and leave them there.
    The trucks came and pick them up.
    And we came every morning.
    And every night, we go back there, working by the Vistula,
    by the Wisla.
    A lot of little boats came.
    The Poles came.
    And they saw us.
    So they brought us some kielbasa.
    They brought a piece of bread.
    So we took out from the concentration camp a sweater,
    pair of nylon stockings, other things.
    We gave them, they gave us.
    And we traded back and forth.
    This was without the guard's knowledge?
    No, the guard knew it.
    He was a very good guard.
    This guard was specially a good--
    he wasn't good for Jewish people.
    He could kill on the spot every Jew.
    No, to us girls, we were selected
    15 girls and the Anweiser was the 16th.
    And he was in love with the Anweiser, the German woman.
    He was in love.
    And we had a marvelous place there.
    We ate.
    And we drinked.
    And we did everything marvelous.
    And we weren't under pressure.
    We worked nice.
    I used to wear nice boots, nylon stockings, a nice striped suit
    made nice, not smutty.
    And I had it not bad.
    No, people had it very bad there.
    They had it very bad.
    No, I-- just luckily, I didn't have.
    I used to bring some bread in in the lager
    and gave the other girls sometime
    to eat and help them out.
    And the concentration camp was still
    bad, was a lot of killing.
    One time, I went out to another Kommando
    and girls were shot right on the spot by working, working hard.
    Then this came to end of.
    This came to a end.
    We went in in a Strafkommando because we organized too much.
    We had a few women where they want
    to get too much to bring in in the lager.
    They had sisters.
    They had sisters in concentration camp.
    So we went in the Kommando.
    And we went to Straf work.
    We had to work very hard.
    For six months, they gave us, in concentration camp, a jail.
    You mean they punished you--
    They punished me.
    --because they felt like you were taking advantage?
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    We ate.
    They took advantage.
    It's a good thing that they didn't take us
    to the crematorium for this because they could, but didn't.
    And this end.
    And I worked very hard under a lot of pressure,
    working in the day to the night.
    We used to work in fields where used to grow grass.
    We had to chop this grass, and take out the grass,
    and make it soil, clean soil.
    And was really hard.
    I still have it there--
    I used to have big--
    Blisters?
    --blister and calluses.
    Warts, that's right.
    --calluses, I used to--
    I still have it.
    And then start-- they start taking out Poles,
    they start taking out from the concentration camp.
    So I said to the girls what I was with them,
    I said, they're taking out Poles.
    They're going to leave all the Jews.
    And probably, the Russians are coming here.
    And they're going to gas us out in the big crematoriums.
    That's what's going to be the end.
    Meanwhile, it was an uprise in the concentration camp.
    And the wires were all cut.
    And the--
    Who did that?
    --the voices-- the one where they organized,
    the people from the concentration camp, where
    they work in the Sonderkommando, where
    they work in the gas chambers.
    And these were Jews?
    Yeah, Jews.
    They tried a resistance?
    Resistance, yeah, yeah.
    They had probably outside--
    they were promised, probably, the outside help going to come.
    And they never did come.
    They opened the wires.
    And they stopped the electricity.
    And they were yelling, girls, run, run, run, run,
    run, run out from the camp.
    I said, I'm not running no place.
    I'm staying right here.
    If I get killed, I get killed right here.
    I have no place to run.
    And I have nobody to run.
    I mean, nobody is around to whom I'm going to run.
    A lot of my friends, my girls what I knew,
    I knew them very well, they run out.
    And they all got killed, all of them.
    And the gendarmerie came, and the SS came,
    and ah, the concentration camp was full of armies, soldiers.
    When was this around?
    This was '44, '44, before they evacuated Auschwitz,
    before going out from Auschwitz, before they took
    the first transport Jews out.
    Till then they took Poles out.
    So that's what I'm just saying.
    Right, right.
    No Jews transport was leaving Auschwitz yet.
    And this was the uprise.
    And then they said, we're going to take Jews to transport.
    I said, I'm Going I'm going.
    And always, I was the first on the transport.
    And I'm going.
    And other girls didn't go.
    My friends, they didn't go.
    And I went.
    Yeah.
    And at night, I had a dream.
    My mother came to me-- the first time and the only time
    my mother came to me.
    And she said, you're going to be in the last wagon
    in the transport in the last.
    Now, when you're going to come to the place,
    you're going to be in the first.
    And the wagon is going to be open.
    They're not going to be closed.
    If you want to escape, you could escape.
    No, don't escape.
    Don't.
    Stay there.
    You did it so far so good.
    Stay.
    I don't know if it would be mind doing
    or my mother was there talking to me.
    And she said, just do the way you're doing.
    And you're going to live.
    You're going to live.
    And that's what I did.
    In the morning, I woke up, I said to the girls,
    listen to this, I had a dream.
    My mother came to me.
    That's the only first time my mother came to me.
    She said that I'm going to be taken by this--
    the--
    Transport.
    --transport.
    And I shouldn't worry.
    I been in the the first train by going--
    no, in the last by going, and the first when I arrive there
    to the place, destination.
    I be the first.
    And the wagon's going to be open.
    And I shouldn't try to escape.
    And I should just try to survive.
    So I told the girls, they were laughing.
    They said, what transport?
    Jewish transport didn't go yet.
    And who knows if they going to take me.
    And usually, I used to go out from the concentration camp
    to work.
    But this day, I didn't go out.
    I don't know.
    I felt so upset.
    I said to the Stubenalteste, I said, I'm going to the dentist.
    See, there was places.
    If you have a toothache or other pain, they took you in.
    And if you were really sick, they took you in
    and then they took you to the crematorium--
    but was [YIDDISH] there.
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    And they used to empty them so often-- every few weeks,
    every few days, who knows?
    When they didn't have too much people to burn,
    so they empty out the [YIDDISH].
    So I said, I'm going to the dentist there to take.
    And I didn't go out from the concentration camp to work.
    I stayed in the concentration camp.
    And that's what it was, the transport.
    They start the transport.
    And I was taken.
    And I and I was going.
    And I was happy to go.
    So had you gone to work that day,
    you wouldn't have been on that transport?
    No.
    When I would go to work, no, I wouldn't be.
    No, they just took those where they
    were on the camp, only those.
    So they-- it was like this.
    I was on the last train.
    I was on the last.
    And when the train moved a little further away,
    all the doors were open.
    And that's the way it was.
    All the doors were open.
    The post was sitting.
    A few times, the train stopped in the woods.
    And they told us, if we want to go out,
    we can go out, stretch out, and do things,
    to go to the bathroom, which we did.
    We came back on the train.
    And we went on the train.
    We came to Bergen-Belsen.
    I didn't know such a thing exist.
    We came there, it was no barracks, no barracks.
    They were just sitting, playing on the open field
    with no barracks.
    They made little tents.
    And were there a few days in those tents
    till a big storm came, a very big storm,
    like hell from heaven.
    And they throw all the tents fly away.
    And we were sitting right there in the water.
    So then they took us to barrack.
    They empty out the barracks from the soldiers.
    Where was Bergen-Belsen?
    Bergen-Belsen was in Germany.
    It's in the English zone, the English,
    not in the American zone.
    It's in the English side.
    And there was something too.
    When-- do you remember around when
    this was that you went there?
    Yeah, it was like in August time.
    I know--
    1944?
    1944, yeah, yeah, by this time.
    And then came other transports, came--
    Esther came, and other my friends what I knew.
    So we said, why did you come here?
    It's such a terrible camp--
    no food, no work, nothing, just sitting and waiting
    for the death, dying, dying, nothing.
    They don't give you any work.
    And they didn't give you any food.
    They didn't have anything.
    It was really bad.
    They couldn't bring over any food.
    They used to cook a little water with a little flour,
    just to mix around, not even cook the water and the flour,
    just like it came up like a foam.
    And that's what they used to feed us.
    And everybody had diarrhea.
    Everybody was dying on diarrhea--
    and piles of people were up to high up.
    It was no place to burn.
    They didn't have any crematoriums to burn.
    OK.
    You mentioned just now, you wanted
    to go back about Auschwitz.
    Yeah, Auschwitz.
    Sure.
    Yeah.
    Auschwitz, in a way, some had a little bit better.
    They could get a little bit better those what
    they were working there, Bekleidungskammer
    with the clothes, those where they work by food.
    I mean, they had a little bit better.
    They organized a little better.
    They helped other little--
    other girls what they didn't work there.
    They help them out.
    One used to help the other.
    And the conditions for work was really bad.
    We used to go out outside working
    in the rain and the snow, wet to the bone,
    come home with the wet clothes, in the morning
    to put on again the wet clothes, and go back to work.
    And day by day, same thing with the wet, with the snow,
    with the--
    and then the conditions came back to the concentration camp,
    the toilets were really bad.
    It was like one room, a long one.
    And then was a long--
    A corridor sort of like?
    Yeah.
    A long hall?
    A long hall.
    And then was the toilets was like this--
    a big--
    Hole?
    --hole here and a big hole here, big hole here, the long--
    like a big long table, like for 50 people to sit.
    That's a big.
    So it was a communal one.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And those big holes in each of the sides.
    Most of the people had diarrheas.
    They couldn't even make it to the hole.
    They used to spit at each other.
    It was just fighting.
    And the water was rusty, couldn't drink the water.
    The water was so rusty, like you're drinking rust.
    That's why a lot of people--
    I think even myself, I got sick.
    I had kidney stones.
    I had gall stones, kidney stones.
    I think this came a lot in the water.
    And even the soups we used to eat
    is with stones, with the things what we used to-- the way
    it used to take it out, it was plenty plenty of garbage in it.
    And everything was cooked.
    And you eating like this.
    So a lot of people like myself, I
    went through a lot of operations.
    Since you've been to the States?
    Yeah, since I've been to the States.
    Yeah.
    When you were in Bergen-Belsen, then,
    you got there in August of 1944.
    '44.
    And it wasn't really a camp?
    I mean, it was just--
    No.
    We had to start this whole camp.
    It was like barracks and soldiers,
    where they come from the fronts and they take them back.
    So they emptied this thing out.
    That's what I think.
    They used to bring soldiers, like in Poland
    and the other countries.
    This was Germany.
    Bergen-Belsen's Germany.
    So they used to bring in to--
    Prisoners of war, maybe.
    --yeah, prisoners to recover there.
    And then they took them back.
    So we--
    Sorry.
    We got-- Bergen-Belsen, overnight,
    became a bigger, and bigger, and bigger camp.
    Everybody in Auschwitz and other working camps,
    concentration camps, everybody was concentrating here
    in Bergen-Belsen.
    They brought in everybody to Bergen-Belsen.
    And Bergen-Belsen didn't have enough food and enough place
    to hold all those people.
    People were dying on top of each other, on floors,
    and outside, inside, every place.
    That's all you saw Bergen-Belsen.
    I never saw so much death in all my life
    what I saw in Bergen-Belsen, piled up,
    like you see piles of lumber.
    That's the way it was piled up.
    Why-- people were dying because of?
    Dying from hunger, from hunger, no clothing.
    We didn't have no clothing.
    I was going around in the winter.
    The winter came already.
    August is August, the winter comes closer.
    And it was cold--
    September, October, November.
    It was cold.
    I was going around without shoes.
    I didn't have any shoes and no clothing.
    Was there any place for you to sleep?
    Did they have camp beds for you?
    Yeah, they had the beds.
    But a lot of people slept on the floor.
    I was lucky I grabbed the bed because I came earlier.
    Then the later transports start coming.
    They didn't have a place where to sleep.
    They slept just plain on the floor.
    And the lice, no clothing, no nothing, no--
    it was full of lice.
    The lice were going around, even on the floors,
    you could see them so much.
    It was really bad, really bad, with no conditions for living.
    Sisters together, what they lived through the whole war,
    it was two sisters, three sisters, cousins, aunts
    together.
    They lived all the war till Bergen-Belsen.
    And in Bergen-Belsen, they had to die because they
    couldn't live through.
    We didn't work.
    They didn't take us out to work no place.
    I wish they would take us out, a garden, someplace to work.
    You didn't help to build up the camp or anything?
    Nothing, nothing what to build.
    It was nothing to build.
    So did you have roll calls?
    Yeah, roll calls, twice a day roll calls.
    That's all.
    Did you have--
    I meant to ask you too, when you were in Auschwitz,
    did they continue to have selections?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    I forgot for this.
    Yeah, always.
    And how often did they happen?
    Very often.
    Very often.
    They used to come in.
    And somebody had a little pimple someplace, a rash, right away.
    You have to be really clean.
    And so they took you.
    They took her one of my--
    of a friend of mine, what she lived near us
    in the old country, what I told you there,
    the mill, very rich people.
    They took her for selection.
    She had the diarrhea.
    And she really lost a lot of weight.
    She was a very young girl.
    So I went over to her.
    I brought over some new clothes, a new jacket, new dress.
    I organized this.
    And I brought over.
    And I said, listen, you're going to get all dressed up.
    And you're going to go over to the Lagerführer.
    And you're going to beg.
    You're going to beg him as much as you can beg to let you live.
    You're young.
    You were sick.
    Now, you're feeling good.
    You want to go back to work.
    She said, not in my life I'm going to do this.
    Imagine.
    She had had enough.
    She said, I have enough.
    I don't want no more.
    That's it.
    And she told me, if you ever live through this, please,
    talk about it.
    Don't never forget it, what they did to us, to our families.
    Did you get the sense that the outside world
    didn't know what was going on?
    No.
    I get the sense they knew.
    No, they couldn't imagine, just like we did.
    We did the same thing.
    Why should I blame other people?
    We did the same thing.
    People came out from Treblinka.
    I mean, they really--
    I don't know how they came out from there, from those gas
    chambers.
    And they told us in plain Jewish.
    And they explained the whole thing.
    And in our imagination, couldn't believe this.
    We couldn't.
    You couldn't accept it.
    No, we couldn't accept this, that people
    can do a thing like this.
    So I really don't blame the outside world for it.
    I don't.
    They-- a person in right mind is really hard
    to accept this thing.
    Even I'm talking now, I live this through, believe me,
    I have a very hard time with myself too.
    How could I live this through?
    Today, I wouldn't even--
    I wouldn't survive one day there, not one day,
    never mind six years.
    I couldn't, not in those conditions.
    How old were you at that time, at that point, when
    you were in Bergen-Belsen?
    In Bergen-Belsen?
    When was it, '44?
    Yes.
    So you were 21 at the time.
    Yeah, yeah.
    Yeah, when I was liberated, I was 22 years old.
    So they wanted girls to work in the kitchen.
    They had to cook for us--
    I mean, for us.
    So they wanted some girls to work.
    Everybody wants to work in the kitchen.
    Who doesn't want to work in this kitchen?
    Everybody.
    Now, luckily, I got in.
    I got in.
    And I worked in the kitchen.
    I worked very hard in the kitchen--
    peeled potatoes.
    I schlepped those big kettles full of water.
    I mean, it was maybe one, two potato running around there--
    and then later, not even one potato.
    And I worked very hard in this kitchen.
    And I used to come home and feel so guilty.
    I couldn't bring nothing home for the girls.
    The girls were hungry.
    I didn't even have much to eat there because there
    was nothing to eat.
    And I used to tell them, you think I'm eating there a lot,
    and I don't bring you nothing.
    It's not true.
    I went there to work.
    It's going to be better, but it's not.
    It's not.
    It's the same thing.
    We don't have there food.
    They stay over us.
    Even what you peel the potato, you want to eat,
    you cannot eat.
    They don't let you.
    Then I worked a few days more.
    And one of the SS was a very nice person, was a nice person.
    So he said, OK.
    Don't rush.
    I'm going to wash you.
    Don't rush.
    Don't run.
    Take it easy.
    You want to eat?
    I said, yeah.
    He said, here's a carrot.
    He gave me a carrot to eat.
    He was very good.
    No, I was tired and working hard.
    And see, we had the bunk beds, three beds and then three
    across, like if you lay the wall,
    you have to go three across.
    So one night, I had to go down to the bathroom.
    And I didn't want to step on nobody.
    I slept.
    And I was so careful not to wake up.
    So instead of sitting in the bed,
    I sat right on the floor of the third bed.
    And I fell down to the third bed of the floor.
    And I hurt my back.
    You fell down when you were going to go to the bathroom?
    Yeah, yeah.
    And then the minute I fell down, everything hit to me.
    If I don't go up this minute, back up,
    I never going to go up back to the bed.
    And that's the way it was.
    I rushed back, with all my pain, I laid down the bed.
    And I was laying for probably for two months, who knows,
    for six weeks.
    I didn't move.
    I couldn't move.
    The minute I moved, I felt like all my bones
    are burning like a fire.
    So the girls took care of me--
    a little bit water, a little of this.
    You didn't have to get up and go to work?
    No, I couldn't go to work.
    And those what they come, the people, she knew already.
    I used to make with my hands.
    So she counted me.
    So I was laying in this position there,
    really bad after everything.
    Because you had sprained your back?
    Yeah, I did.
    I did, after everything.
    So suffering was enough to suffer healthy, now, I'm sick.
    And if anything, they're going to take me the first one,
    they're going to take me in crematorium, I mean,
    if I cannot work, that's for sure.
    Now, luckily, we didn't have a big crematorium.
    It was a lot of dead bodies to burn before them to kill me.
    It was so many bodies, they couldn't burn.
    So I was laying there sick, helpless, till one day,
    we had to move from these barracks the other barracks.
    So finally, the girls moved me, they hold me under my arms,
    and they dragged me, and they moved me.
    And then I start walking little by little.
    I start walking.
    And then they start talking, the Russians are coming.
    The Russians are coming there.
    And the Germans start running around
    like without hats already, and no food at all, not even
    the cooked water we got, for weeks and weeks.
    And somebody said, they're baking fresh bread,
    they're going to bake.
    So we dreamed all night with this fresh bread
    we're going to get.
    We're going-- everybody going to get a loaf of bread soon.
    After everybody's-- after, they're going to have enough
    of bread, they're going to give everybody bread.
    And then we were laying.
    And I mean, girls between us, talking, if the end comes,
    what's going to be if the end comes?
    We're going to be liberated?
    Are we going to be liberated?
    What we going to do?
    Where we going to go?
    How we going to walk without the person being behind our backs
    with the guns?
    How are we going to walk?
    You don't know no more how to be free.
    How are we going to be free?
    Where are we going to go?
    This was our whole thing.
    Not enough, we didn't imagine we're going to be free.
    No, if 1% in 1,000%, what are we going to do?
    That were our main thing.
    And meanwhile, from left to right, people
    dying, and dying, and dying.
    The block became empty--
    empty.
    Everybody's dying out.
    So one night, we hear rockets coming, fire things,
    and this, and this.
    And we don't know what's going on.
    One morning, we hear yelling.
    We are liberated.
    The English came in, the British.
    I said, no way.
    No way.
    I don't know.
    Something there died in me.
    The minute I hear liberation, I said,
    I don't think I want to be liberated.
    Where I'm going to go?
    What country going to take me?
    The Poles going to take me back?
    Where I'm going to go?
    I have nobody.
    Then I remind myself, all my cousins,
    all my uncles went to Russia.
    Maybe they're alive.
    But then came back to me, when was the Blitzkrieg,
    they were all always near Poland.
    So they all were killed out.
    I don't think so I have anybody alive.
    How about your brother?
    You didn't know if your brother was alive.
    No, I didn't know.
    So I was hoping, maybe my brother--
    he's a young boy.
    He wasn't old enough to go to the-- to be a soldier.
    Maybe he'd be alive.
    So everybody started running out.
    When was this that they?
    Liberation?
    Yes.
    April '45.
    You see, you think, from '44 to '45 is just a few months.
    To us, was like 1,000 years.
    Every day was thousands of years.
    We couldn't just live through those days.
    So when we were liberated, a lot of girls went out.
    I didn't go out for all week.
    I was laying in bed and just crying, crying my eyes out.
    And I got so weak, I couldn't eat.
    Everybody brought in bread.
    We had bread piled up till the ceiling.
    Yeah, bread, like you pile up--
    The English liberated you?
    Yeah, the English.
    And they gave us such a fat soup.
    They gave us soup.
    People died after they ate the soup.
    It was too fat.
    And they died.
    I didn't eat.
    I didn't want to taste the bread.
    I didn't eat.
    For a week, I didn't eat nothing.
    I was just laying, and crying, and crying.
    For what did I live through?
    Why did I live?
    For whom?
    Why?
    What, I'm better?
    What, I'm better than my brother?
    What, I'm better than my parents, my own family?
    I had such a pain in me.
    I didn't want to take my life.
    And I didn't want to live.
    I didn't know what to do.
    I was really sick about it, really sick.
    Were you still having that back injury then?
    No.
    My back got a lot better.
    Yeah.
    My back got better.
    But you were extremely depressed?
    Yeah.
    I was terrible depressed.
    I was crying day and night.
    Everybody was dancing in the street
    and telling me, what you doing to yourself?
    You wanted to-- you wanted to be liberated.
    You wanted to survive.
    You always talking about surviving and surviving.
    Now, you survive, you don't want it?
    I said, what we did survive?
    We still sitting here.
    We free to go out.
    And we don't go no place.
    See, we were-- we weren't on the wires, nothing.
    They took us to new barracks, where the soldiers were living,
    the German officers were living, nice barracks, three-four girls
    in one barrack-- in one room.
    I mean, rooms was like buildings.
    And I said, we are free.
    But we're not going no place.
    Where are we going to go?
    We have to wait till somebody's going
    to take us from here to there.
    We're not free.
    You're never-- you had gone so long without making decisions--
    Yeah, yeah.
    --that all of a sudden--
    Yeah.
    It was no place where to go.
    So we went out once to the civilian side.
    We talked to the Germans.
    We don't know anything.
    The concentration camps were right there.
    They killed so many German Jews.
    And they tell us blank, right in the face,
    we didn't know a thing.
    We didn't know a thing.
    What happened?
    We didn't know.
    Like they just woke up from a dream.
    They were drinking, and eating, and dancing,
    and having the best good time from all the world,
    came in from all over the world.
    They don't know what happened.
    See?
    They don't know what happened.
    Now, is another thing.
    This has never happened, they say.
    You're talking about what's happening now in California?
    Yeah.
    There's that--
    How can they say, it's never happened?
    They better say, they didn't know it's happened.
    That would be a better way for them.
    Well, I suppose the same people that
    say that are the same people in Germany that said they
    didn't know it was happening.
    Yeah.
    That's the same people.
    They just reversed because the other thing,
    it didn't make sense.
    Because when we were liberated, we
    took in a lot of German people from the city.
    You know what they were, in the government,
    and even in every walk of life.
    They took in Germans to the graves.
    They dug out big communal graves to throw in in fives people
    what they were shot.
    You took Germans to show them the graves?
    Yeah, the German in Bergen-Belsen, they were there.
    It should be pictures.
    Listen, I didn't have a camera.
    Or those people, where they gave speeches and they talk.
    Are you going to tell me nobody took pictures of those days?
    I don't understand.
    This was something to see, what kind of graves.
    The graves were miles, like to Coolidge Corner.
    This was graves dug, big ones, in five rows.
    And there, they were staying and throwing in.
    They were throwing in the corpses.
    They're throwing in.
    So they were ashamed to say, they
    didn't know because they see what happened.
    So now, they found another word for it.
    When-- after you were liberated, were you
    suffering from any physical illnesses at the time?
    Yeah, I suffered a lot, suffered a lot of headaches.
    I had headaches and headaches from the beating or something.
    I had tremendous headaches.
    I had a goiter because of the things
    I didn't have enough in Germany, the earth and the things.
    I had a goiter be taken out, had gallstones, gallbladder.
    I had a kidney stone.
    I was a lot of sick.
    Was this immediately after?
    Yeah, right.
    It was-- I was sick after.
    And then when I came to this country, I took--
    I came to this country in 1949, in May, May
    the 4th, just when my mother took--
    was taken to the gas chambers, same date,
    came here to this country.
    So you were liberated in May of '45--
    in April of '45.
    April '45.
    And you stayed-- remained in Bergen-Belsen for a time--
    after a while?
    Yeah.
    We stayed for time period in the English zone.
    Then we went over to the American zone.
    We didn't like to be in the English zone.
    The American zone of Bergen-Belsen?
    No, Frankfurt-am-Main.
    That was already free, I mean, not camps, was not a camp.
    And where did-- and this is in Frankfurt?
    Zeilsheim, was Zeilsheim was another kind
    of displaced person.
    Displaced-- a DP camp.
    Yeah, DP camp.
    Was Bergen-Belsen a DP camp afterwards too?
    No.
    No.
    But you went to a DP camp in Zeilsheim?
    No, I went to Zeilsheim-- yeah, Zeilsheim.
    OK.
    And when was this?
    This was in '45.
    I went first to Poland.
    OK.
    You want to know about Poland?
    Yes, I want-- yes.
    Yeah.
    I was liberated.
    I was depressed, and depressed, and depressed.
    And I couldn't find myself a place.
    I said, I have to go back to Poland.
    I mean, I saw with my own eyes who was killed.
    And those what they weren't killed, what I didn't see,
    I like to find out about it.
    So I went back to Poland, which it wasn't easy.
    It was very hard.
    I was going on trains with coals,
    the potatoes, freight trains.
    On locomotive, I went, just sitting with the driver
    on the locomotive.
    It wasn't easy.
    It took quite time to go.
    And when I came to Poland, and I sit
    in Poland on the trains with a Polish woman,
    if I would have a weak heart, I would die then, I tell you.
    That's all what you hear from the Poles talking.
    They said, so many Jews survive.
    This was a lot of Jews for them.
    Just came back a handful, a handful
    of Jews from a country like this.
    They said, too many Jews.
    I was thinking Hitler killed them all out.
    But they're still here.
    That's what you heard them say?
    On the trains, that's what the Poles
    were talking on the train.
    It was a Russian soldier.
    And he knew I'm Jewish.
    So he took me to him.
    And he told me, a lot of Jewish people
    are killed by the Poles now coming back, a lot of people.
    And you better watch out for those Poles.
    So I came to Warsaw.
    Warsaw was-- the ghetto was all to the ground, bombed.
    I went into the committee.
    And I went just myself there in the committee.
    I read it.
    I was going already with my husband.
    I got acquainted with my husband before I left.
    I registered him.
    His name is Morawitz.
    So I said Nathan Morawitz.
    He lived in Targowa 49.
    He left there his parents, and two brothers, and a sister.
    Where did you meet your husband?
    I met him right after the liberation.
    On my birthday, May the 16th, I met him walking.
    In Bergen-Belsen?
    Yeah, that was after the liberation in Bergen-Belsen.
    I met him there.
    He was walking with another Jewish boy.
    But he doesn't live.
    He got killed.
    He drowned in the water.
    And with a Polish boy, he was walking and talking in Polish.
    And we girls were walking too.
    So-- and the others, from where are you?
    From where you coming?
    Where you been in the concentration camps?
    Here, there, we start talking.
    So then they came up to a room, to a house.
    And they sing songs.
    And they sit with us.
    And they talk.
    Did Esther tell you about it?
    She met the same.
    She also met--
    I was walking with Esther, with another girl.
    She lives in New York, Jenny Reiner.
    Esther met her husband there too?
    Yeah, she met her husband after the liberation.
    So and then my husband right away--
    OK.
    So you registered yourself.
    Is this for in case someone was looking for you?
    Yeah, somebody looking for me.
    And then I'm trying to go to Radzyn.
    I'm trying.
    In Radzyn is the train is 12 kilometers away from Radzyn.
    So I have to go there to the train to Radzyn.
    And then I have to walk, probably.
    How I'm going to get there?
    And who knows who is there?
    They don't going to kill me there if I come.
    So we-- I and another girl-- she is now in Israel--
    and the boy what he doesn't live,
    he went with me to Warsaw.
    No, from Radzyn, she went with me
    because she is from Radzyn too, the girl.
    Jenke Klaiman is her name, now is Schuster.
    So she went with me.
    We came there.
    We found a few Jewish people living
    in one room on the floor, sleeping on straw.
    And they saw me, wow, what you doing here?
    Why did you come here?
    I said, why I came?
    I came looking for my people.
    Nobody is alive.
    Everybody is dead.
    We came looking for people too.
    We don't have nobody either.
    And if we're going to stay another few days,
    they're going to kill us.
    We're going to be between them.
    If you didn't die with your parents,
    now, you're going to die without your parents.
    So I said, I want to find out what's going on.
    So I had a cousin.
    He said, don't find out anything because the Poles going
    to kill you.
    They're going to be afraid for you.
    And they're going to kill you because they
    killed your family.
    And now, they're going to kill you.
    I didn't listen.
    Listen, I lived through a concentration camp.
    And I came so far.
    Now, I'm not going to go to the place
    where my parents are laying?
    So I went there.
    I came to my neighbor, to the Gentile woman,
    knocked on the door.
    She saw me.
    She start crossing and praying in this.
    From where did you come?
    How did you live?
    We sure you're not living no more.
    Then I start asking questions.
    No, nobody lives.
    Everybody is killed.
    And she started telling me the whole story, how
    this whole thing went by day, the day, and the night,
    and the killing, and how they were killed.
    This will take another 10 hours.
    Finally, she showed me where they
    buried them, on our land, my parents' land, dugged a hole.
    And they throw them all in just like this.
    This was October.
    And in spring, they plowed this field
    where my parents, where my loved ones lived, they plowed it.
    They throwed out all the bones, throw it around,
    and they plow it.
    That's what I had to hear.
    That's what I came back to Poland, to hear this.
    And I went back.
    I went back.
    Did you know then whether or not your brother had survived?
    Yeah.
    Now, I came back to this place, where everybody
    were concentrating in Radzyn, all the Jewish, what
    they came back to Russia.
    So I met my cousin there.
    And he told me how my brother was killed.
    He said, he was a very young boy, enlisted himself.
    He gave the wrong age, told them he was older.
    He wanted to go find the Germans, want to liberate it.
    He want to liberate his parents, his sister, and brother.
    And he went there.
    He was a young boy.
    I told him, Moishele, don't go.
    And he just went.
    That's all.
    He saw him, the way he was killed.
    His head was all chopped off in the shrapnel.
    From what?
    From the German, from the--
    what they shoot.
    So he was killed instantly, he said.
    And all my mother's sisters and the little children,
    little cousins, all were killed when
    there was the Blitzkrieg in '41, the Blitzkrieg.
    When they invaded Russia and they went in in Russia,
    they killed all the Jewish people were out.
    Nobody was left.
    They killed them to the ground.
    So you went back to Warsaw then?
    Yeah, I went back to Warsaw.
    And from Warsaw, I went to Lódz.
    And from Lódz, I went back to Bergen-Belsen.
    I came back to Bergen-Belsen.
    And we stayed there in Bergen-Belsen.
    Nobody wants us, no place where to go, nothing.
    Just they kept us.
    They give us food, give us clothes from the UNRRA,
    from the Joint, some clothes.
    And we just still like in a concentration camp.
    Not under pressure-- we free.
    Well, we still not free to go no place
    and to do anything with ourselves.
    We have to wait till we get the food.
    We have to wait till we get a clothing.
    And it was really hard.
    It was really fighting.
    And was depressing because after a concentration camp like this
    we lived through, nobody pulled out the arms, and to take us
    in in arms, and to--
    thanks god you are alive.
    How could you survive a thing like this?
    Thanks god.
    And to be happy with us.
    And nobody.
    Nobody.
    Nobody want us.
    And the Polish people-- we were born Polish.
    I mean, that was our country.
    My father fight for this country.
    My cousins all fight for the country.
    My uncle went to war.
    And they didn't want us at all.
    When they talk about so many people dying,
    they say Poles died, so much Poles.
    It's not true.
    They shouldn't call us Poles now.
    We're not Poles, we Jews.
    We're not Poles.
    We became without a country.
    We became Jews without a country.
    I don't know.
    People what they didn't experience this,
    I don't think so they can really knew what kind of hurt this is.
    When you're small and you grow in a country,
    you know it's your country.
    You love it.
    You love it just like you love your parents.
    You think the world of your country.
    You would fight for it, for the freedom for the country.
    And then all of a sudden, your country
    becomes it's no country, when you really
    despair, when you real somebody to speak up for you,
    to stand up for you, you don't have it.
    That's what I think.
    I feel a lot for the Vietnam War.
    For the Vietnamese.
    For the Vietnamese, what they came back to America.
    I feel the same thing like that.
    I came back with no war, nobody cares if I live,
    if I die, how much I suffer, how much I still suffer.
    See, like those what they came back from Iran,
    you saw what kind of welcome?
    It says a lot to do.
    I mean, those people were-- don't--
    The hostages, you're talking about.
    Yeah, the hostages.
    Those people don't going to suffer
    like the Vietnamese soldiers suffering.
    They still suffer.
    They see the deaths.
    And they see all those horrible things.
    And those, this going to stay all life with them.
    I tried.
    I tried to conduct a decent life.
    I wouldn't kill nobody.
    I think in these and as much I live through, and so much
    garbage, so much hate, and so much scum,
    I didn't learn nothing from it.
    I didn't.
    I didn't learn to be bad.
    I didn't learn to be killed and kill.
    I raised my children.
    Let's talk a little bit about that.
    When you came after the war, what
    made-- how did you end up coming to the United States?
    I came with a quota.
    It's a quota or what they call it.
    A quota.
    Quota, yeah.
    Were you-- you were the--
    I didn't have no relatives here.
    I had nobody.
    So I came-- the Joint brought me in, the Jewish organization.
    And why-- how could you get papers
    to come to the United States?
    Somebody sponsored for paper.
    My husband going to come.
    He's going to work for him.
    I mean, we're not going to take nothing for the government.
    Was your husband liberated by Americans?
    No, same thing, in Bergen-Belsen like me
    Oh, that's right.
    So you were liberated by English?
    Yeah, the English.
    But you were in the American zone?
    Yeah, I went to the American zone.
    Because you wanted to come to the United States?
    I wanted to come to the United States.
    And I didn't like the way the English treated us.
    They treated us a little bit like the Germans.
    The English don't like us very much.
    I sensed it when we yelled at the German prisoners,
    our commanders, what they were over us.
    Before, they were so high and mighty.
    Then you should see how the Germans looked in three days
    after they were captured.
    You wouldn't recognize them.
    Jewish people deserve a medal for surviving
    and for doing those things.
    I hate when somebody tells me, didn't you fight back?
    Why you don't fight back?
    Why the Germans didn't fight back?
    They went like sheeps.
    They begged.
    They looked like-- in rags.
    And they looked dirty and filthy.
    They always pictured us like we filth, and we lousy, and this.
    Under those conditions, even Queen Elizabeth
    would break down under those conditions.
    She's a big queen.
    Everybody is big when the time is big.
    Or when the time gets small, every person gets very small.
    Well, you're saying that you were victimized
    and you were being blamed for being what you were?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, can you imagine?
    Why you didn't resist?
    You went to the concentration camp.
    Why don't you-- why didn't you resist?
    How can you resist a army full of soldiers
    are staying with all kind of machine?
    So what you're saying is not only
    was it bad enough that you had to go through it.
    But they made you feel guilty, like you did something wrong?
    Yeah, they made me feel guilty like I did something wrong.
    I didn't fight back.
    I should have fight back.
    The way, what?
    Look, today, a hijacker takes a plane,
    even he does nothing in his hands, everybody is afraid,
    and they do what he does.
    So you decided-- you made a decision
    to come to the United States.
    Yeah.
    I decide, tell my husband, I'm not staying in Bergen-Belsen
    because to me, the English are just like the German.
    When did you marry?
    Did you marry there?
    Yeah.
    I married in Frankfurt-am-Main, Zeilsheim, I married.
    That's Frankfurt-am-Main.
    It's under Zeilsheim-- Zeilsheim is a little city
    under Frankfurt-am-Main.
    When did you marry?
    I married in '46, March 18, 1946, I married.
    And you could-- and so were you in Bergen-Belsen
    until you came to the United States?
    No, I was in Zeilsheim.
    I see.
    You went--
    No, I went to the American zone.
    I told you.
    Oh, I'm sorry.
    It wasn't Bergen-Belsen.
    No.
    I went to American zone.
    I lived in this--
    this is a little camp where they empty two streets
    from civilian Germans.
    They put them together with their relatives.
    And they gave us--
    Eisenhower did it.
    And Eisenhower took us back out in there.
    So in '46, we married.
    In '47, I had my son.
    What's your son's name?
    Steven.
    Steven Murra, Steven Edward Murra,
    Srul Hersh after my father was named.
    He was 22 months old when I came to this country.
    And we came.
    The HIAS took us over.
    My husband started working as a baker.
    In 1951, I was pregnant again.
    And I had twins, two daughters, twins--
    Rita and Janet, twins.
    One was named after my mother, and one was named
    after my husband's mother.
    So we had the parents already.
    And our grandchildren are named after my brothers.
    When you came, you were resettled in Boston?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    We came.
    And you knew Esther--
    also was resettled in Boston?
    Yeah, yeah.
    Yeah, I came to Esther.
    I was writing to her all the time when I was in Germany.
    And when I came, I lived with her for a few weeks.
    And then I got apartment.
    When you came to the United States,
    when you first got here, did you talk very much
    about your experiences, about what happened?
    Yeah.
    I tried to talk.
    I tried to talk to people.
    They shut us off right away.
    Some people didn't-- we didn't know how to talk English.
    We talked Jewish.
    So when we talk to them in Jewish, they say, [YIDDISH]..
    They didn't want to understand Jewish.
    I don't know.
    They were funny people when we came in here in this country.
    They were not so educated people,
    mostly were from the First World War people.
    They came in.
    They educate their children.
    And they made some living.
    Who knows?
    I don't know.
    But they were very ignorant to us, very ignorant.
    You're talking about Jews and non-Jews?
    Jews.
    I didn't come with non-Jews.
    I don't know.
    I came very little with non-Jews because I
    couldn't talk English.
    And the non-Jews cannot talk in Jewish.
    So mostly, I associate with Jewish people.
    It's one thing-- see, that's what
    this is in-- it stays in us.
    We don't associate with American.
    We don't.
    We keep to ourself.
    Were you able to share your experiences
    with other survivors?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, we talked a lot with other survivors.
    We always talked till it came to a point
    we start playing cards when we used to come together.
    Like four or five couples, they used
    to talk from the concentration camps before or after ghettos,
    hiding places, all those things.
    We used to talk, and cry a lot, and talk a lot.
    So it came to a point when we started having the children
    and we were too much depressed.
    I was a lot of sick.
    I was sick.
    In the times when I had my children, when they were
    very small, I was very sick.
    With physical illnesses like gallstones and kidney stones?
    I lived with attacks for three years till I got the operation.
    With what?
    Attacks, gallstone attacks, kidney attacks.
    I was very sick.
    I was very depressed, always very sick.
    So we didn't want our children to know what happened to us.
    We didn't want them to suffer like we do.
    If your children were growing up,
    then, did you ever talk to them about your experiences?
    When they were small, they used to ask some questions.
    Where's our relatives?
    They used to ask you where--
    Question where my relatives, where's
    the parents, where's my grandmother, uncles and aunts,
    cousins.
    Where are the people?
    Why we are just by ourself?
    So I used to tell them, it's a long story.
    It's very painful.
    Hitler killed them all.
    Did they ask you about your number on your arm?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, I told them I was in concentration camp.
    That seems-- it seems so brutal.
    It seems so terrible, like this is something I did.
    They don't want to think.
    As though you were being punished for something?
    Yeah, that's right.
    Were you afraid that your children were
    going to interpret it that way?
    That's right.
    Did they interpret it that way?
    No.
    I feel guilty a lot of times sitting [? like I do. ?]
    Really, I felt guilty by having children.
    You felt guilty about having children?
    I said to myself a lot of times, we shouldn't have any children.
    We really shouldn't.
    Because children like to grow up with their heritage.
    That's what we cannot give them.
    We can't give them their heritage.
    We can't give them a belonging, just me and my husband.
    And my husband used to work day and nights.
    The kids didn't see him.
    I was sick a lot of times.
    I used to hide.
    I didn't want them to see me sick.
    I didn't want them to grow up and think
    they have a sick mother.
    I always tried to be running and doing things, be always on top.
    But I lay down in bed, used to cried by night to sleep.
    My parents used to teach the children from right to wrong,
    always say the truth, always be nice, be polite,
    don't talk loud, all those good manners.
    Yeah, I told you, I felt guilty, I'm going to raise a child.
    The other children what they play with,
    they have American parents.
    They're born here.
    They have a whole future for them.
    What I have to offer my child?
    So we tried to be--
    to bring ourself up, try to have a nice home.
    We tried to give the kids everything they wanted--
    nice clothes.
    We did everything possible.
    We worked hard.
    We saved to give the kids what we never had.
    Did you join any survivor organizations?
    Yeah, I belong to the New Americans Greater Boston.
    When did you join that?
    I'm always joined there.
    Right away you joined it?
    Yeah, right away when we came.
    Why?
    Why?
    Well, this was the only place where
    we could understand each other.
    We could laugh together.
    We could cry together.
    So you sort of became each other's families?
    Yeah, we could be upset together.
    We upset a lot of times.
    Even a wedding-- look, my children,
    I have three children.
    They married beautiful, all of them very happy married.
    I have three grandchildren.
    One grandchild is coming on the way when I be in Israel or I
    come from Israel.
    I just hope everything comes through good.
    So we have a lot of things to share.
    We cry when we happy.
    And we cry when we sad.
    And we always cry.
    Even the weddings--
    I go to a wedding or my children's wedding,
    I should be happy.
    I raised nice children.
    They're very respectable.
    They're teachers.
    My son is a lawyer--
    nice, good kids.
    I should be happy.
    And I'm not happy.
    I'm not happy.
    I'm always sad, not happy.
    It's something inside.
    It's like a cancer sitting.
    And it's eating, and it's eating away.
    After the war, did you apply for reparations?
    Yeah, Wiedergutmachung.
    Yeah, we got Wiedergutmachung.
    You get reparations now?
    Yeah.
    So what they give us?
    They took everything away--
    everything.
    They stripped us naked.
    We worked six years hard labor in their camps.
    We worked.
    We built highways.
    We built where the airplanes coming down--
    Airport.
    --airports.
    We built houses.
    We built. We worked all our life.
    And what we get?
    We don't get nothing.
    The Nazis' women, where the husbands were Nazis,
    and they were persecuted or killed,
    they get triple what we get, more.
    Who?
    The Nazis' wives, the Nazis' children.
    How come?
    The SS, yeah, they get money.
    Yeah, they get.
    Under what reason?
    Under the martial law, under their laws.
    I don't know under what law they get.
    We don't get nothing.
    We cannot survive on this pension what we getting there.
    We don't have Social Security from Poland.
    My parents lived all their lives and their work,
    and they took away all the things
    they had from generations, the gold, the silver.
    What we get?
    Nothing.
    We don't get nothing from them.
    That's nothing.
    I don't call this any kind of giving.
    No.
    They have to be ashamed.
    You know how many is dying out now?
    What, we going to live to old age here?
    A lot are dying out.
    What they're doing with this money?
    We should really get after them.
    A lot of widows are left.
    Right.
    And when I asked you about--
    And they don't have any money to live on.
    When I asked you about reparation,
    I didn't mean compensation.
    You can never be compensated for what happened.
    No, that's for sure.
    No.
    No, I understand that.
    No.
    I can never be.
    Even they're going to give me billions, I wouldn't be.
    I wouldn't change it for no billions
    in the world what I had.
    When you were raising your children here up
    in the United States, what languages
    did you speak in the house?
    Yeah, in the beginning was Jewish, yeah.
    Spoke Yiddish?
    Jewish, yeah, Yiddish.
    And then when they start going to school,
    they knew a little bit English.
    My son got it very fast when I came in this country.
    He talked German when he came here.
    And right away, he talk English.
    Kids get-- the kids learn very fast.
    Yeah, my children, when they went to school,
    they know English.
    Do they understand Yiddish now?
    They understand, yeah.
    They talk when they have to talk.
    Yeah.
    They can talk when they have to.
    What kinds of feelings do you have about living
    in the United States?
    What kind of feelings?
    It's still the best country in the world.
    I just hope and pray you're never
    going to go sour like other countries are going.
    I just hope and pray the government going
    to be always strong and good.
    Do you think another Holocaust is possible?
    Yeah, it's very possible.
    No, not with this government, what we
    have now in Washington, the government, and the Senate,
    and the House.
    I mean, it's not just the president what he says.
    That's what I like about this government.
    It's not one person, what he wants to do, and what he says.
    I like this kind of setup.
    You're saying that person can't have so much power.
    That's right, no way.
    He shouldn't, never.
    If he goes crazy in his head, he can destroy the whole country.
    I watched the Watergate very closely.
    I watched the Watergate just like Germany.
    I watched it.
    What kind of symbolism did it have?
    What kind of analogy was it?
    It is almost identical to the German kind
    of wolves, the Watergate, yeah.
    Ehrlichman and--
    Ehrlichman and Engelman, they all was a German descent.
    And this was the wolves.
    And I'm telling you--
    Loyalty was a big issue.
    The loyalty, yeah, when you say kill, you have to kill.
    It's loyalty.
    And you say lie.
    And you say you didn't do it--
    royalty.
    Loyalty.
    Yeah, royalty.
    Wait, no, loyal, I was talking about being loyal--
    Oh, loyal, yeah, loyal.
    --in the context of loyalty.
    Yeah, loyalty, right.
    And the hush money and all this, that
    was always going on in Germany, always.
    The top, the top, the brass, they ruled the world,
    the brass.
    And all the other, they were afraid.
    Like killing Jews-- it came in, let's say, a New Year's night.
    Two soldiers came in to kill Jews.
    Hitler didn't tell them to do it.
    Believe me, a lot of Jews would be
    saved if Hitler would have to kill them.
    But they did kill them.
    They did kill them.
    Those innocent soldiers and those innocent people,
    what they tell you, they didn't know,
    it never happened, and it never could happen a thing like this,
    those are the people they killed the Jewish people.
    Those are-- for those, you have to watch.
    Those are the killing.
    So you feel like, in a sense, Nixon
    felt he was above the law.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    I felt this.
    I felt it very sickly then, this time.
    I was really sick.
    I didn't eat.
    And I didn't sleep.
    I used to sit near the television.
    If I would have this recorder, I would record the whole thing.
    I was sitting near the television.
    My aunt was then from Israel, she came for a visit
    here to the United States.
    And she was sitting with me together.
    And I used to sit and cry, lived all the German horror back.
    Nixon brought it back to me.
    Yeah.
    That's interesting.
    It's very interesting.
    And I just hope--
    I'm taping this.
    It cost me a lot, a lot of strength.
    Emotional.
    A lot of emotion, a lot.
    And I'm taping it because I wanted--
    I'm talking now.
    I'm just talking only to the young people.
    I don't care what they are--
    Jewish, not Jewish, to all the young people in the world,
    I'm saying to them, be very careful.
    Be always alert.
    Don't think somebody going to promise you the world.
    Don't ever let nobody promise you anything.
    Because those were the promise.
    They just want to get in.
    And they are very evil people.
    If somebody in the government tells you, it's not so good,
    we have to struggle, we have to continue, we have-- he
    shows you the right way, the good way, better way.
    Oh, we going to have cars, and we're
    going to have beautiful houses, just vote for me.
    Don't you ever vote for this person.
    Never.
    Because this is the person, he's going
    to get after the poor people.
    The poor people going to vote him in.
    But the rich people going to live, not the poor.
    And that's my message.
    We should be very careful.
    The government is the most important thing.
    If the Polish government would be a good government,
    even the Poles were bad people, it would never
    come to this, never.
    In talking now, what you just said,
    about the poor people will vote him in,
    but the rich people are going to live,
    do you ever have any thoughts about Ronald Reagan being
    president now?
    I hope he's going to be a good president.
    I just hope.
    I want him to be a good president.
    I want him to care about the poor people
    because the poor people voted him in.
    And we don't have so much rich people in this country.
    We have a lot, but not so much.
    Poor people voted him in.
    And I just hope he's going to go for the poor people,
    is going to go for the human rights, even for woman rights.
    Women have to have rights too.
    It's their body.
    And what they want to do, they should do it.
    They should be free.
    They shouldn't be obligated, somebody's
    going to dictate them what to do.
    With their bodies, right.
    With their bodies.
    If they can work in places now--
    I mean, they came a lot ahead--
    why go backwards?
    Why go backwards?
    Yeah, good point.
    OK.
    Well, I think that's really about it.
    Is there anything that you would like to add or say anything?
    I would like to say about Israel.
    I'm going now to the gathering to Israel.
    To the world gathering?
    To the world gathering.
    I'm going because I know my mother, my father, my brothers,
    all my uncles, aunts, and all the little city
    what I lived there is going to be there by spirit.
    We all going to be there because there was their dream, to be
    someday in Jerusalem.
    They always-- the prayers, when they closed the book,
    we were always next year in Jerusalem.
    So I'm going for my parents, for all my relatives,
    and for all the six million Jews what they couldn't
    see what I'm going to see in Israel,
    a country, a beautiful country.
    It's true, they're surrounded by enemies.
    Now, maybe someday--
    God made such a miracles.
    Maybe, he's going to perform another miracle
    and those enemies going to become someday friends.
    And they're going to live together in peace.
    Because in peace, you can establish more things.
    You can grow.
    Your children grow.
    Your country grows.
    Everything is much better than a war.
    A war doesn't do nothing, only killing.
    It doesn't help.
    It just makes a lot of broken hearts.
    Have you ever been to Israel before?
    Yeah, I've been 10 years ago in Israel.
    And I was so happy to see this beautiful country.
    I walked there just like my mother's walked behind me
    and beside me, my parents, and all my family.
    That's the way I walked in Israel.
    I was always thinking--
    middle of the night, I used to go out on the balcony
    and look in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
    I looked at my mother's, my father's eyes,
    and looked at this country.
    And I'm very proud to see and to tell them,
    we have a beautiful country.
    And the dream for my parents came true.
    And just too bad they had to die with such a death they did.
    They always were hoping, someday going to be a Israel.
    And the Nazis don't going to survive.
    That was their dream.
    And that's what they dreamed.
    The Nazis don't going to survive.
    And thanks god this dream came true.
    Well, I hope you have a very safe and happy trip to Israel.
    Yeah.
    And I hope my daughter going to hold down with the baby
    till I come back.
    I come back the 21st of June.
    When is she due?
    She's been due in this time.
    I almost didn't want to go.
    I didn't want to go.
    And she begged me, go.
    So because of her, I'm going.
    If she would tell me, don't go, I wouldn't go.
    And she said, go.
    I know it's going to do some good.
    So go.
    Well, thank you very much.
    Thank you.
    You're very kind.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Rose Murra
    Date
    interview:  1981 May 29

    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
    Murra, Rose.

    Administrative Notes

    Holder of Originals
    One Generation After
    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The interview with Rose Murra was conducted on May 29, 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:
    2023-11-16 08:10:03
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn510157

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