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Oral history interview with Moshe Kantorowitz

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1995.A.1271.62 | RG Number: RG-50.119.0062

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    Oral history interview with Moshe Kantorowitz
    Transcript
    --1983, and I am interviewing Moshe Kantorowicz
    at the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.
    And it's approximately 2 o'clock in the.
    Afternoon Mr. Kantorowicz what was your birth
    day, day of your birth?
    February the 6th, 1923.
    And where were you born?
    I was born in a small town in Eastern Poland
    on the eternally changing borders of Poland and Russia,
    A town by the name of Shereshow, which
    is some 85 kilometers east of the city of Brzesc,
    or Brest-Litovsk, on the road to somewhere
    between Brest-Litovsk and Pinsk.
    How big a city was this?
    In my time, it was a small town of some 5,000 inhabitants
    divided into, I would say, three equal groups,
    one-third, Jews another third Russian church
    or Greek Orthodox, and another third Catholics.
    As far as I can--
    as far as I know, as far as I could gather,
    the Jewish history of my hometown
    goes back 300 years, at least.
    In fact, in our--
    history of my town goes--
    the Jewish population some 100 or 150 years ago
    was much larger than it was, let's say, 50 years ago.
    There was a census taken in 1848 which had close to 4,000 Jews.
    I would say most likely that there
    must have been more Jews in my hometown
    than in all the United States at that time.
    But then, of course, that mass emigration
    took place in the late 19th century,
    and most of the Jews of my hometown
    moved to America, so to say.
    You have quite a famous name, Kantorowicz.
    There are some very famous doctors by that name.
    Are they your mishpocha?
    Surprisingly enough, I found out some four or five years ago
    in Israel that they do come from a small town, something
    like 30 kilometers from my hometown,
    by the name of Malech.
    And my grandfather comes from that same town.
    So the chances are that we must be somehow related.
    I did succeed in looking up the family tree, so to say.
    And thanks God there are records of it
    from my father's side, at least in Israel, dating back to 1845,
    which is very interesting.
    Was there a well-developed Jewish community
    in your hometown?
    Yes.
    We, in the mid-'20s, and in fact in 1925,
    there was a modern Hebrew school established.
    There were six synagogues, a ritual bath-- which is a--
    A mikvah?
    A mikvah.
    Of course, a cemetery.
    That goes without saying.
    In those years shortly before the war,
    there was what we used to call a [NON-ENGLISH],,
    which was a charitable loan--
    Free loan--
    Free loan-- right-- society.
    In fact, a little bank that belonged to the community.
    They had a Jewish library that was founded.
    The money was raised penny by penny
    from the members of our community.
    And volunteer work was done.
    Of course, in those days it was very
    popular to buy books, and young boys, boys--
    well, not my age, but a little bit older, used to buy them,
    because we were readers.
    That was the only entertainment that there was available,
    of course.
    So we used to read books.
    And it was very fashionable to brag
    about being able to read all the books in our library, which
    consisted of 800 books.
    And the boys of my age, before they were 14 or 15, did do it.
    Were there Zionist organizations?
    Yes, there were.
    In fact, there were both spectrums
    of the Zionistic movement.
    There were the leftists, like the Hashomer Hatzair,
    and there was that revisionistic Betar led by Jabotinsky--
    Jabotinsky.
    Jabotinsky's followers, right.
    Yes, there were.
    And contrary to the trend of Poland, which was--
    which most of the cities had a third, so to say,
    the [NON-ENGLISH],, which were considered as the Bund,
    which were--
    there was none in my hometown where-- so every young person
    was a Zionist.
    Let's put it this way.
    Yep.
    And did you had an opportunity to get schooling in your town?
    Yes, that was-- I would say it was
    the pride of our town, the Hebrew school that
    was founded in 1925.
    Had seven grades.
    And as, well, for 14-year-old boys, when we went to school,
    we used to take pride in being able to converse in the evening
    without using a single Jewish word.
    The trick was to try and converse
    fully and express oneself fully in Hebrew, which was--
    In fact, even now, when I go to Israel,
    the Israelis find it hard to believe
    that I'm not an Israeli.
    So I am bragging a little bit.
    So.
    [LAUGHS]
    You learned all the secular subjects too?
    Yes.
    Mathematics.
    Mathematics and geography.
    Science was in everything.
    Everything was taught in Hebrew, so that Hebrew was actually
    the language.
    In my hometown, I wanted to grow up speaking at least three
    or four languages.
    At home, we spoke Yiddish.
    In the street, we spoke a sort of White Russian,
    because it was, actually, geographically--
    well, the Russians claim, at least that it
    is part of White Russia.
    In school we were speaking Hebrew
    and we were taught in Hebrew.
    And in the offices, like in the government offices,
    we had to speak Polish.
    You had to know at least those languages.
    Those languages we had to know, right.
    And what sort of work did your father do?
    My father was a war invalid.
    He was Tsarist soldier and had lost
    two fingers of his right hand.
    So it was a privilege to--
    it was a sort of-- there were certain privileges that came
    with being a war invalid, and he had the permission to sell
    liquors--
    real liquor.
    We had a little liquor store in my hometown.
    And you had brothers, sisters.
    Yes, we were a family of five.
    That is, I had an older sister and a younger brother and two
    younger sisters.
    My parents got married in 1920.
    In 1921, my sister was born, and I was born in '23.
    In '29 my brother was born, my sister in '31,
    and a sister in '33.
    And they all continued going to Hebrew school.
    Mind you, we had some cheders.
    Familiar with the term?
    But it was-- we were sort of the--
    Elite.
    Elite.
    Elite.
    And we went to Hebrew school.
    And there were quite a few youngsters
    that do go to cheder.
    But in the last few years, it was in Poland compulsory
    to have a public education.
    It had recognized education.
    And those chadarim were not officially recognized
    as institutes of education.
    So they were forced to--
    a lot of the Jewish kids were forced to enter.
    If they couldn't afford it-- let's go back again.
    The Hebrew school was founded by the parents of these pupils.
    Our community was supporting.
    It was a public school.
    The government gave no subsidy whatever,
    while in the Polish school it was free education.
    So a lot of the children used to go to the Polish school
    in order to get the public education.
    They used to go to cheder in order
    to get a Jewish education.
    My sister was older than I was.
    After finishing, graduating from elementary Hebrew school
    in my hometown, went to Pruzhany,
    which is 80 kilometers away, where
    there was a Hebrew gymnasium, which is a high school.
    And she graduated-- finished four grades,
    which was the equivalent of a--
    well, the school had what's called an [NON-ENGLISH],,
    a small matura.
    Matura is the matriculation.
    She got it in 1939.
    I went to Brzesc, Brzesc nad Bugiem in Polish,
    to enter a trade school or an old trade school
    in Brest-Litovsk.
    What sort of trade did you--
    I have learned--
    --learn?
    --a locksmith.
    And I became-- in fact, I learned
    a bit of lathe operating.
    Lathe, uh-huh.
    And this sort of helped me in many ways to survive Auschwitz.
    When the war broke out in 1939, was your community
    in the Russian zone or the German zone?
    The war broke out on Friday morning in June and September,
    of course, the 1st.
    We had no government for about two weeks.
    The Polish government ran away, and that vacuum
    was eventually filled, to be exact,
    on the 17th of September.
    The Russian forces marched in town.
    The 18th-- I beg your pardon.
    They came into my hometown.
    And they remained until June the 1st, 1941.
    When the Russians marched in, of course,
    the Jews felt relieved, because it was suddenly
    the better of the-- the lesser of the two evils.
    And then again, we really did not realize that--
    what life was like in Russia.
    We sort of felt misled a bit.
    Being not exactly equal in Poland,
    we sort of felt as being the oppressed.
    And some, at least some people, I'm sure,
    were looking forward to be liberated by the Russians.
    The White Russian population sort of
    felt that their kinsmen are coming,
    and they certainly felt glad by the coming of the Russians.
    When the Russians came in, we were--
    my parents' home, my home, was one of the first, one
    of a dozen homes that were nationalized,
    or, rather, confiscated by the Russian government.
    Any house that was larger, had larger
    than 113 square meters was nationalized.
    Of course, there was no reimbursement of any sort.
    I mean, there was nothing.
    You didn't get anything for it.
    It wasn't something like you got the reimbursement of some sort.
    They just took it--
    took it away.
    They told us to move out, and we moved in with my grandparents,
    my father's parents.
    And we remained there until the very last day
    that the Russians left.
    I went back to Brest-Litovsk school, and after a while,
    because of our social background,
    I was thrown out of school.
    You were too capitalistic?
    Too capitalistic, yes.
    My father was a merchant, and my grandfather
    was-- his name was Kopel.
    My father's name was Itzik.
    I should have mentioned it.
    He is a Isaac.
    My grandfather's name was Kopel.
    We was the mayor of my hometown during the Polish regime.
    And of course, that branded him as a Polish lackey
    or whatever you would call it.
    And we were sort of blacklisted.
    And for this reason, I was thrown out.
    I was not allowed to come to Brest-Litovsk,
    which was written--
    well, a certain zone of 100 kilometers from the border.
    Brest-Litovsk was on the border, the Russian-German border.
    Were the Jews during the Russian occupation persecuted as such,
    as Jews, or was it on the basis of social--
    At that time, no.
    At that time we--
    in fact, we felt--
    we felt reasonably free as Jews.
    What I suddenly learned-- and I was only a boy of 16--
    I suddenly had to grow up to learn,
    to keep my mouth shut, which, even in the Polish--
    we'll call it democracy, but it wasn't exactly a democracy,
    I did not--
    I was still a minor, and I didn't have
    to be afraid to say anything.
    I wasn't listened to, but I didn't have
    to be afraid to say something.
    And when the Russians came in, I suddenly
    realized that you got to really keep quiet.
    In fact, my younger brother and sisters were told in school
    to tell the teacher anything that they heard at home, anti--
    that refer to anti-communistic or anti-Russian sentiments,
    whatever.
    Of course, the kids knew better.
    But to think that there were seven, or eight,
    or nine-year-old children, and we were told to literal squeal
    on their parents was in itself shocking.
    We realized that you have to learn,
    because in order to survive, as--
    well, reasonably a free person, by not--
    by keeping your mouth shut.
    Simple as this.
    Not to criticize the government or any of the members
    of the Communist Party and so on and so forth.
    Just stay clear of them.
    And I must say that the Jewish population
    did not, surprisingly did not, did not sign up.
    They put in motion a huge propaganda campaign
    for the Jewish children to join up with the Komsomol.
    The Komsomol is the Russian communist youth--
    Young communist.
    And I believe, if I recall correctly, only
    two Jewish girls signed up out of the whole town,
    while the non-Jewish population was much more
    willing to sign up to it.
    There wasn't--
    They also asked for volunteers to later
    be enlisted into the militia, which is the police.
    And there wasn't a single Jew--
    it was a local Jew, that is-- that belonged to-- that signed
    up to be a policeman, which is--
    I think it's complimentary.
    Of course, there was appeared right away
    the shortage of everything.
    That's usual, and the well-known and well-publicized way of life
    in Russia.
    But there was no hunger.
    I mean, there were-- the storekeepers
    had managed to hide their merchandise, their wares
    that they'd managed to trade and acquired
    among themselves and amongst the civilian-- what
    the population that the farmers who
    refused to join the kolkhozes, the collective farms.
    And they approached this-- there was
    a barter was very a very common affair in Russia.
    And that became a way of life until--
    some of course, there are a few kolkhozes around--
    not in my own town of course, but in some--
    in some villages, the Russians have
    succeeded of driving the farmers into a kolkhoz.
    But it wasn't-- I wouldn't call it a successful venture.
    In your area.
    In my area, yes.
    Most of the farmers still remained.
    What happened is that some of the richer farmers--
    and sadly, the Russians refer to them as kulaks;
    kulaks is a fist actually--
    were arrested and deported to Siberia,
    the same what happen to most of the former Polish employees
    of my hometown, like the members of the police force, members.
    Anybody who was employed in the civilian administration
    of my hometown during the Polish administration
    were deported to Siberia.
    There was even one Jewish family that
    was deported because the son was sort of at a minor function
    in the Polish government.
    My grandfather and my grandmother
    certainly would have been deported,
    but due to their advanced age, I think, was the only reason.
    They were in their mid-70s, if not more.
    And sort of they figured that it's really not worth it.
    So they remained.
    Did you have much contact--
    as a young man, you're 16 years old,
    you're growing up-- with the gentile population?
    Did you have gentile friends?
    Yes, I had a contract, but not as friends, I must say.
    After I finished four grades of Hebrew school,
    I am embarrassed to admit that even though I lived in Poland,
    my Polish as a language was very poor, because in Polish
    was only one hour a day in the Hebrew school.
    My father found it necessary to transfer me
    to the Polish school.
    And in return, I got a Hebrew teacher
    who used to come daily to my house to teach me Hebrew.
    There, our class consisted of 45 students.
    There are two Jewish boys-- myself,
    and one I'll mention his name, because he perished.
    I don't even know where.
    Eisenstein was his name, which is Lazar.
    And we had only two Jewish boys.
    I must admit that we were exposed to, quite often,
    antisemitic not only expressions or abuse, but even
    now and then a kick or a push or a shove or something like this.
    And somehow in the seventh grade,
    which was the graduation class, it eased up.
    I don't know the reason.
    That was in '37.
    Somehow we began to feel chummier.
    And even now, I'm trying to analyze
    what happened, what came up on those boys in my class,
    that somehow it ceased.
    The harassment ceased.
    And after this, when I used to see those boys,
    I used to say, hello.
    But we really never, never played together,
    or never-- there were a couple which we were closer.
    One-- I don't know if he's alive or what happened to him--
    had an exceptional talent for painting.
    And he used to come to my house, and I used to go to his.
    Sis was his name.
    It's not important.
    But the others, my friends, my immediate friends,
    were all Jewish boys.
    And when the Germans invaded Russia, in June 22, 1941,
    they occupied your city rather quickly?
    And the war started on a Sunday morning.
    They were warning us that there will be some military maneuvers
    of some sort around our city.
    That Saturday night, the lights did not go out in my hometown.
    Sunday morning, some people that traveled by horse and buggy
    to the nearest town, called Pruzhany, 80 kilometers away,
    and they were turning back.
    And within hours, we saw planes flying overhead.
    And then we took it for granted that they were Russian planes.
    I guess they were not.
    In the late afternoon, suddenly we
    have seen the Russians that came as the civil administration,
    that they have established their offices in my hometown,
    whatever they were, the--
    what do you call it-- the mayor and the others, the town
    functions and so on, and the police.
    They all gathered there, belongings,
    whatever they could, not too much, of course,
    and they got into a few trucks and they pulled away.
    And I must say that we suddenly felt so abandoned.
    The depression, I can still see it.
    We were so sure that the Russians couldn't stand,
    because when they came in, they came
    in with such a military might that we have never
    dreamed could exist.
    Their tanks could be counted by the thousands.
    And suddenly, within a few hours,
    they should run like this, leaving their belongings
    behind, actually.
    They just took whatever they could
    carry with them on their backs.
    And they'd left us alone, of course.
    Monday morning, they turned back for a couple of hours.
    They came into that headquarters of the Communist Party,
    and they opened up a safe.
    Took a blacksmith, in fact, a couple of blacksmiths
    to help them to break it up.
    And it seems like they couldn't open the safe.
    And they took whatever documents they needed.
    I don't know what.
    And they went away.
    And Tuesday morning, about 11 o'clock,
    the first German military units came into my hometown.
    This was on a Tuesday morning.
    Not only the Jewish population, but even
    the Christian population was afraid to--
    was afraid to venture into the street.
    They looked so forbidding, so strict,
    so we, as Jews, certainly feared very much their presence.
    They must have had-- they had precise maps of our hometown,
    because in many minutes, they put their military positions
    in the most strategic-- well, if you
    can call it strategic points in my hometown.
    And in the late afternoon, the army started marching in,
    and they marched for three continuous weeks, day
    and night.
    But the second day, as they marched in-- this is Tuesday.
    Wednesday, they rounded up some--
    I'll-- trying to be precise, 21 and 17--
    38 men.
    They took them out at random from houses
    or caught in the street.
    There were 17 Christians and 21 Jews.
    And they brought them in this town square,
    my town, which is shtetl, which was a famous [INAUDIBLE]
    shtetl.
    There was a city square and streets sort of--
    Radiating.
    --radiating in four directions from [INAUDIBLE]
    in this square.
    Our house was in the square.
    But we did not live in that house.
    We are still-- we remained in my grandparents' home.
    And they came into the square.
    And just behind our house, we-- our house
    was right next to a synagogue.
    And behind it, there used to be an old synagogue, which
    was the pride-- must have been, once, of the whole area.
    I, in my life, I've never seen a nicer one or a larger one
    even now.
    It was built, according to the minister of my hometown,
    by a Polish king whose wife was by the name of Bona.
    It was in the 16th century or something.
    Now the Russians in '39 and '40 destroyed that building.
    The building itself burned in the First World War.
    Our community didn't have enough money, couldn't raise, to--
    Replace it.
    Not replace it.
    The walls remained.
    The ceilings remained.
    Just the roof burned.
    And in our last landslide from this New York send money,
    and there wasn't enough even to fix it up.
    So that money went partially to building, in 1925,
    to the [INAUDIBLE] of that Hebrew school.
    But the Bolsheviks, when they came in in '39
    razed that building.
    And they used the brick.
    And interestingly, it had a local paper in Brest-Litovsk
    wrote that there was a brick factory in my hometown,
    Shereshow, who opened up, where they are producing
    20,000 brick a day.
    Those bricks were torn out of the walls
    of this huge synagogue.
    Now right in this triangle, in the back of our house,
    and in between that other synagogue,
    which I said was next door to us in the back,
    was that huge synagogue [INAUDIBLE],,
    the rubble of that synagogue.
    They dug a hole.
    And those 40 men dug the hole, and they were shot right there
    and buried.
    And they, of course, they couldn't really--
    they couldn't tell who is a Jew and who not,
    because in my hometown, we Jews were
    dressing like the Christian population there.
    We didn't grow beards until over--
    in older-- in advanced age, or the side payos.
    So the Germans couldn't really tell.
    And they told the others that those Jews that buried,
    the machine gunned ones, that you go around and tell the Jews
    to bring in all the weapons that you have.
    Otherwise, you'll all be killed.
    And they did.
    Of course, we had no weapons.
    It was just a [? label, ?] really, a German.
    Of course, we didn't sleep nights,
    fearing any moment that those Germans would come and round us
    up.
    But they did not.
    And that marched where my hometown
    was for three weeks eventually was ceased.
    And we went back to our home, in my home town--
    In the square.
    --the square.
    But we came in.
    And the Germans had established an Ortskommandantur
    like a police.
    Now our house was a very big one.
    They took the front part of the house,
    and they let us stay in the back part
    of the house, back section.
    That was the military government.
    There were half a dozen soldiers, and that was it.
    We just were told that we had to do, perform all kinds of work.
    There was no work to be done, really, because it
    was a small town, a small town.
    There was nothing there.
    So we used to go as gangs of laborers to go on the high road
    and fix the potholes that the German tanks and artilleries
    tore out.
    They used to take us to the woods
    to cut wood, which nobody needed, just to do something.
    But not far from us, we are-- there
    the famous forest, supposedly the largest forest
    in Central Europe, Bialowieza.
    The city of Bialowieza, which used
    to be known in the Tsarists' times, when the Tsarists used
    to come and do a lot of hunting, they'd
    put a beautiful palace there.
    When the Polish government established in 1918,
    Pilsudski and his friends used to come and do some hunting.
    And in 1938, the Polish government
    has invited even Goring.
    and Himmler, and Goebbels, all this elite, the German elite
    came to do hunting in that forest.
    Now in that Bialowieza, in that small town,
    the Germans had set, made a headquarters of the Gestapo
    and the gendarmerie.
    Those gendarmes used to come to my hometown
    every couple of days.
    Just at random they pick a house or two, ransack it,
    take whatever they wanted.
    Or sometimes they used to come and try and ring--
    round up all the Jewish population
    in the middle of the square, and make
    us crawl and roll in the dirt.
    I remember, the rabbi, they put under the pump
    and poured water over him.
    All kinds of--
    Humiliation.
    --humiliation, threat.
    And many times we used to manage to run away before they came.
    But my mother and the kids remained.
    I and my father used to--
    we were afraid more for the men than the women and children,
    for some reason.
    In fact, my second youngest sister, Sarah--
    we used to call her Sonja--
    who once stood in front of my mother.
    She says, Mommy, let me stay in front of you.
    When they'll shoot, they'll kill me.
    They won't kill you.
    She was, at that time it was '41.
    She was exactly 10 years of age.
    No, she was nine of age.
    She was, in '31, that's 40.
    Yeah, 10 years of age.
    That'll give you an idea of what it was like.
    And that continued till September the 24th at night.
    At the evening of September the 24th,
    we have heard a car pulling up in front of our house.
    This is only a-- still only a single-story house.
    And we heard-- we could hear even the footsteps.
    We could hear if somebody spoke loud over through the wall,
    where the Germans had their own Kommandatura.
    You could hear if somebody spoke loud.
    And we heard them telling the Germans
    that we want all the Jews out of here tomorrow
    morning, because [INAUDIBLE] the Germans
    called the Judenrat-- the Judenrat,
    like, established a few prominent Jewish members.
    And they rounded them up.
    And they told the Judenrat to go and tell all the Jews tomorrow
    that every able-bodied man from 16 to 50
    should show up tomorrow at 5:00 in the morning
    with a shovel or an ax.
    You're going to work.
    5:00 in the morning due to the order.
    We all able-bodied men.
    I was there too, and my father, of course.
    We all showed up in the city square.
    [SIGHS] Germans were all around us.
    They told us, go back to your homes,
    bring your women and children.
    Tell them to take food for two days,
    and only take what you can carry with you.
    We went back to our homes.
    We took whatever we could, a knapsack, a suitcase.
    We sort of expect that it won't come--
    we coming back home, so I put on two suits.
    And it was September the 25th.
    It was still fairly warm.
    I took a heavy winter coat.
    I put on.
    And when we came, they rounded us up again, and they told--
    they took the men apart, and they marched us out,
    out of the square.
    And at the corner, they said to drop all the shovels or all
    the axes.
    They took about 10 men.
    They told them to keep the shovels.
    And we marched out.
    And they left behind the women and children.
    And we marched right through the city,
    which was the main street, which was the Jewish street.
    And the end of it was the Christians,
    the farmers lived out there.
    They coming out.
    Even a Christian didn't dare look in the window.
    It was such a depressing moment.
    The fear was hanging everywhere.
    And they marched us all the day.
    And that day was a warm, very warm day.
    And we perspired an awful lot.
    And a lot of men couldn't--
    they were men over the age of 50, even, they couldn't march.
    There were a few men that were lame, or crippled,
    or something, just by birth or something.
    They were picked out, the first ones that are shot.
    As they were picked out, we were told to sit down.
    And those men that carried-- they determined
    to carry shovels, were told to dig a hole, and we buried them.
    That continued all day.
    By early afternoon, we passed the town of Pruzhany.
    It was 80 kilometers.
    And we stopped there.
    And my father had a sister, a married sister, and a sister
    and a married brother there.
    But we were not permitted to talk to them.
    We were just resting there for a little while.
    And we marched on farther.
    With later in the afternoon, trucks passed us by.
    We were not supposed to-- we were
    told to sit down and not to look back.
    But we heard the women and children
    screaming from the buses.
    We knew they recognized us.
    And they were taken farther down the road.
    That continued all day until about 7:00 in the evening.
    What happened is that those people that were digging
    the graves were very tired.
    While we were resting-- while they were digging,
    we were resting.
    So what they did is once they told
    them to run back in the line, they used to drop the shovels.
    And somebody else was told to pick up the shovel.
    Just about 7:00 in the afternoon-- it was maybe 6:30.
    I don't know.
    It was still daylight.
    Somebody dropped a shovel right in front of me,
    and a German told me to pick it up.
    And I carried the shovel, of course.
    And they marched us into a farm unit by itself.
    It wasn't a village.
    Just a single farm in the field.
    And they took six of us-- not the whole 10--
    and they told us to dig a grave.
    And I didn't hear any shooting.
    And I was wondering, what are they digging the grave for.
    And for some reason, sort of, that the Germans all around us.
    And it was hot.
    I was wearing two suits and the heavy coat.
    And I could feel the perspiration going right
    through my coat.
    [AUDIO OUT]
    --the Germans lined out about a half a mile ahead of us.
    And they told us to run.
    And of course the blows kept coming all the time.
    Whoever fell, you used to put them aside
    and they used to shoot them.
    Or somebody used to get a blow, and it started bleeding,
    so they used to go through the lines
    and see if somebody is bleeding.
    Used to pick them out and they used to shoot them.
    And he was, as I said, he was a handsome, strong, very
    strong fellow.
    And he had got a blow right on the side of his head.
    And the side was bleeding.
    So the German waved him out and says, OK, you go over there.
    Like [INAUDIBLE] the bleeding and head bleeding.
    But he wasn't about to give up.
    And it was-- we were right in the middle of, like, fields
    all around the road.
    Instead of running over there, I started running by the side.
    And I start running away.
    The German raised the rifle and shot and missed.
    And he kept on running.
    Of course, a few Germans joined him up.
    They start firing.
    And within a few seconds, a dozen Germans kept firing after
    him, and we all sort of-- we are not supposed to look,
    but couldn't.
    They were too busy firing at him.
    So we looked around.
    I saw him fall.
    The Germans put their rifles down.
    I remember they put their rifles down.
    And he jump up--
    And run again.
    --and run again.
    And he was running in the direction of the forest.
    And the forest was no more than half a mile
    away, or maybe a kilometer away.
    They started firing again, and he fell again.
    And that, did it for three times he fooled them.
    And eventually he run into the forest.
    And this I saw.
    The [INAUDIBLE] told you before we started, and it was true.
    If somebody ran away, was shot 25 men.
    I missed one thing.
    As we were running, I was thinking about my father.
    I wasn't concerned about myself.
    I was only 18 years of age.
    I could run.
    But my father was already a man of 48.
    49, just about.
    48, 49.
    And I was concerned about him.
    As we were running, I saw people stumbling one
    over the other like a pile of people sort of.
    And it must have been a feeling I had.
    And as I came towards the group, I looked down.
    And sure enough, my father was just about on the very bottom.
    I don't know where I got that strength.
    I just stopped, and pushed everybody aside,
    and grabbed my father, took his arm over my shoulder
    and I ran with him.
    And as I ran, of course, I couldn't avoid the blows.
    And I took it as a blow in the side of my head.
    But it wasn't bad enough.
    I didn't bleed.
    And as we sit, I could hear the Germans coming closer to us.
    They were picking 25 men from-- starting from the back.
    And I was afraid.
    They were not-- I must--
    I say this much.
    They were not picking young people.
    They were picking the older ones.
    And I was very much afraid that they'll pick my father.
    Well, they had their norm of 25 before they
    got to me, to my father.
    They told us to dig the graves, to dig a grave.
    And they put five in.
    They shot them.
    And told five to lie alive on the five, shot again.
    And that's how they filled up 25 bodies.
    As they finished this job, the officer
    speaks up, says, Judenrat, like this, the elderly to come out.
    And my father says to me, well, now
    they're going to finish up the Judenrats too.
    The few men came out, of course, petrified.
    Didn't know what's going to be.
    He says, which of you can read a map?
    There was-- one of them was a doctor.
    The doctor says, I can.
    He says, OK.
    Look, he says, you are--
    I don't know exactly, but we could hear him.
    And he was certainly talking in a low voice, says,
    you are here.
    This is the town of Antopol, which is only 7,
    8 kilometers away.
    You go there, and you'll find your women and children.
    And would you believe it, he shook hands with a Jew,
    with the doctor.
    As he said it, there was one man.
    A young man.
    I know his first name was Moche.
    I don't remember his second name.
    He fainted.
    And as a farmer drove by with a wagon, he stopped the farmer.
    He says, you take this man, turn around,
    and take this men to Antopol.
    If not, you're going to be shot.
    The paradox, it is so hard to imagine.
    It is so hard to understand what we went through,
    what's happening to us.
    The men, sure enough, turned around in a wagon,
    and then took us in Antopol.
    And we started walking out by ourselves.
    And my father looked back.
    He says, watch out, they'll put the machine guns
    and they'll opened fire.
    They didn't.
    They had bicycles.
    We, like the younger boys of our group, helped carry those--
    didn't ride the bicycle, but just pushed those bicycle
    for them.
    They took the bicycles, sat on the bicycles, and pedaled away.
    And we came.
    It was dark already.
    It must have been late.
    It was about 10 o'clock till we got to the city of Antopol.
    There was fear in the town.
    Nobody was allowed in the dark.
    So we got into a farmer's barn.
    And we hidden there with the morning.
    We came out in the street.
    We started looking for Jewish [INAUDIBLE]..
    Of course, it could recognize the farmers also, most of it
    straw and shattered roofs.
    We came to Jewish homes and we asked about the Jews.
    They said, don't ask.
    There were Germans here yesterday,
    and they took 200 men away from here.
    And everybody was petrified.
    But they knew that they brought from my hometown,
    from Shereshow, women and children.
    And there were two synagogues, one next to the other.
    He says, you go there and you'll find your families.
    Sure enough, they came into our-- families, my mother
    and my sister and my brother were there.
    Of course, 100 men exactly were shot in these two days.
    You can imagine the wives and the children of those men,
    mostly married fathers, husbands were shot,
    that the reunions, or rather, the lack of reunions.
    Within half an hour we were told,
    the local police, well, they called the Ukrainian police,
    came.
    And they said, there's no room for you here.
    Go on farther east.
    We didn't get a chance to rest up.
    We didn't get a chance to have a meal or anything.
    And we just driven on farther.
    It was a warm day again, and we were thirsty.
    And the farmers were-- not the farmers.
    Each farmer-- the farmers were along the road,
    like all the way.
    And the farmers would not permit us to touch their wells.
    The police went ahead and told them
    not to let the Jews get any water.
    Got to keep in mind, there were infants and children
    and babies and everything else, and old people.
    And the whole town of 1,500 souls was marching on the road
    without food, without water.
    And there wasn't anybody who could help.
    But after we passed about 10 or 12 kilometers,
    the population began to let us at least get water.
    Somehow, the police did not go any farther.
    They just went so far.
    They wanted to make sure that we keep on going.
    And at least we could get enough water.
    That night the population spent under an open sky.
    We just sat all night.
    And the following day we just picked up again and went.
    And there is a town called Drohiczyn Poleski,
    which is past Antopol, east towards Pinsk.
    We came into Poland.
    I must say to the population, first of all,
    the population did not suffer yet from the Germans.
    It seems there was a--
    the Russian word for it is pop, which
    is a Greek Orthodox priest.
    Patriarch.
    Patriarch, right.
    And he was a very nice man.
    And he intervened on behalf of the Jewish population.
    And the Germans have not--
    until then, have not touched them.
    And they, out of compassion, of course, and out of whatever
    the reason, they have taken us in.
    Every family in the town took in a family of my hometown.
    And I'm sorry that I don't even remember
    the name of the family that took us in and make us comfortable.
    And we stayed there just for Erev Rosh ha-Shanah.
    And we stayed there for Rosh ha-Shanah.
    And we stayed for the [NON-ENGLISH] of Sukkot.
    Now some 18 or 20 kilometers north of the region, Poleski,
    there's a town called Chomsk.
    And there are towns that go parallel to the Drohiczyn
    Poleski to Yanov and Pinsk.
    Those towns, Chomsk, Motele, and [NON-ENGLISH] go parallel some
    kilometers north of this to due east.
    Motele is the birthplace of Weizmann, the first president
    of Israel, Chaim Weizmann.
    In Chomsk, the Jewish population was slaughtered already
    three months earlier.
    There wasn't a single Jew.
    The population was something like my hometown.
    We are told that Jews can go there.
    There is the empty Jewish homes.
    And there are some gardens where there are still the potatoes
    that the Jews have left.
    And we can come there and stay there
    at least for the time being.
    And something like 80 families from my hometown,
    from Shereshow, that were in Drohiczyn, were picked up
    and we came to Chomsk.
    And we picked a Jewish home.
    How can one describe to walk into a dead town?
    The non-Jewish population was there.
    They looked at us like one looks at a cat or a dog,
    or even less than this, because some people have compassion.
    There was no compassion.
    There was such an indifference.
    I don't know.
    You can't-- you can't describe it.
    Something like you say, well, OK, hang around for a while.
    It's only a matter of days.
    And it all began, too.
    We came into that house.
    There was no furniture.
    All there was is an old building in the back full with wood
    that the men, the family, at the head of their family,
    they must have prepared for the winter.
    And there was a garden in the back.
    And sure enough, there were potatoes in the garden.
    Everything else was already taken away.
    Like the non-Jewish population must have taken it away.
    There was some hay in the stable in the back.
    So we took the hay, and we spread on that one room
    in the floor, and that was our bed we all slept on.
    And we had to-- all we had with us is just the clothing
    that we had on our backs.
    We stayed in Chomsk eating potatoes three times a day.
    The difference of the menu was in the morning
    it was potatoes with peels.
    For lunch, it was potato soup.
    At night, it was plain, dried potatoes.
    Or the men used to change around in circles.
    We did not know from day to day, in the mornings
    we were all of us up and listening for a sound,
    if the Germans are not surrounding
    again now in the area, so we should try and run
    or something.
    We were expecting the town of Pruzhany, which was the larger
    town next to my hometown, Shereshow, 18 kilometers away,
    where my father had his brother and sister married
    to be driven out to.
    But we heard that instead the Germans
    have made a Judenstadt, a Jewish city, a complete city.
    They have, in fact, driven out certain streets cleared out
    of Christians.
    And they have taken in Jews from the surrounding
    towns of Bialowieza.
    I mentioned about this forest's name.
    Tuisi-- sorry-- Bialowieza.
    And [NON-ENGLISH] was a large wood industrial center.
    Bereza, Kamenets Litovsk, and a few more.
    And they brought over 5,000 Jews from Bialystok
    in that ghetto Pruzhany.
    And it seems that Pruzhany was supposed
    to be a permanent place of residence,
    a sort of a permanent ghetto.
    And we started talking about going to Pruzhany,
    seeing it's closer to home, whatever it meant,
    and that we have at least somebody there.
    And in order to make sure, my father and I
    set out, first of all, to see what the situation is Pruzhany,
    what people are saying.
    Now a Jew was not allowed to be anywhere
    but in the place of his habitat.
    For this matter of us, it was Chomsk or anywhere else.
    To go out of the town, or to be caught on the road
    was a crime punishable by death.
    But we decided to go.
    There was no future, because we realized
    that there isn't enough potatoes even
    for us to survive the winter.
    And there was nothing to do.
    There was no work.
    There was nothing, really, no future.
    So my father and I set out.
    We left behind our mother, my mother, all my three sisters,
    and my brother.
    We went.
    We came.
    We had to go through a small town, Malech,
    where my grandfather comes from, my grandfather of my father's
    side.
    And my father had the two cousins there,
    because this was very--
    Family home.
    Family home, right.
    And the one-- their name was Nisselbaum,
    because it was a sister, like cousins.
    And he was, for the Polish government,
    he was the orderly of that small town of Malech.
    And he remained in good terms with the chief of police.
    The chief of police ran away in '39 when the Bolsheviks came,
    but in '41 came back.
    And we came back, the chief of police
    of the town under the German rule.
    But they remained on good terms with my father's cousin,
    that Nisselbaum, Isaiah Nisselbaum.
    We came to that town two days later.
    We marched through.
    And of course, having a cousin there, we--
    my father said, we'll stay here overnight.
    And at night, in my father's cousin's home, to visit him
    came the chief of police, who, of course, wasn't a Jew.
    He was a gentile.
    And he introduces us, the chief of police's chief.
    This is my cousin, Kantorowicz [PERSONAL NAME],,
    and he tells him the story.
    Fine.
    Anyway, in the morning we set out.
    And we had to cross.
    Now the Germans have somehow, that Malech,
    and all the southern parts in the region,
    and Antopol cities we came, now included
    into Ukraine, the northern, east, of us, like Pruzhany,
    my hometown.
    They put it into East Prussia.
    So there was a kind of a border.
    Now that's the border-- the border line was a railway
    track.
    It's a lot to tell.
    We ran into a house on the border,
    and they had a lot of women, gentlemen wanted us out.
    And there was a German right in front of the house
    just passing by.
    And a young woman of no more than 20 or 22
    had a fight with the mother.
    She said, no, she says, they are not
    going to them out because they're going to be shot.
    Stay in.
    They are both fighting, and the woman is screaming,
    and the other German just passing
    by in front of the house.
    Anyway, we went on.
    I don't know what miracles happened.
    We had no choice.
    The woman was going to scream.
    We walked out behind that German, no more than 10 yards.
    He was no more than 10 yards ahead of us.
    He never turned back.
    We went up from the side streets,
    and we went straight through the railway tracks.
    Just sure a miracle.
    Anyway, we came to the ghetto, Pruzhany
    and went to my other brother and sister.
    And well, they said, look, there's no future for you
    there.
    Whatever it will be with us will be with you too coming.
    So we stayed in Pruzhany a few days, and we started on our way
    back.
    We started our way back.
    We came back to Malech.
    My father had a distant relative there.
    I don't-- it was a baker.
    And for some reason, we decided to stay there overnight.
    As [INAUDIBLE] not more than 5:00 in the morning,
    or maybe before this, we suddenly
    hear shouts and firing.
    We jumped out.
    And while there, we saw that the Jewish population
    running back and forth.
    The Germans have surrounded the town.
    We already knew what to expect.
    There was no time to [INAUDIBLE]..
    We got this fast, and we ran out.
    You can see now the rabbi of the town running
    no more than 50 yards or 75 yards ahead of us
    with somebody else.
    And I remember I saw one which I knew.
    Her name was Goldberg.
    And she run-- she was no more than 100 yards
    to the right ahead of us.
    And I can see her now.
    She was shot, got a bullet.
    And she went.
    We had not only the Germans but the local police
    fired at everyone who tried to run away.
    We did not get hit.
    We run.
    And we came late in the afternoon.
    I remember, we got there.
    And we saw a farm.
    And we got behind the farm.
    There was a well.
    And we started drinking the water.
    And I noticed two Germans walking on the road.
    And I didn't want to tell my father.
    I didn't want to scare him.
    I didn't want him to see the Germans.
    So I stuck my head in the pail of water
    and I pretended I'm drinking.
    [INAUDIBLE] how much do you drink?
    Will you stop?
    Anyway, after I realized the Germans already have passed it,
    I stop drinking.
    I tell my father, you see.
    And we walked out.
    And we came to the village.
    I remember the village was Minki.
    The name of the village was Minki.
    We came in there.
    And we asked the local population there,
    do you know anything what happened in Malech?
    And they said, we don't-- we know only that the Germans are
    there, and they are killing.
    We don't know what.
    Anyway, we waited a couple of hours.
    And some of the local people went out to find out.
    And they came back.
    And we went to the elderly of the village.
    He says, look, he says, they are killing some of us people
    and some of you, but mostly you.
    Some of us people is they are already robbing,
    already breaking the Jewish shops and taking.
    So the Germans were shooting at them too.
    They gave us permission to stay in that village overnight,
    which we did.
    And in the morning, we set out, back to Chomsk,
    where my mother and sisters and brothers were there.
    As we approach about--
    in the late afternoon the following day,
    they approach Chomsk, 5 kilometers, a few children
    run out from a house on the road and say, hey, Jews,
    why are you going to Chomsk for?
    The Germans are there.
    They've killed everybody.
    My God, what do you do?
    I mean, in those days you don't take things-- you take them
    for-- yeah, you're running from Malech
    and here you were coming to Chomsk.
    They tell you that-- my mother is
    there, my sisters, my brother.
    5 kilometers from the village, from town,
    they tell me that the Germans, they are killing everybody.
    We start to think in a--
    we see for a distance there are farmers' wagons coming along,
    like a horse and buggy coming.
    And a distinguished-looking elderly man sits in there.
    And he says, gentlemen, he called us gentlemen, not, hey,
    Jews.
    Where are you going to stay?
    Look, we don't know where we are going.
    We are from Shereshow.
    Tell him the story.
    We are going to Chomsk.
    And there is these young people tell us
    that there is a slaughter taking place right now.
    And he says, no he says, I am an elderly of that village way
    back.
    He says, I would have known.
    Nothing is taking place there.
    He said, don't worry.
    You get in the wagon and come with me to Chomsk.
    Don't be afraid.
    Nothing will happen to you.
    We got in the wagon.
    And he turned out to be such a nice man.
    And so much so much sympathy.
    An elderly man he must have been, an elderly.
    He was my age, 60.
    We came in Chomsk.
    And sure, there was nothing.
    The kids just [INAUDIBLE] Jews.
    We came there, and we stayed.
    My father says, well, let us finish the potatoes,
    because there was no ration to get in Pruzhany, either.
    We didn't know what to expect there.
    We stayed till the 21st of December in '41.
    We waited.
    It was cold and winter and snow.
    Now that was in '41.
    My youngest sister was then eight years of age.
    [INAUDIBLE] eight years.
    The second one was 10, and my brother
    was 12, and my older sister was [INAUDIBLE]..
    And they set out on the road with no permit--
    Jews are being caught on the road, they are killed--
    in the snow, in the storm, walking with the clothes
    that we had on our back.
    Nothing.
    Absolutely nothing to our name.
    Not even food.
    Nothing.
    And we walked.
    And we used to come into the houses along on the road
    on the farms to warm up.
    And the farmers kept begging my mother,
    leave those kids with us?
    Why are you taking them?
    You're going to Pruzhany.
    You know what's going to be there.
    Sooner or later you're the Germans
    are going to come and kill them too.
    Let them-- they will live, at least.
    They'll be our kids.
    Everyone said, what do you do, my mother says.
    What shall I do?
    How can you leave kids behind knowing
    you'll never see them again?
    We wouldn't leave them.
    Of course, my mother wouldn't.
    And I don't blame her.
    I don't think I would.
    And we came.
    One day, we slept in a farmhouse.
    The second day we came to Malech, the same town which
    we ran on the way out there.
    We come into the town.
    We had no choice.
    You took-- either you'll make it to Pruzhany
    or you'll be shot on the road.
    There's just no place.
    It's cold, winter, with kids.
    The police stops us.
    Jews, good.
    That's exactly what they were waiting for, to take us
    in the police station.
    From the police station, of course,
    we were very much afraid.
    Of course, we knew it's there.
    We walk in there.
    The chief of police [INAUDIBLE].
    Oh, he says, Missis Pani Kantorowicz,
    Mister Kantorowicz.
    He shakes hands with my father, the policeman
    thought he was dead.
    He couldn't get over it so suddenly.
    My father says, look, I want to go.
    I'm going to Pruzhany.
    And I would like to stay here overnight.
    Oh, no trouble at all.
    They put us in two homes of the local people.
    One we knew from before, and one of stranger
    with the police chief.
    He says, keep them.
    So they kept us.
    In the morning even they give us breakfast.
    On that day, in the late afternoon,
    we crossed that border, that railway track.
    And in the same day, in the late afternoon, in the winter,
    in the cold, we managed to smuggle in to ghetto Pruzhany.
    Came in Pruzhany, and we went to the Judenrat.
    We were assigned living quarters, one room.
    And we shared a kitchen with another family
    from Bialystok, with other refugees.
    Then I had to go to work every day.
    We used to get a certain ration.
    I'm not going to say it was comfortable,
    but we were not starving.
    The family was generous, of course, to us too.
    The winter of-- we came Christmas Eve
    to the ghetto Pruzhany.
    I started going to work.
    At work, there was no pay for it.
    But we had to, everybody needed to go out to the ghetto.
    We went to work.
    And I remember in the early summer they took us--
    I'm trying to remember which [INAUDIBLE]..
    Just early summer, they took us.
    The Russians have left behind, unexploded,
    thousands of thousands of bombs some 8 or 10 kilometers away
    from Pruzhany.
    We used to go to work there and collect those bombs.
    And the German Air Force men, we used to blow it up.
    And then I got a job in the [INAUDIBLE] in Pruzhany.
    There are six of us.
    The job was to peel potatoes, chop wood, and pump water
    into the kitchen continuous all day long.
    We used to get whatever the soldiers did not eat.
    So sometimes it used to be a filling meal.
    It was good.
    Whatever was leftover.
    We used to manage to get some vegetables to take
    in the ghetto.
    Sometimes managed to get some wood.
    At least wood we could take in a knapsack
    that we were allowed to carry.
    If the police at the entrance to the ghetto
    didn't take it away from us.
    It was a help.
    In my work, even though it was without pay,
    it was this much reward that I used
    to manage sometimes to bring in even a loaf of bread.
    Surprisingly enough, I might--
    I'll admit that those Germans, the [GERMAN],,
    the soldiers there, the Wehrmacht,
    if they steal a loaf of bread or sometimes--
    anything they didn't really need,
    they used to throw it our way.
    The Germans used to get us salt cod sometimes.
    They used to soak it in water and then cook it.
    And they didn't eat it.
    So we did-- let us take this into the ghetto.
    And it helped somehow.
    There were still some towns left around Pruzhany.
    There was a little railway station 12 kilometers away
    by the name of [NON-ENGLISH].
    There were other towns.
    But slowly, but surely, those towns
    were annihilated one by one.
    We eventually realized that we have remained
    in our land, that region that was so nice to us
    when we first came from Antopol, and saw to it,
    that we should have a place where to go to,
    it was divided into two ghettos.
    That was the German policy, of ghetto A and B.
    And then ghetto B used to be liquidated first,
    and the ghetto A afterwards.
    I don't know if--
    I don't want should go into the whole story of the life
    of the ghetto itself, that--
    but I'll say this much.
    There was a lot of bitter feelings of--
    expressed by many communities about the Judenrat
    in their ghettos.
    I for one have only praise, as far
    as the ghetto Pruzhany and the Judenrat of Pruzhany goes.
    If at all, if it ever was possible to save a Jew,
    those members of the Judenrat in Pruzhany, they are best,
    they done as best to save a single life.
    There was a time that they had to send out
    500 members of the ghetto just to be for an exercise.
    The Germans wanted to, I suppose,
    to take us somewhere, or shoot or whatever.
    For three continuous days, they attempted, and helped,
    and eventually succeeded in bribing the Germans.
    And those 500 Jews were never--
    have never left that ghetto.
    And the ghetto as such, except for a few exceptional events,
    exceptional facts that some Jews were caught smuggling
    individuals, or some of his former non-Jewish
    or even maybe a Jewish neighbor had a grudge against somebody,
    and brought it to the attention of the Germans,
    claiming that he's a communist, or supports communists,
    or something like this, there were no executions,
    no mass executions of any sort in that ghetto
    until the very end.
    But before I go to the very end, I
    would also like to mention that there were-- we were
    in the forests of White Russia.
    And there were a lot of partisans.
    And the Jews in ghetto made contact
    with those partisans and some organizing groups,
    and they went into the forests.
    Their big job was, of course, to procure arms.
    We used to go and chop wood in a former--
    near a former Russian airbase that the Russians
    had built in 1939 and '40.
    There were a lot of magazines.
    Some of the magazines held weapons.
    Some of the magazines held parts of machinery and everything
    else.
    Those weapons were collected after the Russian army
    withdrew, and they left it on the battlefields or whatever.
    Some of it were intact.
    Some of them had broken stocks.
    We tried to get it out, and we organized a group, the group,
    the six of us that worked there belonged to that group,
    that eventually had to--
    it was our task to get those weapons out.
    And we did manage to get them out through the magazine
    and hid them in the lumber down there on the--
    which is the lumber.
    There is a man who is still alive
    who worked for the mayor of the city of Pruzhany,
    not the Jewish part of the ghetto, but the outside part,
    who was--
    used to-- the Burgermeister was a German, a member of the--
    Volksdeutsche?
    No, no.
    He was a real German from Germany.
    And he sort of had the job with him.
    He got from him a permit to get some wood
    exactly where we were working.
    A sled was made.
    And I want to mention those names.
    A sled was made by a name called Herschel Morawski, who
    is alive now in New York--
    he retired to Florida--
    with a double bottom.
    He came to us.
    And the name of the man to pull that sled
    was a Hermann, Shmuel Hermann.
    I mention those names because I think
    they deserve to be mentioned.
    The Shmuel Hermann came to us.
    The German that walked with him out of the ghetto
    went in to speak to the Germans inside the watch
    house, the guard house.
    We opened up the bottom.
    We pulled rifles in, covered it, put timber on it.
    He harnessed himself into the sled,
    and with that German, went to the gate of the ghetto.
    Of course, if this German came with a Jew,
    the Germans would not-- the other, the guard of that ghetto
    would not dare to look in the sled.
    And they let him in.
    Now there was a man in the ghetto Pruzhany
    who came from Bialystok.
    He was a carpenter.
    I'm sorry, I don't know his name.
    He made the stocks for the rifles.
    And the group managed to get out.
    I got to go back a second.
    On the 27th of January 1943, we, the group that were trying
    to go out of the ghetto, trying to procure the weapons,
    had a meeting in Pruzhany on [NON-ENGLISH] Street.
    The Judenrat was then in the house
    of my uncle, Leibel Pinski.
    We had the meeting right across the street.
    And it was after 8:00--
    after 8:00 at night.
    We were not allowed to work in the ghetto after 8:00.
    And as we-- the meeting finished already.
    It was after 8:00.
    And as we were going out of the house, in the back of the yard,
    we heard a car pull up in front of the ghetto.
    And I remember the words I had--
    a German said, [GERMAN].
    Keep watch.
    And within a minute or two we heard shots.
    We found out later that, as the Germans, whoever
    they were, marched and walked into the ghetto,
    they found two Jewish partisans speaking
    to the members of the Judenrat.
    Precisely there are different conflicting stories.
    Some say that the Judenrat were talking
    to them because they had connections with the partisans.
    Some say they came to ask the Judenrat for supplies.
    Whatever it happened, those partisans run away.
    But the Germans opened fire, and they killed the guard,
    which was not a guard.
    It was a watchman, actually, in the ghetto--
    in the Judenrat office.
    And two members of the Judenrat were wounded.
    And the Germans said, if you do not
    bring us those partisans by midnight,
    all the ghetto will be evacuated.
    Before midnight, yet, the Germans
    said, forget it about bringing them back.
    Of course, the German-- those partisans run right out
    of the ghetto-- the ghetto wasn't so thoroughly guarded--
    through the fence.
    And by tomorrow morning, 2,500 Jews have to leave the ghetto.
    Anyway, what they issued is an order to evacuate the ghetto.
    Now the ghetto had 10,000 people in it.
    Now the conflicting story is that some
    say that because of this event, that they found the partisans,
    the ghetto was evacuated.
    Others say it's impossible, because when the farmers came
    in the morning with the sleds to take us,
    they already were told a day before to be in the ghetto.
    So for just a coincident that the Germans
    have found a couple of partisans in the [PLACE NAME]..
    To make it short, the ghetto was divided into four parts.
    And every day, commencing with the 28th of January,
    2,500 Jews left the ghetto.
    We were taken to the railway station, Leniovo, or Ratichi--
    it had two names--
    12 kilometers away.
    We were packed in cattle cars--
    [INAUDIBLE] the 28th of January in '43.
    My parents left on Saturday, which was the 30th of January.
    And every night, I tried, with all other young men,
    friends of mine, to get out of the ghetto.
    And it was impossible.
    On Saturday, my mother said to me, look.
    She says, wherever we go, that place you'll keep,
    so you don't have to rush.
    Try one-- we've still got one more night, stay in the ghetto
    and try.
    Maybe you'll manage to get out, sneak out.
    We were trying, of course, to get out
    of the ghetto into the partisans--
    join the partisans in the forests.
    Now, I can still see my mother waving goodbye to me
    from the porch of the house.
    I went.
    A friend of mine--
    almost every house in the ghetto had a hiding place.
    In a friend of mine's house, we as boys, my group,
    had a hiding place.
    Four or five of us got into that hiding place.
    It was a hole in there, but we moved a few boards
    from the floor and we got underneath the floor.
    And my friends got out the first night,
    but his mother and grandmother were still in the house.
    And they used to-- for heating, they used turf, peat.
    She says, you get in there, and I'll cover you with peat
    so the Germans won't find you.
    All we wanted to remain is just for a few hours
    so the Germans just could go by.
    It wouldn't last a total search.
    Sure enough, as we were sitting underneath the bunker there,
    we could hear the Germans walking on the floor
    several times.
    They took the women, my friend's mother and grandmother.
    She was already a blind lady.
    I said goodbye to my family, as I said--
    my father, my mother, my sisters, three of them,
    and my brother.
    My grandparents on my father's side, and my mother's parents
    died before.
    Together, at that day, six uncles and five aunts--
    one uncle was married, and all their children--
    51 persons.
    They were all together on that day.
    My uncle, the second youngest, Herschel,
    started singing a song, [?
    "Ali, Ali." ?] And the song sings about God abandoned us.
    And my grandmother, being an old lady already,
    says, we are going to die, and he is singing.
    She didn't realize that he wasn't singing, that he was--
    Prayer.
    Prayer, yeah.
    And that's the last I saw them.
    Late in the afternoon, when we got out of the bunker,
    that part of the ghetto was quiet.
    Nobody was left there.
    But at the court, the fourth part of the ghetto,
    like the fourth quarter of the ghetto, was still intact.
    So we joined the others, and we spent that night.
    And that night, it was not only impossible to get to the wires.
    It was even almost dangerous to cross the street,
    because the Germans already did not shoot in the air.
    They kept firing into the ghetto all night long at every shadow,
    knowing that there was a lot of us,
    that those that want to get out will try to get out that night.
    There were three men.
    One of them was my hometown.
    We were close friends.
    He was a Polish soldier who was taken in prison--
    as a prisoner, I suppose, in '39,
    but managed to get in '42 to the ghetto from Germany.
    And he was-- he was the tallest man in my home town.
    Yankel [? Vinograd ?] was his name.
    And he in order to--
    giants at the time--
    managed to get out that night.
    And we saw him running out, and we had one shot.
    But when daybreak came, we saw all three
    of them lying in the middle of the street,
    right out of the side of the fence.
    I suspect the Germans had caught up with them later,
    and they brought them back to the fence
    to show us that you don't get away.
    In the morning, that was the last-- some did hide in bunkers,
    but somehow, I didn't have any more strength.
    I didn't sleep for three nights.
    I figured that's enough.
    I was with a friend of mine, who was actually several years older
    than myself.
    His name was [? Sheldon ?] Bernstein from my home town.
    And they put us six persons on a sled.
    600 sleds came into the ghetto every day to take 2,400,
    2,500 people to the railway station 12 kilometers away.
    It was a beautiful, sunny, wintry day.
    This was the 31st of January, the last transport.
    And as we drove out of the city, the last one,
    the last building was a mill-- a flour mill.
    His name was [? Kreuzer. ?] He was a Jewish owner,
    but, of course, he was already gone to the transport, too.
    But the mill was still open, and people--
    the people that worked there worked.
    The Germans had taken it over already.
    And the mill was surrounded with a fence,
    and there was a huge gate.
    And in front of the gate, there were about half a dozen gentiles
    staying there and looking at the Jews
    as we were being taken away.
    And Bernstein talks to me, says, let's get off.
    Come here.
    Listen to me.
    I said, are you crazy?
    That's the Germans behind us.
    After every 10 sleds, there were two Germans
    in a sled with rifles at the ready.
    I said, wait, maybe they'll turn around.
    I said, I'm getting off.
    And today, I cannot explain it.
    He got off the sled and walked right through the half a dozen
    men into the gate.
    They didn't point at him.
    They didn't blink an eye.
    He went right through, and the Germans didn't see it.
    I cannot-- don't know what happened.
    He walked in, and, of course, I felt
    sorry I didn't go with him at the moment.
    And I went on farther.
    About halfway between the ghetto Pruzhany and the station where
    [PLACE NAME] used to be was the border,
    which I mentioned the Ukrainians--
    Railroad.
    Border.
    And there was a bunker, and Germans were in there.
    And to the left, as we drove to the railway station,
    there was a forest.
    But a pine forest in the winter is an open book.
    You can see for a mile, straight pine trees.
    And there were no small trees, only tall poles.
    And about 20 or 30 men--
    I don't know exactly how many-- jumped off the sleds
    and started running in the forest.
    And the Germans opened up fire, and then the Germans
    that guarded us just from the bunker opened up.
    And you could see one by one every one of them was cut down.
    Not one managed to get away more than 100 yards.
    They brought us to the station--
    and it was still daylight.
    It was about 4:00 in the afternoon, I would say.
    And they started packing us into the cattle cars.
    And we tried to stick my--
    there was a large proportion of young, able-bodied men
    in that group, because a lot of men like myself,
    who were young and able-bodied, were still
    hoping to the last day, the last night to get out of the ghetto.
    So we tried to-- we tried to stick together.
    And they packed us in those cattle cars.
    I don't know how to describe the cattle cars.
    Everybody knows the story.
    I don't know how many, but it was, so to say, room to stand.
    Well, there were still families, intact families.
    And they had children.
    So, of course, they stood, and if a child--
    you get tired holding a child, you slid down.
    You had a job to lift it back again.
    There was no-- if somebody fainted or couldn't stand up,
    they fell.
    And we left the station at 1:00 in the morning.
    And we slowly-- directing, of course.
    There were a lot of families who did not want--
    a lot of people did not want to let it penetrate in their mind
    that they are going to die.
    And there were all kinds of assumptions.
    Because not far from Pruzhany, towards the east,
    there was a place called [?
    Pruna Gora, ?] where there used to be huge lime mines,
    huge holes.
    And those holes were filled in with Jews from Kobryn, Pinsk,
    [PLACE NAME] and others.
    And I'm sad to say that in all our, well, sad history,
    it's hardly ever mentioned that place, [?
    Pruna Gora. ?] But in my opinion, who knows,
    maybe 100,000 or more Jews had been buried.
    We figured we were going due east.
    Instead, the train turned west.
    And, of course, we didn't--
    we were hoping for the best, said,
    well, you see, the Germans are taking us into Germany
    to kill us.
    They will take us east.
    And people started to assume that we are going into Germany
    in camps or otherwise.
    And the train made its way till we came to--
    I believe it's Minsk Mazowiecki.
    I'm not sure.
    And for some reason, of course, we didn't.
    Who could have imagined the crematoria or gas chambers?
    What we understood is machine gunning.
    But something-- somebody mentioned at the railway station
    Molkin.
    That was the railway station going to Treblinka--
    something is down there.
    It found its story into the ghetto Pruzhany,
    but what, nobody knew.
    Something in Molkin is no good.
    And with us, in my car, there was a man.
    Cabby was his name.
    He used to travel from Pruzhany to Warsaw.
    He used to be a traveler.
    And he knew exactly how the train
    was left a branch off in order to go to Molkin.
    He said, wait.
    If you turn right to Molkin.
    Then it's not good.
    But if you go straight to Warsaw--
    and sure enough, we did not turn to Molkin, and we stayed.
    Well, if you go to Warsaw, there is no question.
    We are going to Germany to work.
    On the train, the conductor-- not conductors,
    but a few of the service people were
    Poles in the railway uniforms.
    And they kept trying to sell us water.
    They kept telling us we were going to Auschwitz.
    We never heard of Auschwitz--
    Oswiecim, Auschwitz.
    He says, you don't need money, so give it to me.
    Here's a bottle of water or something like this.
    So they tried to sell us food.
    You don't need food there, said, if we don't eat anything,
    so why do you sell us food?
    We couldn't somehow figure out.
    Kept you off balance.
    Off balance.
    Well, they wanted our money, whatever it is after all.
    They passed by Warsaw.
    Not for a moment I believe that we are going to live.
    I was sure we were going to die.
    Now, remember, coming from a small town,
    I'd never seen a big city.
    The biggest city I've seen is Brest-Litovsk.
    We drove out to Warsaw, and I looked through the cracks
    in the window.
    And I see a big, brightly-lit city, five, six-story buildings.
    Every window was lit.
    And I think, here is such a beautiful life,
    seems to be in its full swing.
    It was so bright.
    It was so beautiful.
    And here all of us go to die.
    It was such a--
    it was so bitter.
    It was so sad.
    And I said, ah, does it pay to look in the window?
    What good is it?
    It's my last hours anyway.
    In the early morning, we came into a huge railway station,
    and we found out it was Czestochowa.
    And at that time, there were still 5,000 Jews in Czestochowa.
    I want to get back for a moment or two.
    In the ghetto, about three days before the evacuation,
    I dreamed that we are getting off a railway station.
    And I saw a railway station, a square building with the roof,
    four sides coming together.
    I saw the station.
    I don't know why.
    I wanted to remark, in case I forget.
    Because when I came to Auschwitz, not
    in the concentration, but first to the station,
    this is the station I saw in my dream.
    And people-- I don't know how to explain it,
    but this is exactly the picture of that station,
    before I forget it.
    And another thing is we came to a railway station
    before Warsaw yet.
    It was late afternoon.
    It was the first day, the second day--
    sorry, first-- in Minsk Mazowiecki.
    And as we look through the cracks in the window,
    we saw Jews with yellow stars walking on the railway track.
    They were not--
    I could see they were not allowed to turn to towards us.
    They were all with the back, walking along the track.
    But nobody turned.
    But I saw a tall, young man.
    I could figure out by his stance.
    Near was an older, shorter man and I could see him, give him
    a poke, and waving his head.
    Gave him a sign, look in the back.
    And the old man just shook his head sadly.
    One did not have to hear what he said.
    They said, look.
    They communicated.
    Yeah, look, there are some more Jews going to slaughter.
    And the old man sort of, like, shook his head sadly.
    Yeah, like I said.
    And about 50 minutes later, a man who did
    not what one would describe a Jewish looking,
    came to the front of our car and says--
    in Jewish, says, Jews, you are going to the slaughter.
    Save yourself.
    I am a Jew.
    There's only 200 of us left in Minsk Mazowiecki
    I'm one of this group of the 200 working here.
    He had no yellow star on him.
    He took it off.
    And I could see him looking both ways
    to see if there are no Germans.
    He took his life, in a sense, to come and speak to us.
    Get out save yourself, run, because you're
    going to the slaughter.
    And, of course, he's not a Jew.
    He's a Pole.
    He wants us to run so we'll be shot.
    All kinds of people.
    He [INAUDIBLE].
    He spoke to you in Yiddish.
    He spoke Yiddish.
    Oh.
    But we didn't do it.
    Anyway, so now let's proceed.
    We passed Warsaw, to Czestochowa.
    And by about 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon,
    I saw we came to a station, Auschwitz.
    And I saw that railway station.
    And we continued a little bit farther.
    And this is-- this I still remember to that day,
    that the dream or the shape of the railway station
    became farther.
    And really, of course, the train finally came to a halt.
    The cattle cars opened up, and people ran by.
    He says, [GERMAN].
    That was Auschwitz.
    Now, everybody-- people can describe it in much nicer colors
    than I can, make it much more eloquent
    to the arrival of Auschwitz.
    But it's enough to say that those who could get out got out,
    and the others were pulled out and dragged out.
    Some were dead.
    I'm not going to go through the whole story again.
    They just separated us men, on one side able-bodied men,
    and women and children separate.
    What I cannot understand is I remember seeing a huge German,
    big and fat with a whip-- must have been three or four yards
    long.
    And as he walked along the row of women and children,
    he kept whipping them mercilessly.
    These people were going to die, so let them.
    Why?
    And the other thing I've seen is-- this will never leave.
    I think I'll remember it.
    They took a tarpaulin and spread it on the snow there.
    And the Germans walked by the mothers
    and tore the infants out of their arms,
    and dumped them in front of them.
    And they started putting a pile of screaming infants.
    And that I seen.
    And they took the four ends of the tarpaulin, tied it up
    like a bundle of dirty laundry.
    And they didn't take young men.
    They took old men from the same group-- and 10 men,
    and told the men to lift up the bundle of screaming infants
    and dump it on a truck.
    And this I have seen with my own eyes.
    And they dumped it, and they told the other--
    they told the old men to lift up-- it was like a little ramp
    that they put in the back of the truck for people to walk up.
    And all the women and children and old people
    started walking up on the truck.
    They each truck was to back-up pile of--
    fill up a truck load, shut it.
    The trucks are open.
    I mean, the women and children screaming and yelling.
    It was chaos-- and pulled away.
    And we men were lined up in one side,
    of course, the famous selections of Auschwitz.
    I was then just exactly--
    Tuesday, I turned 20.
    I always celebrate my Jewish birthday.
    That's the--
    Secular.
    Secular, right.
    So that was on a Tuesday, was 20 days in a month of Shevat.
    Was that a Tuesday?
    And that was already--
    Sunday was Auschwitz.
    Monday-- it was the following Tuesday that I arrived,
    the 27th.
    Because my parents came the 26th, a day earlier.
    And 27th, the month of Shevat.
    So I was already 20, and I came to the German,
    and two questions, how old are you, and what's your occupation?
    I said I am 20, and I am a blacksmith, a Schlosser.
    I promise, fairly healthy-looking young man.
    They took me, amongst another 300 roughly men.
    And they lined us up, and the rest of us went with the others.
    They marched us into Birkenau.
    I tried to be cool.
    I have realized that I'm going into a camp.
    I knew then that it's not--
    they wouldn't bother otherwise picking.
    And I remember trying to figure out what is it like?
    And the first thing that struck me is I
    saw two young men, Slavic-looking Russians.
    I could tell by their features--
    healthy, well-fed, sitting on a horse with a team of horses--
    well-fed horses and a buggy.
    [INAUDIBLE] And I think to myself, it couldn't be too bad.
    They look very well-fed, those two Russians.
    And as I walked by again, I looked to the left,
    and I saw a skeleton of a man, which didn't look like a man
    anymore.
    He was thinner than thin.
    There was no description.
    The striped uniform was hanging on him.
    Excuse me.
    And another well-fed man is standing over him
    and hitting him mercilessly.
    And the man tumbled and fell.
    And he kept hitting him.
    And I think to myself, why doesn't he get up and run?
    And the man did make an effort to get up and run.
    And they beat him down again.
    And I could see them finishing.
    And I couldn't understand.
    He hasn't got enough strength to get up.
    And there was such something happened
    at that paradox, that moment.
    Excuse me.
    They took us into the bathhouse.
    Now, we were thirsty, three days of travel.
    And the first thing--
    sorry, not the bathhouse, in the registration room.
    It was a wooden barrack, famous Birkenau barracks which--
    that was the registration.
    And there were inmates sitting, and they called us
    by letter alphabetically, the letter A, B, C.
    And we came to letter K, and we lined up and came--
    you see, so it was address the inmates--
    spoke Yiddish with a bit of a German accent.
    And they were filling out the form--
    name, parents' name, address, and so on.
    And the question is, why were you arrested?
    That question is still in my mind.
    I said, what do you mean why was I arrested?
    Were you apprehended at a place of crime?
    Those questions-- I said, look.
    So, I mean, he filled it in.
    And this is where my name was changed from Kantorowicz,
    ending with that C-Z of the Polish spelling.
    It filled in, as I spelled it T-Z. And this is the--
    I this is-- I kept it this way already.
    This was my original spelling, Kantorowitz.
    I filled in whatever.
    But he asked me that question.
    And I didn't know what to answer.
    After we got the name, and then, of course, right away,
    we were branded, tattooed with that number,
    right there on the spot.
    We were searched.
    And I did have a few dollars, American, and some marks, which
    received from the ghetto yet.
    It was divided before we left the ghetto,
    before everything was taken away from us, from me.
    And all of us, like the whole transport,
    all 300 men were taken from there.
    Of course, by the time it was all finished,
    it was already late at night.
    They took us into the bathhouse.
    We were dressed.
    We were shaven completely from head to toe.
    Our showers were very thirsty, and we
    wanted to drink the water.
    And of course, we were already supervised then by inmates.
    We were no more under SS supervision.
    And those inmates turned out to be Jews.
    They said, don't drink the water.
    You'll get typhoid fever because the water is contaminated.
    Some of us drank, some of us did not.
    We were searched thoroughly.
    And after the showers--
    before, of course, we were disinfected with a-- one of us,
    we had a [INAUDIBLE].
    It was smearing over, smearing with a kind
    of a disinfectant of some sort.
    And then we washed it off.
    We were given, I mean, just thrown a shirt,
    a pair of undershirts--
    a pair of shorts, I mean, a pair of pants, a jacket.
    We were permitted to keep our boots, which was good.
    It was good because I had the high, like the cavalry boots,
    the high leather boots.
    By 3:00 in the morning we were finished,
    and we were led into a barracks and were told to go
    into the bunks and lie down.
    But before, they told us to line our shoes.
    The barrack had a heating system,
    which was like a long chimney, from one end ran
    right through the barracks to the other side.
    And we should line up the boots along that chimney.
    Within half an hour, a few inmates, well-fed, big,
    husky fellows came in.
    They looked through the boots.
    Picked up whatever fit them or whatever they wanted.
    And the rest they took.
    And they dumped them in one huge pile
    and said, OK, everybody, get your shoes.
    Anyway, I managed to get one boot, which was--
    could have been mine because it fitted.
    And the other one was too small.
    So for the next six weeks, I walked on one foot
    without being able to put my heel down into the shoe,
    walk and then tiptoe.
    In the morning, they took us out and counted us.
    And they said, well, you're going
    to go into the Zigeunerlager.
    Now that was-- we were--
    our transports were the first of the Jews
    that were the inhabitants of that later well known Zigeuner,
    gypsy camp, Zigeunerlager.
    They let us in that camp in the afternoon already by then
    it was the afternoon.
    And we were joined up with a group of Jews from Holland.
    The Dutch Jews were big men compared with-- we are just
    Eastern European Jews.
    They're not big-big.
    The average height is 5' 6", 5' 8" This is the average.
    5' 10" is already considered a Polish.
    Those Dutch Jews were 6' 2", or 6' 4"--
    big men.
    And I remember, we were brought in, they were brought in,
    two at the same time.
    And I'm not going to go through the trouble of explaining
    the whole camp set up with kapos and Blockalteste
    and the Blockalteste of the Lager.
    And there was an inmate too, a criminal, a German,
    that [NON-ENGLISH] Lager, [NON-ENGLISH]..
    Because of it, one of those big Dutch Jews say,
    what is your profession?
    He says, I'm a Kaufman.
    I'm a salesman.
    Oh, he says, a Kaufman.
    And he was holding a huge stick in his head.
    And necessary, he lowered it right over his head.
    And within two minutes, this man he
    kept us one blow after another.
    This man's head became pulp.
    He was bleeding profusely.
    They did it as a demonstration.
    That was our welcoming present, to see what can be done to us.
    It is-- it was, how should I say, depressing?
    I--
    It's not adequate.
    I just I got to watch this guy.
    Anyway, deep into the barracks, for that night in the morning--
    the morning that we came out, we were
    counted, which was over the following business.
    And they gave us this lined up in five,
    and they gave a red bowl, that standard red bowl of Auschwitz,
    a red bowl of tea, which was brewed out of blueberry leaves.
    And the first on it, you had to have a mouthful or two
    and pass it on to the last fifth.
    Of course, by the time it came to the fifth,
    there was nothing left-- or to the fourth,
    or to the third, who knows?
    The barracks were-- we were able to open up the little windows
    on top and get some snow.
    And I managed, the first two couple
    of nights, to take my life in my hands because whoever was caught
    was beaten, beaten anyway.
    I managed to get some snow.
    We slept from eight to eleven of us
    in a bunk covered with one blanket.
    There was nothing underneath, just boards.
    We were supposed to get undressed.
    We're not allowed.
    We were not allowed to sleep in the sacks,
    above all, at the underwear.
    That's it.
    It was bitter cold.
    It was already February the 2, the 3, the 4.
    This is-- in the mornings, we used
    to stay pressed one against the other
    against the wall of the barracks all day long.
    Afternoon we always used get a cup full of soup.
    And at night they get a quarter of a loaf of bread
    and a bit of tea.
    So [INAUDIBLE] into the barracks.
    And the blows again, spend the night there, yes.
    No working?
    No, no.
    We were in quarantine.
    Now, we were the--
    we caught up there with the rest of our ghetto.
    All of us, the four transports, the four
    that came in when we were there.
    And that were, of course, the Dutch Jews that came in between.
    And the following day, they brought the next few days Jews
    from Bialystok, which were neighboring-- not far
    away from us.
    And sort of-- we were the first inhabitants
    of the ghetto, the Zigeunerlager, the Gypsy camp.
    The camp was built for some reason on clay ground.
    The clay was so deep and so sticky that once you put
    a foot-- not a shoe, but my boot--
    if I wasn't careful enough or stood in one place too long--
    Suck it right off.
    So I pulled my foot up, but not my boot.
    I had to pull the boot out by myself
    and then stick my foot back in there.
    So they decided one day to clean it--
    not to-- to dry it a bit.
    So we had to reverse the jackets,
    buttoning it at the back, keep the front of the jacket like
    an apron, so to say, marched by one-- there was a pile of sand--
    and get one or two shovels of sand, which wasn't heavy.
    And this, we were told, you have to do it by noon.
    You have to cover the whole space between the two barracks
    so there should be comfortable to stand when you are
    being counted, should be dry.
    Nobody-- nobody chased us, so we took our time.
    And we walked very slowly because that was the procedure
    for us because we didn't-- we didn't work at all.
    Of course, it wasn't ready by noon.
    So they told us to line up in five.
    And first of all, that sit on our knees,
    like crouching on our knees.
    I was fortunate.
    I was on the third row.
    I wasn't in the first two.
    I see they brought a gang of about 100 or 150 kapos
    and Blockalteste and foremen, all just to say,
    trustees of all kind of rank in Birkenau.
    And there were a lot of shovels with long, long handles.
    And I see they are breaking up the shovels from the handle.
    And each of them suddenly became armed with a stick.
    The handle of a shovel makes a very good weapon.
    And they lined those people up from that sandpit
    to that spot where we were standing.
    And they took the two front rows,
    which is 30% of our barracks, like 300 men.
    I don't know.
    And running under the blows to grab the two shovels
    full of sand and run back.
    It's not the running.
    Of course, when you're under the bit of food
    that we got and blows with the sticks continuously
    back and forth, I don't know if you could call it
    the job was finished.
    But to make it short, by the following morning,
    I don't know how many were alive out of those two
    rows of people they picked out.
    I was only wondering, God help me
    if they take the third or fourth row.
    Fortunately, they settled for the first two rows.
    I remember the dead bodies, they lined up
    in the following morning to be counted because they
    had to be counted to be.
    We remained in that Birkenau for six weeks.
    Before we left yet, the Gypsy transports began to arrive.
    And I remember, I walked to it.
    They were allowed to come with all their possessions,
    whatever they brought with them into that camp.
    And I managed to sneak into a barrack
    where a Gypsy old lady was there.
    And she gave me that red bowl with a bit
    of soup left from yesterday.
    And I gulped it down.
    I was thinking to myself, I don't want to sound prejudiced,
    but here is a bit of cold soup from an old lady.
    I don't know how clean it was.
    I don't know how well she was.
    Where on earth would I have touched it?
    And here, God forgive me if I say it,
    and I'm putting yet on tape.
    But I gulped down a bit of cold soup
    from yesterday, what was left at the bottom of the bowl.
    This is the state I have gotten within a month or six weeks,
    whatever.
    It was before the six weeks was up yet.
    And if we remained at that--
    in that Birkenau, in Zigeunerlager for six weeks.
    Finally one day, we did not get washed.
    In the six weeks, we did not get out clothes changed.
    But we became louse-y and the lice were giants.
    [AUDIO OUT]
    And eventually, to this I don't--
    as a rule, I remember every day.
    But the last count, I don't know exactly what day it was.
    We were told we are going to be taken away from Birkenau.
    And they lined us up, something like 800 men.
    They told us to get washed.
    And there was a barrack where you could get [? wurst. ?]
    It was a long, narrow, like pipe sort of like.
    You could-- not actually called-- like wooden containers,
    like long narrow ones.
    We washed in the same water, every one of us,
    the faces, whatever.
    And we were taken out, and we were marched to Auschwitz,
    the main camp of Auschwitz.
    And it was in the evening.
    We arrived in Auschwitz.
    It was dark.
    We came into another world entirely.
    The buildings [INAUDIBLE] are permanent, not
    the wooden barracks of Birkenau.
    They were brick buildings, lit up with electricity inside.
    And they took us into the disinfection,
    like in the bathhouse.
    We were again told to undress.
    We were shaven again, disinfected again,
    and showered with clean water.
    I must say that we have changed completely.
    We were given a new set of clothes,
    and we were given shoes.
    And by that time, we were all fed.
    By the time we finished with all the disinfection,
    if was early morning.
    And we were brought--
    by morning, we were brought into the Appellplatz, the place where
    there used to be counted.
    As soon as the people that the inmates went to work,
    we were brought in there.
    And the 800 of us, was, of course,
    they were taken over by the inmates, by that [INAUDIBLE]
    of Auschwitz already, the main camp of Auschwitz.
    And we were trying to be divided in by trade.
    Anyway, I was taken to the trade of lathe operators
    or blacksmiths, well, Schlosser, which is a locksmith, actually.
    And I was one of, I suppose, 20 or 25 young men.
    We were taken into a building, to the Block 18.
    And the room, Stube, which it's called in German, Stube number
    four, we were brought in there.
    I remember each-- the bunks were individual ones,
    not very narrow.
    And everything was so precise, so even.
    It was such a different world.
    It was entirely-- it wasn't-- it was Birkenau at all.
    And of course, the first question
    was, they said, oh, where are you from.
    The man in charge of that room was-- his name-- first name,
    was [? Kazik. ?] I don't know his second name.
    He was a short man, about five foot six, shorter than I am.
    He must have weighed close to 200 if not 200 pounds,
    certainly wasn't--
    he wasn't hungry.
    He was very well fed.
    Was he a German?
    A Pole.
    Pole?
    Yeah.
    Well, he asked us where we are from.
    And suddenly, the Blockalteste, who
    was in charge of the whole building,
    brought us in about three or four or five loaves of bread.
    He says, look, I know you're hungry.
    Divide it between you.
    And he said, this is not your ration.
    Your ration you'll get tonight.
    This is from me personally, a welcome from me.
    It was--
    Sounds like a human being.
    Yeah.
    It was something-- you couldn't believe it.
    Anyway, the first thing he said, that Stuben, he says, have you
    got any lices?
    We says, no, we've just been disinfected.
    He says, yes, I know.
    Take off your undershirts and look, and you'll be surprised.
    We found we could not get the lice out of our skin.
    The following day we were assigned to go to that group
    Kommando DAW, which is the initials of the words Deutsche
    Ausrüstungswerke--
    German repair shops.
    It was a complex of buildings, which was consisted
    of two main functions.
    One was a carpenter shop, a huge carpenter shop.
    The other one was a blacksmith, a blacksmith mechanical works,
    where the ammunition boxes, wagons
    from the front that were damaged or destroyed
    were brought and reconditioned.
    I, as a locksmith, was taken into that department where
    the locksmiths were working.
    It was a barrack.
    The barrack was number three.
    The kapo was a German, a criminal.
    Auschwitz did the famous triangles,
    the green triangles were the criminals.
    I was assigned as an assistant to a Czech worker
    in dismantling the broken wagons.
    Within, the hunger was so intense
    that instead of thinking about my family, which I've already
    by then found out precisely what happened and how, what,
    and when.
    All I could think of was food.
    And the hunger has not left me for a moment.
    I began to plan.
    And in the mornings, when we used to get out of the barracks
    to be counted, I used to notice a huge pile of garbage
    in front of the kitchen.
    Our barrack was overlooking the kitchen.
    And I've noticed there are some rotten potatoes, just
    every morning.
    We were not allowed to leave the barracks before the order came.
    We just had to get up in the morning.
    We had to get washed.
    We had to get our ration of bread,
    the quarter of a loaf of bread, and a bit of tea
    that everybody got, and then following outside to be counted.
    I took the chance.
    I got up before everybody else.
    I used to sneak out to the kitchen
    and look in that pile of rubbish and find a few rotten potatoes
    and fill my pockets.
    And I used to come to work in this-- this factory used
    to be that-- used to be a huge drum that
    used to be filled up with sawdust from the carpenter shop
    nearby.
    And the inmates used to string on a wire potatoes
    and hang it inside.
    So the wires used to [INAUDIBLE]..
    So the potatoes would hang.
    And you could reach for it and take it out.
    The potatoes, they-- somehow some
    managed to get good potatoes.
    I was glad that I could find some rotten potatoes.
    It used to quench my hunger a little bit.
    I got away a few days.
    I want to mention also that twice a week we
    used to get an extra half a loaf of bread that we
    used to come back from work.
    We used to after being counted.
    We used to line up in front of the kitchen.
    And everybody used to get an extra loaf of bread and a piece
    and a salami or a sausage, which was
    in additional to the quarter of loaf of bread daily.
    It used to be a help.
    That was the ration.
    The saying in Auschwitz used to go that no matter how fat one is
    or how strong one is, by living from the ration alone,
    one cannot live longer than three months,
    cannot survive longer than three months.
    I would say, I wouldn't be able to come completely already
    starving from Birkenau.
    I got away with it several days.
    I was the only Jew in the group that I worked for.
    There were a few Russians in there, some Czechs, some Poles.
    One day the kapo went by that oven.
    And he noticed these wires hanging.
    He picks it up, and found these potatoes.
    He said, whose are they?
    Of course, all the fingers went pointing at the Jew.
    Of course, it was against the law,
    stealing potatoes, baking potatoes.
    Fine.
    Now in that other unit--
    as I said before, there was the main unit,
    was the carpenter shop and the locksmith shop, the repair shop.
    But there were different shops where they repaired
    machinery of all sorts.
    And there were a lumber yard.
    There was a lumber yard, which consisted
    of two groups of people, one that
    used to measure the lumber that just arrived,
    and one that used to deliver it into the factory.
    Now that part that used to deliver it into the factory
    was a Strafkommando.
    The Strafkommando is the punishment Kommando.
    It had a famous foreman by the name of [? Pilarek, ?]
    who was a Volksdeutsche, who was a--
    I don't know-- a Germanized Pole, a Polarized German--
    I don't know, whichever-- who spoke both Polish and German.
    And they came from Silesia, which was
    on the Polish-German border.
    This man, in my opinion, have killed more--
    has killed more inmates than anybody I've ever heard of.
    He was the executioner, and I put it on tape.
    And those that have ever worked for a day or two
    on the old platz in Auschwitz will testify to the fact
    that, if you lasted with [? Pilarek ?] for three days,
    you were a lucky man.
    I have not found anybody who lasted more than this.
    The law was that they had to supply 10% of this Kommando dead
    that very same day.
    What is a Kommando?
    Is that a work group?
    Kommando is a group of people.
    The Kommando was called a group.
    If he worked anywhere, if it was there, the Kommando.
    Even a bakery was the bakery Kommando.
    I see.
    It was just a group.
    It's a group.
    We were a group of approximately between 50 and 60 workers.
    And they used to carry home between five
    and six dead every day.
    His favorite system was he used to hit a man until he fell.
    When he fell, he used to turn him over face up, put a stick
    on his throat, and stand with both feet on the stick
    until he suffocated.
    I'm sure that if anybody will yet listen to the tape
    while there's still some living witnesses alive,
    they'll take the trouble of asking those
    who worked in the area of Auschwitz
    if they've heard of the Holzplatz
    if they've heard of [? Pilarek. ?]
    And maybe somebody who was fortunate,
    unfortunate, to fall in there for a day or two
    and fortunate enough to get away will
    testify to what I've just said.
    I worked at [? Pilarek ?] that day.
    And I had enough.
    I came from work in the evening.
    And in my-- in the room I slept, we were 100.
    I will refer to the room as Stube.
    That was the German term for the room.
    There were roughly 100 men.
    Suddenly I hear somebody saying to me, hey, you, come here.
    There was a Jewish man with the numbers of the 42,000.
    That was a transport of Jews that came from France.
    They were originally Polish Jews, who came to France
    and they are still not French nationals.
    And they were the first ones to be deported to Auschwitz.
    He was one of those 42,000.
    We are referring to the 42,000 numbers.
    He says, I saw you today at [? Pilarek. ?] I say, yes.
    It was my good fortune to, unfortunately, sarcastically,
    to be on the [? Pilarek. ?] He says,
    look, I work on the Holzplatz.
    But I've got the other job.
    I'm the one who measured the timber.
    So I'm fine.
    But I'll give you one advice.
    Tomorrow you get the [GERMAN],, which
    is the additional half a loaf of bread and a piece of sausage.
    The day after, it's going to be your worst day because it'll
    be after you were trying to save some bread or a piece
    of sausage, and you'll be after it.
    You should bribe him.
    You should let [? off. ?]
    If you start giving him your bread,
    you'll have to give it a first time,
    you'll have to give it the second time too.
    Even if he's not going to hit, you're
    going to die of starvation.
    Don't give him, you stand a chance.
    If you bribe him, you don't stand a chance whatsoever.
    Was this man a kapo?
    Or was he--
    The [? Pilarek? ?]
    Yeah.
    His title a foreman.
    He had a kapo above him.
    A kapo didn't do the dirty work.
    He was the one who used to execute
    the filthy work of killing.
    The following day, sure enough-- two days later,
    after I came with that extra bit of bread to work,
    that was the worst day I ever had in Auschwitz.
    The man didn't let off of me and a few new ones that
    came in the last couple of--
    two or three days.
    But I made up my mind not to give in.
    Of course, the following day was almost as bad.
    And when the second [INAUDIBLE] Lager came,
    I made up my mind not to.
    What will be will be.
    It seems that this advice was one of the best advices I ever
    had in my life.
    I would say that within 8 or 10 days, that [? Pilarek ?] let off
    me.
    He did not-- he pretended he didn't see me as much as--
    I didn't get in his way.
    And he sort of hit newer ones who fell for it.
    And I was must say that I was so fortunate.
    If he didn't see me, he didn't miss me.
    Whatever the reason was, there was such a turnover
    of new faces every day that he kept out of sight.
    Now, there was no place-- you couldn't hide.
    But you could use the washroom, the bathroom,
    which was very public.
    In the building of this factory were a lot of buildings.
    One was the main building, which had a bathroom downstairs.
    It was under a roof.
    It was warm.
    And if you sat there it was fine.
    But each bathroom had a supervisor, a man in charge
    who was not allowed to keep anybody there more than five
    or seven minutes.
    After that, you had to get up and go out, back to work.
    It just happened that that man, who was a Pole, I must say,
    was marching with me in the same row to work every morning.
    And we sort of got a bit friendly.
    And I found out about it.
    He told me where he is, the title, which
    is an embarrassing name, for Scheissmeister.
    And he was in that building, in the basement.
    And I used to come there.
    He used to let me sit there even for half an hour.
    And the Poles that used to come up and say,
    hey, this Jew been sitting there for so long.
    He says, he works on the Holzplatz.
    Would you like to try his work?
    And so they kept quiet.
    Everybody worked in the Holzplatz
    was looked upon as a short visitor,
    as hasn't got much time left.
    In the room I slept, the bunks-- these bunks we slept on
    were three story-- the bottom, the lower bunk, the middle one,
    and the top one.
    And the very low bunk slept a Jew from the--
    his number was exactly 42-0-0-0, 42,000.
    His name was [? Fisch, ?] from France, came
    from Poland, the same story as the [INAUDIBLE]..
    I slept on the second bunk, in the middle.
    And above me slept a Pole by the name of Leon [? Kulowski. ?]
    The numbers of Auschwitz began from the very first one.
    I, when we arrived, I got my number is 99,347.
    These numbers run up to 200,000 and then it started with letter
    A and then letter B. The name of the Polack,
    the number of that Polack, the Pole,
    Leon [? Kulowski ?] was 500--
    sorry, beg your pardon.
    The number was 805.
    The one that was in Auschwitz knew what that number meant.
    If one survived that number, the people used to almost just about
    tip their hats for him.
    It was one of the rare, rare numbers
    that you could see in there.
    He found himself in Auschwitz because he
    was a Polish intellectual.
    He was a teacher in a high school.
    In Poland, a teacher in a high school,
    you refer to him as professor, not teacher.
    He was an officer in the Polish army.
    And after the collapse of Poland in '39,
    he tried to make his way to France via Hungary,
    through Czechoslovakia into Hungary, where he was caught.
    And the Hungarian police handed him over to the Gestapo.
    After Auschwitz was established in the late of '39, beginning
    of '40, he was one of the first 1,000 that arrived in Auschwitz.
    And he was given that number 805.
    He was nevertheless fortunate to have gotten a very good job.
    It was he worked for a short while in the supply
    department of the SS.
    That gave him the chance, the access to many good things.
    If he was afraid even to take him to the camp, at least
    he didn't have to eat in camp.
    And his ration of food, he could leave to his friends
    in the camp, and he ate there.
    This, of course, made him a lot of friends.
    When the camp has grown and a lot of those first inmates
    became permanent members, trustees, foremen,
    and kapos themselves, and working
    in good positions in the camp, they, in a way,
    reciprocated by making sure that these remains
    in Auschwitz because, for the Polish inmates,
    Auschwitz was the best place they could have asked for,
    even though they complained, they
    say that it was a bad spot, a bad place for them.
    And if one got a job in there, which
    was a place where you could not--
    you were not too often-- the chances
    of being sent away in another camp were very small.
    There was a productive industry.
    And if somebody worked there, they usually
    left him there to stay on.
    He was one of those that somebody as appreciation
    made sure that he works in there.
    And of course, being already too much of a big shot to do labor,
    they gave him the title foreman.
    Now foreman have [? tokens. ?] Foreman
    had all kinds of-- there were all kinds of foremen.
    My foreman, [? Pilarek, ?] in the Holzplatz was a foreman too.
    But he became a foreman in order not to do anything.
    As far as we Jews are concerned, as far as I am concerned,
    he stood up for Jews wherever he had the chance to such an extent
    that the Poles in my room, in my Stube,
    named him [? Zidovski ?] [INAUDIBLE],, a Jewish uncle.
    One Sunday evening, that Pole, as he was climbing up
    the third bunk, looks at me and says, where do you work?
    What's happening to you?
    You are disappearing.
    You are shrinking.
    I say, what do you expect?
    I work in the Holzplatz.
    He says, in Holzplatz?
    How long have you been there?
    I say, six weeks.
    He says, my God, you survived six weeks?
    I say, yes.
    I survived six weeks.
    I said, but I won't last much longer.
    I knew that--
    You're getting weak.
    I couldn't.
    I couldn't last.
    So right across-- that was the end of the room where we slept.
    But a little bit farther to the end
    there was an empty space, where a table was placed.
    And on the other side there was one row
    of bunks for the big shots, kapos, foremen,
    the Stubendienst, which was in charge of the Stube,
    and his assistant.
    And his superior, the kapo-- kapo was over the foreman.
    The kapos, his name was [? Gradek, ?] Yannic
    [? Gradek, ?] was also a friend, who
    actually in appreciation made him for a foreman, slept across.
    And he tells to Yannick, he says, Yannick, take him
    into the carpenter shop.
    He says, you know I'm not allowed to.
    You are not allowed to change your place of employment,
    if I can use the expression.
    You not have a permission.
    So I sort of say of and say, my kapo couldn't care less.
    He says, if you can find yourself another job,
    go right ahead.
    Oh, he says.
    If that's the case, tomorrow morning, Monday
    morning, you come to work for me in the [INAUDIBLE]..
    The [INAUDIBLE] it was a long barracks, almost the same shape
    as the barracks in Birkenau.
    But it was a factory, part of the factory.
    Monday morning, the order used to come out
    from Auschwitz proper, Kommandos [INAUDIBLE]..
    Every Kommando, every group--
    as there there was 1,200 men-- we used to fall in and come
    in the factory there.
    Then again, we were fall in into the separate groups,
    each in his number of the [INAUDIBLE]
    or the floor he worked-- like I used to work in the Holzplatz,
    into the Holzplatz gruppen.
    What does Holzplatz mean?
    Holz is wood, place--
    lumberyard.
    Lumberyard.
    Lumberyard.
    Right.
    In the lumberyard, so I had to fall into that group.
    But when the command came to fall in,
    I fell in with the [INAUDIBLE] number one,
    with the barrack number one.
    And sure enough, came that the secretary had to take down
    every number every day.
    So in order to-- they had to do bookkeeping too in order
    to know where everybody works.
    He says, who are you?
    I say, ask the kapo.
    Turns to the kapo, he says, kapo?
    He says, it's OK.
    Mark him down.
    Fine.
    I came in.
    He took me over to a-- again, I must say there were a lot
    of Jewish--
    French Jews from 42,000 number who was a real good craftsman.
    And he says, look, you be his assistant.
    Well, you got to keep in mind, besides the beatings
    at the Holzplatz, I worked for 12 hours under the rain with
    my Auschwitz outfit, from 6:00 in the morning till 6:00
    at night, soaked to the bone.
    I used to come from work, my legs
    used to be swollen in those wooden shoes.
    Here I'm under a roof in the warmth.
    And my job-- at that time, that man was working.
    He was putting the hinges --
    hinges and the metal-- the metal framings on windows.
    They were producing windows in that particular part
    of that barrack.
    He says, look, whoever produces the most, biggest
    amount of windows gets a bowl of soup
    extra, a liter of soup extra.
    He says, I can do the work by myself.
    You just get me the windows.
    So I run to get those windows.
    But of course, everybody else was working for that liter soup.
    So that kapo was smart.
    He didn't have to use a stick.
    He used a carrot.
    The big [? gut-- ?] all I had-- if everybody wanted that--
    Soup?
    --to produce the bowl of soup, to produce more windows.
    And I didn't like it initially.
    Of course, every craftsman had an assistant
    who stood in line to get those windows.
    And my job, the moment I got a window, I ran to him
    and stood in line again for half an hour to get to my next gig.
    It was beautiful.