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Oral history interview with Frida Herskovits

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1995.A.0550.1 | RG Number: RG-50.182.0001

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    Oral history interview with Frida Herskovits
    Transcript
    [AUDIO DISTORTED] and she is here
    to talk about her experiences.
    My name is Frida Herskovits.
    And I live in Clearbrook, in Monroe Township.
    I'm a Holocaust survivor.
    I was-- 1944, I lived in Czechoslovakia in a small town.
    We were a family with 10 children.
    And when the Germans came in, we had to pack a few things.
    And we didn't have no choice.
    We had to go with them.
    But they told us, we had too, otherwise they would kill us.
    They took us to a factory, a brick factory.
    We stayed there for a few weeks.
    And then they put us in trains, in cargo trains.
    A lot of people, we couldn't even breathe.
    We didn't have no food, no water.
    We were a few days till we reached Auschwitz.
    We came to Auschwitz.
    Then they put separate the children,
    separate the older people and separate the people who
    they felt that they could work.
    We didn't know that there was a crematorium.
    We didn't know that they're killing and burning people.
    So we went in a place where they had-- we had
    to take off all our clothes.
    And they shaved us.
    And we weren't used to that.
    We were naked.
    Men were walking around.
    They were-- they shaved us, even private parts of the body.
    We didn't have no choice.
    We couldn't do nothing.
    After that, when we were there, we heard screams.
    And somebody said, there is a crematorium.
    And the parents, they're burning.
    Until then, we didn't know nothing that something like this
    exists.
    After that, they took us to our camp.
    And there were bunk beds.
    And on one bed, 10 people.
    We didn't have place, like this, and one on top of the other.
    Every morning we had to get up and go to work.
    We were working field work.
    I was outside.
    Highways, we made highways.
    I was working with trucks.
    They gave us big trucks.
    We had to work with and make it small.
    Some people working on a train where the train goes on the--
    I don't know what it's called.
    And we have to fill up the rocks.
    And sometimes it went off the trucks.
    We have to put it back.
    And it was very difficult.
    We didn't have food.
    Maybe once a day, they gave us food, but very little.
    Just what they felt--
    I think a cow or a horse would fare much better
    like they did us.
    A lot of time in the middle of the night,
    they took us out from the bed and we had to go out in our rags
    and meet for hours for no reason.
    They felt like having fun.
    We went to work.
    They were on two sides, SS with guns and with dogs.
    Anybody who didn't obey, they took the dog and the dog
    tore apart the person.
    And we had to watch.
    One day, we went by a border.
    And that was-- there was a building we didn't know.
    It was a crematorium.
    And all the ashes and the people that they burned and went
    in the water because of the smell.
    We didn't know that either till we passed by.
    Later on, they didn't have enough gas,
    so they made like a swimming pool, a big--
    big-- what do you call that?
    Like a hole, a big one.
    And a lot of people fit in.
    They threw in the people.
    They put gasoline on them, and they burned them alive.
    And we had to listen to their screams.
    A lot of people came in to the trains.
    And they couldn't walk.
    So they took the people and threw them
    in a car, the open car, like we throw out sack potatoes.
    And that's the way they took them to--
    and they burned them.
    We worked in the snow.
    And we didn't have shoes, no coats.
    And it was very difficult.
    At the end of December, the Russian was close to Auschwitz.
    So they took all the people who were still alive
    and we had to walk without food, day and night.
    And in the cold, that's--
    Auschwitz is in Poland.
    And Poland is very cold--
    without a coat.
    So people were hungry and tired, so they couldn't walk.
    So the SS men shot the people.
    They were begging, please don't kill me.
    I want to live.
    They didn't care.
    They killed them, left them for the dogs
    on the side of the street.
    After that, a few who we were left,
    they put us in an open place.
    And it was cold.
    So in the day time, it's raining.
    And our clothes was bad.
    At night time, it was stiff because it was frozen.
    And they took us to another camp, Bergen-Belsen.
    That was even a worse camp because that
    wasn't a working camp.
    That was a death camp.
    As soon as we came in, when you walked on the street,
    people were dying.
    One would half dead.
    One was dying.
    One was falling down.
    And they put us in a building.
    It wasn't carpet.
    And it wasn't concrete.
    It was just soil and just a roof.
    And we didn't have enough place.
    We had to lay one on top of the other.
    And the same thing, people were sick.
    There was no medication, no doctor.
    Anybody was sick or he died or they killed him.
    We didn't have water.
    We didn't have food.
    So people died for hunger.
    And they were dirty because no water, no showers.
    We had one wish just once to have enough water and bread.
    I said, I don't care when I die.
    But that was my wish, just to have enough water and bread.
    And in the end--
    I will go back to Auschwitz.
    Auschwitz, one day, we were working on the field.
    And we heard shooting.
    So we figured maybe somebody come and will free us.
    And once we walked home, we saw 300 people.
    They shot them.
    They were trying to run away.
    There was underground people.
    And they gave them ammunition.
    So they cut the electric wire because we have all around
    in the camp electric wire.
    So they cut the wire.
    And they tried to run away because they knew that every--
    they worked in the crematorium.
    So every three months, they changed a new group.
    And the old group, they killed, they burned them.
    So they knew they don't have nothing to lose.
    But they caught all of them.
    And once they caught them, they showed us
    what they do to people who run away.
    So they put them down like goose,
    you put down when you kill them, in the line
    and we had to pass by and watch that.
    In the crematorium, the people who were working there,
    sometimes children came in before.
    And then they brought in the parents with a different group.
    The children have to burn their parents.
    Or sometimes, it was the opposite.
    The parents came first, and they had to burn the children.
    There was-- they didn't have--
    they were standing next to them, then the SS--
    they didn't have no choice.
    They took a lot of people, Dr. Mengele.
    And he took people in Auschwitz.
    He cut them open.
    He took off part of their organs from inside.
    And he let them bleed to death.
    He let them scream for pain.
    He wanted to see how long a person could survive.
    Nobody came to help.
    A whole year we were suffering, and nobody kind of took--
    one year until we got free.
    It was things that-- it's just unbelievable
    that a human being could do that to another human being.
    And most he did that to the Jewish religion.
    There were some that wasn't Jewish.
    But he had problem in his country.
    So he had somebody to blame.
    Somebody should be blamed.
    So he took the Jews.
    And he was taking Jews, Gypsies.
    Some Catholics he had, but not that many.
    And so he thinks that it's just--
    In Auschwitz, they had a death--
    not, Bergen-Belsen, the dead people, they hadn't--
    they didn't have enough people to pick them up
    because there were so many dead.
    They couldn't-- they didn't have a crematorium there,
    so they couldn't burn them.
    So they put them in a place, it was as high
    as apartment buildings, that many.
    Sometimes you could see a tape and the real pictures
    after they were freed--
    the British came in to Bergen-Belsen--
    how many dead people.
    There I think in the library you might get a tape.
    And it's certain things that I forgot to think,
    but it's just unbelievable that any human being--
    it doesn't matter religion--
    I think we should respect each other's religion.
    Everybody, our religion, it's wonderful to believe
    in religion.
    And I think everybody is equal, the same human being.
    Doesn't matter what religion we are.
    And it's very sad that something like this happened.
    And from 10 children, we left three.
    My youngest sister was seven years
    old when we came to Auschwitz.
    And my mother was 40 years old.
    They went straight in the oven, and they burned them--
    for no reason.
    We didn't hurt nobody.
    We didn't do nothing.
    We was a very good citizen.
    And we were living in peace.
    And it's very difficult. But that's what happened.
    So we have to be very careful and be alert
    that things like this should never happen again.
    I think-- I don't know if I remember everything else.
    But so far, that's what I remember.
    How much should I--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    OK, I'm just thinking I'm a little bit shaky.
    So--
    If--
    Yeah, there is something in Bergen-Belsen
    when my sister came.
    And she didn't even recognize me because I looked--
    I was there for a long time, so like skin and bones.
    I couldn't even walk.
    And the British came in.
    When the British wouldn't come in another day,
    we were all would be dead because they put poison--
    in the baked bread, they put poison.
    And they put explosives all around the camp
    because the camp was almost dead.
    And they wanted to destroy the whole camp.
    But they didn't have time because the British came in.
    And that was in April 15, 1945, when we got free.
    So a lot of people--
    very few who was left.
    OK, I think that in case anybody has any questions.
    OK.
    How old were you when you first went--
    I was 18.
    How old were you when you left?
    A year older, 19, because we were a year in the camp.
    How were you so lucky to survive the camp?
    I believe in miracles because I was in the biggest fire.
    I was standing.
    Bombs are falling.
    The earth was shaking.
    And people were dying all around me.
    It's just like you have a fire here
    and I stand in the middle and nothing touched me.
    I was working-- the steps, the concrete steps
    what you have by the houses.
    I used to carry that steps.
    There isn't any-- difficult, very difficult jobs I had.
    And we carried the steps.
    And when we couldn't--
    it was very heavy because concrete is very heavy.
    We did that.
    We worked by machine, the wheat.
    And you take down the wheat.
    And the machine takes out the wheat.
    I don't know exactly what it's called.
    I worked by that machine.
    They were standing.
    And we had to work fast.
    And they didn't care if we hungry or--
    that didn't bother them.
    A human being was nothing to them.
    Yes.
    Do remember your--
    Yes, I did.
    But I lived in Brooklyn.
    And people felt sorry.
    They said, ah poor thing, you went through that.
    So I carried like a sign on me.
    So I went to my doctor.
    I didn't have money.
    I came to this country, and I didn't-- and I said, doctor,
    I don't want to be a neighbor that's poor,
    that people should feel sorry for me.
    So I went, and I took it off.
    Yeah, I felt like I'm carrying around a sign, what I am
    and for everybody.
    How do they put on the number?
    It's with a needle.
    They did every point with--
    How did you get it off?
    They got-- I didn't have money for plastic surgery.
    So I just a regular doctor.
    And the doctor just cut off skin and pulled it together.
    Oh, sick.
    Yes.
    Did they ever try to kill you?
    I was just lucky.
    I don't know.
    To me, it's a miracle I'm alive because I
    was sleeping with typhus and all kind of contagious diseases.
    And nothing touched me.
    Yes.
    Out of your nine brothers and sisters, how many are left?
    Three.
    Me and a sister and a brother I have in Israel?
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    What happened if you couldn't pick up
    the concrete or something?
    They were hitting you.
    Or they could take the dog, and the dog tore apart the person.
    You wouldn't do that to an animal, to nobody.
    That's what I did.
    It seems like they were monsters.
    They weren't human beings.
    Yeah.
    We didn't-- Bergen-Belsen is a death camp.
    So we didn't get water.
    Water and a little piece of bread,
    we get once in three days, we got a little bit.
    In Auschwitz, we were working.
    We got once a day, but a little water and I
    don't know what they put in, garbage.
    Yes.
    In what started concentration camp that you were in?
    I was in Auschwitz.
    What started it?
    Why did they have it?
    I don't know.
    Hitler, he was--
    I think he was crazy.
    I don't know if he was normal.
    I don't know what-- but he had problems in Germany.
    So he couldn't tell the people that he caused problems.
    So he had to have somebody to blame.
    Like when somebody doesn't leave the house or any place,
    they're looking for somebody to blame.
    So he blamed the Jews.
    So for no reason.
    Yes.
    Did you see Hitler?
    Mengele-- I don't think so.
    I saw Mengele with other-- because every few weeks,
    we had to take off our clothes and stay outside.
    And they were telling people, a few Nazis, left, right.
    And who they didn't like, they put them
    straight in the crematory.
    And they do that every few weeks in Auschwitz.
    Were you [INAUDIBLE]?
    A [INAUDIBLE] camp?
    We were-- I mean, it was terrible,
    but we didn't have no choice.
    Even when we scared, there was nothing to do.
    They were all surrounding us.
    And we didn't have nothing to fight.
    We couldn't fight.
    It was too late.
    Now, when things would happen, I would never, ever go.
    I would fight.
    Because when somebody would do that,
    I would rather die on the spot, and I wouldn't go no place.
    I thought-- yes.
    Were you the only one in your family who
    went to the concentration camp?
    No.
    My sister and I were there and another--
    and all the rest of the family.
    They all were in concentration camp.
    So the two of us survived.
    My brother was in the army.
    Yes.
    Were you and your family separated [INAUDIBLE]?
    No.
    We was separated.
    As soon as we went down in the train in Auschwitz, Mengele,
    he made sure that he separated, because my mother had--
    my youngest sister was seven years old.
    So she went straight to the crematorium.
    And my youngest sister, they all went there.
    And then we were three sisters.
    So we told them that we want to be together.
    And once he knew that the sister,
    we didn't know that, especially he took us apart
    so we would be everybody separate.
    We didn't know that he would do that.
    Yes.
    When this is going on, did they make
    you go to, like, separate schools from--
    Jewish from the--
    No, no, no.
    We had regular school.
    We lived in a town with all together in school.
    We lived neighbors in peace.
    We were just-- when my mother used to go away, my neighbor--
    she wasn't Jewish--
    she left with the children.
    We were like family.
    It's a small town.
    No, we didn't have no problem.
    They just came in to nowhere.
    And we had to leave the house.
    We had to leave everything.
    Yes.
    Where did you go when you left the concentration camp?
    In the concentration camp, my sister had typhus.
    So I was in the hospital.
    I was OK.
    So I was working in the hospital with my-- helping my sister
    and helping the other people because they were--
    kind of help and helping the doctors--
    everything.
    We had a room.
    And there was a lot of patients.
    After that, I got sick.
    I got water in the lungs.
    So I got sick.
    And when my sister got better, I got sick.
    And from there I went to Sweden.
    And to Sweden, I lived till 1947.
    And in Sweden, we made papers to go to Cuba.
    But we really wanted to go to a Jewish land
    because we had enough.
    So we wanted to go to Israel.
    So we made legal papers because in Sweden you can leave.
    In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, we turned around.
    And we wanted to go to Israel.
    At that time, it was Palestine because the British was there.
    So the British saw us on the ocean.
    So they came with the ships.
    And we still didn't give up till they
    threw tear bombs on the ships.
    So we didn't-- because we were fighting, we were throwing--
    we learned that you don't give in so easy.
    And then they took us to Cyprus.
    I was a year in Cyprus.
    Cyprus was a military camp.
    And they put us in a in a bank--
    bunkers, a military camp.
    And then every month, a certain amount
    they allowed to go into Palestine.
    That was 1948, I went to Israel.
    Yes.
    When they took you there, what did they do?
    Just barge into your house?
    And did they tell you where they were taking you?
    No, no.
    What did they do?
    They just took us.
    And we had to follow and go where what they told us to go.
    We didn't-- we just think that we're going to camp.
    But nobody did think that they're going to kill us.
    We didn't know that.
    Just one second, this young lady.
    OK.
    Is is true that one time, they told
    that they were going to have like a shower
    and then turned the gas on?
    Yes, they did that in Auschwitz.
    First, the people, so they shouldn't panic,
    they shouldn't have problems, so they opened up.
    It was made like a shower.
    And instead of water, the gas came out.
    So they just fall down.
    And they were still half alive when they put them in the oven
    to burn them.
    Yes.
    How did you feel when they came and barged in your house
    or when they took you?
    It was like a shock.
    We didn't expect anything.
    We didn't know.
    They just came in, the Nazis.
    And we had to pack.
    And they gave us orders.
    And that's it.
    When they first came, did you know that they
    were going to [INAUDIBLE]?
    No, no.
    We just felt that they're going to take us
    to a camp, a working camp, and we'd be together with a family.
    No, we didn't know.
    Yes.
    You said before that you had to watch people die.
    Yes.
    How did you feel when you were watching them?
    It was sad.
    There was nothing nobody could do.
    Because, you know, they were from both sides with ammunition
    and with dogs.
    Yes.
    Did any of your friends that weren't Jews
    turn against you when they heard about this?
    Like they leave or something?
    Well-- I didn't understand.
    Did any of your friends that weren't Jews turn against you?
    No, not where I lived, no.
    No.
    We were living in peace.
    And we were friends.
    And we trust each other with the house, with little children,
    and everything.
    We were like a family because it was a small town.
    Yes.
    Do you know where your brother and sister is now?
    I have-- all the--
    one of my brother, somebody said he
    was working in a factory in about three days
    before he got free.
    They killed him.
    They bombed the factory.
    He got killed.
    And the rest, they killed all in Auschwitz.
    Now nobody would think of that.
    Yes.
    It's hard for you-- it must be hard for you to talk about.
    It's a little bit.
    It takes up a lot of things.
    Why do you-- even though it's been terrible for you,
    and yet you speak to groups.
    Why do you--
    I feel it's very important that the new generation should
    know what happened.
    And we never did think years ago that something
    like that could happen.
    So people should be aware that should never happen something
    like that again.
    Because a lot of time--
    I think people, even here in this country, a lot of people
    hate because this religion and this color and that color.
    That's wrong.
    People should respect for everybody for what he is
    and respect each other's religion and each other.
    It's wrong to do that.
    And people live with hate because they
    hate this, because this is this religion, that religion, that's
    wrong.
    People are miserable when they hate each other.
    It makes their life miserable.
    And it's not healthy.
    So much better the world would be
    if everybody would live in peace and not hate each other.
    Yes.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    I didn't-- where I was it wasn't so many Gypsy.
    But after the war, I knew a lot of that they were.
    But they weren't in the same camp where we were.
    But they-- I'm pretty sure they killed them
    just like they killed the rest of the people.
    Yes.
    When you were there, like did you think
    they were going to tell you?
    No.
    You know, after a while--
    first of all, they put something in the food
    when we were in Auschwitz.
    They have some kind of--
    I don't know what they put in.
    And I think that made us--
    We didn't know what day it is.
    We didn't know what date it is.
    We didn't know nothing.
    We just knew that we had to get up and go
    do things what they told us to.
    Yes.
    How did they know you were Jewish?
    By your last name?
    They knew-- in Europe, they knew every family who is Jewish.
    They knew who is Jewish and who is not Jewish.
    Couldn't you just change your last name or--
    No, no, no.
    There was papers, just like you have a birth certificate
    and you know exactly where you were born, what you are,
    what religion you were born.
    And even now that I suffer so much just because I'm Jewish,
    I'm even stronger.
    Somebody asked me, do you still believe in it?
    And I said, yes, even stronger because I suffered so much just
    for that--
    because I'm Jewish.
    I feel I have a very strong foundation.
    And when you build a house, you have the foundation strong.
    The human being is the same thing.
    When you grow up and you have a good foundation,
    that stays with you even when you get older.
    You don't lose them.
    Yes.
    Did you ever go back to your old house?
    No.
    My brother was there.
    We had a big house in a small town.
    It was a very nice house.
    Usually, the school-- the school moved there.
    A public school moved in in our house.
    And the teacher was living in our house.
    And my brother left.
    He didn't want to stay there.
    But the property, I think it's still-- we
    have a lot of property there.
    But I never went back.
    I would like to go back to Auschwitz
    because that's a cemetery.
    And all my family is there.
    People say, why would you go there?
    But it's a cemetery.
    There is all the ashes from my family.
    That's where-- I don't have a grave
    to go to my parents or my sister that they buried.
    They not buried no place.
    That's-- yes.
    When they burned you--
    I mean, when they burned your parents.
    Yes.
    How did you know that they were your parents' ashes?
    Because weren't all the ashes mixed?
    They're all together.
    But they're still in Auschwitz.
    All the ashes is in Auschwitz.
    They may be not in one place, but the wind blew them apart.
    But they still in that area.
    Yes.
    What did they do with the concentration camp?
    I would like very much to go back.
    I hope that one day I'm going to go back and see.
    Because to me, it's like I'm going to visit a cemetery.
    And one place I think they built on the crematorium,
    the nuns, some kind of church.
    Now, I felt it's not right because it's a cemetery.
    And when somebody is buried and somebody
    goes on the place where when people are buried
    and you put a house or a church or a synagogue, it's wrong.
    That's my opinion.
    I don't know.
    They actually started to use some of the buildings that
    were still--
    Yeah, and I didn't feel-- when I heard that, I didn't feel
    it was right.
    But that's just my opinion.
    Yeah.
    Yes.
    Why were Catholic schools [INAUDIBLE]?
    I don't know.
    I really-- there was--
    I'm not sure.
    I'm not sure why.
    Maybe some papers they had to do.
    I don't know for what reason.
    Or they looked for things.
    They were looking for certain things.
    Yes.
    I think that maybe they were hiding people?
    No, no.
    Some of them were.
    And some of them, even now, they came here to the Holocaust
    because they never forget people who did very nice things when
    they were hiding.
    Yes.
    How did you know-- when did you find out that your mother
    and your younger sister was--
    Not just them, almost my whole family.
    Yeah.
    When we went in there and people were
    saying stuff who you were working there before,
    and they said that there is a crematorium and the screams come
    from the crematorium.
    So at that time, but we weren't sure at that time.
    But later on we did.
    Yes.
    Why were Gypsies in the concentration camp?
    Because they didn't like them.
    They didn't do nothing.
    Yes.
    Did you wear a yellow star?
    No, I didn't have to wear a star because I came to Auschwitz
    and then they did the tattoo.
    So I didn't.
    But the Polish people, when they were in ghetto,
    they were wearing stars because they were walking around.
    They took us straight in a factory, in a brick factory.
    And we were there for a few weeks.
    Yes.
    Where's the scar from--
    This?
    Yeah.
    Because I didn't have money.
    I came here and I didn't have no money to pay.
    That's the scar?
    Yeah.
    That's the scar.
    Otherwise it would be a plastic surgery
    and it wouldn't look like that.
    But because I couldn't afford to pay for it,
    and the doctor felt that it bothered me so much.
    And he was very nice.
    And he was-- I wasn't even asleep.
    And I was [AUDIO OUT] sleeping.
    And the nurse asked the doctor, she [INAUDIBLE],
    that I could watch and it was bleeding.
    So the doctor said, compare what she went through,
    that's nothing.
    Yes.
    Are you from Poland?
    Or--
    No, I'm from Czechoslovakia.
    Oh, OK.
    Did anybody else have a question.
    OK.
    [APPLAUSE]
    Yes.
    OK, thank you--

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Ms. Frida Herskovits
    Date
    interview:  1992 May

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Herskovits, Frida.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a copy of the interview from Frida Herkovits in 1994.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:21:22
    This page:
    http:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/bookmarks​/irn512193

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    Transcript (English)

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