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Oral history interview with Leon Merrick

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0095.50 | RG Number: RG-50.163.0050

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    Oral history interview with Leon Merrick
    Transcript
    My name is Cecille Steinberg.
    Today is November 9, 1986.
    I'm here to interview Mr. Leon Merrick, who
    is a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust.
    I am doing this under the auspices of the Oral History
    Project Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington.
    The purpose of this interview is to add
    to the oral history of the Nazi Holocaust
    so that through this living Memorial,
    future generations will know what happened.
    With this knowledge, hopefully we
    can prevent any such occurrence in the future.
    Tell me your full name.
    My name is Leon Merrick.
    Formerly, I changed my name.
    It was used to be Leon Kusmirek, a Polish name.
    So I cut off this "Kus" and I left the "Mirek."
    When did you change it?
    It's 1953, when I was in the army.
    It's a court order.
    I changed it by court order.
    You were in the army here?
    Yeah, sure.
    I was drafted.
    I was drafted.
    When I came back from my honeymoon,
    I had greetings from Uncle Sam.
    Oh, my goodness.
    So I was drafted, and I was--
    I took my basic training in Fort Breckinridge.
    That's in Kentucky.
    And I spent most of my time in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
    Where and when were you born?
    I was born in January the 8th, 1926, Zgierz.
    It's spelled Z-G-I-E-R-Z. It's about six miles from Lódz,
    L-Ó-D-Z. Lódz is the second largest city in Poland.
    And before the war, it had a population of 250,000 Jews.
    So you were very close to Lódz.
    Yeah, but I used to take the--
    I used to take the tramway, or the streetcar.
    And it took a few minutes.
    And I was-- in Zgierz, this small place
    was like in comparison to Wheaton and Washington, DC.
    The suburb.
    Suburb, which is almost six miles.
    Wouldn't be more than that.
    And so.
    Who comprised your household before the war?
    Well, I had one--
    had parents, my father and my mother.
    And I had a younger brother.
    He was three years younger than I was.
    OK.
    And in 1939, when the war broke out,
    they called all the Jews from this small place,
    from Zgierz, in the marketplace.
    And they told us that we have to leave the city in three days.
    So some of them went to Warsaw.
    Some of them went different places.
    We decided to go to Lódz because it was only six miles away.
    My mother had a sister over there.
    And in Lódz, they made the--
    Germans made a big ghetto, which was closed on May the 1st, 1940.
    And there were 160,000 Jews.
    And I spent there four years.
    Before-- before this, when you were in your small town,
    how did your father earn a living?
    My father my father worked in a factory.
    I mean, it was a big industrial center.
    They had factories and then textile factories.
    And my father worked in a finishing factory.
    In other words, they put color and dye
    and the packings material.
    And he used to go nearby to Lódz.
    And Lódz was also was a big industrial center.
    And they used to collect the raw material,
    and they used to bring it back to the factory and made--
    like I said, add color and made it ready for the store.
    To the materials.
    To the materials, yes.
    He used to pick up to make sure it's all finished,
    finished product ready for the stores.
    And--
    Did you go to school there?
    Yeah, I went to school over there.
    And I went to regular--
    it was a school run by the government.
    And in this place, they had the Jews
    used to go to separate school.
    And for the Polish people, they had a separate school, too.
    For the only reason is because if a Jew went
    to a Polish school, the kids would beat him up after this.
    So the Jews used to go--
    they had their own school also run by the government.
    And I was there eight years.
    And I was in the eighth grade, and then the war broke out.
    And I was 13 years old.
    And I planned to go to they're called gymnasium, which
    is a higher education school.
    But being I was only 13 and Jews were not allowed to go anymore--
    So the war broke out, and then we went to the ghetto
    for four years.
    There was no schooling for four or five years, you know.
    While you were in the ghetto.
    Sure, they took out Jews every year, and they transferred.
    They sent them out to the different camps.
    Do you remember when the war broke out?
    Sure, I remember everything.
    I remember it was a Friday, September the 1st, 1939.
    I remember seeing the planes high in the sky, German planes.
    And my mother used to come back from the market, used
    to go shopping every Friday for Saturday.
    Used to be a market place.
    And I remember very well.
    And then there was a Friday and a Monday.
    Everybody was running.
    We were running, too.
    We were running away towards Warsaw.
    But on the way, we stayed.
    You only had bundles with you.
    You had nothing.
    And we stayed overnight in a village.
    And at that time, it was terrible.
    You seen all these inmates.
    The Poles let out the inmates from the prisons.
    And all of a sudden, you see different characters,
    faces with shaven heads and things like that.
    So we stayed there a couple of nights,
    and it was hard to get food.
    And we didn't have any clothes with us
    because we just ran away.
    So a rumor was going around that all the able-bodied men
    have to report to near Warsaw.
    They're going to draft them in the army.
    So my father went towards Warsaw, too.
    And we decided to go back to the small city where we came from.
    It was only maybe 10 kilometers away.
    How much can you go on foot?
    So when we got back, we ate, and we spent an hour or so.
    And then we heard shooting.
    My Polish neighbor come running.
    And he says, Germans are coming in.
    Right there.
    And that was about--
    I think it was like a Wednesday or Thursday.
    And the war broke out Friday.
    It wasn't many days.
    So--
    You were together with your mother and your father
    and your brother.
    No, my father went towards Warsaw.
    And it was just my mother and my father.
    And so at that time, we stayed.
    And the next day, I just went out.
    I went out on the street, and I saw Germans, different uniforms,
    gray uniforms.
    And the city was empty.
    And they were robbing the stores.
    They were plundering.
    I see a lot of troops going towards Warsaw, everything.
    And then after a few days, my father came back.
    He came back.
    So he decided to come back, and he went back to the factory.
    But the factory was deserted.
    There was nobody there.
    And they put in German commissars
    because it's a Jewish factory.
    Jews owned it from Warsaw.
    My father, my grandfather were the only two Jews
    working in this place.
    But it was--
    The rest were just Poles.
    Oh.
    It was owned by a Jew.
    Owned by a Jew from Warsaw.
    The administration was Jewish, and the office workers.
    But the workers in the factory itself, the majority was Poles.
    And it was a big factory.
    It was called Bzura, B-Z-U-R-A. It was named after a river which
    was flowing underneath, that river.
    And then, like I said, one night, I woke up, and I saw--
    I saw the sky is lit up.
    I looked out the window, and I saw the synagogue burning.
    Because I know exactly where the synagogue was,
    synagogue was burning.
    The Germans burned it.
    And so--
    Had you known anything about Hitler?
    Yeah, before the war?
    Sure, we knew it.
    Of course, we read-- we had Yiddish papers and English--
    I mean and Polish papers and all of this.
    We had a lot of neighbors, Jewish neighbors.
    And they had relatives in Germany
    who went from Poland to Germany.
    They settled there, but then the Germans expelled them.
    In 1937, 1938, all--
    the Germans expelled first all the foreign Jews,
    and they dumped them on the Polish side of the border,
    near Posen.
    If it matters to you, the majority came to Zbaszyn.
    It's a border town.
    And they came on the Polish side.
    And then they formed the different Jewish committees
    to help settle.
    People who have relatives, they went to sisters and brothers.
    And I imagine some didn't had anybody.
    But mostly, most of the Polish Jews,
    they threw them out from Germany,
    and they just dumped them on the Polish side of the border
    and said to the Pollacks, you can do with them,
    whatever you want to.
    So that was how we knew what was going on.
    And sure, we knew what was going on.
    And so that was how I spent four years in the ghetto.
    And then--
    What was it like in the ghetto?
    Where did you live?
    In the ghetto?
    In the ghetto was very bad from the beginning.
    And they closed the ghetto, like I said before, in 1940.
    And was all-- it was all wire around it.
    You couldn't leave.
    You couldn't go out.
    And they had German sentries posted every so--
    every few meters or whatever you want.
    They had booths day and night, 24 hours.
    Nobody could go out.
    Nobody could go in.
    They had German-- they had the German criminal police
    unit in the ghetto stationed.
    They're called Kripo, German Kriminalpolizei.
    And from the beginning, it wasn't so bad.
    But then they start rationing everything, and it was very bad.
    People killed one another for a loaf of bread.
    And then they were starved and coming in the foreign Jews,
    like Jews from Czechoslovakia, the remaining Jews from Vienna,
    Jews from Holland.
    They've all been transferred.
    And then when the Germans started building all these
    camps, like the extermination camps-- of course,
    we didn't know it at that time, but every so often it meant that
    transport--
    it meant that so many Jews, 5,000 Jews a quarter,
    10,000 Jews, so what happened to be the case is they took these
    foreign Jews who just came in in the ghetto,
    like from Prague and from Vienna,
    and they made a transfer, they just had to live with
    the people.
    And then but the hunger was very bad.
    People were eating potato peelers--
    potato peels and eating--
    they made cakes from ersatz coffee grounds.
    Have you ever eaten a cake from ersatz coffee ground?
    And sure, we got rations once a week,
    maybe a piece of bread and a few potatoes.
    And it was very bad in the winter time.
    And I also worked in the ghetto.
    They made me a--
    they made me a mailman.
    Not a mailman.
    I was only a boy.
    I was 16 years old.
    But the ghetto was autonomous, had their own administration,
    had a council of elder Jews.
    And the Jews, they had--
    they had their own administration.
    In other words, they did the bidding of the Germans.
    But they were-- 150,000 Jews was a lot of people.
    So they had a burial society, and they had bakeries, whatever.
    And you had to have a lot of pull.
    They brought in groceries.
    And [SIGHS] it was very bad from the beginning.
    People, all my relatives went in this transport.
    The Germans, there were rumors spread.
    They need 10,000 Jews, they need 15,000 Jews.
    They just had to make up transports,
    and everybody had to work.
    I had a job, my mother had a job.
    She worked in the kitchen.
    My father worked in a hospital, not as a doctor or something
    like that, because he just happened
    to know the guy who worked in Zgierz
    in the same factory with him.
    And he was a brother of the eldest of the Jews,
    so we went to him.
    He also gave us a room, because we were outsiders.
    And so he gave me a job.
    And at my job, I had two soups a day, which was very good,
    two meals a day.
    My mother worked in the kitchen, and my father
    worked in the hospital.
    So it wasn't so bad, but everybody
    tried to help him-- to help themselves.
    And I remember many times my father used to bring home loaves
    of bread, already stale and moldy.
    They also had horses stationed nearby in the hospital.
    And this was intended for the horses.
    You think bad, but it was good.
    It was molded-- moldy bread.
    But then they had--
    like I said, one day, the Germans said, well,
    we're going to make a--
    they call it in Germany a Sperre, which nobody
    can go out for eight days.
    You cannot leave the house.
    And the Germans came around, and they took everybody else
    in the apartment.
    They lined them up on the street.
    And the able-bodied they sent one side,
    and the kids and the elderly to another side.
    They put them on wagons, and they sent them
    to the central prison.
    It was a Jewish central prison, like I said.
    In Lódz?
    In the ghetto.
    The whole administration with the prison,
    with everything, it's imaginable.
    And they kept them there for a few days.
    And then they took them out outside the ghetto.
    And all those people went to a--
    now we know it.
    At that time, we didn't know.
    But at that time, they sent them to Kulmhof, Chelmno.
    They had this extermination camp.
    It was north of Lódz.
    It was only 30 miles away.
    I mentioned, but we were still in the ghetto.
    We heard the rumors that the Germans were taking out people,
    and they tell you they give you a shower, and they put in gas.
    And we knew a rumor was going around, but nobody believed it.
    How did the rumor start?
    Well, I'll tell you, like I was young.
    I was only--
    I said the war broke out 13.
    I was a couple of years afterwards,
    maybe about 14 or 15.
    The rumor's going around.
    Somehow, the news filtered through.
    Because some Poles smuggled through the wires
    and bought some food.
    And somehow, the way the ghetto was
    divided, like one side of the street was the Jewish section.
    The other side was the Pole section.
    Jews lived on this side.
    Poles lived on the other side.
    Somehow, maybe the two newspapers
    across from one window to another, or maybe underground.
    The rumor went-- the rumor went--
    we knew it.
    We also knew about the Russian, how the Russian with Stalingrad
    the Russians are coming back and the Germans leaving.
    So we knew every way.
    And not only this, a lot of people-- of course,
    I didn't know at that time, but now, after the war,
    you're reading books and periodicals and magazines, too.
    They also had shortwave radios in the ghetto.
    It wasn't that common.
    So they listen to Russian broadcasts.
    They listen to the Polish Voice originating from London
    during the war.
    So somehow, the news filtered through.
    So you knew how the war was going as well?
    We knew that.
    Yeah, we knew that.
    Of course, nobody could leave the ghetto.
    People get killed, and people committed suicide.
    In the ghetto.
    Oh, the hunger.
    I also have a book.
    I have a book.
    I thought I'm the only survivor from this small town,
    but my daughter, the one who died, she was very instrumental.
    She was always looking for my roots.
    And she went to Israel.
    And she found out that they wrote a book.
    And I was amazed how many people survived from the small town
    where I come from.
    And I've read this book.
    I also read a book about the Lódz Ghetto and things
    like that.
    And I have-- so now I'm putting pieces together,
    and I get a more clearer picture of how it was at that time.
    Because in the ghetto, you only talk about survival, only about
    food, food.
    Because now I'm reading this book about--
    the one from the two Polish people left.
    And one guy mentioned, he always liked
    to see the day when he can sit down at the table
    and eat up a whole loaf of bread.
    And we felt the same way.
    No matter what we talked about, we always
    wind up in the same subjects--
    food.
    So it's amazing.
    Now in the restaurant business, you have food,
    and you throw out the ends, and you throw out this.
    And you smell.
    If it's not quite good, you throw it out.
    But who would imagine?
    At that time, nobody knew that.
    So.
    Where were you living?
    We had one room.
    Everybody was living in one room.
    Because, sure, because the Germans
    took the worst part of the city, and they designated
    a place for the Jews to live.
    And we crammed in 160,000 Jews in a very small section,
    which was the worst section of the city.
    It was all dilapidated.
    Even before the war, it was the worst section.
    You had all the rundown houses, all [? together. ?]
    So we had one room, four of us only one room.
    And of course, like I said, we took a little bit clothing.
    It was a ghetto.
    We had a pole in the room.
    We had the clothes hanging there and cover it up with the sheets.
    And that's what it was.
    That's it.
    And when the winter got bad, people just
    were tearing out doors and window frames
    from the houses which the people left and used it for firewood.
    It was very bad.
    So it was very bad.
    What was your job?
    What did you do in your job?
    Oh, mine?
    Mm-hmm.
    Well, it was domestic mail.
    We had the post office.
    It was the main post office.
    And they-- I was young.
    And I was glad I got this job because I always wanted a job.
    I was only 13, 14 years old.
    And I saw the young boys walking around.
    They had something hanging.
    They had all this mail to deliver.
    And I figured, why can't I do this?
    Because there was no schooling, nothing.
    And that all was this, and the boys were well fed.
    They give you three meals a day.
    So we wrote a letter.
    We wrote a letter to the eldest of the Jews.
    I told you before that my father, before the war,
    he worked with his brother, and he helped us get an apartment
    and settle down in the ghetto.
    So also the eldest of the Jews, he
    had a private apartment in the hospital where my father worked.
    So they had the head nurse, and my father was very friendly.
    And the head nurse, also I have to mention
    that this eldest of the Jews, he was at that time either 62
    or 63 years old.
    Before the war, he was head of the Jewish orphanage.
    He was head of the Jewish orphanage.
    And the rumor goes around how he got appointed
    the eldest of the Jews.
    The Germans had to pick somebody.
    So he was active in the Jewish Council even before the war.
    But when the war broke out, the rumor
    goes around that the Germans came in, and they ask him,
    who is the eldest head of the Jews?
    And he understood, who is the oldest,
    and he was the oldest at that time.
    He was all gray-haired.
    So he says, I am.
    And the Germans appointed him the eldest of the Jews.
    So we wrote the petition.
    We wrote a letter that I'm looking for a job,
    and I can do that.
    My father wrote, and he gave this to this head nurse.
    And she took care of him.
    And when the moment was right, she gave him the petition.
    And then they called me to the personnel.
    They called me first.
    They had there-- well, there was a whole Jewish administration.
    They called it personnel.
    And I remember she had a [INAUDIBLE].
    I remember her name.
    She had the letter in the front of her,
    and it was a big R because his name was Rumkowski.
    So he initialed it with a big R. And she asked me,
    do you have good feet?
    I says, yeah.
    So I got the job.
    And then I met a lot of boys and girls my age.
    And it was very nice.
    It was a good job because you get two meals a day,
    and you have to do something.
    And I was there.
    I was there until 1944.
    And then, the Germans put more demands.
    We need 5,000 here and 5,000 here.
    And then they scraped up non-essential-- well, of course,
    the Germans made different factories.
    They made tailor factories, metal factories.
    And they're working for the German war effort.
    They were producing uniforms for the German soldiers.
    Of course, I wasn't in this category.
    I had no profession because I was too young.
    So the people from the non-essential jobs,
    they picked me.
    And I was lucky.
    And I was lucky in a way, because all-- they
    picked us people.
    They put me in a transport.
    First of all, I was hiding.
    I didn't want to go because it was already 1944,
    and we heard a rumor that the Russians are coming closer
    to us, and we figured maybe in a few months,
    we might be liberated.
    But it so happened that the Russians stopped right
    on the Vistula River.
    It's a big river.
    I don't know if you're familiar with it
    if, you heard the word Vistula.
    And because at that time, the Poles
    made an uprising in Warsaw, in the city of itself.
    And the Russians were against the Poles themselves liberating
    Warsaw.
    They want to liberate Warsaw.
    So they figured, let the Poles kill one another out.
    The Polish Home Army staged an uprising.
    They want to liberate the city.
    And then the Russians were on the other side of the river.
    They stopped for a few months.
    Then the Germans crushed the Warsaw uprising for the Poles
    and also had time to liquidate the Jews.
    So I was hiding.
    And I was hiding here.
    I was hiding there.
    And then they took the ration cards away from me,
    and they took the ration cards away from my parents.
    So finally, I had to go.
    I had to-- so I went to the central prison.
    I turned myself in.
    I was there two or three days.
    And one day, they marched us to the sidetrack.
    They had an opening in the ghetto,
    and they marched us to the side track.
    And we went on the cattle train, just like everybody else.
    You were by yourself, or you were with your parents?
    Just myself.
    Just myself.
    My parents were still left--
    my brother, my father, my sister.
    And we went to the train.
    We didn't know, of course, where we're going.
    And I think we wrote overnight, or maybe a few hours.
    I don't remember.
    It's Such a long time, some 40 some years ago.
    They opened the train, and we walked out.
    And we went to another labor camp.
    It was called Kielce.
    The name should be very familiar.
    It's in Central Poland.
    And they had a pogrom in 1946 in that city.
    And it was so they took us to this camp.
    And the local Jews from the surrounding area,
    we worked in a factory, in a munition factory.
    We're making bullets for the Germans.
    And at that time, we came in contact with the Poles
    because the Poles worked alongside us.
    In other words, they came to work
    to the factory from their home.
    And we came to the work for the factory from the camp.
    The camp was nearby.
    Like the camp was here, and the factory maybe
    was a quarter of a mile, and we just walked.
    Under the guard, of course, but it was better than the ghetto
    because we had food.
    Of course, a lot of the newcomers with me,
    it wasn't too many, maybe 50 people.
    It was a full 50 people because they dropped--
    the Germans dropped off.
    When we left the ghetto, they dropped off maybe 50 people here
    and 50 people in another place where they had a factory,
    and they distributed us.
    And a lot of people were trading clothes
    for bread with the Poles.
    And there I was.
    Like I was in a sweater.
    I put on a sweater on me, and I brought it to the factory.
    And I took it off, and he in turn brought me a loaf of bread.
    And it so happened my mother packed the best clothes with us.
    Brought a sweater and shoes and boots,
    because of course, we didn't know where we're going.
    But I don't know if it was the local Jewish people didn't
    deliver the clothes to us or the Germans took it away from us,
    and they traded it for whiskey, for food.
    So I had really nothing to trade.
    I had very, very little bit left.
    But at night, you went down to the Polish kitchen.
    They fed.
    If I worked in the night shift, they
    had a kitchen for the Poles.
    Whatever was left over they gave the Jews a little bit.
    And I also noticed posters in Polish,
    in the hallway in the kitchen.
    I remember, of course, the Jew Hore-Belisha.
    Of course, I didn't know at that time who Hore-Belisha was.
    But after the war, I learned that he
    was active in the English Parliament.
    He was a Jew, and he was directing the war efforts.
    Everybody heard about Churchill and about Eden and things
    like this.
    But he was, of course, the German picked the Jew.
    And I remember they had a propaganda poster.
    But sometimes if they have leftover, they gave us the food.
    And if they didn't have leftover,
    they just didn't give it to us.
    But it was-- the food situation was better
    than it was in the ghetto.
    Were you with all men?
    No, it was men, women, and children, too.
    And children, too.
    It was-- and the Germans organized like a football club.
    They were playing football over there, which is called soccer.
    Here, football is the oval ball.
    But in Europe, football is the soccer ball, the round ball.
    And over there, if you left it--
    well, I got there in March.
    And then also I was in this camp.
    We heard about the Normandy invasion,
    or the Allied invasion, in 1944.
    We heard about that because we came in contact with the Poles.
    And--
    Were the Poles friendly?
    Were they antisemitic?
    Well, we're just in the factory.
    Like I said, we didn't-- first of all,
    we couldn't fraternize too much.
    I worked with one Pole undereath the machine.
    And you had German masters.
    They had Germans there in charge of the factory.
    The Germans, they were going around.
    You couldn't talk too much.
    They want you to work.
    Sure, of course.
    I work with the Pollack next door.
    He bought me a loaf of bread or something else,
    but they were plain, uneducated Poles.
    You know what I mean?
    They knew our situation.
    As a matter of fact, some of us were heard--
    we heard that some Jews run away from that camp.
    It was relatively easy to get away.
    You could sneak out from the factory or whatever.
    But then the Poles turned them.
    They brought them in, they shot them.
    So of course, I didn't attempt to because I
    wasn't from this vicinity.
    People who were from this vicinity,
    maybe they have friends around a few miles
    away in the countryside.
    They could do it.
    But we heard they brought them back.
    And I also have to mention that in charge of the security,
    there were most were Latvians and Ukrainians.
    They were the auxiliary.
    They're helping the Germans.
    So then we heard about the Normandy invasion,
    and we knew about the news that the Russians are coming.
    So one day, they came us.
    And they said, everybody has to pack.
    They have to pack.
    So they packed up, and they liquidated the camp.
    The Russian must have made an offensive.
    And we went.
    They put us on a train, and we went for a day.
    And then the train stopped.
    And of course, they brought some food for us.
    They had to feed us.
    You were in the cattle cars?
    In the cattle cars.
    And I remember when they wouldn't-- if it makes
    a difference, the place is still in Poland.
    It was called Przedborz.
    You find out Przedborz.
    I don't even know how you spell it exactly.
    It's called-- I think in Polish it's called P--
    you spell it P-R-Z-E-D-B-O-R-S apostrophe.
    Przedborz.
    And it sounds right.
    So we asked the guards, the German guards,
    or the Ukrainian guards, how come--
    where are we going?
    Where are we going?
    So they says, they didn't know where to take us.
    So we asked them, why can't you take us back to the Lódz Ghetto?
    There are a lot of Jews in the ghetto.
    That was in August of 1944, and they told us
    the ghetto is being liquidated now.
    You were saying that you asked the guards.
    We asked the guards.
    So maybe I wasn't the only one.
    Other people asked them, too.
    Says, where are they going to-- where are they taking us?
    And the guards said they don't know.
    So we gave them suggestions.
    Says, why can't they take us to the Lódz Ghetto?
    Don't forget, this was in August, and we just left--
    I left the ghetto March, and we didn't know what goes on.
    We knew there was a lot of Jews there,
    and we just came from work.
    And they told us the ghetto's being liquidated now in Lódz.
    So they couldn't take us there.
    So after--
    How did you feel when they said that?
    You went through so many things.
    So we still-- at that time, we didn't
    believe the Germans are going to kill my parents.
    Liquidated means a lot of things.
    I left the ghetto, too.
    And here I'm working, and they feed me.
    Of course, I didn't--
    I had nothing on.
    I have to mention it, that when I worked in the factory,
    the work was very dirty, and I had no clothes.
    I only had one pair of pants.
    And I slept in it, and I worked in it.
    And I worked, and I made these bullets for the Germans.
    And those bullets, the machines spray a lot of oil.
    Because otherwise, the machines are getting too hot.
    And we had no aprons, and the oil we went through my clothes.
    My clothes was all oily.
    And then I got--
    underneath my legs, my skin, I got--
    what should I say?
    I don't know.
    Like black?
    It was all-- my whole legs were all red and filled
    with blisters, I should say.
    So in the wintertime, when I went out,
    when the weather was cold and the cold weather hit my legs,
    it was sore here.
    What can you do?
    But anyway, they took us to Czestochowa from there.
    Czestochowa they had the same type of factory.
    Is that still in Poland?
    Yeah, it's Poland.
    It's called the C-Z--
    I give it a--
    I'm going to give an exact spelling after we finished, OK?
    And over there, they set up-- they
    had a factory, the same thing.
    We were working the same thing.
    We were working at night and sometimes in the daytime.
    I also have to mention it, they dropped us off in Kielce,
    but they also dropped off a transport in Czestochowa,
    too, so they had the same type of factory.
    So we worked there for a few months.
    And over there, it was very bad, too.
    If they caught somebody stealing or so, the Germans cut them,
    and they give them lashes.
    You ever heard of lashes?
    You actually saw them giving--
    I didn't see that.
    But I've seen in the bathrooms, the people--
    because you had a common bathroom,
    and when they went to the bathroom, to the shower,
    their behind was all black.
    They gave them 15 lashes, 20 lashes as a punishment,
    maybe for stealing a few potatoes.
    So I didn't have to see the exact beating,
    but I've seen the results, which is almost the same thing.
    When the people told you that, isn't
    that somebody was just hiding.
    You had a common shower.
    You had a common toilet.
    What do you think the toilet was?
    It was just holes in the ground, and that's it.
    So you could see it.
    And over there we were a few months.
    I mentioned August.
    And over there, we were till like December or January.
    And then the Germans-- of course, the Ukrainians came,
    says [NON-ENGLISH] Jews, you all pack up, here we go again.
    So they put us up in a column.
    And we had no clothes to pack.
    What was there to pack?
    There was nothing to pack.
    Just like I was, I was always ready.
    The only thing I had to remember is taking mine--
    mine soup pot with me.
    I had a soup pot and a spoon.
    That was the only thing, the only thing.
    If you didn't have that-- you didn't have a spoon,
    you're lost.
    Where are you going to put it?
    In your hat?
    You didn't even have a hat.
    So they marched us to the train.
    And that's of course, I knew it was January.
    It was very cold.
    And on the way, I've seen the German Volkssturm,
    the old people, Germans, a lot of ethnic Germans were--
    a lot of ethnic.
    They were living in Poland, but it
    was so bad for the German effort that they drafted older people,
    and they draft them in the German Army.
    We could see them walk against us.
    Then we came to the train station.
    I remember just like today, we saw all the flat cars
    and Germans loading the cannon and machine guns
    and camouflage them.
    And the Poles were running.
    We heard shooting in the distance.
    Of course, they put us-- they stuffed us into the cattle cars.
    And we moved out.
    We moved out.
    They always managed one thing.
    They always managed to take the Jews along with them.
    No matter how bad it was, there are no trains,
    no transportation, the Russians bombed the railroad Tracks,
    The Allies bombed the railroad tracks,
    but somehow they always manage to take the Jews along.
    Always manage it.
    In other words, we heard shooting in the distance,
    and the Russians were already in the outskirts
    of that city of Czestochowa.
    And they took us out to one side.
    And then there we were about--
    we were riding about--
    I don't know how many--
    I don't know how many days.
    And we didn't know where we are, but I
    know we were riding in Germany because they
    had the slits in the railroad--
    in the cattle cars.
    You could make out names.
    We know we were in Germany.
    Anyway--
    What was it like in the cattle car?
    How many of you were there in there?
    Packed in?
    Nothing.
    You just packed in one to another tight, very tight.
    You're just in cattle cars.
    You open them up, and then they let us out, and--
    oh, yeah.
    When they then let us out, then we
    realized we were in Buchenwald.
    We were in Buchenwald.
    We came to Buchenwald.
    We're not in the camp yet.
    We're in Buchenwald, and a lot of these people
    had still German money or Polish zlotys,
    and they just thrown out.
    A lot of had bread, and they were sharing to one another.
    Because once we go in the main compound--
    we were not ready to go in the main compound yet.
    It took us a few hours.
    Then I remember we went into the main compound.
    It was a big arch.
    You had a big sign that "work makes freedom"
    or "Arbeit macht Frei."
    But you didn't know what kind of a camp it was.
    No, I wasn't-- I never heard of Buchenwald.
    I didn't know.
    I was 17, 16.
    I didn't know what Buchenwald means.
    But I remember one thing.
    I remember we went in over there, and we went to stages.
    First of all, we went to a big--
    I don't know if it's a basement or hall.
    I don't know anymore.
    But they had maybe dozens of people with hair clippers.
    And those people were inmates, too.
    And they worked in the new arrivals,
    and they shaved you all off every hair, the hair
    under the arms, everything.
    And then I remember we walked into a big--
    had a big vat, disinfection.
    You had to jump in.
    Jump in a vat?
    A vat.
    And it was infect--
    it was the infection water.
    And when you were all shaved off under the arms,
    it was all burning.
    And then we walked out of there.
    And then they had a shower.
    I don't know what kind of shower.
    They had showers.
    I remember one thing, that you all went in the shower room,
    and they had two or three people under the shower.
    And the water was dripping very, very slowly.
    And here you was all burning.
    And then you went to a place in a different hallway.
    They registered you, your name, your father's name,
    your mother's name, your mother's maiden name.
    And they gave me clothes.
    My clothes was no good.
    They gave you clothes.
    They gave you clothes.
    And I don't know.
    They gave me, I think, wooden boots and one shirt
    and, I don't know, a jacket.
    I don't remember what they gave me.
    And after the registration, and then we went into German--
    so I went to a big room, and a German in a black uniform
    came in.
    This was already in Buchenwald.
    And he looked at me because I had all these--
    all these blisters on me.
    And he just looked at me.
    And he could have sent me to the gas chamber, too.
    I don't know.
    They didn't [INAUDIBLE], who knows?
    But I remember my broken Yiddish or German.
    I didn't-- I told him, this is from work.
    I don't know if he understood or not.
    But anyway, he let me through.
    So we went out.
    You told him it was from--
    I told him from work, from the Stahlwerk.
    It means work is a factory, and you're working
    the steel and this dirty oil.
    I have-- I have still a lot of these holes now.
    I have it all over my body.
    I have it bad here.
    Of course, I'm not going to pull my pants up.
    But I have it in my little--
    of course, you know, it's healed now.
    And--
    Did he ask you how old you were?
    He just looked at me.
    He was a young fella.
    He just looked at me, shook his head.
    And I said, Stahlwerk.
    I don't know if he knew what I was talking or not.
    He just let me go.
    And of course, I have to mention that in that place,
    you had to empty all our possessions.
    When I left Poland, my mother had a sister in France.
    And she gave me addresses and things like this.
    And she gave me pictures.
    She figures, if you're going, we don't know
    when we're going to see you.
    They didn't know where I was going.
    I was supposed to go to work, for the Germans to Germany.
    Maybe I'll need an address.
    But over there, we had to empty everything out.
    Nothing.
    They give you new clothes, schmattas.
    And we went out.
    And it was wintertime.
    Don't forget, it was January.
    It was all cold, shaven, no hair, no hat, one jacket,
    one shirt.
    And then they marched us to a barrack.
    The barrack, they had just like shelves.
    It wasn't a barrack.
    It was just shelves.
    And we stayed in this barracks there.
    And of course, the first day I was very ignorant.
    They give me my piece of bread, I put it in my pocket
    and save for later.
    In the evening, I went to eat, somebody had swiped it from me.
    So the next day, I got smart.
    Don't ask me how.
    I sewed out in my pocket.
    Don't ask me where I got the needle and thread.
    Somehow, I must have got it from-- somebody
    must have had it.
    I just sewed them out, and I punched a hole here,
    and I put my ration stuff through here.
    In your shirt.
    To my side pocket in my jacket.
    And so the odds, of course, I punched a hole.
    Don't ask me where I got the needle and thread.
    I don't remember.
    And then--
    Were you in a barrack with all newcomers?
    I was in barrack with newcomers and oldcomers.
    It was hundreds of people there.
    One barrack only had shelves over there.
    And then the Germans were grabbing.
    They came in.
    The kapos were grabbing people to work, every day
    to work at the quarry dragging wood from the woods.
    Buchenwald is 10 miles away from Weimar.
    And it's all woods.
    I don't know if they take them out for different kinds of work.
    And so I thought to myself--
    Oh, yeah.
    Now, I remember.
    I was standing in the barrack.
    And each barrack had a--
    well, they call it like--
    I don't know if they call it a kapo or cadres.
    They had a cadre section.
    They had a small room, and the people
    who take care of the barracks were living in that room.
    They were old-timers.
    I came to Buchenwald in 1945, in January.
    They were there in 1938 already.
    They were old-timers.
    And also you could see the markings of the old-timers
    had different markings.
    They were a lot of Germans.
    Of course, there were all nationalities in the camp,
    with Jews, Poles, Russians, French people, Hungarians.
    Wherever the Jews walked in the occupied territory,
    they brought all the transports.
    And especially in 1945, there was a big mish mash.
    It was a big mixture.
    They lumped them all together.
    But in charge of the entire administration
    mostly were German, German political prisoners.
    Some of them were criminal prisoners,
    but we could distinguish them because the criminals had
    a green triangle, and the political had a red triangle.
    Of course, all the people who came to the Jewish transport,
    they had nothing at all.
    I just had a number here.
    I think a number, or maybe I didn't even had a number.
    They just told me my number.
    I think I had a number written down.
    I don't remember.
    So one day, one of these guys, I think he was a Russian.
    They were living in this room, too.
    See, everything was changed towards the war.
    It was a big mish mash.
    Somebody come to me and asked me if I want to clean up
    this little room over there.
    He's going to give me something to eat.
    I was very happy.
    So I went over there, and I cleaned it up,
    whatever, sweep it up or mopped it up.
    They gave me I don't remember.
    And he gave me something to eat.
    And I was smart enough.
    I was smart already.
    I says, can I come back tomorrow?
    He says, OK, come back tomorrow.
    So and I knew the Germans, the kapos.
    They come and they take-- grabbing people off
    in the barracks for work.
    They blew a whistle, and they grabbed them all back.
    So I figured I stood near the door the next morning,
    and I figured if they come blow the whistle looking for work,
    I should jump in that room.
    I came back to clean.
    So I was standing near the door.
    Of course, I couldn't go in.
    And well, anyway, it got so that every day I cleaned the room,
    and he gave me something to eat.
    They gave me something.
    I think there were living three or four people,
    I think one Russians and one was--
    one I remember was--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    I'm not going to answer.
    And one was--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    One was a green triangle, and one was a red triangle,
    a couple of red triangle.
    But of course, I didn't know at that time.
    But now--
    At the time, you didn't know?
    I didn't know exactly who they were.
    But now, after reading after the war and all these things,
    I read things about Buchenwald, I
    knew that that was the underground,
    the political underground in the camp, in Buchenwald.
    Of course, I didn't know at that time, because they were all--
    they were all--
    I think three of them were Germans,
    and one was a Russian up there.
    But they came after the war.
    They were all red triangles.
    Only one had a green triangle.
    He was a-- he was for political.
    So then--
    Were they all Jews?
    No, they were Germans, real Germans.
    Real.
    What were they doing in the camps?
    They were opposed against Hitler.
    They were communists.
    And they were in Buchenwald.
    See, Buchenwald was a political camp from the beginning.
    So first of all, yeah.
    Then I was cleaning up.
    Then I was--
    One day, he came into me.
    He comes to me and says--
    I don't remember what he called me, Lajb.
    My Jewish name was Lajb, Leibl, or Leon or something.
    He says, are you clean?
    Are you sure you don't have any lice?
    Before he left me in that room.
    I said, sure.
    I think he gave me something to clean myself up.
    And he says, you know, you go out--
    I remember just like today.
    He says, you got to take a look.
    They're killing this man over there.
    And they did, too, because a lot of kapos
    came from the different camps like I was in.
    And if you were bad to your fellow--
    to your fellow inmates, when they came back to this camp,
    they asked who was a kapo, who was this?
    And they killed him in that camp.
    They killed him.
    I was nervous.
    They were doing this to say, if the Germans come in,
    they take some people out to work details.
    And if you're going to be against the other inmates
    or working with the Germans, same thing
    is going to happen to you.
    It was like they had like a court martial,
    the inmates themselves.
    They had this.
    I remember.
    And then he asked me, what are you going to do after the war?
    He asked me different things.
    But anyway, I wanted to mention it.
    Then I wasn't there all the time.
    Just once in a while, I got in over there, and they gave me--
    they got packages from home, too.
    They had families in Germany.
    They were Germans!
    They got cookies and this and this.
    You're young.
    You got good teeth.
    They eat me.
    And then I overheard them to say one another
    that the Germans approached him if they want to be
    drafted in the German Army.
    Of course, they were Germans.
    They says, no, not at this late time.
    [CHUCKLES]
    And then one day, see, they were Germans.
    They went to the main kitchen, and they bought some soup,
    and they distribute for the people from the barracks, too.
    And of course, when the war got closer, we could hear shooting.
    We heard rumors that they had a big air raid on Erfurt.
    Erfurt is a big city not far away from Buchenwald.
    Then they start Erfurt.
    So we knew the Allies had come closer already.
    I also met in this camp--
    I also met--
    I mentioned-- I have to mention before, I became friends
    in Czestochowa and Kielce with another boy who is from Poland.
    And he was in the camp, too.
    He was in the same barrack.
    And he came to see me.
    And of course, if I get extra bread, I shared it with him.
    And then the Germans said one day, all the Jews assemble.
    So we didn't want to go the Jewish transport
    because you know Jews-- what's going
    to happen to Jewish transport.
    So they took these people.
    They took the Germans, and they took
    the-- who were in charge, like I just told you.
    And they took all the inmates on one side of the field,
    and they're looking for Jewish faces,
    the Jewish faces to pick them up.
    Of course, they knew I was Jewish, but they knew me.
    I was cleaning up the room, and they just
    let me through as a non-Jew.
    So I didn't go with the Jewish transport.
    But then after a few days afterwards, they
    says to take everybody.
    Did you know where they were going?
    No, they moved.
    They were liquidating the camp.
    So I remember they took us to a big factory.
    They took us to the main--
    it's hard to describe this camp.
    This camp for 60,000 people.
    It wasn't just one enclosure.
    Then, they had different--
    then, they had different separation with barbed wire.
    I was told over there, there were British people.
    Of course, they had flyers shot down
    and prisoners, things like that.
    They had British.
    But I was in the common camp with all the Gypsies
    and the Hungarian Jews and the French people.
    It was January of 1945.
    They packed us all in.
    They took everybody, not only Jews.
    They put us in a big factory overnight.
    And I remember the next day, they marched us
    to the train station.
    But before they marched us to the train station,
    I remember like today, the German SS,
    they make you line themselves up.
    And before they made a--
    before they assembled you, you had to walk through a narrow--
    it's not a gangplank, whatever it is.
    A narrow path.
    A narrow path.
    And they had big whips, and they whipped you.
    I don't know how I got through of a day.
    They took us one by one, young.
    So anyway, I don't know if they whipped me or not.
    I don't remember.
    I went through.
    Maybe they spared me.
    And I was young.
    They had elderly people.
    I was only 17 over there.
    I don't remember.
    They assembled us, and they marched us to Weimar.
    Weimar was the closest city.
    You heard the Weimar Republic, where
    the German burns this thing.
    And we came in--
    we came in Weimar.
    It was already dusk.
    Was dark.
    Was in the evening.
    I remember the whole station was big SS
    men with dogs and everything.
    And they loaded us in flat cars.
    It was open.
    We could see the sky from the top.
    It was in January.
    It was cold.
    And so the next morning, the train starts chugging along.
    And we came to a place the next day.
    It's called [? Zeitz. ?] I remember now.
    I don't know exactly how to pronounce it.
    I think it's right.
    And then the Allied planes came.
    They shot up the whole locomotive.
    Shot everything up.
    We were right there.
    And the people were jumping from the trains.
    I was jumping, too.
    They were American planes or British planes?
    [SIGHS] I don't remember at the time,
    but I'll guess at it later.
    It was just planes.
    We're jumping off the train.
    And then after the planes left, they assembled all the inmates
    back to the train.
    And we were--
    Then we were going again.
    After a few days, we wind up in another camp.
    It's called Flossenbürg.
    Flossenbürg, it's in--
    I think it's in Bavaria.
    And this was a political--
    but this was a criminal camp of--
    I don't know if you read a lot of books.
    After the war, that's the place where the German intelligence
    chief got hung.
    The Germans hung him because they accused him
    of dealings with the Allies behind their back.
    I forgot his name.
    He gets hung up.
    It was a criminal camp.
    And over there, I was a few days there, three or four days.
    And it's the same story.
    The Allies came closer, so the liquidate this camp.
    So they lined us up.
    They lined us up, and they marched us in the train station
    again.
    They put us in the open cattle cars.
    So I was in the car.
    I don't even remember if the train pulled
    away from the station yet.
    I think we were still in the station, open cars.
    All of a sudden, I remember just like today, I looked in the sky,
    and we heard motors, engine.
    And we looked in the sky, and we saw silver dots in the sky,
    very tiny.
    And then they came closer, closer, and closer.
    And they shot up the whole train because we saw German guards
    on it.
    And I remember like today that something hit me in my face.
    And I ask my friend, like I mentioned,
    he was with me in the camp--
    He stayed with you the whole time.
    He stayed with me, yeah, in this camp.
    I had blood running.
    In other words, it was a big sign "crossing railroad"
    that you see here before a railroad.
    And maybe one of the bullets splinters, hit a piece of wood
    and hit my face.
    I didn't get hurt, but I asked him, do I have blood running?
    Because something hit me in my face.
    And people jumped off the trains.
    I jumped off, too.
    The guards were running to the nearby houses.
    It was the countryside.
    I was running after them, too.
    I was running with the guards to a private home,
    in German houses.
    But I heard them saying--
    I understood this much German, that they're coming back again.
    The planes are coming back again.
    Well, anyway, after a few minutes,
    after a half hour or an hour, it was all quiet.
    So we all went back to the trains.
    That was in Germany.
    But not everybody jumped the trains.
    What happened?
    The guards left all the Russians.
    The German-- like a soldier has a rucksack,
    and they left the rations.
    They left the cigarettes.
    Not everybody jumped the train.
    After we all jumped off, one of these inmates
    were robbing all these things for food and for cigarettes.
    So when the guards came back, they
    could see that all this thing is riffled, they lined us all up,
    the whole train, thousands of people.
    And they went through the inmates
    to see who's got cigarettes on them or bread.
    And if they find, they kill them on the spot.
    It was the guards' thing.
    I had nothing on me because I ran off with the guards,
    too, to the house.
    So we run.
    After this, the train started off again.
    Did you see this?
    Sure.
    I was right there.
    Yeah.
    Then after this, the train started off again.
    And I don't remember.
    Maybe we rode another few hours.
    Here, planes come again.
    And they were all open, flat cars.
    And the flat car had guards.
    And they said, when the plane come, next time you
    people wave with handkerchiefs.
    He says, that's your friends over there.
    And we did wave.
    We did wave, wave, some of us.
    We waved because there was a lot of guards and says,
    those are your friends over there.
    And the planes, they came, they shot up the locomotive.
    And then we had no transport.
    So the Germans assembled us.
    And they said, we're going to march.
    We're going to march.
    We don't know where.
    We're going to march.
    I was the first line.
    They also mentioned that said people who cannot march,
    we're going to send cars or trucks or transportation.
    I know what this meant.
    They're going to kill them.
    So I was the first in the line, first in the line to march.
    So I was in the first--
    first in the line to march.
    And after we marched maybe a half day, and then
    they found another transportation.
    And they put us again on cars.
    And put us again on cars.
    You were in Germany at this point?
    This was all in Germany.
    And then I remember the planes come again.
    And now I can tell you, now it was British planes
    because they were coming so low.
    And now after the war, I remember
    they had this round thing on the tail, on the fin with this blue
    and red and white stripes in the middle.
    They were coming very, very low.
    And then I could see the tracer bullets.
    We could see they're coming over the car.
    And we all jumped off the car because they're
    going to kill us.
    I jumped off, and I run.
    I was laying underneath the car.
    You have these planks, and you have the--
    I was laying under the car, and I
    could see the bullets hitting the gravel from the stones.
    Because every--
    And the guards were on the side, big trains.
    And of course, the locomotive pulled away,
    and they pulled underneath a bridge.
    They were hiding.
    But the Germans-- but they shot it up, too.
    OK. then they summoned us again.
    No more transportation.
    So here we march again.
    Here we march again.
    And--
    Meanwhile, I imagine people were dying.
    Oh, they were dying!
    I'm going to get to that.
    And they marched us again.
    And I heard shooting in the distance.
    And then at night, we walked in the woods and says,
    we're going to stay-- spend the woods here.
    We spend the woods here.
    I just was--
    I just took a little bit.
    I was praying.
    I took some leaves near the tree, and we used to lay down.
    I slept over there.
    I think I found a--
    I remember I found a piece of toothpaste.
    I don't know who, maybe a guard dropped it.
    So we're eating toothpaste or something.
    Anyway, we spent the night over there.
    And the next day--
    next day, we marched.
    And it was so raining, soaking wet.
    All rain, rain, buckets!
    I couldn't-- I couldn't walk anymore.
    And we could see the telephone poles are down.
    The wires are down.
    And people go along the roadside.
    They couldn't walk anymore.
    And they shot them.
    I was almost ready to give up.
    But my friend from New York, he grabbed me.
    He says, you got to come with me.
    He dragged me.
    I was ready to jump out.
    I couldn't walk-- wet rain.
    Anyway, we marched through the night.
    And then in the morning, at daybreak,
    they put us up in a farmhouse.
    It was a barn, a barn.
    And they put us up in the barn.
    We stay there in the barn maybe two or three hours.
    We were all wet.
    You could see all packed together.
    You could see the steam going from your wet clothes
    because the barn was hot and straw.
    And all of a sudden, an egg fell on my head.
    An egg.
    Could be chickens there before or something.
    So I broke the egg, and I shared it with my friend.
    Then all of a sudden, we heard shooting.
    And a barn has slits.
    And some people looked out.
    They see the Russians are here.
    This was Germany.
    They saw the big--
    then we saw the guards were still in the barn with us, too.
    They had a lot of barns.
    They distributed to us.
    And they got-- they got their rifles and put white cloths on.
    They want to give up.
    Some people looked out.
    The Russians are here.
    Of course, they were Americans, but we
    didn't know the Americans have stars, too, on their tanks.
    So we stayed there for a while.
    And then when it quieted down, we came out.
    And that was a village.
    It was a barn.
    Everything's burning, everything.
    You ever see the war pictures?
    Everything was burning around us--
    houses, barns, haystacks.
    And don't forget, I still had my jacket
    here with the pocket I had--
    we went out there, and we saw the Germans.
    The Germans had horses and buggies, the German guards.
    We marched, but they had horses and buggies to carry
    their rucksack and everything.
    And the people, the inmates--
    of course, the Allies were here.
    They were robbing this wagons.
    I went, too, and I took off big boots.
    I put some boots on me.
    I hadn't had no socks, just my bare feet.
    I had boots.
    Then I went to--
    marched-- I went further, and I saw a big woman.
    She has a big loaf of bread.
    She was cutting big bread and giving everybody out.
    And I went a bit further to the next house
    and saw a big bag with raw potatoes.
    It was already liberation.
    So dumb.
    I took the raw potatoes, and I was stacking them up here.
    I was weighed down.
    I could hardly walk with all the raw potatoes.
    Then I walked in the next house, and it was all
    occupied by Russian inmates, from Russian inmates there.
    We were all in the same column.
    We had thousands of people in this column.
    We marched thousands of people.
    And they were already plucking the chicken, killing the chicken
    and cooking.
    They chased the Germans out.
    And we asked them, can I stay here?
    They were already laying on the floor
    and making themselves at home.
    The house was full.
    So I went to the next--
    to the next village, me and my friends.
    In the meantime, we passed by--
    we passed by from one village to the other.
    Right.
    So you were saying that the Russians made themselves
    at home.
    The Russian inmates, not the Russian Army.
    The inmates were Russians, Hungarians.
    And I came in.
    They preceded me already, because I
    was one of the last ones, me and my friend,
    to leave this barn because we were afraid.
    We heard shooting.
    We didn't know exactly what was going on,
    so we just played safe.
    We stayed there for a while.
    But at that time, people were already
    roaming around the countryside.
    In the meantime, we saw tanks rumbled by, American tanks.
    They threw out candy, cigarettes.
    They came to a clearing, so we couldn't stay in this village.
    Everything-- village is only a few huts,
    small villages in Bavaria.
    They came to a clearing.
    We saw big tanks and walked over there.
    And the GIs had K-rations, and they gave us chocolate, this.
    Of course, I couldn't speak English at that time,
    but I speak Polish.
    And we found some American Polish--
    Polacks.
    They were in American Army.
    And we communed with them a little bit.
    And they give us candy and cakes.
    And we walked further down.
    We saw clusters of German prisoners, just sitting down,
    an American guard [? tent. ?] And so we
    walked to the next village, and we passed by and saw
    a German outside.
    And I said, you have coffee, Brot?
    He says, yeah, come in.
    So we came in.
    There were people there, too, already, but he still had room.
    And so they gave us coffee with cream and soup.
    Everybody was eating.
    I was eating so much the first night,
    and I get sick the next day.
    The next three, four days I was sick.
    I was just burping up like rotten eggs.
    My stomach wasn't used to all this food.
    And then, every day, we eat every day,
    and we stayed over there.
    And then after a while, we heard that nearby there's
    American Army there.
    They had Jewish chaplains over there.
    So we walked over there.
    And course, we talked, and he gave us a little siddur
    and told us about the-- he told us that a lot of Jews
    are forming in the city not far from here.
    It was a bigger city.
    We were just in a village.
    Where were you exactly?
    Well, I was liberated.
    The place was called Passing.
    Passing it's called.
    I think it's spelled P-A-double S-I-N-G.
    And I remember they used to tell me that the closest city is
    Cham, and it's near the Czechoslovak border,
    near the Czechoslovakian border, Cham.
    Not far away, but I never was in Cham.
    And they also told me not nearby is a bigger village.
    It's called Roding.
    And before the war, there were a lot of Jews in Roding.
    And right now, after the war, I came across German Jews,
    and I told them I was liberated near that.
    And they say he did business in that little city.
    There were Jews in the Roding, too.
    So he told us there are lot of Jews congregating in Schwandorf,
    which is not far away.
    So we made our way to Schwandorf.
    And that's Schwandorf.
    I'm going to tell you the exact spelling later on.
    And then it was like a Jewish house.
    We had the communal kitchen.
    And they fed us three meals a day.
    And they gave us clothes.
    And I don't know if I should mention it on tape
    or not, but that's the first time I saw a Black soldier.
    [LAUGHS] So that was-- this place was a market place.
    It was-- I mean, it was a market.
    It wasn't a big city either, but it was bigger
    than the village we were there.
    So all of a sudden, I saw a few American trucks pull up, GI.
    Of course, don't forget.
    Now I know it.
    But at that time, I didn't know that the army was still
    segregated.
    And most American GI Blacks were in the transportation
    department.
    They were driving trucks and things like this.
    So a few trucks pulled out.
    And I remember a big soldier comes out and opens the plank.
    And he was probably had to load in something.
    And I took a look, and I was wondering
    to see Black hands, big.
    You never saw.
    I know they may tell I'm prejudiced,
    but the only time in Poland you see
    a Black man is in the circus.
    In Poland, you didn't see them.
    There are no Blacks there.
    Anyway, so I don't remember how long I was in this house.
    Maybe I was a few days in this house.
    How were you feeling at liberation?
    Yeah, we're talking about going back to Poland and this.
    And after the war, some people run to the countryside.
    They were gathering food.
    They were-- they were going to the Germans.
    They want to take maybe diamonds or rings.
    But I was only 17 or 18.
    I didn't have the mind to do that.
    I mean, I was only a young boy.
    And some people were liberated were elderly.
    They were in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s,
    and they had a different mind than I had.
    They were thinking differently.
    I just think about my family.
    Of course, they probably thought, too.
    I was just thinking about going back to Poland.
    Don't forget that was I was liberated in April 24, 1945.
    I don't know if I mentioned or not.
    I left home was March the 8th, 1944.
    It almost just a little bit a year, a year.
    So we didn't know about the camps.
    At that time, I didn't know it yet.
    We didn't know it yet.
    So I thought maybe I'll go back to Poland and things like that.
    And we did.
    We did see a lot of transports going back to Poland.
    Not much, not many Jews.
    The Poles, Poles themselves, they were in the camp.
    And that was their country.
    They're just going back.
    They had families.
    They were not-- they just came to Germany to work.
    They were going back in transports.
    So I feel great.
    Only I can think of--
    still at that time, we only thought
    of survival and the food.
    So I was in this house one day, and then a Jewish GI
    came back, American soldiers.
    I think he spoke a little bit Yiddish.
    I remember chewing gum.
    And he says he needs about three or four people to work.
    The army was stationed.
    They were in tents nearby, maybe 5 miles away or 10 miles away.
    He came by Jeep.
    So I volunteered.
    So he took us out over there.
    And--
    You and your friend?
    Me and my friend?
    No, my friend didn't happen to be at that time around.
    He just came around, and he says he needs volunteers.
    So I went over there.
    There were a few people, whoever happened to be nearby.
    Maybe my friend was away at that time.
    Maybe he went to--
    I don't know where he was.
    He just wasn't around.
    And he only needed four or five people, so we just went out.
    And he took us out in the Jeep, and the tent's
    set up over there.
    And that was 7:45.
    That must have been--
    I was living in-- maybe this was in May or June.
    It was right after the war, a few weeks.
    And the GI were in the tent.
    And they put us to work, to cleaning the pots and pans
    after the kitchen.
    They had nothing else.
    But I remember they had a GI of Italian extraction,
    and he was cooking spaghetti and make their own thick sauce.
    And he knew how to do it.
    Now I know he was dark complected,
    and he had oranges, fresh oranges and peaches.
    We didn't have any peaches.
    Even in this home over there, they had just local food.
    They had a bowl of soup and a piece of black bread.
    Peaches, oranges, candy, cigarettes, cookies, and meat.
    So they picked us up every day.
    We went back and forth.
    Not the same GI.
    Somebody came with a truck.
    Sometimes somebody else picked us up,
    and chewing gum over there.
    And then they rested maybe three or four weeks over there.
    And then over there, then they had to leave.
    They were only transitory.
    They were in tents.
    They said they were going to Nuremberg.
    Nuremberg, you heard of Nuremberg?
    That's where the war crimes trial was there.
    So they asked they asked us, if you go to Nuremberg
    and we get settled, would you come over there?
    I said, yeah.
    We had nobody over there except the house.
    So we went back to this home.
    I wrote the whole thing off.
    And then one day, I don't remember how many weeks passed,
    maybe three, four weeks, five weeks, not the same GI,
    a different GI which we met already over there.
    We knew.
    He came.
    He says he came with a truck.
    You want to go to Nuremberg?
    I says, yeah.
    So we packed everything up.
    We go to Nuremberg.
    We go to Nuremberg, and they're all in tents again.
    We had the same thing in Nuremberg.
    And so we worked over there and cleaned the pots and pans,
    but there was a little bit differently.
    Nuremberg is near Fürth.
    In Fürth, they had a big Jewish community.
    They had before the war, too.
    As a matter of fact, Henry Kissinger comes from Nuremberg.
    He was born in Nuremberg.
    I didn't know at that time.
    But then when we worked in the evening, we went to Nuremberg.
    And they had a lot of Jews already settled
    from Poland over there.
    And they took over the Jewish cultural house.
    And the synagogue, it came back.
    And so we commute.
    It was only about by train--
    not by train, by tramway from Nuremberg.
    And over there, the GIs lasted another four or five weeks.
    And he says, well, we're leaving again.
    But this time, they're going back to the States.
    But first, they're going to France.
    And we had nobody, me and this other few fellas.
    Of course, at that time, I called my friend, the one
    that was through the war.
    He came back to Nuremberg.
    And of course, he couldn't work with me,
    so he took an apartment, a room in Nuremberg nearby.
    And every night, I see him.
    Then during the daytime, I brought him candy,
    I brought him oranges.
    We had plenty of that stuff.
    Sometimes, he came out to see me.
    I gave him spaghetti leftover.
    Because we was cleaning up the kitchen,
    there was always stuff left over.
    So they gave us a choice.
    He says, we can take you to France.
    And then after we leave and go to the States,
    we dump you in France.
    You'll be on your own.
    Or we can find you a job here with other GIs.
    So we opted to find us a job with the other GIs We
    were better off.
    So nearby was a hospital.
    I think it was called-- it was a German hospital before the war,
    but after the war, the American Army took it over.
    It was 385th General Hospital.
    They said they can give us a job over there.
    So we says, OK, give us a job over there.
    So they took-- we got a job over there.
    And they got us quarters over there.
    It was a big hospital.
    And I met different people.
    And the same thing over there.
    Of course, we didn't have to clean the kitchen over there
    because they had German-- they were already organized,
    the German workers over there.
    They had German cooks.
    The American GIs are supervising the German cooks.
    And at that time, they were trying--
    it was the start of German government.
    So the German Arbeitsamt--
    it means like, the working place.
    They send so many Germans every day to work, to clean up,
    things like that.
    So we were just in-- we were-- they
    had the fuel stoves over there.
    You know the fuel--
    I don't know if you're familiar with the army stoves.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, you probably-- well, anyway, we have a job.
    We had to repair the stoves.
    So I learned it.
    And they had the fuel stoves.
    And then they brought everyday prisoners, German prisoners,
    to clean the stoves.
    And we were in charge of it.
    And they was cleaning stoves.
    We were living over there.
    And in the evening, I went to Fürth and the Jewish community,
    and I met other Jews.
    And then all of a sudden, I thought to myself, well,
    it was Nuremberg.
    I don't want to live in this hospital nearby.
    I want to get out of the [? shelves. ?]
    [PHONE RINGING]
    OK, after the hospital.
    After the hospital, I wanted to--
    I went-- I rented a room myself outside in Nuremberg.
    So I put a ad in the paper.
    I put a ad in the paper with a box number and everything.
    It was a German paper.
    And I got a response.
    All of a sudden, yeah.
    Yeah, I got a response.
    I got a response.
    And I went to see the room.
    And an old lady had a room.
    And of course, after the war she told me the same story.
    I didn't know about the thing.
    It was right near the Palace of Justice
    where they had the Nuremberg war tribunal.
    As a matter of fact, across the street where I had my room,
    the Russians were still there.
    They had the quarters because it was the international tribunal
    in Nuremberg.
    And this lady said her grandmother was half-Jewish.
    [INAUDIBLE] anyway.
    She told if I work and it was a nice room, nice and clean.
    And I was-- then that's right.
    But I want to mention it before the war--
    before that, the rooms were very scarce to get.
    So I went.
    In Nuremberg, they had a Jewish community, too.
    But they were mostly German Jews, German Jews
    who came back from Theresienstadt,
    or who were married to gentiles, Mischlinges who somehow survived
    the war, by hook or by crook.
    So I found once I went to services over there.
    And they have just like here, they had one room.
    It was the Jewish community before the war and had a minyan.
    And I got this particular guy who was the president,
    his wife was German, a real German.
    He survived the war somehow.
    I don't know.
    I don't remember what he told me, if he was in a camp
    or somehow he worked.
    He was the head of the Wohnungsamt
    they call it in German.
    He was in charge of assigning rooms.
    Right after the war, everything was bombed out.
    I just-- I want to mention it.
    I forgot to mention it.
    After I put down the-- after I put an ad in the paper,
    this lady had a room.
    And I answered the ad, and she says, I can give you--
    I can rent you the room.
    I'd rather like to rent it to you
    than to get some people from the East,
    because the German ethnics are coming back from the East.
    If you can get assignment to the room.
    I just couldn't come in.
    So I had to worry about this assignment.
    So I remember when I was in the services,
    this guy told me he's in charge of this assigning rooms,
    or anyway, or maybe not assigning.
    He works in that office.
    So I went to him.
    And I told him, listen.
    I says, I found a room, but I have to be assigned to it.
    You just cannot-- after the war, everything was bombed out.
    It was scarce.
    So he just gave me a signature.
    And I went over there, and they gave me the room right there.
    There was a line.
    Because don't forget, right after the war in 1945,
    beginning of '46, the survivors, German Jews,
    they got good positions in Germany.
    They were German Jews.
    They were not Polish Jews.
    So he gave me the room.
    And I went back.
    I had the room.
    And then I went to work every day in the army.
    And then I heard-- my friend, the one who was friends with me,
    he told me that he heard that they register
    survivors to go to America.
    At first, registered people who have relatives, HIAS.
    And I didn't have anybody.
    Did you know that your family wasn't--
    what had happened--
    I didn't know.
    I didn't know they were killed, but I was just not going back
    to Poland because we heard the Kielce Pogrom,
    and we heard this.
    And we were reluctant to go back to Poland.
    And some people did want to go back to Poland.
    And they came back and said, there's nothing left there.
    So I just didn't-- we just didn't go back.
    So we heard they registered Jews to go to America.
    So I didn't go right away.
    But my friend, the one I spent the war, the one who
    was walking with me, he didn't let me give up.
    He says he went first.
    And he came back.
    He said, he didn't have anybody in America.
    He came back.
    He says, I registered.
    So I went back.
    So I went to Munich, too.
    I took the train.
    I went back to Munich, and I registered, too.
    And then after a while, I got a summons.
    They want to get me--
    they want me to get the birth certificates.
    Who had a birth certificate?
    After the war, you lost everything.
    So we had to go through the same procedure.
    You have to get two witnesses.
    And you stayed, and you tell them the truth.
    You were born in Poland and that you were
    born on such and such date.
    And it was all only declarations.
    We had nothing.
    But anyway, then I got summons to the American consul
    in Munich.
    And I didn't have to worry because they asked me questions,
    what you did after the war?
    And I worked for the American Army, so my record was good.
    So--
    You worked for the American Army all the way through.
    I worked all the way through.
    So [INAUDIBLE] then until I left.
    So I didn't have to worry.
    Some people are worried about the dates
    they went back to Poland.
    They had cut-off dates.
    You were eligible for certain dates under this quota.
    At that time, President Truman passed the Refugee Act which
    admit 250,000 Jews to the United States under the Displaced
    Persons Act.
    And I came under this Displaced Persons Act.
    So I went to that.
    And--
    Why did you decide to go to the United States?
    Well, I'll tell you.
    At that time, there was no Israel yet.
    There was a Israel.
    But OK, at that time it was 1947.
    They were fighting.
    And you hear that the ships--
    they're turning the ships down, the Exodus,
    and they leave them at sea.
    And especially the big ships who came back to Bremen,
    they didn't let them in Cyprus, and they unload all the refugees
    back.
    And so we couldn't go to Israel.
    There was no Jewish state yet at that time.
    But when I registered and everything at that time,
    Israel proclaimed independence in 1947 and 1948.
    But at that time, my things were already in motion.
    And you heard different rumors.
    In Israel, you lived in a kibbutz.
    And here in America, some people, refugees, survivors
    went to America in early 1946 and '47.
    They wrote back letters.
    They work, and most of them have relatives,
    and they're taken in good, and they
    have different organizations, and they
    help you get settled here.
    The life in Israel, everything was uncertain.
    There was a war going on.
    You hear the Arabs come at night and shooting at kibbutzim
    and shooting up here.
    And you see pictures in the paper and magazine.
    You heard that children killed in their school classes,
    [? murders ?] at night.
    So after the war, America was a paradise.
    Once you get there, everything was safe.
    So I registered.
    And then I got the summons.
    And I was called to the consul.
    I went to--
    Of course, I go.
    I went to physicals and things.
    I had to get the papers ready.
    I had to get police clearance.
    My record was good.
    I had-- whatever at that time, it wasn't--
    I wasn't doing the black market.
    Some people were doing it.
    And if you interview different people you're familiar with it--
    cigarettes and this.
    Mm-hmm.
    But that was-- first of all, I was young.
    I was too dumb to do that.
    I didn't have any brains yet.
    I was only 18, 19 years old.
    So I came to America.
    I came to Bremen.
    From Bremen, they put us on the ship.
    It was General Omar Bundy.
    I remember that.
    And General Omar Bundy.
    We left Bremerhaven.
    I could hardly believe my eyes.
    I'm going to America.
    Especially, I have nobody, nobody.
    Had you found out about your family by now?
    I didn't find out.
    Oh, yeah.
    I wrote a few letters to my former neighbors, to Polacks.
    I had no response.
    And then we heard-- then the things
    was coming about Auschwitz and they're liquidating
    the whole ghetto from Lodz.
    And so I knew what it was already.
    I knew my father was only in the 40s.
    He was born in 1900.
    So when the war ended, he was only 45 years old.
    My mother was two years younger, born in 1902,
    which would make her 43 years old.
    But after the ghetto and all, no food, nothing, a man of 45
    looked like 60.
    And at that time, the stories came out
    with Mengele and the selections in the camp to the right
    and to the left.
    And it all depends how you look.
    So for some reason, I just didn't go back.
    But I want to go back many times,
    but I just didn't go back because the stories came back
    bad, that they came back-- people
    who came back to the homes, and the houses
    were occupied by the Poles.
    And they didn't want to give up the houses,
    so they killed them instead because they
    didn't want to evacuate.
    So I just didn't go back.
    Just didn't go back.
    So came to America.
    I came to America.
    I was eight days on the boat.
    And I remember one thing.
    I was proud of myself.
    I didn't get seasick.
    Everybody else got seasick, but I didn't.
    And then I came to New York.
    I remember we came at night, and the ship
    didn't come into harbor, at least at night.
    It was outside, and we could see far away all the lights
    in New York harbor.
    And after you come from Europe, everything is devastated,
    and no lights, and everything is drab.
    And so the American skyline, all the lights flashing just
    looks like Christmas.
    You see all these cars, and everything lit up.
    So we stayed overnight on the boat.
    In the morning, we went--
    the ship started off.
    And we had breakfast.
    And I remember passing the Statue of Liberty.
    I remember that.
    And I forgot to mention it.
    Before we came to the States, on the boat or in the camp--
    I don't remember exactly--
    they gave us booklets about America,
    each in his own language.
    So I picked mine in Polish because that's
    a language I could read.
    It was a German refugee, they gave you
    a booklet in German or maybe somebody in Hungarian.
    You had all kinds of nationalities there.
    So I read about the capital and the White House.
    And I heard about the Liberty Bell and the Statue of Liberty.
    I remember passing by the Statue of Liberty.
    I remember in the morning, I remember everything.
    And then we-- then I remember immigration officials
    came in the boat.
    We had to show papers and everything.
    And after they examined everything, they let us off.
    We came in a big, big hall.
    And they had these customs inspectors.
    I remember we went to the customs inspectors.
    And we had only schmattas.
    We had nothing.
    Looking for contraband.
    I tell you what, I came penniless.
    I had-- I had, I think, 3/2 silver dollars.
    And I left them in Germany, silver $0.50 pieces.
    $0.50, not silver. $0.50, left them with a guy.
    I came penniless.
    So after we went through customs,
    people were waiting on the other side of the barrier.
    Each group, like I was--
    people were waiting for me from the Joint.
    They had labels on it.
    From the what?
    From the Joint.
    From the American-- I think--
    I forgot.
    I think it was the organization for new Americans.
    It was a Jewish organization.
    And for Poles, a Catholic relief organization was waiting.
    And for different people, a different people were waiting--
    each his own.
    They knew-- none of us-- when we came to the United States,
    everybody had to have a sponsor.
    I just didn't come.
    Somebody had to sponsor.
    They knew so many people, so many Jewish people
    would be in the boat, and those people were all volunteers.
    I think they came.
    And on the other side, they gave us donuts and coffee.
    And I think this woman, she spoke Yiddish.
    And I had a label here.
    I forgot.
    I think it was a new immigrant, a new American or something.
    I don't remember anymore what it was.
    Anyway, she says, you come with me.
    And they took me.
    We walked, and I slept, I think.
    And I remember riding an escalator.
    She took me to the train station.
    She says, you're going to Washington, right from New York.
    And she gave me a ticket.
    I don't remember what station she took me.
    I think maybe it was Penn Central Station.
    I remember riding an escalator up, and she took me to the gate.
    And there were a lot of people waiting outside the gate.
    The gate wasn't open yet.
    And she says, when this gate opens up,
    you go downstairs with the other people.
    And here's your ticket.
    When they get on the train, you go on the train.
    You're going to Washington.
    Somebody will be waiting there for you.
    I forgot.
    I had a number here.
    Somebody waiting there for you.
    So OK.
    Oh, she gave me $3.
    She says the $3 here, on the train, if you want--
    in case you want to buy food or a sandwich, something like that.
    I had no money.
    So I thought to myself, well, I got $3 for me,
    and I don't know where I'm going to get another dollar again.
    So I didn't spend that money.
    I just kept it, $3.
    I didn't eat on the train.
    So here I am on the train.
    And I told you, they gave me the booklet to read up at America.
    And I'm going to Washington.
    I know it's Washington, DC.
    And then I noticed on the train they had people with caps.
    And it has "Washington, DC."
    They were American legionnaires, American Legion.
    I didn't know whether they were coming from.
    Maybe they're going to Washington.
    They're coming.
    So I tell myself, when they get off, I'm going to get off.
    Washington, DC, right?
    And then so I ride in the train and pass Philadelphia there.
    And I didn't eat nothing.
    And then we arrive in Washington, DC.
    They're getting off.
    I'm getting off, too.
    Someone's supposed to meet me at the Union Station here.
    I get off, and people are getting off the train.
    I thought somebody is going to approach me.
    I didn't know those people.
    They're supposed to notice me because I
    was wearing this button with a pin with something written down.
    And first, when the train comes in, a lot of people
    get off the train.
    Then it's less people and less people.
    And I see nobody is approaching me.
    And I'm just waiting in this big concourse in the big halls,
    and nobody is here.
    And I'm walking back and forth.
    And I read the booklet.
    I know about the traveling society.
    I learn.
    I read about that.
    It says, in case you get lost by city,
    you can always go in and ask for help.
    And I pass by.
    I see a sign.
    I saw a sailor sitting inside.
    It says, going in.
    I'm not going in.
    I says, I'm not going to go in.
    I'm not going to go in today.
    All of a sudden, I saw two women.
    And we noticed one another simultaneously.
    They noticed me, but the clothes, too.
    In Europe, we wear different clothes.
    So we approached each other.
    And OK, and say, OK, they're from the Jewish Social Service
    Agency.
    And I know we walked out from the train station.
    The first thing I noticed, the Capitol.
    When you walked in the train station, the Capitol.
    I says, is this is the White House?
    I mixed it all up.
    I don't know one thing for another.
    She says, no, that's the Capitol.
    But at the time, I didn't know what the Capitol does
    and what the White House does.
    I didn't know that one is legislature,
    one's the president.
    So anyway, they took me to--
    they took me to a house.
    And it was near the zoo.
    I think it was on 19th Street.
    And they put me up over there.
    And it says, the Jewish social service took care of it.
    They just put me over there.
    And over there, they had another--
    they had another couple of refugees.
    They were from Hungary.
    They were girls.
    But they didn't come at the same time I did.
    They came before this.
    This lady, she was a woman from Austria.
    She was a refugee, too.
    But she came before her ready.
    And she had a few roommates.
    She had roommates who go to George Washington University.
    And she fed them.
    They stayed, and that's how she made a living.
    And I guess the Jewish Social Service Agency looked
    for a house like this, too.
    And they gave them a few dollars.
    And so they put me up over there.
    So the next day, I come from Europe.
    I didn't know it.
    I slept overnight over there.
    And you get up in the morning, and everything is strange.
    You hear different voices, English voices.
    In Germany, you spent four years.
    This was '49.
    I heard-- was used to-- my ear was used to German voices.
    Everything's just like a dream.
    So the next day, I figured to--
    I slept.
    And I says to myself, well, I don't know.
    Should I make up my bed or not to make up my bed?
    I figure in Germany, they made up my bed.
    I says, I'm not going to do it.
    Figure how it's going to work out.
    In the evening, I'm going to find out.
    Comes the evening, the bed is not made.
    So I got the message.
    The next time, I got the message.
    So the next day, I had to go to the Jewish Social Service Agency
    by train.
    At that time, they were in Spring Road.
    You remember that?
    The Jewish Social Service Agency was in Spring Road.
    So I took the bus.
    It wasn't far away, but I took the bus.
    I walked over there, and Mr. Pixner was still there.
    He just retired a few years back.
    You don't remember him?
    Mm-mm.
    You don't know?
    So I went there.
    He interviewed me, what I did, how old I am.
    And this is after the war.
    He says I am--
    I said--
    Well, anyway, I told him what I did, and he says, OK.
    And he said--
    I said-- then I went to a different room.
    There was a lady there, and she gave me $20.
    She says here's $20.
    She says, go sightseeing.
    So I had $3, and I had $20.
    I had $23.
    And I had the meals.
    I didn't have to pay for rent.
    It was only-- that was the second day I came here.
    So I said, sightsee?
    How can I go sightsee?
    I says, I'm going to get lost.
    I'm in Washington.
    I didn't know anybody at that time.
    I had a room on 19th Street near the zoo.
    And this lady from the house, she told me,
    you go sightsee, too.
    So she packed my lunch.
    She packed my lunch.
    And I was--
    I went to the zoo.
    It was nearby.
    She told me, you go down here, see the zoo.
    I went down to the zoo.
    And I noticed the zoo was so big,
    I was afraid I might get lost.
    So I sat down on the first bench, and I ate my lunch up.
    And then, the next day, I walked the opposite--
    So you went to Park Road?
    Park Road.
    Park Road.
    And the-- it was a pleasant area.
    Now it's the Adams Morgan it's called.
    It's pleasant.
    I walked around.
    But I walked-- I walked in one street and another street.
    And I remember exactly how--
    this was the third day I was here.
    And I passed by.
    There was still a lot of Jewish businesses over there.
    Don't forget, it was still before the riots.
    And I noticed-- I passed by a cleaner's.
    A man was reading a Yiddish newspaper.
    I could see through the window.
    So I figured, well, maybe I should go in and ask him, maybe
    ask for a job.
    I had to do something.
    Guy says-- he goes, go sightseeing.
    Come see me in two weeks.
    I didn't want to wait two weeks.
    So I go in.
    I didn't go in.
    I just hesitated.
    So on the third day, I went a little further.
    Anyway, one day, I wind up downtown.
    Went for one of the parks.
    I sat on the bench.
    And I found a elderly man over there sitting on a bench
    opposite me.
    So he comes over to me and starts talking.
    He saw I spoke with an accent, a little bit broken English.
    He asked where I'm from.
    And I told him I'm from--
    I'm only three days here.
    He says, well, you have to come meet my wife tonight.
    He wasn't Jewish.
    He wasn't?
    No, he was Gentile.
    His name was Brown.
    He was a retired man.
    He used to be in Seabee, in the Navy.
    And they used to-- and he asked me where I live,
    and I told him where I live.
    I said, with three more people over there,
    and she packs my lunch.
    And I says, I'd like to work.
    And he says, well--
    so he says, first you need a job.
    And I says, yeah.
    So he says, you need a room, too.
    I says, yeah, I need a room, too.
    So he was living on Parkwood Place.
    You remember where the Zansky used to be on 14th Street,
    the Zansky's.
    How long are you in Washington?
    Oh, not that long.
    So you are not familiar.
    I know this area better than you.
    Yeah, sure.
    On 14th Street, used to be a Jewish funeral home.
    Used to be a lot of Jews.
    But anyway, he lived in an apartment house, was a hotel
    apartment house across the street.
    His wife was a nurse in Children's Hospital.
    Children's Hospital was on 13th Street at that time.
    He says, you come meet my wife.
    So I met him.
    He gave me a dinner and everything.
    And the next day, he took me in to Peoples Drugstore.
    And they had on the signs, over there on the wall,
    they had notices, rooms for rent, this for rent.
    And he noticed a--
    Yeah, that's right.
    He noticed.
    First of all, he says you need a job, too.
    So he found me a job.
    It was in Peoples Drugstore.
    Before the rent, it was in Peoples in the commissary.
    I told him, I work in the kitchen and things like that.
    He says, I'm going to give you-- but it was a night job.
    It was a night job.
    And at night, I had to go by train.
    But here, I found out-- he told me--
    they found out for me that you got to go to night school
    to learn English and things like this.
    And this was interfered with--
    If I work at night, when I'm going to go to school?
    They find for new-- for people, for immigrants
    to have school at night, for new Americans.
    So I think I worked there for a week or so.
    In the meantime, he says, well, you have a little job,
    you like it or not.
    Now, you need a room for yourself.
    So he took me into Peoples Drugstore.
    Took me to Peoples Drugstore.
    They had a notice there.
    They have a room for rent.
    It was right around where he lives, on Parkwood Place.
    So I walked over there.
    We walked in over there, and he has a room, the guy.
    And it so happened I told him who I am.
    It was a German Jew immigrant.
    He came 1937.
    I says, I'm from Poland.
    And he says, yeah, from Poland?
    Sure, he rent me a room for $40.
    He asked me where I work.
    And I told him.
    I didn't know how much I was working.
    I making $1 an hour or so, but I had enough $40 I could spare.
    So I rented this room.
    And I was living there until I got married.
    And then I told him I have a job, but I don't like my job.
    I got to go to school at night.
    So he says, I have a cousin who is in the restaurant business.
    He doesn't live too far away from here.
    He says, let me give him a call.
    Maybe he needs somebody.
    So he gave him-- he gave him a call.
    And he says, yeah.
    He says, I have a young man from Poland here.
    And he told him the story.
    Just let him come over.
    And he says to me, come over, come with me.
    And I moved into that room.
    I moved out from this lady.
    So he come over here, and I went over there.
    And it was a German Jew.
    I remember he's dead now already.
    First thing is come.
    Where you come from?
    You like good wine?
    If you want, I share with you wine.
    And he gave it to me.
    And he says, you know why?
    I have a restaurant, a small restaurant-- they were refugees,
    too--
    in Thomas Circle.
    He says, come over when you have time tomorrow.
    If you like it, you stay.
    If you don't like it, you don't stay.
    So I walked over the next day.
    And I stayed there.
    I looked around.
    I says, I like it.
    I have no choice.
    So right now, I had a job already.
    He says, he's going to pay me $1 an hour.
    All right.
    So I stayed there.
    I have a job now, and I have a room for myself, too.
    I was still friendly with these people.
    Once in a while I call them up.
    And then they find out for me about the Americanization
    School.
    Americanization School was on California Street
    and Mount Pleasant.
    And I went over there, and I signed up.
    And every day I met more refugees.
    I met refugees.
    They were in the same situation like I was.
    Some came to an uncle.
    Some came to an aunt.
    And some, they work for a refugee--
    I mean, for an uncle.
    Some, they work as a tailor.
    So I had this job in the daytime.
    It was good for me because I was working in a restaurant.
    I had my meals.
    He paid me $1 an hour.
    I was clearing $34 or $35 a week.
    But I didn't need this work, so I saved it.
    I brought a lot of clothes from Europe,
    and I didn't eat any meals.
    So I had $35 and saved $35.
    And those people I lived with, they were very nice to me.
    Holidays, I didn't eat over there.
    I just had a nice room.
    She had more roomers.
    She had one-- she had one roomer.
    He was a pharmacist.
    He worked for [? Varis ?] Drugstore.
    [? Varis ?] Drugstore was on 14th and Pennsylvania Avenue.
    Right now, there's a new Marriott there.
    And go back a long time ago, and then she
    had another Jewish man from Ohio.
    And she told me that she doesn't know much about him.
    He never speaks about his family and things like this,
    and she doesn't ask any questions.
    And he works for the government.
    But came a holiday, like a Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur,
    they always told me, come down and eat with us.
    Otherwise, I always cared for myself.
    And they had a boy, one son.
    His name was Fred.
    I still keep up with him.
    And he was going to be a pharmacist.
    And so when he was away in college, he wasn't home.
    But last year, I think he was going to George Washington.
    And he was-- his room was right next to mine.
    And sometimes before the examination,
    he wanted to test me.
    So I remember salicylic acid was aspirin, a thing like that.
    So I was over there.
    And then I met more people in Washington.
    We were going out and going to parties.
    And I was going to school at night.
    And from there, I enrolled in--
    this was a preliminary course.
    And from there, I went and enrolled to--
    right now, it's this Black school on 13th Street on top
    of the hill.
    Used to be Central High School.
    I was going at night and finished up over there.
    It took me a few years.
    And--
    And you were learning English?
    I was learning English at the same time.
    And then somebody said, we're having a party tonight.
    One guy who I met also in the Americanization School,
    he had an aunt here.
    Don't forget, I had nobody.
    I had-- these people, the gentile people
    were very nice to me.
    They always told me to come over.
    And every time I called up, you want to eat?
    Called me over.
    It was no--
    No relatives?
    No relatives, complete strangers, complete strangers.
    He found me out about the Americanization School.
    He found me the first job and people.
    Then he found me these people, because I couldn't-- complete
    strangers.
    But so I met--
    I went to different people.
    They had aunts and uncles, and I was a refugee.
    They fed me that and that And then one day
    he says, we're having a party.
    Would you like to come to a party?
    And he took me to my present wife, which now I'm married.
    She had a uncle here living on 17th Street.
    And the party was there.
    And I don't have to tell you any further.
    And this man who took me there is from the same hometown.
    People meet one another.
    He comes from here, from the same thing.
    So then we got married in 1952.
    She was with her uncle.
    They treated her like a daughter.
    He's the guy with the liquor store.
    And they send her full time to school.
    First, she works-- she went to--
    she went to Strayer's business college,
    and then they went to school.
    She finished Central High School, too.
    Of course, they had other children, too,
    because they had the two sons and two daughters.
    And the two sons went to dental school.
    They graduated from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
    And both-- and I think all of them
    went to Ann Arbor, Michigan.
    So two became dentists.
    And the-- Anna, the oldest one, she graduated, too.
    She worked for-- during the war, she worked for housing.
    And Bertha, the youngest one, she worked for the Red Cross
    during the war.
    And they had friends in UNRRA who were
    Americans who worked in Europe.
    And well, of course you interview me now,
    so I don't have to tell you about my wife.
    But anyway, so after the war, I got married,
    and I worked over there.
    And after I got married, Uncle Sam called me.
    I spent two years in American Army.
    I went in a private.
    I came out as a sergeant.
    Were you an American citizen by then?
    No.
    Well, I'll tell you.
    Then I married--
    I married my wife in 1952.
    And at that time, I could become a citizen
    because she became-- she was a citizen already.
    She came early in 1947.
    So I applied for citizenship, being
    I'm married to an American.
    And at that time, when I applied for citizenship,
    we decided to change our name.
    Because wherever I went, I had to spell Kusmerik, K-U-S-M--
    Kus, Kus, Kus, Kus, and it's annoying.
    So we cut off the "Kus" and spared the "Merik."
    But I could be an American citizen, too,
    because in the army, during the Korean War,
    they naturalized en masse, you know.
    But I became a citizen through my wife.
    I came back to the District of Columbia and changed my name.
    And then--
    You were drafted into the army.
    I was in the army, spent two years.
    And we lived in Washington.
    She worked for Lansburgh's at that time.
    It was a department store.
    I don't know if you remember or not.
    She was a secretary.
    And I didn't get to go to Korea, so I came home
    after two or three weeks.
    Where were you stationed?
    I was at Fort Bragg.
    And I was in the kitchen there, too.
    I signed up to go to cook school and baker school and all this.
    Don't forget, I was a draftee.
    I went in a private and came out as a sergeant.
    18 months, I was a sergeant already.
    And the Korean War was going on, but somehow they didn't send me.
    And then I got discharged.
    And then-- so I worked briefly for the [? Johns ?]
    when I came out.
    And then I worked for my uncle for the liquor store.
    But then he sold the stores, so I went.
    And I got in touch with these people, which I worked before.
    And at that time, they expand, and they had a big--
    they had several places.
    I mean, it's a big place.
    At the time, I was more proficient in English,
    and I knew about the business anymore.
    I learned a lot and forget.
    I learned a lot because I went to school every day.
    Learned a lot.
    As a matter of fact, I was number one.
    I was number one.
    I'm going to show you later my letter of commendations.
    Came out the first one in the class.
    So then I worked for this restaurant.
    And then I decided to go my own business,
    and I bought my own place.
    And that was what year?
    Huh?
    What year was that?
    Oh, this was-- it was in 1973.
    So at first, you had to save money,
    and you had children in between.
    It's not so easy.
    So now I'm here.
    What else you want to know?
    Did you-- when you were in Buchenwald or on the marches,
    did you feel that you would survive?
    No, I was ready to give up.
    I was ready to give up.
    I says, I'm going back.
    I was ready to go.
    But this guy in New York, he schlepped me under the arm.
    I couldn't walk.
    He was stronger than I am.
    And he took me, and he--
    that was the last night.
    You see people going to the side, going to the side,
    going to the side.
    Not only this, I omitted a lot of things because I told you
    before, you cannot--
    I cannot put it all in, in three hours' time.
    When we walked, after they shot up the train to Flossenbürg,
    we had to walk, and the train didn't go in.
    As the planes came, the German guards,
    they were seeking out people who were wobbling.
    You didn't have to go especially fall to the side.
    They were sitting out.
    And I remember just vividly they seek out a boy.
    One thing, pulled him out of the line.
    They put him down.
    This is one thing, but the guy was fighting.
    He says he can walk.
    No, no, he made him come down.
    So what happened?
    He shot him down.
    And as soon as the guy fell down, he shot him.
    A few people walked-- run off in the ranks,
    and they went over his pocket, if he
    got any bread left or something left, something like that.
    It's not imaginable.
    You know what I mean?
    It's not imaginable.
    Can't imagine.
    Why do you think you did survive?
    Well, I'll tell you why I think I did survive.
    First of all, health-wise, I was more or less lucky
    because, like I told you, in the ghetto,
    I had this job with two meals a day.
    And my father worked, and he had two meals a day.
    My mother worked in the kitchen, so it was a lot of hunger,
    but we were not starving.
    We were-- sure, we always talked about the food because--
    always talked about the food because the food was just plain
    bread and nutrition and potatoes.
    Always didn't had enough to eat.
    So I was luck in a way, when I left Poland in 1944,
    I didn't go straight to concentration camp.
    I went to Kielce, I told you.
    And then, I come in contact with people.
    And I didn't have much to trade clothes for bread,
    but I got a little bit more to eat than I had in the ghetto.
    And then at night, I went to the Polish kitchen.
    And they give you food.
    The food wasn't good, but it was food.
    And that was already August, don't forget.
    And then I went to this other one in Czestochowa
    and was a little bit food, too.
    So when I got to hell, really, it was January 18, 1945,
    and this was Buchenwald.
    At that time, I was 18 years old.
    And I was liberated in on April 24.
    So April 24, 1945.
    So we're talking a question about three or four months.
    So at that time--
    but the last night, I couldn't make it anymore.
    Oh, I was wobbling and everything.
    So that's what-- so relative, I got in late.
    If I would then go to all these things before, I could never.
    You could never survive.
    It's unimaginable, the camp.
    If ever you went to the camp, you see piles.
    You ever saw wood stacked up for firewood?
    Bodies were stacked up just like that.
    And this was an everyday occurrence.
    Every day, I mean, everything was just packed up
    because they couldn't burn them as fast as the people died.
    They just couldn't burn them that fast.
    And you could see all this stacked up like wood,
    all skeletons.
    I can see in the pictures exactly, no exaggeration, just
    bones and hollow cheeks and everything.
    So even in the camp, I told you, a guy called,
    he wants to clean my room.
    He gave me something to eat to eat.
    So the extra already, it was a supplement.
    And I was going there.
    So more or less, for three or four months was really bad.
    I had to sustain on the camp diet.
    That's all.
    When you were in the camp and cleaning up in the rooms,
    was that your only job?
    In the camp?
    Yeah, because I ran away a few times.
    They took me to work on the quarry.
    So I saw other people run.
    I was running, too.
    And then I heard-- but then they had no Germans.
    The local inmates, they were in charge of things like that.
    So in other words, if you run, nobody shoots at you.
    And you couldn't run outside the camp.
    You just run from one enclosure to the other.
    Oh.
    They had-- the camp was big.
    In other words, they took you out here, and the gate was open.
    So nobody shoots at you.
    They might just chase you.
    If they didn't catch you, it's fine.
    I remember, even with the transport--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    Even with the transport where I couldn't
    go with the first transport.
    Even the second transport, I didn't want to go.
    And I was hiding underneath the barracks,
    and somebody got me, kicked me and pulled me out.
    But eventually, they took these rations away, too, from you.
    You had to sustain something.
    So then I had to go.
    And they assembled you in a big factory in the main camp.
    And that's OK.
    And somehow, I just made it out.
    It was bad.
    I was lucky.
    In a way, everything is luck.
    And these fellas, even the camp, it was a political camp.
    So they brought me, gave me some cookies here and there.
    And I was just plain lucky.
    You were kind of far from the actual Auschwitz
    where they were.
    Oh, Auschwitz is in Poland.
    Auschwitz is in Poland.
    And the Buchenwald is in Germany.
    And Buchenwald, like I told you before, people died there, too.
    They died there from hunger, from malnutrition,
    from beatings.
    But right now, I found out that they had a political underground
    in the camp.
    In other words, even in Buchenwald, the Germans, the SS,
    they run the camp.
    They didn't-- they didn't--
    I mean, they were not in charge of the camp itself inside.
    Sure, there were guards.
    They came-- we had to stay in Appell.
    You know what Appell is?
    Well, they came every night, and they counted us.
    Everybody had to go out from the barracks, and they lined us up.
    And sometimes you had to stay two or three
    hours until they came.
    And it's snowing.
    Don't forget, it's January, spring in Germany.
    And then they count until everybody is accounted for.
    Then the Germans came.
    And if they didn't like somebody in the line
    or somebody was cold, gave them a kick, everything.
    But in the camp itself, the inmates were in charge.
    And usually, the inmates were in charge who were there longer.
    I mean, people who were there attending.
    Like I told you, the German inmates.
    And they run the camp, and they were political prisoners,
    some of them bad.
    Some of them were kapos.
    But like I told you, the ones I knew is they came at night, too.
    And they ask, where are you people from?
    I think the first night we came, we told them
    we come from Czestochowa.
    We came from Kielce.
    Who was the kapo among you?
    And if you pointed somebody out, and if he
    did somebody something bad, I could say, listen, when we came,
    they took all our clothes.
    They didn't give us the clothes back.
    They traded our clothes for whiskey with the Poles.
    So if we could have the clothes, I could have traded for bread.
    I just didn't do it.
    I remember one was a Rosenzweig.
    He was a-- he goes, well, every camp had to have a policeman.
    The German calling keep order, But sometimes--
    but you cannot please everybody.
    But if you turned him in, these guys
    kill him because there was a political underground there,
    especially after the war.
    I read about it.
    So it's every place is luck.
    How many tapes have we used up?
    What else do you want to ask me?
    Wait.
    [LAUGHS] What are your feelings today
    about how the war influenced you?
    Well, how do-- you mean the war itself?
    Yeah, how it influenced you that you still feel its influence.
    Well, I don't know if I'm going to answer you exactly.
    The war-- I went a lot through the war.
    So the war itself, I got wiser.
    I mean, I learned how to survive.
    But what else can I tell you?
    I mean, the war not good.
    I lost everybody.
    Sometimes I feel very bad.
    I didn't have anybody.
    I just got during the war.
    Because it was a bad influence.
    But I learned a lot.
    I learned about-- this was my luck, just to survive.
    I tried to survive.
    Every step, I think back during the War,
    I think more or less, I mean, I was destined to survive.
    I'm the first one who left.
    My parents were still there, but then they liquidated the camp.
    Very few people survived.
    Not many did survive.
    It was my survival wasn't--
    I just had to--
    My destiny was to come to the United States.
    It wasn't-- I could go-- a lot of people went to Israel.
    They're brave, but I wasn't that type.
    I was the timid type.
    I wasn't a fighter.
    Like the last time, the last night before marching,
    I wanted to give up.
    But my friend, he always mentioned this, too.
    He lives in New York now.
    You're still friends with him?
    Yeah, he has three daughters.
    And every time the daughter got married,
    he invited us to the wedding.
    He's a bagel baker in New York.
    He's well off.
    And he lives in Brooklyn.
    And yeah, I see him.
    The last time he came back was to my daughter's funeral.
    I see him right now.
    He's very well off.
    One of his daughters married Joe [? Marr. ?]
    I don't know if you know who Joe [? Marr. ?] is.
    He's a folk singer.
    Yeah.
    What kind of feelings do you have now
    and how during the war about being Jewish?
    Are you more observant now?
    No, I'm not observant.
    I was-- I'm not going to tell you something which I was not.
    I mean, we were traditional Jews in Europe.
    We went to the synagogue.
    My father didn't pray every day.
    He went Saturday to the synagogue.
    He went to-- we observed all holidays.
    We had kosher in the house.
    We were just like any other Jew in Poland.
    We had Simchat Torah and Sukkot.
    My father ate in the sukkah.
    But he didn't wear a beard.
    He shaved.
    And some Saturdays he couldn't go to shul.
    He went to shul.
    And we had Pesach.
    We had the Seder.
    We had matzos.
    We had no bread.
    We were just like any traditional Jews.
    And now, we're doing the same thing.
    I feel the same way right now after the war.
    We belong to a Reform temple, Temple Sinai.
    We have no pork in the house, no bacon.
    But we have no--
    we have no dishes for meat.
    We have no dishes for dairy.
    We just go holidays.
    And America is differently now.
    Some Fridays we go to shul.
    Not every Friday, but on the holidays, we go to synagogue.
    And my daughter is the same way.
    They went to Sunday school.
    They were confirmed in the temple.
    We are members.
    We're members of the temple.
    I pay my dues, That's all.
    Do you-- did your daughters know about your past?
    Yeah, both of my daughters were very interested about my past,
    especially my daughter who died.
    She was very instrumental about it.
    She always wanted to find the relatives.
    And she always-- as a matter of fact,
    I told you before, I come Zgierz.
    It was-- right now--
    At that time, I was only 13 years old.
    I didn't realize it had 5,000 Jews.
    I knew the population was 49,000, Poles together.
    But she was all instrumental to find it.
    And she went to Israel, and she found
    me the book from my hometown.
    Of course, it's in Hebrew, but it's in Yiddish.
    But sometimes, I went through it in Yiddish.
    I can understand.
    I'm a slow reader in Yiddish, but if I go two or three times
    through to the same article, I understand it.
    And she was very instrumental.
    She went to France two years ago, and I had an aunt in Paris.
    And she was-- she went to the archives.
    She wanted to look for relatives.
    But I wrote to the Paris Jewish community before.
    People give me different addresses.
    But then I realized the Germans were in France, too.
    And all the horror stories--
    a lot of French people we know about the Vichy government
    in Southern France, and we know the French were collaborators.
    And lately, this Beate Klarsfeld came out with a book.
    You know who Beate Klarsfeld is.
    You heard of her?
    Yeah.
    And she printed the book, and they found all the names,
    all the transports, the name of the transports
    who went to Auschwitz.
    And I found my aunt's name on the transfer.
    Yeah.
    It has only the date.
    And I had a cousin.
    He was named after the same grandfather like me, Leon.
    And he was born, I think, the same year.
    And he had a girl.
    And that is it.
    Now, as a matter of fact, I read now another book
    of Beate Klarsfeld.
    I found it in answering the questions about my daughter.
    We took all the books from her.
    She had about--
    Wherever They May Be!, that's the title of the book.
    And it's by Beate Klarsfeld, too.
    And it deals with the French Jews, the French Jews,
    how the French people hid them, how they hid them,
    how somebody gave them away.
    But they had no ghettos in France.
    They just were-- they just came after them to take them away.
    And my aunt went, too.
    So that's my youngest daughter.
    She was very-- she always looked for my roots.
    So when she died, you put in the obituary,
    if somebody wants to donate something in her memory,
    you should donate to the Holocaust Committee,
    to the National Holocaust Campaign Committee.
    As a matter of fact, they collected $13,000.
    Oh my goodness.
    Yeah.
    So we want to put up a plaque in her name.
    So we found out they wanted for our plaque $50,000.
    So $50,000?
    we cannot afford this kind of money.
    So my wife came up with a different idea.
    My daughter was very talented.
    She painted pictures, and not for a living.
    She was very--
    I'll show it to you later on before you
    leave if you care to see them.
    And we gave some of them away.
    But then we kept--
    we came up with an idea.
    Before we give them away, we're going
    to take pictures of the originals.
    And we spent a lot of money.
    We took pictures.
    And then now my wife wants to make like writing paper,
    and she wants to put them in packages
    and sell them and the proceeds to go to the Holocaust
    Committee.
    And maybe if we collect enough money, maybe we can collect--
    maybe we can get a plaque in her name.
    Because $13,000 we have already.
    So we have a problem.
    We just-- we have the cards.
    We got to put it in a big quantity.
    And then we have to find who's going to sell for us.
    To put it in the store, the merchants want to make money.
    If you make too expensive, nobody's going to buy it.
    In the meantime, so we have to know how to handle that stuff.
    In the meantime, the campaign committee,
    they don't have an office.
    If they would have a building already, they have a shop
    and we give them the shop and they say sell it,
    the proceeds goes to the thing.
    And after you collect so much money,
    maybe we can put something up.
    But they don't have anything else,
    and nobody is going to do it for nothing.
    So.
    Maybe when the museum is finished.
    Maybe when it's finished.
    So that's what it is.
    What was your daughter's name?
    Mira, spelled M-I-R-A. I'll share with you later.
    OK.
    She was 27 years old.
    When did she die?
    She died a year ago.
    1985.
    18 of November, this month, 1985.
    A good-looking girl, too.
    How do-- how do you feel about war reparations?
    Well, how I feel about war reparation?
    I think it's coming to these people.
    Because first, I got some reparations.
    I got reparations for deprivation of liberty
    and for the work.
    But it was very, very little.
    I think it was around 5,000 marks.
    It was very, very little from the beginning in 1950.
    So I found out that the people get
    reparation which is coming to you, just for the work.
    I mean, this is not going to compensate you--
    You were talking about, the war reparations.
    Yes.
    Initially, I heard in Germany you
    can get the war reparations for depriving
    of liberty and for the work.
    So I applied for that.
    And I think it's coming to you, because everybody's
    got to be compensated for something.
    Some people have the impression, either one,
    they've blocked money or something like that.
    But this doesn't solve anything.
    So I got, just for the depriving of liberty,
    I don't remember how much.
    And for the few months, which I was in the camp, because I did
    work.
    Yeah.
    But I missed the main thing.
    I missed the reparation for the depriving of your health,
    because like I said, I still have pock marks from this oil.
    I mean, and I couldn't get that.
    But just like I said, you have-- lucky I
    had somebody to fill up the papers for me,
    and people advise you bad.
    Some says while you're young, why don't you-- advise you--
    why don't put in reparation for school,
    and give you the privacy school, and you
    have four years in the ghetto, and you were here,
    and you had no chance to go to school.
    And so I did for that.
    And then they rejected me for that.
    And then somebody advised me, apply
    for your loss of your parents, because you were a kid.
    You were only 13, 14, 15.
    They applied for that, and they reject me for that.
    In the meantime, a lot of people applied for this
    for health compensation.
    You had nightmares at work.
    You had dreams from the Germans.
    Even right now, what can get a hold about the war,
    or with the Germans, I'm reading, with the Holocaust,
    and all these thing.
    So by the time I applied for that, it was too late.
    I missed the deadline.
    So if I missed a deadline, I missed a deadline.
    So I figured, well, maybe I'm lucky in different respects.
    I got a business, and I make money.
    And I did that.
    So I didn't get reparations.
    So whatever it turns out, it just turned out.
    So I realize, you cannot have everything.
    You don't have everything.
    Have a business, everything, and have living goods
    and everything.
    So I lost my daughter.
    So it never works out.
    You cannot-- never have 100%.
    So now I'm in a position, I could
    be able to help and everything.
    So it's just, that is it.
    It's the same as the war, the survival.
    That's what it was.
    I mean, I just survived.
    I mean, it's no special effort on my part.
    I just survived.
    That's it.
    I was maybe in the right place at the right time.
    I was just lucky to go to Buchenwald in 1945 instead to go
    there in 1943, or to leave the ghetto in 1944
    instead to leave in '41.
    And the people who lived in '41, what do you think
    did happen to them?
    They took them all to build all this extermination camp.
    Sure, they would think of building them.
    They're the ones who build them.
    And then they got exhausted, and this,
    and they could never survive.
    So that's just plain luck.
    You were able to stay in the ghetto for four years.
    For four years, I was manage, you know, and I was a relative.
    There was no food, but I had my parents there, and all my aunts
    and all my uncles.
    They all left together.
    They all went in the transfer.
    And none of them survived.
    The kids and their families.
    So we're just lucky.
    And so what happened, even luck.
    My father happened to work with the guy who
    his brother was in charge.
    So we came over there. he give us a room.
    Then there he gave him a job.
    And then, when he gave him a job, sure it was a good job.
    And then I got a job.
    So we all worked in the kitchen, more or less.
    And even in the ghetto, everybody
    tried to help themselves.
    You worked in the hospital, whatever was not available
    for the population was available in the hospital,
    where how scarce the food was.
    I remember many times, he says, why don't you
    come to the hospital.
    I'm going to feed you every day.
    And I went, and he fed me.
    And I remember many times here I was so bulged out with food,
    I couldn't stand.
    It was [INAUDIBLE].
    People were starving.
    But that's where it was.
    This was luck, in the right place at the right time.
    Otherwise you just didn't survive.
    I tell you.
    You couldn't buy from outside.
    You couldn't go in.
    You couldn't go out.
    You get so much, and that is it.
    It's only so much.
    And people killed one another for food.
    And you were delivering mail.
    Well, it was local stuff.
    Just--
    Yeah, and not only--
    I forgot to mention it.
    Sometimes I delivered things.
    The ghetto was big.
    They had tramways going inside.
    They had the whole administration,
    that specific statistical bureaus.
    Had their own policemen, their own fire department,
    because they had workshops in the ghetto.
    And that's the only-- the fire department
    is the only one who is allowed to have
    a fire truck with gasoline.
    And all these people, they had to feed them.
    And as a matter of fact, like I was delivering mail,
    and let's say I came in--
    I brought to somebody who she works in the kitchen.
    She fed me.
    I didn't even ask her food.
    You know what I mean?
    And sometimes I came to homes.
    And I remember once, I came to her home,
    and I think she was really German.
    They were Christian Germans.
    So she was married to a Jew, and she was in the ghetto.
    And I said-- I think I made a remark, something smells good.
    [SNIFFING] So she gave it to me.
    People, I mean, they were better than me.
    People, that everybody was starving, even in the ghetto.
    It's an old saying, whoever-- you don't understand Yiddish,
    do you?
    Whoever sits near the pail, that's the one who eats.
    They have different jobs.
    And they were even now, here in America the same thing.
    Whoever sits near this just helped himself.
    And during the war, it was just a matter of survival.
    Even with the transport, they took out.
    If you knew somebody, you were on the transfer list,
    they took you off.
    Send somebody instead.
    The people who like--
    this why the first transport, they
    took all the newcomers who came from Prague,
    from Czechoslovakia, from Austria, from Germany,
    from here, from there.
    They just send them along.
    The local people that were staying.
    They were going later on.
    So it got, in 1944, they were taking out
    from non-essential work.
    Why do they need a mailman.
    People, the mail, there were less Jews left.
    There was less and less.
    The ghetto was shrinking.
    They took people.
    They're not going to take somebody who
    makes uniform for the Germans.
    They took somebody else.
    That's what this.
    Well, maybe this was my luck.
    See?
    This was my luck.
    So I went to labor camp, and had a little bit more food
    than I had before.
    And then to another camp.
    In the meantime, the war was drawing near an end,
    and if I would stay in the ghetto,
    they'd probably take me all straight to Auschwitz.
    Maybe I would survive.
    Maybe not.
    Maybe the guy would tell they go on the other end.
    Who knows?
    So that's what it is.
    Do you feel that the war still affects you?
    No, not now.
    Because I forget, I'm 30--
    no, it doesn't affect me now.
    I'm 37 years in this country.
    And like I told you, I was in the service.
    And I went to school.
    And I think like an American.
    I don't think like a European, you know what I mean.
    I think if you have, you live, you buy, you sell.
    I understand about the economy.
    Everything is financing.
    Everything is dead in Europe.
    The economy is differently.
    In Europe, if you want to buy an item,
    you have to save the money, and then you have the money.
    You buy it.
    In this country, everything is differently.
    Otherwise, the economy is [INAUDIBLE].
    So the war doesn't affect me.
    Sure, I know I don't have anybody.
    But no.
    But now, since my daughter died, I'm
    just thinking a little bit differently.
    And I'm thinking.
    I'm thinking, 37 years ago I was all by myself.
    And now I'm just thinking, well, I
    have one daughter, and just me and my wife.
    If something happens, I'm just going right back where I was.
    Just the last year, I'm thinking like that.
    Something, you're getting older, and so I
    wonder what's going to happen.
    Just because something happens, and you just
    go back wherever you was.
    You're all by yourself.
    Sure, I have cousins now.
    I didn't have anybody from my side.
    But my wife has family here.
    My wife has family here.
    But the uncle who brought her here,
    he died already, and died already.
    And now the children are left.
    And my children died already.
    And that's life.
    Yeah.
    But the war doesn't affect me.
    No, it doesn't affect me.
    I don't have any nightmares.
    Like I sleep.
    But I'm only interested--
    I'm interested to read everything
    what happened during the war.
    So my wife's [INAUDIBLE].
    If it's a war picture, you'll like it.
    I didn't say, I don't like if it's a war picture.
    I'm interested because I'm interested in history.
    I'm interested in history, about the Normandy invasion
    and how it was planned.
    And then if I read this or I see this,
    I always have it in my back of my head, what
    was I doing during that time?
    Where was I at that time?
    And the same interesting about the Russian people,
    what the Russians are doing at that time,
    because during the war, a lot of Polish Jews
    went to the Russian side.
    And what happened to them, and how they fared.
    So I'm interested in history.
    But if you give me ancient history, I'm not interested.
    I'm only interested in the history
    through the period what I lived through.
    So take it for what it is.
    So if I can get a book like, Rise and Fall of the Third
    Reich, I like the book because it's history.
    It's all documents.
    I don't care for novels.
    I like to read, but I don't care for novels.
    Novels, I got to imagine things.
    But I, like, you take, like, Exodus, it's a novel, too,
    but it's based on the truth.
    That's what actually happens.
    And that's what I like.
    It doesn't have to be-- the names, then,
    don't have to be the exact.
    But that's the way the names don't have to be.
    The places don't have to be either.
    But that's what it is, and that's what I like.
    So all, I like geography.
    And so anything what happened during the war.
    So the war did last--
    made a lasting remark on me.
    And I'm interested in Poland too,
    not because I liked the Polish people.
    Because I just like to know how much Poland progressed
    since I left, because of all these big shots
    that have blamed the Jews for everything.
    You read this book.
    It just came out.
    I think this book is written well.
    A lot of people thinks, well, it's a lot of baloney.
    But there were Poles.
    They were impartial, you know what I mean.
    Maybe the book is not perfect 100%.
    But whatever deals made, and the book, it deals with that.
    Ask you a question, just like you asked me.
    It asked Jews, why did you stay?
    And people have different answers.
    One guy especially, he says he stayed because he--
    the Poles helped him a lot.
    And he feels his obligation to stay.
    And maybe he can help them too.
    People have different things for different things.
    What's good for the goose not good for one by somebody,
    might not be for the other one.
    But that's what it is.
    What is the name of that book?
    Remnants.
    Remnants.
    Right.
    Yeah, but so, it's a good book.
    It's a good, big, antisemitism.
    First of all, the book, it's true.
    They kind of blamed the Jews.
    There are no Jews.
    There's nobody to blame.
    Before, they--
    But you have to read the books so you
    would understand the book.
    The Poles, it deals why the Poles--
    the Poles were big antisemites before the war.
    I was a kid.
    I was 12 years old.
    But I know my mother used to come home.
    She says, listen, they have that they're boycotting this bakery,
    Jewish bakery.
    They're boycotting.
    And otherwise, they come and go around with placards,
    and he says, why do you buy from a Jew?
    Why don't you buy it from us?
    Before the war.
    And I remember that.
    And they had different organizations.
    Don't ask me what kind.
    I know.
    I remember only they were nationalistic organizations.
    No matter what they were, they were against the Jews.
    And they had very--
    Jews couldn't attain a high position during the war
    either in Poland, in the government, like here.
    If you find a captain in the Polish army, it was a big deal.
    You couldn't find a general or a major, a colonel, or things
    like this.
    No.
    You only find Jews in high positions,
    like doctors and lawyers and things
    like that, it's because they educate themselves.
    That wasn't up to the Polish government to hire them.
    And then, which I didn't know before the war--
    I know there's a big antisemites,
    but now in this book they had benches, benches in the schools,
    in the universities.
    The Jews were only allowed to sit in certain benches.
    They couldn't sit on certain benches next to a Pole,
    and things like that.
    You didn't know that either.
    This is why this book is very interesting.
    I didn't know that.
    I mean--
    You never had any antisemitic occurrences?
    Yeah, I had.
    Sure.
    Yes.
    I had that.
    Well, as a kid, you mean?
    Yeah, sure, you always had to run away from Polacks.
    They beat you up.
    And like I told you before, the Jews had to go to a--
    I mean, the school was subsidized by the government
    just like any other school.
    But only Jewish children who went to this particular school,
    because they felt safer.
    And not only this.
    Jewish in Poland lived in special neighborhoods, too.
    They were not ghettos, but they felt safer.
    They felt more at home in certain neighborhoods.
    In other words, you couldn't live all of a sudden,
    in an old Polish neighborhood, because they're
    going to beat you up.
    And you're going to-- of course, they didn't burn any crosses,
    but they would do similar things like that, because you're
    the only Jew in that neighborhood,
    and they wouldn't like it.
    So the Jews had to stick more or less together.
    Well, that was in mine--
    in my place.
    Maybe in the smallest shtetlach.
    Maybe the Jews lived, and the Polacks mingled all over.
    And so I don't know.
    But the biggest cities, the Jews--
    the Jews lived in predominantly certain sections.
    Like you find here, Jews.
    Silver Spring is a big Jewish neighborhood.
    You're not going to find many Jews in southeast,
    but they live.
    Or in Suitland.
    But mostly they live in Bethesda, and Potomac,
    and Silver Spring.
    That's where they feel more comfortable, more at home.
    Like that.
    Is there anything else that we might have forgotten
    that you want to talk about?
    Yeah, we forgot a lot.
    I mean, otherwise it would go back and forth.
    That I told you before, and you cannot put in a three-hour
    interview things which happened three or four or five years.
    You always forget things.
    But it's hard to describe, and it's very hard to--
    I mean, it's undescribable, things like this would happen.
    Could you imagine me, and going with a German
    after the liberation.
    We should take a look.
    I mean, how would it look?
    Have a jacket, and things were sewn off.
    I had a string tied on, and no buttons here.
    Potatoes over there.
    it looked like a--
    I don't know what she looked like.
    But then, if you see the pictures,
    how the American army in Bataan, the death marches,
    and things like that.
    The Germans were just the same.
    They used the same thing--
    even worse.
    Like I told you before, you didn't have to go out yourself.
    I mean, I told you that if you wobble or something,
    they pulled you out, they pushed you at the thing,
    and they shoot you, and then just punch a thing.
    Just run out and go over your pocket.
    Maybe they find some bread there.
    That's the way it was.
    It's undescribable.
    People here don't believe.
    When my kids were small, my kids used to ask me,
    what kinds of programs I used to watch on television.
    And they don't know.
    The television was something just recent.
    But I just said, like anybody else, they should never forget.
    They should talk about it.
    You should keep the flame alive.
    I happen-- I am glad that happened.
    I'm glad there's now is a Israel.
    Especially European Jews.
    They have something to look forward to.
    And the Poles used to see the Jews were not workers,
    were always only with the [INAUDIBLE] people,
    and always used to know how to steal and take.
    For sure, because the Poles didn't gave him any opportunity.
    A Jews couldn't obtain a high position.
    They were mostly merchants, peddlers.
    They had their own store, a peddler on the street.
    Or you were a professional.
    And the professionals, even the schools, they have quotas,
    have quotas.
    Don't allow so many Jews to go to certain-- even this country.
    They go to school and be a doctor, or be a dentist,
    or be a lawyer, and things like that.
    So they had quotas.
    So I'm glad to see Israel.
    You read the paper now.
    Israel has an army.
    You have a government.
    The prime ministers, have ambassadors.
    And you see headlines in the paper.
    Israel this, Israel this.
    Or they know that it's not the stereotype of Jew
    who was before the war.
    Even this author, he wrote a book.
    Who wrote a book, the husband and wife team.
    They said that when they decided to write a book,
    before they started, they had to overcome their own prejudice
    and their own stereotypes.
    A Jew is always characterizing the long nose and the hunch
    back, and a merchant who loaned you
    money for the big, high interest rates, and things like that.
    They didn't know you could be nice,
    could be a government employee, a scientist, or a biochemist,
    or a discoverer of Salk vaccine, things like that.
    They don't know that things.
    In Poland especially, because they
    didn't give you the opportunity.
    You had no opportunity to do that.
    And people want to survive.
    They just do anything to survive, you see.
    So that's the whole spiel.
    I wouldn't mind it, going back to Poland, because I just--
    even if you love and care for the country,
    but you want to know where you come from.
    As a matter of fact, the book, the Jewish book what
    I read, from Zgierz, from my hometown,
    I understand that people came back after the war.
    And they were afraid to go out at night
    because the Polish people would kill them.
    They didn't want him to settle back to there some time.
    They wouldn't want them to settle back.
    So the government, they said to help them and welcome them back.
    And you see the claim, which is true.
    They said the Jews came back to Poland,
    and they were all communists.
    You see, this is not true.
    Sure, there were some Jewish communists before the war,
    but the only reason the Jews joined
    the Communist Party in Poland is because the Communist Party,
    I understand, treated all members equally.
    They're supposed to treat them equally.
    And the Jews were not treated equally in Poland
    as the other populations of the [INAUDIBLE] Party.
    You can get equality, a job, or things like that.
    That's why the Jews joined the party.
    They want to be-- they wanted to be equality.
    They figured that the party is going
    to force them to have them.
    You can get a job and things like that.
    And when the war broke out, they went to Russia.
    A lot of them.
    When the Russia, then they establish--
    they had two Polish governments.
    I don't know if you're familiar with that.
    One they had an exile from London, and one,
    they had one in Russia.
    The Russian established a government.
    It was called the Lublin government.
    And I told you before, the Russians liberated Poland--
    not the Allies.
    So the Russians brought their government back to Poland
    from Russia.
    And there were a lot of Jews among those,
    because they felt Polish citizens.
    Why not?
    You know what I mean?
    They felt Polish citizens.
    So they came back.
    So all of a sudden, Russia comes back,
    imposes a Polish government on the Polish people,
    who also [INAUDIBLE] has a lot of Polish citizen
    in them, because they were Polacks.
    They were born over there.
    And they resented that.
    So now the Poles says, you brought communism to Poland.
    And after this, they left, because they're forced to leave.
    So that's the whole spiel.
    Yeah.
    So the Polish-- the Poles [INAUDIBLE].
    And then it's the church.
    The church.
    They had a big pogrom after the war,
    and there were-- and they killed.
    After 1946, there were very few Jews left.
    Like Jews who were left, people who came back from Russia
    or came back, survivors from concentration camp.
    Those were the people left.
    They had pogrom.
    They're killing Jews.
    The rumor was going around, they're
    using the blood for matzos, for matzos.
    And I only blame the church for that.
    But I went to this interview from this-- what I had,
    this husband/wife team, the [INAUDIBLE].
    And she said, well, now it's differently.
    The community council.
    The Pope came out, and things like that.
    He said, the Jews are not to blame.
    Present-day Jews are not to blame what happened
    so many thousand years ago.
    He says, but if you go in the countryside
    and you speak with the average priest,
    he's still prejudiced against the Jews.
    So that's what it is.
    You see, right now, I work.
    Near me, the Catholic organization, the whole diocese,
    the whole United States, the headquarters is in Mass Avenue.
    It's not far away.
    I got a lot of Catholic customers.
    I not a Jewish--
    I mean, I let them know that I'm Jewish or not.
    But they're very friendly.
    I couldn't converse with a Polish priest
    like I converse with a Catholic priest.
    When they come into my store, no, they come in.
    They know me by name.
    They joke around with me.
    They joke around with me.
    Priests with their collars.
    Especially right now.
    And then not far away, they have Mass Avenue.
    One comes around and says, I'd like to have your job.
    He jokes around.
    He says-- my job.
    Yeah, I'd like to come.
    He says, you take my job, I take your job.
    Still on tape?
    Maybe I shouldn't say.
    [LAUGHS]
    So I mean, people in this country are entirely different.
    They're more educated.
    You come to do something, you ask why.
    You ask questions.
    In Poland, they say, go beat the Jew up.
    He doesn't ask questions.
    They beat him up.
    He's human too.
    They just go and beat him up.
    He says, why?
    He says-- they ask him, why did you do this?
    The priest told him, or somebody else told him.
    This is going to beat the Jew.
    You just beat the Jew up.
    Here it's definitely.
    Sure, they say the Jews were different stereotypes,
    and different cold.
    Sure, they were cold.
    They kept to themselves.
    They kept to themselves because they
    were discriminated against it.
    So here, in today's paper--
    I don't know if you read today's paper or not.
    They have an article about the Jews in Williamsburg,
    in New York.
    And they have a problem too.
    They fight around with the Puerto Ricans,
    because they have a problem with the schooling.
    It's separation of church and state.
    And the Jewish girl, the Orthodox,
    the Hasidim girl, when they go to school,
    but they want to be separate from the boys.
    They want to partition.
    And of course, it's a public school.
    They got a few Puerto Ricans going over there or something.
    They don't like the separation.
    All of a sudden.
    So they have a problem, too.
    Yeah.
    But I like the separation of church and state.
    I like a lot--
    I don't want to-- not because I'm ashamed of my religion.
    I don't care.
    Wherever you go in Poland, I remember your religion.
    Wherever you go to school, your religion.
    When you went here, your religion.
    But here in America, they only ask you two places
    your religion-- in the Army.
    if you're going to the hospital.
    And they say, for the only reason is in case you die,
    they want to know whom to call.
    In the Army, the same thing.
    In case you get killed in action or something,
    they don't know whom to call.
    That's the only two places.
    Otherwise they don't ask you any religion.
    And I like that.
    I like separation of church and state.
    I think that's the way it should be.
    You want to educate your children in Catholic or Jewish,
    you got to support yourself.
    Otherwise the state doesn't have to do it for you.
    Let's say that's the only-- that's a good thing.
    There's nothing like America, I tell you that.
    It's a good thing.
    The [INAUDIBLE] comes and they knew well.
    They knew what they were doing because they came
    from persecution themselves.
    They came from England.
    They didn't let them practice their religion.
    They came from [INAUDIBLE].
    They came from Russia.
    They came from Poland, all the Jews.
    They know it was all about it.
    For religion, people are going to kill for their religion.
    So that's the main, the only thing.
    That's what I like.
    Mm-hmm.
    Even if you run for office, you run for elections,
    your religion is never mentioned.
    Well, they were mentioned by the Catholics.
    Kennedy had a problem when he first started running.
    But I worry about this first confession.
    If he goes to the priest, he's a Catholic,
    he's going to tell him state secrets.
    [LAUGHS]
    But it's overkill.
    But everywhere these days.
    But now things are changing in America, especially now.
    You see a lot of Black mayors in different cities--
    Tom Bradley, Barry, in the south, in Atlanta.
    Everything changes.
    And the Jewish mayors in New York, too.
    Koch.
    You had Mandel in Maryland.
    And I had a ticket.
    Steinberg in there.
    I mean, guy from Maryland.
    What's his name?
    Schaefer and Steinberg, governor, lieutenant governor.
    That's right.
    It's definitely.
    Will you tell your grandson about your experiences?
    If he's going to ask me.
    He might not be interested.
    I don't tell much.
    My son-in-law never talk about that.
    He know I was in a camp.
    He probably doesn't even know that I was in Buchenwald.
    Maybe he does know.
    Maybe he does know.
    But I don't talk about it.
    People not interested.
    At work, nobody knows exactly what my background is.
    People know that I speak with a accent,
    and sometimes it make them ask, where do you come from?
    And I tell them, from Silver Spring,
    and let them guess the rest.
    What I'm going to tell them?
    I don't say anything.
    Anyway, it's the same in Poland.
    I mean, it all depends who ask me.
    Maybe some people know where Poland is,
    and maybe some people don't know where Poland is.
    But everybody knows it.
    I'm going to tell them about the camp.
    You never heard of a camp.
    Buchenwald?
    Especially the workers who work with me.
    They've never heard of that.
    And even the American public.
    I tell you, they--
    sometimes I watch these quiz programs,
    and you ask them, name a state.
    Name a country which the first letter starts with a S.
    And they don't know it.
    They're mixing things up.
    Some said Siberia, which Siberia is not a country.
    Siberia is only a province in the Soviet Union.
    And things like that.
    Not all of them.
    They just don't know it.
    You have to say it.
    I ask somehow, what's the program that somebody
    named the capital of Liberia.
    They didn't know it to save your wife.
    Nobody guessed it.
    Nobody guessed it.
    It's Monrovia.
    They never heard of strange things like that, these places.
    And they just don't know it.
    So I feel [INAUDIBLE] so at work,
    I never tell them about it.
    A lot of people ask me, where are you coming from?
    Not everybody.
    Well, they didn't ask me.
    They just asked me because they--
    they just were-- not because they have something against it.
    They just interested.
    Only when I have a conversation, that I
    used to tell them over there.
    They have to start going to background, thing like this.
    And for your just average customers,
    none of his business, right?
    It's not because I'm hiding, but sometimes they ask me,
    are you Greek?
    I says, no, I says, I'm Jewish, and things like that.
    Sometimes they ask you too, because I'm dark complected,
    and I [INAUDIBLE] So that's the end of that.
    But some knew it.
    Some know it even if I don't tell him.
    Somebody's come in, and they just
    know [INAUDIBLE] shalom, things like that.
    So, come [INAUDIBLE] when the Jewish holiday to the store,
    we have a business, and it says, what are you doing here today?
    And you're supposed to be here.
    And I didn't go.
    But they just know it.
    They just know.
    And people find out from one another.
    So that's the whole story.
    So it's nothing like this country.
    But now I'm glad it turns out like this.
    First, when I came here, and I was only a year here,
    I had to go in the Army, I felt kind of blue.
    I had nobody, and things like that, and going away for two--
    [AUDIO OUT]
    So in the end, you were glad you went into the Army.
    Yeah, was glad that I was in the Army.
    I'm glad I served.
    I'm glad I did my duty.
    So now I feel just like any other Americans.
    Now I can, if you talk about something, I can say
    refer it's ours.
    Otherwise, maybe I would say it's only "they,"
    because I wasn't even part of it.
    I didn't contribute anything to this country's fate.
    But now I served my time.
    I just did my job just like anybody else,
    so I can feel that something mine, and not a stranger.
    Just like anybody else.
    I'm no different.
    And in [? 30 ?] days, I came out good out of it.
    I'm a pretty good rank as a draftee.
    And like I told you, I went to school.
    I'm going to show you where the letters.
    Came top of my class.
    I was riding the ball.
    And so that's what it is.
    So it's a great country.
    I vote in every election.
    I think it's a privilege to vote,
    because if you don't like the things they're doing,
    you got to be stand up and be counted on.
    Because I remember this.
    You read the papers, you see what goes on.
    See, in the other countries, they don't let them vote.
    It's not up to you who's going to be there.
    Here, and it's up to you.
    Might as well take advantage of it.
    Take advantage of it.
    Advantage.
    Right.
    So you read the issues.
    And so I think it's great.
    Yeah.
    Yep.
    Thank you very much--
    Yeah, thank you.
    OK.
    --for participating in this interview.
    Yeah.
    I'm glad I was able to help.
    And I hope it came out good.
    I hope my voice is loud enough.
    This has been Cecille Steinberg interviewing Mr. Leon
    Merrick about his experiences as a survivor
    of the Nazi Holocaust.
    This interview will be included as a valuable contribution
    to the oral history library of the Oral History Project,
    Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Leon Merrick
    Interviewer
    Cecille Steinberg
    Date
    interview:  1986 November 09

    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. Museum staff are currently unable to copy, digitize, and/or photograph collection materials on behalf of researchers. Researchers are encouraged to plan a research visit to consult collection materials themselves.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Merrick, Leon.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The interview with Leon Merrick was conducted on November 9, 1986 as part of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington's oral history project to document Washington, DC area survivor's experiences of the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the interview on May 26, 1993.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:19:51
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/bookmarks​/irn511511

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    Oral history interview with Helen Luksenburg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abraham Malnik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lilly Appelbaum Malnik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helena Manaster

    Oral History

    Helena Manaster, born on May 29, 1917 in Lesko, Poland, describes the Russian influence in the area after October 1939; her father losing his business and the family moving to L'viv, Ukraine; doing secretarial work in a Russian office; getting married to a medical student, Norbert Ramer, on September 22, 1940; sitting in a bunker for eight days with her family once the war began in Ukraine in June 1941; the creation of a ghetto in November 1941; her husband being employed by the Germans to fight typhus in Orelec, Poland and accompanying him there; living with Jewish peasants in Orelec; going to Olszanica with 120 other Jews and being released with her husband shortly before the 120 Jews were killed between Olszianica and Ustianowa; returning to Lesko; the first Aktion in the ghetto in July 1942; hiding during the Aktions; going with her husband to Radymno labor camp, where her husband worked as a doctor; the project finishing and getting false ID papers with the name Dobrowolska; being pregnant at the time; passing as non-Jews and going to Sosnica then Przemysl and Krakow to the homes of Polish friends; receiving help from the underground movement; staying in different places every night, separated from her husband for safety; working in the kitchen in a Capuchin monastery, pretending to be the wife of a Polish officer; the birth of her son Tadeusz on October 6, 1943; adopting another infant in November 1943; the baptism of her son; leaving the monastery in June 1944; getting an apartment with her husband in the winter of 1944-1945; the end of the war and hearing that her brother survived; staying in Warsaw, Poland for 10 years and having three more children; going to Vienna, Austria; going to Chicago, IL in December 1968 while her husband stayed in Poland; immigrating to Israel in 1982; and returning to the US in 1988.

    Oral history interview with Spiro Manesis

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nina Merrick

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Luba Moskowitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Felicia Neufeld

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anna Olkon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Orenstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hy Packhenker

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Miriam Penn

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Selma Perlin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Louis Pohoryles

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Vera Ramaty

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Max Regensteiner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sime Reitzfeld

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Margit Ruben

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Sando

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edith Sando

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rachelle Selzer

    Oral History

    Rachelle Selzer, born on November 4, 1923 in Czernowitz, Rumania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), describes her family moving to Bucharest, Romania in 1933; witnessing Jews being beaten; attending a Catholic school since public schools were not safe for Jews; her family fleeing to Paris, France in 1938;; attending a lycee; vacationing in Brittany in 1939 and staying there because her father was in danger; returning to Paris in the summer of 1940; her father being denounced in 1942; her attempts to get her father released; her father’s deportation to Drancy then Auschwitz; her father’s false ID papers with the name “Denise Dufour”; staying in a hotel with her mother in Juvisy for two years; her job at a boarding school; going to farms to get food and hitchhiking with German soldiers; liberation and returning to Paris; how her father’s stock certificates worthless after Russians took over Romania; trying to emigrate; going to the United States in May 1950 and settling in California; getting married in 1955; living in New York, NY and Washington, DC; and her career as a psychotherapist.

    Oral history interview with Brenda Senders

    Oral History

    Brenda Senders, born in 1925 in Sarny, Poland (now in Ukraine), describes her life before the war; attending Hebrew school; the Soviet occupation; the German invasion in 1941; going to live in the ghetto in Sarny; going into hiding and staying in her uncle’s barn with 11 other people; an uprising in the ghetto led by Jewish youths; returning to town and joining her family during a deportation; being taken to a camp in a valley; escaping the camp with her sister and a friend; receiving help from a local woman; hiding in the woods with a group of people; joining the partisans after finding someone she trusted to look after her sister; the growth of the partisan group; her activities with the partisans; the end of the war and reuniting with her sister and uncle; immigrating to the United States in 1952; getting married and having three children; and the book she has with pictures of people from her town who perished in the war.

    Oral history interview with Leon Senders

    Oral History

    Leon Senders (Lazar Sederovich), born in March 19, 1923 in Vilna, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania), describes his father, who was a socialist and bid on oven-building jobs for Russian Army in 1940; the bombing of Vilna in June-December 1941; traveling with his friends to Russia; traveling to Smolensk, then to Penza, where a refugee committee gave them food; living on a collective farm, doing tractor repair work; applying to Lithuanian Division of the Russian Army; going to Balakhna in the Gorky Region of Russia; the difficult living conditions; attending school in Moscow, Russia from 1943 to 1944 and learning to build radio stations and relay messages; parachuting into Lithuania in October 1944 and helping the partisan group led by “Jurgis” (Heinrich Zimman or Henrikas Zimanas-Jurgis), who was a Jewish communist; sending radio messages to Moscow, giving them the German troop movements; going deeper to Siauliai, Lithuania and fighting Germans; going to Lazdijai, Lithuania and sending coded messages; hitching a ride to Kashudar and being arrested then released; staying for five days in a hospital in Vilna; how his entire family except his sister was killed in Ponar; staying in displaced persons camps in Poland, Prague (Czech Republic), and Vienna (Austria); going to Salzburg, Austria; getting married; crossing over the Alps to join his surviving sister in Milan, Italy; learning typewriter mechanics at an ORT school; and going to Washington, DC, where his wife’s relatives lived.

    Oral history interview with Esther Sendrowicz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mike Shmeltz

    Oral History

    Mike Shmeltz, born on May 15, 1924 in Goworowo, Poland, describes the German invasion in September 1939; the burning of their town and fleeing with his family to Zambrow then Bialystok, Poland; being sent to Siberia by the Russians; the journey on a cattle train for eight days; the German attack of Russia in June 1941 and going to Kyrgyzstan, where he tilled the land, carried water, and endured extremely cold winters; being given permission by the camp director to leave in 1945; crossing Russia to Baranovichi, Belarus; waiting a year for permission from the Russian government to leave; going in 1946 to Szczecin, Poland, where he found his sister and her husband; going to a Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz and contacting Bricha; getting married; going to Czechoslovakia and Austria; living in the Schteia displaced persons camp and the terrible conditions there; going to Kassel, Germany, where he worked as a truck driver from 1947 to 1949; living in Israel from 1949 to 1959; living in Montreal with his wife and daughter from 1959 to 1964; and immigrating to the United States in 1964.

    Oral history interview with Mollie Siegler

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abraham Silverstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Monique Simon

    Oral History

    Monique Simon (née Gautschoux), born on November 9, 1932 in Mulhouse, France, describes her father entering the French Army in September 1939; her family’s move to Bourbonne-les-Bains to a relatives’ house; having gas masks and being taught to be scared by her mother; going to Plombières-les-Bains in early 1940 and attending school; fleeing in late 1940 for Crest after her sister disclosed that they were Jewish; living with mother’s sister in early 1941 and her father locating them; her father finding a place for them with a non-Jewish family, the Lutrands, through the Red Cross; her father getting identity cards marked “Juif”; being hidden by a priest along with her sister, while her parents hid in a post office; her father’s arrest and release; living with her sister in the home of a peasant family, the Oliviers in 1942; doing farm work and not attending school; going with her sister to her aunt’s house in February 1944; the bombardment of the village by American troops and staying in a bomb shelter for weeks; the Germans arriving and taking hostages, radios, and bicycles; the Lutrands taking them to the village of Livron (Livron-sur-Drôme); returning to Crest when the Germans arrived; staying in a bomb shelter as the Americans and Germans fought for the village; returning with her family to Mulhouse in early 1945; attending high school and spending the summer in Zurich, Switzerland; attending physical therapy school in Paris for three years; visiting her sister in Israel in 1955 and meeting her husband, Benjamin Simon; going to the United States in 1958; settling in Washington, DC; and the birth of her daughter in 1960.

    Oral history interview with Flora Mendelowitz Singer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sema Soffer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Robert Solomon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Regina Spiegel

    Oral History

    Regina Spiegel (née Gutman), born in Radom, Poland in 1926, describes her childhood; her three sisters and two brothers; the German invasion in September 1939 and being the only survivor from her immediate family; being at the mercy of the Germans; having to move to a small apartment and give up their valuables; the restrictions placed on Jews; the creation of the ghetto in 1940; life in the ghetto and bribing a guard to escape; living with her sister in Pionki, Poland; bringing other Jews into the village; working in a labor camp; the camp allowing her sister to bring in her baby boy; the deportations to Treblinka; the denouncement of her sister and confronting the woman responsible after the war; the closing of Pionki labor camp and being deported to Auschwitz; conditions during the journey; her experiences when she arrived in the camp; being selected to work in a munitions factory at Bergen-Belsen; the bombing of their train and being hit by shrapnel; the importance of sharing Holocaust experiences; returning to Poland after the war; and her reflections on the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Samuel Spiegel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alexander Stolzberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gerd Strauss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Richard Straus

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Andrew Theodore

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hilda Thieberger

    Oral History

    Hilda Thieberger (née Hildegarde Goldberger), born on February 26, 1913 in Teschen, Silesia (Cieszyn, Poland), describes how the town was half Czech and half Polish; having a Czech passport; getting married to Irving Thieberger on November 11, 1935; having a daughter in February 1937 in Bielsko, Poland; the plundering of Jewish stores in the fall of 1937; going with her child to her sister-in-law in Zabjek, Poland (possibly Zabrzeg); the German invasion and her husband’s imprisonment for three months; smuggling themselves into the Auschwitz (Oświęcim) ghetto and wearing armbands with star; Jews being forced to build a camp in June 1940; her husband being sent to Belice work camp in 1941; going to the Sosnowice ghetto; going to the Belice work camp in 1941 and living with her husband in an attic; bribing guards with food and whiskey; witnessing hangings in the street; having to wear the yellow star; working for a year as a cook and seamstress for the SS; her husband going to Gleiwitz-Blechhammer; joining her husband in Bystra in December 1943; hiding in a hole in a basement in the summer of 1944 and getting false ID papers; the Allies approaching and hearing Auschwitz inmates marching in January 1945; their house being bombed on February 10, 1945 and seeing Russian soldiers; renting an apartment in May 1945; having a second child in December 1945; going to Ostrow, Czechoslovakia on false papers in August 1946; going to Hof, Germany in October 1946 and the difficult conditions in the camp; going to Landau, Germany and staying in the displaced persons camp for four years; going to the United States and settling in Washington, DC; living on a chicken farm in Pennsylvania for five years; returning to Washington, DC, where her husband did metal artwork for the Smithsonian Institution; and her husband making the menorah for the White House.

    Oral history interview with Helena Ticker

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bella Tovey

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Perry Vedder

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alfred Weinraiech

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anna Weiss

    Oral History

    Anna Weiss (née Loewi), born on January 26, 1911 in Gratz, Austria, describes attending medical school in Munich, Germany in 1932; returning after seeing swastikas on the street; attending medical school in Vienna, Austria for two years; going to Prague, Czech Republic in 1936; her father, Otto Loewi, receiving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1936; getting married to Ulrich Weiss on May 23, 1937; living in Aussig on Elbe (Ustí nad Labem, Czech Republic) and having a child; seeing the Nazis marching and their attempts to emigrate; going with her child to Stara-Boleslav, Czech Republic and hiding in a furniture van to get to Prague; getting visas to Belgium; meeting her father in Brussels, Belgium in March 1939; going to Argenteuil, France; seeing planes and shooting; going to Clermont-Ferrand then to Vert-au-Laye; renting a room on a farm; going to Lyon, France to the Spanish, Portuguese, and American consulates; going to Marseille, France in March 1941 and staying in an inn with Spanish soldiers; persuading HIAS to give her money for tickets; sailing with 250 people, including artists and scientists; docking in Martinique and staying in an internment camp for one month; sailing to the Dominican Republic then New York, NY; arriving in New York on June 2, 1941; getting a job to pay off the debt of her father’s trip; going to Washington, DC in 1957; and working at the National Institutes of Health with her husband.

    Oral history interview with Arnold Weiss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ulrich Weiss

    Oral History

    Ulrich Weiss, born on June 24, 1908 in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes earning his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1930; working for a pharmaceutical company; getting married to Anna Loewi in May 1937; his wife and child going to Stara-Boleslav, Czech Republic then to Prague; going to Belgium in March 31, 1939; his company setting up an office in Paris, France in July 1939; his wife and child living in Argenteuil, France and experiencing antisemitism; the German approach in June 1940 and fleeing to Clermont-Ferrand; staying in a shelter with Belgian refugees; going to a farmhouse in Marat and helping with the harvest; his wife going to Lyon, France and getting American visas; going to Marseille, France in March 1941 and staying in an inn with Spanish soldiers; sailing with refugees, including Andre Breton, Victor Serge, and Anne Seghers; docking in Martinique and staying in an internment camp for one month; sailing to the Dominican Republic then New York, NY; working at a pharmaceutical company; going to Washington, DC in 1957; and working at the National Institutes of Health with his wife.

    Oral history interview with Shulamith Wellisch

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eddie Helmut Willner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Arno L. Winard

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bernhard Witkop

    Oral History

    Bernhard Witkop, born on May 9, 1917 in Freiburg, Germany, describes being raised by a Catholic father and Jewish mother; being baptized as a Catholic; his mother’s move to Bavaria in 1935 and his parents’ divorce in 1936; living with a cousin; being considered a mischlinge by the German government and not being allowed to attend university; his mother being forced out of the country and winding up in Holland; working on his Ph.D. in Munch, Germany in 1939; being rejected for an American visa in 1940; moving in 1942 to Freising as conditions worsened in Munich; living in a farmhouse and doing lab work in a technical high school; the destruction of his records in Munich during the bombardment; not registering with the government; Professor Heinrich Wieland getting him an identity card to show he was an employee at a pharmaceutical company on the Rhine; being liberated by Americans in May 1945; getting married and contacting his mother in Holland; becoming a university professor in 1946; how his friend, Hans Heiman, arranged a position for him at Harvard; sailing on the Ernie Pyle from an UNRRA camp in Bremen, Germany to New York, NY; his Mellon fellowship at Harvard from 1947 to 1950; being a visiting professor in Japan; and how he considers himself a devout agnostic.

    Oral history interview with Frederick Wohl

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with John Wolff

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marion Wolff

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Renee Barr

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sonia Blickstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Candy Krasnostein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Margaret Bogler

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irving Bogun

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leslie Solomon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Cy Vaber

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Christine Jan Flack

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack S. Orick

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hy Asin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Shirley K.

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Kost

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Emanuel Mandel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Daly Burrell

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marion Rosen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eda Saks

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Michael Schofield

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mildred Steppa

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marshall Treado

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ella Tulin

    Oral History

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