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Oral history interview with Lusia Milch

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1995.A.1271.96 | RG Number: RG-50.119.0096

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    Oral history interview with Lusia Milch
    Transcript
    --Lusia Milch.
    And this is the Convention Center in Washington, DC on 13
    April, 1983.
    What's your maiden name?
    My maiden--
    Say it again.
    My maiden name is Rosenzweig.
    My father's name was David Rosenzweig.
    My mother's name was Nettie, Necha in Yiddish.
    And her maiden name was Rubin.
    I come from a area which has changed hands politically
    several times from the turn of the century.
    It is Ukraine, the western part of Ukraine.
    The small town where I come from is Skalat.
    It is near a bigger town, Tarnopol, not very far
    from the region where my husband's family came from.
    The area at the present moment is
    under the Russian jurisdiction.
    The area was also under the Austrian-Hungarian jurisdiction
    preceding 1914.
    Thereafter, in 1918, after the Versailles Treaty,
    when many independent countries gained their independence,
    that portion of Ukraine was ceded to Poland.
    So we were living there, actually,
    as young children, although my husband and I did not
    know each other at that time.
    We come only approximately from an area, which is about--
    oh, well, I would say 30 kilometers apart.
    However, the official language at that time
    were the Slavic tongues, although at home, Yiddish
    was spoken, Hebrew was taught.
    Some of the older generation even
    knew German because of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire's
    influence.
    However, primarily, the recollections
    which I will bring out here are those of my childhood
    and those of my torturous years during the war, and primarily,
    during the occupation, where I survived
    and where I lost my family.
    As I said, I lived in Skalat, near Tarnopol.
    My mother, Necha, was married there.
    I'm a little confused now.
    In the period, say, of the '30s, so which nationality--
    was this Russian--
    In the '30s--
    --or Austro-Hungarian?
    --after 1918, after the Versailles Treaty,
    it was Polish.
    And then in 1939, it ceased to be Poland because,
    at that time, in 1939--
    Became Russia.
    --it became Russia only due to the fact
    that Stalin and Hitler had had a pact and divided Poland.
    My mother, Necha, who lived there, was married.
    And tragically, my father died of cancer
    when I was five years old.
    So he did not live to the occupation.
    And he was spared the bullet, as he certainly
    would have probably gotten.
    However, my mother was a young woman
    with a five-year-old child, which was myself.
    And shortly, within a year or year and a half or so,
    remarried.
    And my stepfather and my mother had another child
    so that I had a sister, who during her--
    when she was caught and shot, must have been
    approximately five years old.
    So that I lost my sister, and my father--
    my stepfather, rather, and my mother
    to the German occupation.
    Well, are you going to tell about them?
    Yes, I am.
    I'm going to tell about them.
    In 1939, when I was a little girl--
    the reason I'm bringing that period out--
    that was the time--
    Why don't we test--
    I started to say, I am going back to 1939,
    although that was not the occupation.
    The occupation for us began in 1941.
    However, in '39, when the Russians entered Ukraine,
    that was that part of Poland which was ceded to Russia
    between the pact--
    under the pact between Stalin and Hitler.
    I remember, many Jewish people were running away from Germany
    and running away from Poland.
    As I said, many of these people who
    were running-- and they were trying
    to run towards the Russian border
    to escape the Nazi onslaught-- many of them
    simply escaped just with what they had on their bodies.
    They had, really, not--
    no great wealth.
    They were begging and asking for work and for food.
    Most important thing which I remember in those days,
    they were coming around and trying
    to inform the local Jewish population of what
    it was that they were running away from.
    And I remember, as a frightened little girl,
    sitting with my mother in the kitchen,
    seeing a woman walking into my mother's kitchen
    with a little girl tagging behind her.
    I could just identify myself with my own mother
    and her position.
    And she turned to my mother, who befriended her,
    and was feeding her and the child,
    and she said, what are you doing here?
    Why are you sitting?
    Look, I'm running with my little girl.
    She says, do you know what they are
    doing to the Jews in Germany and in Poland?
    They are surrounding us.
    They are sending away the Jews.
    They are killing everybody.
    And my mother opened her eyes in disbelief
    and said, what do you mean?
    They are killing everybody.
    Everybody?
    Come on, don't exaggerate.
    It is impossible.
    They may be killing people of prominence.
    They may be killing people of wealth.
    They may be killing people who happen
    to have all kinds of political affiliations.
    Why would they want to kill just everybody?
    Anyway, it's impossible.
    You mean they will come into a town,
    and they will surround the whole town, and they'll catch us,
    and they'll kill us all?
    Now, doesn't that sound absolutely impossible?
    And as my mother dismissed it in disbelief,
    so did many other people from our towns,
    even though I never forgot that incident.
    It was a period in which we were warned,
    but the enormity of the crime was just not to be fathoms--
    fathomed.
    And that's why people turn around and sometimes say to me,
    how come, before it happened, everybody did not run away,
    everybody did not start to arm themselves?
    Because the disbelief was just as great.
    We simply could not comprehend.
    The adults could not comprehend that such
    an overwhelming catastrophe will occur or even could occur.
    However, I as a child never forgot it.
    I never forgot it to such a degree that I always felt,
    something inside told me, the grown-ups
    don't want to believe, but there is something in there
    which frightened me.
    And never again did I trust the grown-ups
    to be the guards over me, which came
    me in-- came in good stead.
    Later on, when the Germans began to surround the towns,
    I promised myself that I, as a child,
    will only sleep in the daytime.
    I will never permit myself to close my eyes.
    That was-- I was about 10 years old.
    I never trusted-- not that I didn't trust them out
    of dishonesty, but I simply felt,
    they could be lulled into disbelief.
    The adults were overtired, exhausted,
    both physically and mentally.
    And that incident in 1939, I go back to that incident.
    When I had--
    I was impressed with what this woman said.
    And I realized that it was going to be,
    and was, the beginning of the end.
    Cut.
    I'm confused here again.
    That-- this woman who came, and spoke to your mother, and said,
    the Germans are doing this and that--
    but at this point, you were-- it was
    the Russians who were coming.
    Right.
    But I never forgot the incident two years later,
    when the Germans came in because she had warned us.
    This woman had come from the German sector?
    Exactly.
    They were running.
    And she was trying to warn our-- my parents and everybody
    else who would listen to her.
    And she was not the only one.
    So later on, in 1939, we still led a semi--
    really normal life.
    It was not free.
    The Russians came in.
    Many of the properties were confiscated.
    I really do not want to go into the period of what
    happened between '39 and '41 because it does not
    bear directly on our Holocaust period, during which I
    specifically want to emphasize this interview.
    There were other deprivations.
    And Jews felt themselves that they were antisemitically
    being exploited and so on.
    But in comparison with what happened
    when the Germans came in, everything else really pales.
    My childhood and the tragedy of my childhood
    really began as the Germans marched in, which was in 1941.
    In no way were we prepared for anything which occurred.
    I was a little girl.
    I was primarily interested in the things which
    small, little girls in the house are interested-- to listen
    to the parents, to go to school, to obey the responsibilities
    which we had upon ourselves-- to keep ourselves safe at home,
    to attend classes.
    And this is what happened.
    All of a sudden, in September of 1939, the war broke out.
    And then for two years, I was in school.
    I tried to push all kinds of political rumors, all kinds
    of tragedies out of my mind.
    My responsibility was to simply do quietly and obey
    what I was supposed to do in school
    and what was told at home.
    When the Germans-- when the war broke out
    between Germany and Russia, and the Germans
    entered our part of Ukraine, and specifically our town,
    on the very, very first day when they entered,
    I shall never forget that as long as I live.
    The Panzer divisions began to come
    in with a roaring noise with their motorcycles
    and motorized equipment through the main street of the town.
    It was an open town.
    Was that a Jewish town?
    Yes.
    The town was a Jewish town.
    It was really prevalent in those parts of Ukraine
    to have similar towns to what our town was.
    My husband's family was the exception.
    Most families did not own land--
    first, by coercion, going back from the century before,
    when they were not permitted to buy land, and later
    on, because they became entrenched
    in the city business.
    So my family lived in the city.
    And we, in the city, numbered, oh, approximately half
    of the population.
    The entire town was about 9,000-10,000 souls--
    more or less.
    I am not sure exactly of the statistics.
    I was a little bit too young to really know these statistics
    by heart.
    But I know that I am approximately correct.
    Half of the population, just like in my husband's town,
    was Jewish.
    And the other half of the population was made up--
    again, the predominant minority were the Poles.
    And the other minority-- the other majority
    of that half of the population were Ukrainians.
    The Jews, however, did make up a large portion of the town area.
    And it was-- our town, named Skalat,
    was the biggest town in the particular area, having many,
    many, many small little villages under its jurisdiction--
    I was told, as many, perhaps, as 50 villages--
    50 villages.
    Some of these villages were tiny,
    no more than 50 to 100 souls.
    But many of these villages would come once a week
    for market day to the town to bring their fares.
    Many knew many of the Jewish merchants in town.
    Among them was my grandfather and my father, who--
    and my father, who had a small store,
    more or less like a small hardware store,
    and then later on like a grocery store, selling
    the basic essentials, like coffee, and sugar,
    and kerosene, and candles, and so on.
    This became very important, this incident, later on.
    I almost lost my life because of this,
    that my family was known in town.
    And I shall tie this incident in to the end of my story.
    But we were known in town.
    And my family, going back to my grandfather,
    were merchants, who primarily lived on that which they
    can earn through the store.
    My father's family was large.
    My grandfather, from what I understand,
    had about 13 or 14 children-- at least 11 of whom were alive.
    And the majority of his sons and daughters, my aunts and uncles,
    lived in Skalat.
    All of them were married.
    All of them had children.
    With cousins, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren,
    my family--
    my father's family consisted, approximately, perhaps,
    of about 45 to 55 souls.
    All that is alive from that side of the family
    is myself, in the-- living in the United States, my cousin,
    Tinka, who lives in Tel Aviv.
    She is married and had two sons, one of whom
    was just killed in Lebanon as a--
    on a four-week tour and the Tyre explosion which
    took place a few months ago.
    And there is one more cousin alive
    who escaped from Poland during the antisemitic incidents which
    occurred in the '60s when the war occurred
    between the Arabs and the Israelis.
    She with her two sons was forced to flee
    and left Poland for Sweden.
    So the three women are alive.
    Do you want to give the name of these two ladies?
    Yes.
    The woman who lives in Tel Aviv, my cousin, her name is Tinka.
    Her last name is Guss--
    G-U-S-S. And she has two sons.
    One son is married with a wife and two children.
    The second son, as I said a minute ago, was killed.
    Yitzhak was-- Yitzhak Guss was just killed recently
    during the-- defending and being on a tour of duty in Lebanon.
    My other cousin's name is Rose, Rózia Hirschberg.
    From home, Bernstein, her maiden name is.
    Her husband died.
    And she, with two sons--
    Stephen Hirschberg and a second son, Jerzy Hirschberg,
    are living now in Sweden.
    From my mother's side, there was a smaller family.
    My mother had a sister in the United States
    and one in Argentina.
    She also had a brother who lived in Canada.
    These people, my aunts and uncles from my mother's side,
    left that part of Europe approximately
    after the Second World War-- exactly what year, I do not
    remember.
    Second?
    After First World War, I stand corrected.
    They left after the First World War.
    So all of these were spared.
    And I really did not know them because I first
    got to know my aunt when I arrived in the United States
    after Second World War.
    My mother was the only one left in Europe
    from her side of the family.
    And she perished, as I said before, during the Holocaust.
    In 1941, when the Germans entered our small little town
    with their Panzer divisions, the first horror took place.
    A few days before the entrance of the German troops
    into our town, the town was like an open city.
    There was literally no government
    in existence, which happened to be
    the case for most of the towns.
    However, as soon as the Germans came in, most of the Ukrainians
    were issued rifles--
    some of the Poles too, and especially
    those nationalist Ukrainians who had
    hoped that, by ingratiating themselves with the Germans,
    they will be able to benefit in having a nationalist state.
    And as my husband stated in his recording of his experiences,
    their cooperation with the Germans against the Jews
    was absolutely complete.
    As far as they were concerned, they
    were doing it because of hatred, which
    was instigated and inspired by their Christian teachings
    in church, for which I happen to have a personal incident
    of before the war.
    They were doing it because they were hoping, politically,
    to gain favors with the Germans in terms
    of a nationalist state.
    And they were doing it because it simply
    was another form, another way of being
    able to loot Jewish properties, Jewish homes, whatever
    the Jew at that time still possessed.
    As a proof that I can give in terms of their religious hatred
    against the Jew, let me say--
    state the following incident that I experienced.
    After all, these are experiences which are individual.
    And I have to indicate them by personal incidences.
    I remember that before 1939, when we, as Jewish children,
    were being taught in the public school,
    we went to school together with the other minority groups.
    And they were the Polish children as well as
    the greater majority of this subgroup,
    the Ukrainian children.
    And religious education was compulsory.
    Consequently, two or three times a week, the class
    would split up into three groups according
    to our religious denominations.
    The Catholic children went to catechism classes.
    The Ukrainian children went to the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox
    or Catholic Ukrainian classes.
    And the Jewish children went to Jewish religious training.
    As soon as I came out from my religious class and the other
    children from theirs, every time, somebody--
    a little girl would walk behind me in a corridor in my class,
    and would turn around, and say to me in a pejorative term--
    I will give it in Polish first, as it was told to me,
    and then I'll translate it--
    [POLISH],, which means, you infected Jewess,
    get out of here to Palestine.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    And immediately, I realized, I said to her,
    why do you say that to me?
    And she would just tell me what she had just learned
    in her class in catechism.
    She was aware that I was the killer of her God.
    This is the Polish?
    This was in the Polish, Ukrainian children.
    And I realized what hatred, what enormous fear and hatred
    they were instilling in these children
    when they were still so very little,
    and what was going on in their own religious instructions
    by their own priests.
    I came home not only being angry, but actually frightened,
    and telling my mother what occur.
    And of course, my poor, helpless mother, and step-father,
    and everybody else would just shrug their shoulders
    and say, avoid them.
    Try to stay out of their way.
    Do the best that you can, make yourself invisible,
    just get out of the way.
    Because truthfully, there was nothing,
    nothing to fight this enormous onslaught of antisemitism,
    which was already beginning to become apparent to me, even
    as a child.
    That particular antisemitic training,
    that particular hideous, murderous, insidious planting
    of the seed took full form when the Nazis came in.
    And consequently, on the very first day,
    when the Germans came in, and the Ukrainians
    were handed guns and rifles, the first thing which they did,
    suddenly, began to run.
    There was suddenly a screaming in the streets,
    and especially in the little marketplace around which
    most of the Jewish community was located,
    since they were merchants, everybody began to scream.
    We began to hear shots in the air.
    And since people were running away,
    they were actually shooting at the running away population.
    People went into their homes, began to shut doors
    and shut windows.
    And immediately, whoever was in the square,
    whomever they were able to get a hold of, approximately 200
    to 250 men were grabbed with the main rabbi,
    who was literally put under a [POLISH]----
    Under a well.
    --a well, a well from which the little town was getting
    its water, a communal well.
    And he was literally, as an example, pumped water
    into his throat in order to drown him forcefully.
    The other people were grabbed.
    The other--
    You mean this kind of well?
    This kind of a pumping well, exactly.
    It is not a hand pump in which from the little pipe,
    water comes out.
    And the rest of the people who were rounded out--
    rounded up during that first pogrom, so to speak,
    were taken.
    Right under the Polish church, we had trenches.
    And they were murdered, shot, executed.
    And that was our first taste of the first two hours,
    perhaps, during the first two hours when the entire onslaught
    took place.
    And the murder took place approximately that night
    or towards evening.
    That was a first taste of what it was like and for me,
    as a little child, what the beginnings were like,
    to be as a Jewish little girl under the Nazi occupation.
    I need not tell here because there
    are many, many records of what happened
    how slowly and slowly the circle of the ghetto
    began to be organized, how the anti-Jewish laws started
    to be implemented, how the selection of a Jewish Judenrat
    took place, which really meant a Jewish group of elders who will
    have helped, later on, to supply the Germans with money,
    with jewelry, with clothing, with comforts, with housing,
    with everything, with liquor, with every whim which they came
    with to demand from the Jewish community every few weeks.
    And eventually, tragically, catastrophically, even
    with a demand for souls to be delivered to slaughter.
    How that took place is a long, long story.
    No one came to terms yet to discuss this issue
    because it is even difficult for me to comprehend.
    I know for a fact, many of the people
    from the so-called Judenrat began truly and honestly,
    in their own belief, that when they cooperate,
    they will be able to spare the Jewish community a few more
    days of living, a few more months a few more moments
    if they will pay, if they will give them gold, and eventually,
    tragically, if they will give the older people who don't have
    a chance of survival anyway.
    Maybe the younger, maybe the able-bodied, maybe
    those who have a chance of survival
    will, after all, survive.
    Hope against hope.
    It was hope against hope.
    There was no question about it.
    Many, unfortunately, begin, as all these beginnings begin,
    with the good intentions of trying
    to save a community, slowly, slowly in a degrading fashion
    are sucked in into a position where yes, they
    actually came to the community, saying, give us a contingent.
    Give us a-- kontingent was the Polish name-- contingent
    of human beings.
    Because if we will not, they will come,
    and the slaughter will be even worse.
    They'll grab the children.
    They'll grab the young ones.
    They'll grab everybody.
    This, unfortunately, took place even in our parts.
    And they also-- after they took the slaughter,
    they ask this community or this ghetto
    should give, let's say, 500 souls to be killed.
    After this was done, the community
    had to pay for the bullets.
    They had to they put up a ransom.
    They come in and they say, now, you have to kill 500 people.
    Then these bullets will cost two kilo of gold.
    Every-- you have to collect two kilos of gold.
    If two kilos of gold were not delivered for the bullets,
    they will take another 100 men kill for that.
    The blackmail, the slaughter, the deliberate and careful
    dehumanization of all of us, the simple breakdown both
    physically-- because actually, when
    you have a group of people who have no possibility of working,
    who have no possibility of being supplied with food,
    have no possibility of sleep because everybody is afraid
    that any day, any night, they can come and start a rampage,
    again, of slaughter, when you have
    no possibility of clothing, when you
    have no possibility of heating in the bitter cold winters,
    slowly and slowly, we were being worn out and worn down
    with disease, with cold, and with hunger.
    Dehumanized.
    Our dehumanization is just one little example
    to our tiny, little town, which, as it was said,
    was beginning to die from day one.
    And it was an example of what happened
    to hundreds and, yes, thousands and thousands
    of other little towns.
    The ghetto started to be organized according
    to German orders and dictates within,
    I would say, nine months to a year after the Germans came in.
    Why did it take so long?
    There were reasons for it.
    The primary purpose of having the ghetto created
    was to gather and to push as many Jews
    from the surrounding area into the first bigger
    town which they could organize.
    As I said before, our little town,
    which has-- had approximately 5,000 to 6,000 Jews out
    of a population of approximately 10,000 to 12,000,
    had under it many, many small little villages.
    From these villages and from other smaller little towns,
    where there were no more than about 1,000 people or 2,000
    Jewish people, slowly but surely,
    the orders came in to have these people move into the bigger
    town, which was the little town, about which I
    am speaking right now, Skalat.
    Where did these people go?
    You must understand-- or those who
    will be interested in this story will understand,
    the only place to go was to go and share
    another little hut, another little room,
    another little place within a room
    with another Jewish family in the ghetto.
    And slowly, as the walls of the ghetto
    began to swell with the surrounding expulsion of Jews
    from the other towns, every single room
    resembled a little tenement.
    Not only were there two, and three,
    and four families to a room, but literally,
    one bed meant a family--
    two, three, four, and five people slept in that corner--
    the mother, the father, and the two and three children,
    or whatever they had with them.
    Since conditions were atrocious, since there
    were very few sanitary conditions, since we
    had no medication, since we were starved and undernourished,
    I need not tell what a terrible epidemic used--
    Typhus.
    --consequently, typhus broke out.
    It was rampant.
    It was rampant all around.
    Since there was no medication, people simply
    took their natural course.
    Those who died died.
    Those who were able to, by natural resistance
    of their bodies, come out of it came out of it.
    And those who were happened to have been caught during actions
    were simply shot on the spot so that the weak, the sick,
    the little ones, the religious ones, the obvious ones
    immediately went to the slaughter
    without any kind of a choice at all.
    They were not any less worthy.
    They were not any less bright.
    They were not any less agile than I was at any one moment.
    And there were many like this.
    There but for the grace of God, I would have gone.
    Plain, sheer, dumb luck was so many times on my side.
    Yes, I was young.
    Yes, I was agile.
    Yes, my mother had brainwashed me, brainwashed me over,
    and over, and over again.
    She used to say to me, Lusia, when you survive--
    she never said, if, she always said,
    when you survive, remember two things.
    And this is my reason for this story today.
    I really don't you know why I'm doing it.
    I don't know whether evil is preventable.
    But her words are engraved in my mind.
    When you survive, remember, tell them what happened to us.
    That's what I am doing here.
    And she says, remember.
    Don't you ever forget.
    Don't forgive.
    Remember what happened and tell it to them.
    That's what I'm doing here.
    I am really making her wish come true.
    When the ghetto began to swell, the Germans
    had a very, very typical procedure
    in which to exterminate us.
    What happened?
    At the moment when we were most disorganized, when
    the people were forced to come in from another town, when
    the rooms and the houses were swollen with crying children,
    sick people, old people in new surroundings, in a new town,
    in a new little room, immediately,
    within a day or two, when they caught us most off guard, early
    in the morning, the Germans would
    begin their first rampage.
    Not many of them took place because they
    were so successful.
    They didn't need hundreds of them.
    They would begin so-called their Actions.
    In our particular town, it took no more than about
    four or five Actions, so-called Akcjas
    in Polish, until the entire population
    was totally executed.
    I shall speak perhaps of one or two incidences which
    took place during the Actions.
    One must understand that before the Actions took place,
    the unbearable, the overwhelming fear with which we lived
    every single day in the ghetto, aside from the hunger,
    aside from the disease, aside from the cold,
    aside from the unbearably crowded conditions,
    the fear with which each and every one of us
    lived not just for one minute, not just for one day,
    not just for one week, but for two years.
    I cannot even believe today that that is the fear that I
    literally was able to survive for two years.
    Why?
    I recall, specifically, the fear with me was so overwhelming
    that I actually had physical symptoms.
    I was physically sick as a result of fear.
    I always remember having stomach pains.
    I remember that my fear was so overwhelmingly great
    and I remember that I was fearing
    that my parents, with others, will not be on guard enough.
    They will be-- [AUDIO OUT]
    How very, very frightening it was
    to live through even one moment in a ghetto,
    even one day in a ghetto.
    And yet we made it through-- actually, two years.
    I remember during that moment, when the people were lulled
    into a false security because there
    were a few rumors that there will be Actions the week before
    and two or three days before.
    And people from exhaustion, trying
    to run into hiding places, be it in the attic,
    be it in the cellars, were finally saying,
    it probably will not happen today.
    And people tried to sleep in an exhaustive way--
    exhausting way in order to get-- catch up on some sleep.
    I made up my mind that I would listen to what was going on.
    And very early in the morning, perhaps around 4 o'clock
    in the morning, I heard one quick run of boots
    in the alley.
    I very rapidly woke up my mother.
    And my mother said, are you sure you heard something?
    I said, I heard something.
    Please, alert everybody in the building.
    It's very important.
    Because I'm sure I heard something.
    She did.
    She alerted everyone in the building.
    And this is what happened.
    We had created a bunker in the particular town--
    in the particular house where we lived.
    The bunker was so devised, it was a part
    of a cellar which was separated from-- it
    was a huge cellar underneath the entire building.
    One portion of the cellar was separated with a false wall,
    against which we put old furniture, and potato sacks,
    and so on.
    The hiding place and the entrance--
    I'm sorry, the entrance into the hiding place,
    however, was underneath a kitchen.
    It was a stove.
    It was-- the hiding-- the entrance was created--
    dug out a tunnel in a zigzag fashion.
    We had counted that it would take approximately a half
    a minute for human beings to be able to slide through
    on his stomach into the hiding place.
    So in order to have 60 people go down there,
    we needed a great deal of warning ahead of time
    to be able to slide down.
    And it was because of what I heard
    and because I was able to alert the entire building early
    enough that we managed to get the entire building
    into the hiding place.
    There were heroic deeds too.
    There was always somebody who had
    to be chosen to be on the outside
    to close up that hiding place.
    And a young boy, a volunteer, whose parents and sister
    were going into the hiding place volunteered and closed us up.
    Do you know the name?
    I do not know his name because he
    must have been one of the boys from the surrounding areas who
    was crowded in and got in into the towns.
    It was just without thinking, a hero,
    a boy knew that his mother, his father, his little sisters,
    and brother, perhaps, were there.
    And he said-- he was young enough.
    He thought he will be agile enough.
    He thought, even if he is caught,
    he will be able to jump off the train,
    perhaps, only there were no trains in our part of Europe,
    there were only mass executions.
    We were in this hiding place for two days.
    At the end of the second day, all of a sudden,
    we used to hear the Germans above us looking for us.
    They were sure, they were positive-- they
    turned the building in upside down looking for Jews
    because they could not get anybody in that building.
    They knew there had to be a place in the building
    where the Jews were hidden.
    And no way were they able to find us.
    All of a sudden, they kept on coming back to the building
    and back to the building.
    We heard them coming with their boots, coming with their dogs,
    because the wall was very, very thin.
    And the floor was very thin.
    And we were able to hear through into the cellar
    when they were coming again.
    What happened?
    A baby started to scream.
    There was absolutely nothing to be said.
    We looked.
    I say, we because we are collectively guilty in this--
    all of us, all of us.
    Nobody has a right to point a finger.
    And I was only a little girl of 10 years old.
    Nobody paid attention to me.
    And I did not have a voice in it.
    But I partake in that look.
    The older people in the hiding place looked at the mother.
    And she knew what she had to do.
    She picked up a pillow, she put the pillow on the baby's face,
    she sat on the face because it was
    a question of saving 60 people.
    Had the baby continued to cry, the Germans above us
    would have discovered us.
    The Germans left.
    The baby was hushed.
    It did not die.
    Miraculously, that baby did not choke.
    But this was one of the incidences
    about which everybody makes a great deal of a point.
    I lived it, I saw it, I survived it.
    I know that I was-- this was no exception.
    I know there were many other incidences in which mothers
    had to make this choice.
    And with other people in hiding, it
    was almost as if everybody is drowning
    in the middle of the ocean.
    And everybody is for himself.
    This was the choice which she had
    to make because there was no other way out.
    By the same token, in the same hiding place,
    during the same two days, let me give
    another example of heroism.
    When I heard that people and I alerted the people
    in the town--
    in my building that the Action was beginning,
    a young boy, who stuck his head out through the main gate
    was shot by a sniper, who saw him.
    As he was retracting--
    going back into the building, he was aware
    that he was shot in his stomach, he caught a bullet.
    They did not kill him, but he caught a bullet in his stomach.
    We took that wounded boy down with us into the hiding place.
    And we had in the hiding place a pail of water.
    We were in the hiding place for a few days.
    But the first thing which each and every one of us gave up
    is the water.
    We began to apply compresses to his wound
    in order to keep him alive.
    So without any word, without any saying, nobody had to be asked,
    we knew that the first thing which we had to do
    was to save this young boy's life.
    That hiding place, in which I lived for over two days,
    eventually was a place where we could no longer breathe.
    We no longer could have enough oxygen. Towards
    the end of the two days, we could no longer light a candle.
    And we ourselves were forced to open up our hiding place.
    We were forced to open it up.
    And most of the people who could not have--
    could not breathe anymore, started to--
    wanted to catch their breath.
    And when they began to come out of the hiding place,
    naturally, the Ukrainians passing through the building
    heard commotion, came it--
    came in, and they simply walked into the hands
    of the Ukrainians and the Germans.
    From the entire 60 people, approximately a dozen
    to a dozen and a half, I do not know exactly--
    among them, my mother and we children,
    who were always under our mother's orders--
    refused to leave that hiding place.
    We said, if they have to kill us,
    they going to have to come down and kill us
    in the hiding place.
    If they're going to have to kill us,
    they're going to have to kill us with torches.
    They threw in hand grenades.
    But nothing reached us because the entrance,
    as I explained before, into the hiding place
    was in a zigzag fashion.
    No way could they go down.
    And they were frightened, petrified themselves to come
    down to the hiding place.
    They flushed out what they could.
    But they could not flush out the remnant
    of the half-- of the dozen or a dozen
    and a half people who survived-- among them, my mother, myself,
    and my sister.
    This is only one example of one Action which I survived.
    There were similar ones at least three and four times that
    I came as close to death as somebody brushing a hair
    right over my hand.
    Another action which I can describe,
    in which my mother, and my father, and my sister
    were hidden in an attic--
    we heard the Germans approaching a portion of the attic which
    was not exposed to them, in which we were hiding,
    and they could not see us because we were
    behind a hidden simulated wall.
    A portion of the attic was open.
    As they came in, as they began to scream their usual scream,
    Juden heraus, Jews out, come out, we can see you,
    we can see you, frightened little children
    began to scream.
    And once again, it was a question
    of each man for himself.
    We forcefully opened up a door between--
    from our hiding places.
    And we formed a human chain, a human ladder,
    in which human beings came down from about two stories high,
    all the way, jumped.
    And each person would throw himself.
    As we came out of the building, we
    ran right smack in the middle--
    Ukrainians, Germans, Jews all over.
    Many were caught.
    Most were caught.
    Once again, miraculously-- miraculously,
    for no specific reason, my mother and myself
    ran from one building into another,
    hid under broken furniture.
    And once again, I survived a second Action.
    As I stated, at one point, the Jewish population
    in our small little town swelled to about, oh, to--
    we were locally about-- a group of about 6,000 Jews.
    Since many of the Jews from the surrounding area was--
    were forced to come into our town,
    I would say our town swelled to perhaps 7,000 or 8,000 Jews.
    I do not know exactly the number,
    but it was approximately that number.
    And it took approximately five Actions.
    Usually, by the way, the Actions were taken very strategically,
    around a holiday season.
    Consequently, my mother, for example, was killed on Shavuos.
    My family, my father's side of the family, who--
    which was very numerous, as I stated before--
    there were many cousins, many little children,
    many brothers and sisters--
    most of them were killed, for example, during Pesach.
    Was an enormous action during Pesach--
    enormous for our little town, in which
    3,000 people were killed in a period of about
    a day and a half--
    3,000 people out of about 5,000 or 6,000 population--
    was literally one half of the population was eliminated
    in one sweep, in one Action--
    3,000 people-- among them, my entire family
    from my father's side.
    What happened to them?
    What did they do to them?
    It was very simple.
    They surrounded them.
    They marched them into the big synagogue in our town.
    And I was once, during one action, very, very
    close to that synagogue.
    When was that?
    Was during the period when I jumped off with my mother
    from the attic and when everybody
    split in different directions.
    It was our tragedy, and at the same time, for me
    now, very important to be very, very closely located
    under the furniture, close to the synagogue.
    The screams, the shouts, the cries,
    the prayers that came out of that synagogue
    that I was able to hear with my mother
    while we were hiding under the furniture, how they did not
    pierce the skies, I will never know.
    We could not believe how the trucks were coming up.
    We realized now, about every 20 minutes or so on,
    they had a number of trucks, perhaps five or seven--
    I do not know exactly.
    And they were able to load, let's say,
    90 or 60 people at one time on these trucks.
    And as the trucks came up, the screams
    and the beatings to get the people faster, faster,
    everything was to be done in a state of panic
    and a state of keeping the people--
    Shook.
    --off center, off-- exactly, off keel.
    The screams and the brutality knew no limits there
    was absolutely an unbearable period in which humanity,
    as far as I'm concerned, ceased during periods
    of these Actions--
    when they were loading them into trucks,
    they took them out of town, they marched them from out of town
    into the area where the trenches were dug.
    Usually, they were immediately out
    of town area in open fields.
    There were mass graves or mass trenches, shallow ones.
    Or ravines.
    Or ravines.
    And usually, when there was no ravine,
    the people would be made--
    able-bodied muddies-- the able-bodied men
    would be made to walk over to help to dig the trenches.
    They were usually shallow ones, by the way.
    The trenches were not very deep.
    And I will give an incident later on why--
    how I know they were not deep.
    They would line them up in a typical Babi Yar fashion,
    as I found out when I went to visit Babi Yar with my husband.
    They would line them up in rows of four or five.
    And they would either shoot them,
    or if they had machine guns, they would machine gun them.
    Naturally, they did not kill many.
    Naturally, perhaps even, they did not kill most of them.
    How do I know?
    Let me give you one incident.
    I just found out recently through a story of a woman
    whose name is Lusia Baras.
    She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin now.
    She is from home Lusia Rothstein.
    She had written a little article in her synagogue weekly
    just about a year or two ago.
    That article was sent to a friend of hers
    in New York, who in turn sent me a copy of it.
    This is the story which Lusia Rothstein Baras writes.
    During one of the actions--
    it happened to have been the last Action which took place
    in Skalat.
    It happened to have been the Action in--
    during Shavuot, which is in June, approximately seven weeks
    after Passover, of 1943.
    It happened to be the Action during which
    my mother and my sister were caught and executed.
    What took place?
    The Jews were caught.
    They were taken to the local shul, to the synagogue.
    They were marched out of town, as I
    described just a minute ago.
    They were put in front of trenches.
    They were made to undress.
    They were made to walk quickly under beatings
    through the trenches.
    And they were executed.
    She said that her husband, a few hours later,
    happened to have been walking through the fields.
    He saw quiet.
    He saw no Ukrainians.
    Everybody had left.
    The trenches were already empty.
    The people were gone, those who had covered up the corpses.
    And he heard moaning.
    And he heard a cry.
    And as he came from far away, from the fields,
    he came closer to the graves.
    And he heard a definite moan, a woman begging, help me.
    He began to pull her out by her arm.
    As he pulled her out, she was half-alive.
    She was completely bitten up from half of her body down,
    apparently, by people who, in half agony,
    were biting and clawing to trying
    to get out of the graves.
    He pulled her out.
    She was half-swollen.
    She died a few hours later.
    This was a story that I just found out recently
    what happened and how the agony of their last minutes
    and last hours was in these trenches, where
    my mother and my sister perished.
    This was another final episode of what I just found out
    what actually happened from my own witness of what I heard
    was taking place in the synagogue,
    to loading them on the trucks, to bring them out of town,
    to marching them to the trenches, and then later on,
    what happened after the trenches were closed.
    I think--
    Let me tell you one more example of what happened.
    I stated it before that only three cousins
    from my entire numerous family on my father's side survived.
    I said that one of them, Tinka Rosenzweig Guss,
    lives today in Tel Aviv, Israel.
    Let me say what happened to her.
    She was a young woman who had two brothers, one sister,
    a father, and a mother before the war.
    All of them, besides her, died.
    However, before they died, while she was still
    in the same ghetto as I, there were rumors going around
    that if people will be able to get working papers, which
    will permit them to go to working battalion
    outside of the town, they will be spared
    because they will be considered an important asset
    to the Germans.
    Her father, my uncle, Velm Leib Rosenzweig, who was--
    happened to have been a wealthy man before the war,
    was able to procure papers for himself and for his daughter
    in order to be able to-- the idea was
    to sleep outside of the ghetto.
    There were approximately, in that particular working
    brigade, where he was with his younger daughter, approximately
    40 Jewish men and women.
    Naturally, the Germans knew just what they were doing.
    Because that was their tactic.
    They first got the money from the Jews.
    They got the gold.
    They made the Ukrainians sell them the papers.
    They got the working papers.
    Then they lulled them into a false security,
    into these working brigades, which were outside of town.
    And one day, they surrounded this working brigade
    of about 40 people, marched them outside of the town,
    of the little village where the working brigade was situated,
    made them dig the ditches, made them line up.
    Only in this particular case, they
    made them lay down on the ground in these shallow ditches,
    and walked over to each one with one bullet,
    shot one after the other.
    My cousin lay after--
    next to her father.
    She heard the bullet being shot, under which
    her father was killed.
    She heard the explosion of the next bullet,
    which was her bullet.
    The bullet entered.
    And then she heard the third bullet after her.
    She could not understand what took place.
    But she didn't budge.
    When everything was quiet, the people went away.
    She said, she lay in her grave for approximately 20 minutes,
    a half-hour.
    She was afraid to budge because she was afraid,
    as soon as she gets up, there's going to be somebody, perhaps
    a guard.
    She also was completely off--
    Disoriented [CROSS TALK].
    --disoriented.
    She didn't know whether she was alive or not.
    She could not understand what it was.
    She simply eventually lifted her head
    and saw that there was nobody there,
    picked herself up, and walked out
    of her grave because the grave was not very deep.
    She had received a bullet into the back of her neck.
    She had put both her hands on her cheeks in order
    not to watch as she's going to be shot.
    The bullet entered the back of her neck,
    exited through her cheek, and lodged in her finger.
    When she walked out of the grave, bleeding from her face,
    in her little nightgown, which is what she was-- all
    that she had on her, she walked to the first Ukrainian door
    that she was able to open, and they slammed the door
    in her face.
    She went to the second house, begging, to the third house,
    begging for some water, begging for just a little bit
    of a rest.
    One after another, they screamed, get out of us,
    get out of this house, get away from us, move.
    She finally walked several miles quietly back
    into town, where the ghetto existed because there
    was just no other place where to go, where she still found,
    after the Action took place, her mother and her sister alive.
    After the Action took place, her mother and sister
    took her to a local physician, who
    was not permitted to do what he did because he was a Gentile.
    And he was not permitted to treat Jewish people.
    But he knew our family from before the war.
    We were many of us his patients.
    He removed the bullet from her finger.
    And she is still today to give testimony to this fact.
    She lives in Tel Aviv.
    This was a second example of how they killed people
    in the graves.
    Many were never killed.
    How you survive?
    I finally wanted to explain what happened to me.
    My mother and my father, when they anticipated
    that the end was coming, gave whatever little possessions
    we had, which was very little because we literally lived--
    You might have a date for this.
    In 1900-- this was in the middle of 1943.
    And what was the date that you made the human chain out of--
    Approximately the end of 1942.
    This was in the middle of '43, approximately, oh, about a year
    and two months-- and three months
    into the German occupation.
    After Passover.
    After Passover, exactly, just before--
    just before Shavuos.
    Because Shavuos was already the end.
    My parents became aware that the end is coming.
    Our ghetto shrank, and shrank, and shrank more and more.
    Whatever little possessions we had,
    we gave them to one peasant, who happened to have occupied-- one
    thing I want to explain.
    As the ghetto shrank, many of the non-Jewish population
    entered into the houses which were emptied
    by the Jews, in which they lived--
    these were their homes traditionally for many years.
    And as the Jews were forced out from their particular section
    of the ghetto, because the ghetto was becoming smaller
    and smaller, many of the Gentiles
    would enter, and come in, and overtake-- live
    in the Jewish homes.
    One of these Gentiles happened to have
    been living in my aunt's house, a house which I knew intimately
    because I used to play in my aunt's
    house with my little cousins there all the time.
    I knew that house as well as I knew my own.
    I knew the house, I knew the kitchen, I knew the cellar,
    I knew the attic.
    Many as children, we would roam and we
    would play in these houses.
    My mother gave whatever she possessed at that time
    to a Gentile man who lived in my aunt's house.
    He was a poor man.
    And he promised to make a hiding place for us.
    And he promised to keep us there when the ghetto ceased.
    Needless to say, when the ghetto--
    the last Action took place, when we ran out of the ghetto,
    we managed to get to him.
    And we came, and we begged him to hide us, he says,
    I am sorry.
    I could not find a place.
    I could not make anything for you.
    Please, get out.
    There is not a place I can put you.
    Move, move.
    And he began to push my mother and my little sister
    through the door.
    As he was pushing them through the door,
    he didn't realize that I was moving to the side.
    There was a side little door.
    Since it was my aunt's house, I knew it.
    I literally clawed my way up through a wall
    onto the top story.
    And from the top story-- there were
    two-- it was a two-story house-- into the attic.
    I hid myself.
    As soon as I got to the attic, I removed my little coat
    because all of us were dressed in two or three little dresses
    and coats.
    We never knew what we were able to take with us.
    So whatever we could, whatever possession,
    whether it was even an extra little coat
    or an extra little sweater, we put on us.
    That became a burden to me, eventually.
    Because when I got up on that attic,
    I didn't know what to do to remove the clothes in order not
    to leave any trace after myself.
    I removed my clothes, I stuck it inside an opening
    into a chimney.
    And when I was no longer dressed,
    I was literally in a thin little nightie,
    I looked for a spot as to where to go in.
    And I found one.
    Where was the spot?
    I found a narrow little space about, 12 inches long,
    between the ceiling of the room--
    Between the beams from the ceiling--
    Between the beams--
    --and the top.
    --between the beams-- between the floor of the attic
    and the ceiling of the room there was approximately,
    between the beams--
    You mean 12 inches high.
    --about 12 inches high.
    And I crawled on my stomach.
    I crawled into that space after I got rid of my clothing.
    It didn't take more than literally minutes,
    when the Germans were on top of that attic.
    And all I could see-- and I pushed on my face
    between straw and dirt.
    And I was able to see between a tiny little space
    that I left the ends of their carbines-- of their rifles
    and the legs of the dogs.
    The point was the dogs were really not
    truly trained to scent people.
    They were taken along strictly for fear, strictly
    for the noise of it because--
    They were terrified of them
    --too terrified, too terrified.
    They didn't have that many of the trained dogs
    to sense a human being.
    They looked, they looked, they looked all over,
    and they could not find me.
    I stayed on one cheek, and in one place,
    urinating in the same place, laying
    in the same place for two days.
    How old were you then?
    I was-- that was in 1943.
    I was at that time about 11 and a half, 12 years old.
    I came out of the hiding place.
    And for me, that--
    at that moment, and at that day, there was no longer any place
    where to go.
    Your mother was killed, you said.
    My mother was killed, my sister was killed, unbeknown to me.
    I knew that he was pushing them.
    They were out of his house.
    And my little town was declared Judenfrei.
    It was free of Jews.
    When he realized that I came down from the attic,
    he said, go wherever you want to, but get out of this house.
    How did you manage to get there?
    And I told him.
    And I begged him to give me a chance to just stay there
    until dusk, when it's going to be
    a little bit-- a little dark.
    And then I walked out of the house,
    and I saw a man with a Jewish armband, a white armband
    with a blue star.
    He was from our town.
    He knew me.
    His name is Motek Sas.
    He is alive.
    He lives today in Lakewood, New Jersey.
    Every time I meet him, every time he meets me,
    he says, Lusia, do you remember the time when you followed me,
    a frightened little girl, and you asked me the way
    how to go out of town?
    Why did I want to follow him?
    Why did I want to go out of town?
    Because out of town, where the military barracks were,
    there was still a small little camp, so-called--
    Zwangsarbeit.
    --forced labor camp, Zwangsarbeits labor camp
    was still left there.
    There were approximately 200-250 Jewish men
    still interned in that camp who were forced every day to go
    from that particular camp, from the barracks,
    out of town, about six kilometers to a little village.
    And they were working breaking up stones for roads.
    I followed that man into the camp.
    And as we approached, he said, look,
    they will not let you through the barbed wires.
    Because there was no electrical barbed wires,
    just plain barbed wires around our village.
    I crawled in through a side barbed wire, hid myself
    between broken furniture, only to discover that there were
    other little Jewish children also ran away from the ghetto
    also there.
    And the next day, early in the morning, the Germans
    surrounded and started to look for remnants who ran away
    from the ghetto, and among them, caught
    many, many Jewish little children-- many-- about 25-27.
    I was spared.
    Once again, I was not caught by plain, sheer luck,
    by plain, sheer coincidence.
    When my stepfather, who was already in that labor camp
    saw this, he said to me, Lusia, there
    is no hope for you to stay here.
    Go.
    Run away, wherever your eyes will carry you,
    as long as you go.
    Go into the fields.
    He said to me in Yiddish, [YIDDISH]..
    Go into the fields and into the forest.
    Save yourself if you can.
    There is no more hope for you here.
    I said to him, how shall I go?
    I don't know the way even out of town.
    He says, early in the morning, when
    our trucks and our brigades begin to go outside of town,
    follow on the sidelines as we go out of town.
    And that is what I did.
    I followed slowly-- and the dawn was still at break--
    to walk out of town.
    And I came to a small, little village.
    He said to me, stay here.
    At the end of the day, when we are ready to come back,
    they will be putting us back to the camp,
    I will let you know how to go to the next village.
    I went into the village, and like my husband,
    and his family, and many other Jewish children
    did, unbeknown to the peasants who lived in the village,
    I quietly walked into the stables,
    I stole a little bit of milk, I ran up into the attic,
    I crawled up there unbeknown to the local people,
    I slept over the night there.
    Early in the morning, I heard shouts and screams.
    What happened?
    They had formed another Action on the particular camp.
    We're rolling, keep going.
    And in that particular camp, where
    my stepfather-- where I had hidden the day before,
    they had formed another Action, this time to hunt and to catch
    as many of the able-bodied men as they could,
    separated them, and sent them off
    into a different, ostensibly camp,
    but it was really a camp in which
    they were executed on the spot.
    I stayed with that woman--
    she didn't know about it-- for a few days.
    And I saw, once again, the brigades
    coming out through the village to break up the stones.
    They were working on fixing the roads.
    I crawled out of the spot.
    I immediately walked out.
    I wanted to see whether I'll be able to get
    a hold of any familiar face.
    And there, lo and behold, my stepfather
    stood once again with his eyes looking for me, looking for me,
    seeing whether I survived or not.
    And when he spotted me in the distance,
    and when we spotted each other, my father--
    stepfather began to sing to me in Yiddish.
    He pretended that he was singing to himself.
    In his song, in his message, he was telling me
    exactly where to go and what to do.
    It was a song in which he was telling me, this is the end.
    You must walk six kilometers straight ahead.
    You must never tell anybody that you're Jewish.
    You must tell them that you're looking for work.
    You must go and save yourself.
    This is the last time we can see each other and be together.
    And that is how I parted.
    And I left the last remnant of my family.
    I began to walk by foot in front of me on a road.
    I didn't know which way the road would lead me.
    I didn't know where I was going.
    I didn't know what my destiny was.
    I had no money.
    I had no papers.
    I had no parents.
    I had no objects.
    I simply walked.
    I walked, and walked, and walked until I was tired.
    I spotted from far away, towards the middle
    of the day-- this was early in the morning--
    towards the middle of the day, a young boy.
    --told me that he would not give me
    to the Germans or the Ukrainians, that he knew me.
    And I did not recognize him.
    I didn't know who he was.
    But apparently, during one of his visits
    to the ghetto while we were living
    with other families in a small, little room,
    he came to see and to help by bringing
    some food to one of these--
    to one of the Jewish girls, who happened
    to have been a schoolmate of his before the war.
    And in that particular house and that particular room,
    several families huddled together,
    was also living my mother, and my sister, and myself.
    And he said that he remembered seeing me
    in that particular room, in that particular house when
    he went to visit and to help this Jewish family.
    And he said that he would help me
    by bringing me on the road to another little village
    and that he would stay in the background
    to watch whether or not I will be
    able to find a place with the peasants
    in that particular village.
    I thanked him.
    I was very frightened.
    I didn't know whether to trust him or not.
    But since I had absolutely no other choice, I walked ahead.
    And I realized that he was walking behind me,
    seeing whether or not I will be able to find a haven.
    What was the haven which I was looking for?
    It was a place--
    it was already getting towards the fall,
    actually, at the end of the summer--
    it was a place, as the peasants were going towards the field,
    that I was hoping to find by trying to hire myself out
    to a peasant woman as a helping hand.
    Many of the peasants at that time in my part of the country
    were tending their fields.
    They were planting-- they were not planting,
    they were already gathering the wheat
    and they were gathering the potatoes.
    And on one particular woman that I came upon, I said to her,
    listen, would you like to hire out a--
    me to help you out in the fields?
    She says, yes, she says, I happen to be a widow.
    And I have two small children.
    And I have a great deal of work.
    And I could use this.
    She says, by the way, who are you?
    And I gave her a made-up story?
    What was the story, under what conditions did I--
    was I hope hoping to be hired?
    About a year before the end of Judenfrei,
    there was a lot of hunger going on,
    even among the Gentile population
    in a small town called Stryj.
    Many of the poorer Gentile families
    were forcing their children to leave
    and to look for work because they could not
    feed them anymore.
    When the Jewish children in the ghetto
    found out that outside Gentile children are looking for work,
    that gave us ideas and a pretext that we should pretend
    that we are one of those Gentile children running away
    from their parents who are pushing them out of the house
    to look for work.
    That was an idea which my mother planted into my mind
    when she prepared me for two things simultaneously.
    And this I want to record.
    My mother always taught me this--
    first, that I must survive--
    not if I will survive, but when I survive.
    And she always taught me that I'm not a Jew
    and that my story will be made up that I'm not
    a Jew, even if they catch me.
    They cannot kill me if they cannot prove that I am a Jew.
    She made me promise that I will adhere to this story
    all the time.
    Her second preparation was as following.
    She says, remember when--
    if we are caught, she says, I know that you will not be.
    But if we are caught, let's make a pact
    that we will never permit ourselves
    to be walked to the grave.
    No matter what we do-- we are three of us--
    you, your sister, and I-- if we run in different directions,
    they're going to have to shoot us from the back.
    They will not be able to catch us all.
    She says, I'm going to have to run with your sister
    because she's too little to know which way to go.
    But you and I, we must run in different directions.
    Promise me that we will run.
    I still don't know until today whether my mother decided
    to run or whether she walked to the grave
    because her one desire on my-- on her part
    was that we should run in different directions in order
    not to see how we will be caught.
    When he-- to go back to the story, when
    this young Ukrainian or Polish boy brought me to the fields,
    and saw that I engaged this peasant woman,
    and that she said to come with me, he left.
    And I stayed with this peasant woman.
    The hardest part-- when I spent the day with her,
    and came back to the village the hardest
    part about the first few days of the village
    was that everybody in the village
    opened suspicious eyes on this new person who just came in
    into the village.
    There were questions.
    They looked me over.
    They were suspicious.
    They wanted to know who I was, where I came from.
    And when my story finally began to penetrate
    and sank through after a few days,
    and I became part of the scene, I
    was accepted as a local portion of the village.
    The first few days were the most treacherous
    and the most dangerous because there was always suspicion.
    Where do you come from?
    Who are you?
    What is your name?
    What is your mother's name?
    What is your father's name?
    How come you came to these parts?
    All these suspicions and all these questions at any one turn
    and at any one moment could have given me away.
    I stayed with this peasant woman,
    not in hiding, attending to the horses, attending to the cows,
    attending to her children, helping her
    in the fields approximately--
    oh, I would say, close to perhaps 10 months
    or so until the end of the occupation.
    What was extremely dangerous in this occupation
    was the fact that I was never sure
    whether the woman did have her suspicions
    or did not have her suspicions as to who I was.
    I never openly declared because that was too dangerous.
    I learned later on that she knew who I was,
    but since I had blended into the local scenery
    and I was no longer suspected in the village,
    it became to her advantage to have me.
    How did I learn that she knew how I was?
    It had happened in the following manner.
    Towards the end of the occupation,
    hunger was rampant in the town.
    Many members of the Gentile population
    were coming into the villages to exchange anything
    which they had assured--
    From the city?
    --from the city, they were coming
    in to exchange what clothing and what kind of clothing,
    primarily clothing which they robbed, many times
    from the Jewish homes.
    One such woman, early in the morning,
    at dawn, came into my peasant woman's house
    and saw somebody-- her two little children next
    to the crib sleeping and somebody on a straw
    on the floor sleeping too.
    She asked the woman to go into the stable
    and bring her some food.
    And the woman went out to bring her a piece of cheese
    and some bread in exchange for a sweater.
    When the woman came back, she turned around.
    And she says, by the way, who is-- are these your children?
    She says, yes, these two are my children.
    And she says, and who is this one over there on the floor?
    She says, she's always--
    she's a lazy bum.
    She always sleeps there, always too late.
    She's somebody who's helping me out.
    I was shivering because she says, it's funny,
    she looks familiar.
    I was shivering that the woman would wake me and say, get up.
    It's time to go to the horses.
    It's time to go to feed the horses.
    The reason I looked familiar to the woman
    was very, very simple.
    She knew my family.
    She came from the town from which I came.
    And she was aware, perhaps, in a sort of night--
    in a fuzzy way that she was aware that she was seeing
    me someplace.
    Had my peasant woman not quickly realized what was happening,
    had she woken me up, that would have been the end of me.
    When the woman from the town finally
    was outside of the house, the peasant woman
    broke out in a sweat and said, oh, my god.
    She said, I thought you were going to get up.
    I was dying 1,000 deaths that you will not
    get up from the floor.
    I was so frightened that you will jump up
    to go and do your chores.
    She, in other words, suspected and knew all along who I was.
    But she was trying to protect herself against this woman,
    saying, I don't know who she is.
    She's a lazy woman.
    She always sleeps there and doesn't ever--
    gets up to her chores.
    She knew exactly who I was.
    And I turned around and I looked at her.
    And she looked at me.
    She says, yes, she says, I not only know you,
    I used to buy food from your parents and your grandparents.
    I know the store that they had in you-- in the village.
    So that goes way, way back.
    Not only did she know who I was, she
    knew exactly the little town and she knew exactly the store
    that my grandfather and my father owned.
    That's how intimately familiar the Jewish community was
    to the Gentile world and how easy it was for them not only
    to go to the first generation of the grandparents,
    but to the parents and to the children,
    and how to point out every one of them
    when they chose to do it, and to send them to the slaughter.
    My story is just about completed.
    When the Russians came in and when the Ukrainians finally--
    and the Poles were settling affairs between them,
    I picked myself up--
    by the way, with the help of this boy who originally showed
    me the road.
    I wish I knew who he is.
    I wish I knew his name because altruistically,
    he simply helped me.
    He later on came back to the village,
    remembering that I didn't know my way back to the town.
    And he says, come.
    I'll take you back to town.
    And he did.
    And he showed me the road to go back to my hometown, which
    was no longer my own town.
    Because there were no-- not only was it not my town,
    the people--
    the Jewish community was no longer there.
    My parents were not there.
    The Jewishness which was there for hundreds and hundreds
    of years had ceased.
    I had met on the road another survivor, a Jewish woman,
    who is no longer alive.
    Her name was Malcia Weissbrodt.
    When she saw me walking with this peasant
    boy in the street--
    this was several days already after the liberation--
    she looked at me, and she says, who are you?
    I know you.
    And I had so forgotten, I was so--
    I had so brainwashed myself, and so did my mother--
    brainwashed me not to say that I'm Jewish,
    not to say that I'm-- that I know how to speak Yiddish,
    that I had forgotten to speak Yiddish.
    And when she turned around and said to me, in Yiddish,
    [YIDDISH].
    I know who you are.
    What are you afraid?
    I started to cry.
    And I say-- said to her in Ukrainian, [UKRAINIAN]..
    I said, please, believe me, I swear to you, I'm Jewish.
    I swear to you.
    But I had forgotten how to speak Yiddish.
    But please, believe me, I'm a Jewish child.
    Take me.
    She says, I know.
    What are you talking about?
    I recognize you.
    And she grabbed me.
    And she told to this boy, she is now with us.
    She is all right.
    And we all started to cry, including that man, that boy.
    He said, I know that she'll be all right now.
    He went back to his village.
    And infected as I was with disease--
    I had a-- contracted a skin disease,
    which was highly infectious between my fingers.
    Scurvy?
    I don't know, no.
    No, not scurvy.
    It's a disease between the fingers.
    It's a very itchy disease.
    It's not psoriasis.
    It's something which is prevalent during hunger and--
    And vermin and--
    --and vermin and poor sanitary conditions.
    She grabbed me and she held me tight.
    And she said, I know who you are.
    I knew your family.
    And that was the beginning of my return to Judaism.
    Not only to the beginning of my return to Judaism,
    it is the beginning of my return,
    through my children, to whom I have nothing else to give,
    except that which was the most important thing to give them--
    my parents' name.
    My son, David, is named after my father, his grandfather,
    whose name is David.
    He is 28 years old.
    He's a physician.
    He's doing his residency at Harvard Medical School.
    My youngest son, his name is Neil.
    His name is Naphtali.
    He is named after his grandmother, my mother, Necha.
    He is 25 years old.
    He's a second-year law student at Columbia Law School.
    During the recent fight in Lebanon, Israel,
    my children spoke to me.
    When they found out what the Jewish boys had to do
    and how they were risking their lives in Lebanon,
    both said to me, mother, if David and I were living
    in Israel today, and if we had to go to Lebanon,
    how would you feel?
    I said to my children, I gave you life.
    I gave you my parents' name.
    Beyond you, I have nothing else.
    You are the only reason for my survival,
    the only justification.
    But I want you to know that if I had a choice today,
    and if it was my vote to give whether you should go, and pick
    up arms, and fight as every single Jew is fighting today
    in Israel, I would choose that for you.
    And even if you have to, god forbid, fall,
    I would want you to fall as a Jewish soldier defending
    yourselves, your lives, a country as you didn't have
    a chance to do during the occupation,
    as I did not have a chance to do, as all those
    who are not here to tell this story
    did not have a chance to do.
    Yes, I gave you life, and I want you to live.
    But if you have to die, never again the way
    my mother died, my father, my stepfather, my sister,
    and the way you would have died.
    That is my answer.
    That is my reason for this recording.
    That is the legacy I want to leave to my children.
    OK.
    That is it.
    He did the right thing.
    Yes.
    I will tell you what the point is.
    I realized that there was no logical answer to evil.
    There are only questions to evil.
    After all, we can go back to our Bible.
    We can go back to the story of Job,
    when he was being tested by God, and everybody around him
    was trying to convince him that the reason that he's
    being tested is because he did something wrong,
    he must have sinned, he must have transgressed.
    There must be a reason why God is punishing him
    by taking away his fields, by taking away his children,
    by giving him boils.
    It was only Job's strong belief.
    He said, no, no, I did not do anything.
    I will not believe that I am deserving all of this.
    There may be a reason, but not because I'm deserving.
    There must be a bigger reason than I can comprehend.
    That, he says, I believe, but not because I am guilty.
    I believe strongly.
    I believe firmly.
    I believe with all my heart that all the reasons, all
    the antisemitic scapegoats, all the economic scapegoats,
    all the torture, all the death, all the punishment,
    all the degradation were vested upon us without any kind
    of guilt on our part.
    I believe firmly, with all my heart, that perhaps,
    perhaps evil cannot be prevented,
    perhaps even killings cannot be prevented, perhaps, perhaps,
    god forbid, even another Holocaust may not be prevented.
    But I believe with all my might that we are guiltless,
    that what we did and what we stand for is right.
    We did not deserve to be treated this way.
    And I believe with all my might that this
    is what I must tell my children, this
    is what I think is the reason for survival,
    this is what my children will be taught by me.
    I believe that even if it is not possible to prevent evil,
    the truth must be told, just for the sake of truth,
    just for the sake of testimony, perhaps,
    perhaps, perhaps, hope against hope,
    wild hope against wild hope, perhaps someday,
    someday, human nature will become
    a little bit more refined, a little bit more tolerant.
    And perhaps something will come out of this accumulated
    suffering, out of this accumulated purposeless,
    wild torture, evil, and murder.
    That is the reason for my testimony here today.
    Do you feel that you want to say something, Ernie?
    Yes, Lusia.
    I believe that all out of the suffering that we
    were subjected as people, I hope that the mankind
    and the so-called great religions
    have learned a moral lesson, that another Holocaust
    like that on any people will not occur again.
    I believe that by the creation of the state of Israel,
    Jewish people will be able to defend themselves
    and at least have a spokesman that they always
    lacked, that they were on the mercy
    of the nobilities in the Middle Ages and of the Church.
    And this is-- the Holocaust is a culmination of persecution that
    was conducted for 2,000 years.
    And I have to-- to go on, must believe
    that there is a moral lesson in that,
    that another Holocaust will not occur.
    OK.
    Lusia, You want anything else?
    I think that really is everything.
    I would like to--
    Mr. Holly, right?
    That's it.
    I'm sorry--
    Mr. John Holly.
    --I don't have any cards.
    Thank you very, very much.
    I hope something good will come out of it too.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Lusia Milch
    Date
    interview:  1983 April 13

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Milch, Lusia.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors conducted the interview with Lusia Milch on April 13, 1983, in Washington, D.C., during the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Conference. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Dept. received the tapes of the interview in 1989. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the tapes by transfer in February 1995.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:14:03
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn503397

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    Also in American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors oral history collection

    Contains oral history interviews with 157 Holocaust survivors recorded during the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in Washington, D.C., in Apr. 1983. The interviews contain information about persecution, life in the ghettos and concentration camps, and concentration camp liberation during World War II.

    Date: 1983 April 11-2083 April 13

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    Oral history interview with Anna Olivek

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mayer Pasternak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sonia Pasternak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jill Pauly

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lee Potasinski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lily Redner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edith Riemer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Dora Riss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Noah Roitman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sol Rolnitzky

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Barbara Rona

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Michael Ronay

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Celia Rosenfeld

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Rothstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Aliza Rubin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Meyer Rubinstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hadassa Rublevich

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Charlotte Rudner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frieda Salomon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gloria Salomon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Theodore Schwarcz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hilda Schwartz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Barbara Seligman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irene Shapiro

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Meyer Shnurman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Gabriele Silten

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Claudia Sissons

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Isadore Small

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Klara Snyder

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Sochaczewski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Sold

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Goldie Speiser

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Meier Stessel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Felice Stokes

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Norman Swoy

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Simon Taitz

    Oral History

    Simon Taitz, born in Königsberg, Germany, describes having a successful watchmaking business in the suburbs of Kaunas, Lithuania; hiding with a Gentile family after the German invasion; being in a motorcycle club before the war began and how it was taken by the partisans; being forced to do labor; being mistreated by the Germans; being sent to the ghetto; working in the nearby airport; being sent one day to another work place and writing a song (he sings it during the interview); witnessing the reactions of the parents during and after the roundup of Jewish children; the separation of the men and women in a camp and writing a song about a woman who saw the men dancing and was punished (he sings it and the interviewee reads the translation); his song about the daily life in the camp (he sings it and the interviewee reads the translation); more details about life in the ghetto; writing a song about the choices people made during the war; the journey on cattle cars to Dachau; being sent originally to Stutthof; being transferred to Dachau, where he was separated from his mother and never saw her again; details on his childhood (losing his father when he was very young and having two siblings); helping to save other Jews in the camp by giving them jobs in his watchmaking repair shop in Kaufering; and more details on daily life in the camps.

    Oral history interview with Halina Zimm

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Solomon Teichman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Tenenbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Matthew Tovian

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Max Trompeter

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fela Unikel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Wakshlag

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Dobka Waldhorn

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sidney Wapner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Martin Water

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Celine Weber

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Weinberger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alice Weinstock

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Weinstock

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Weisfeld

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Weisfeld

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sol Wieder

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Samuel Wisznia

    Oral History

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