Oral history interview with Larry Hersh
Transcript
- Hi, Larry.
- Hi.
- I'm Peggy Nathan, National Council of Jewish Women.
- And I want to thank you so much for your participating
- in this tremendously important project.
- It, of course, will be a permanent oral history
- for future generations.
- You, I would like to introduce as Larry Hersh.
- And the first thing we'd like to do is to tell you--
- to have you give me a brief description of yourself today.
- All right.
- Tell me a little bit about yourself.
- Like you said, my name is Larry Hersh.
- I was born in a small town called Chust--
- C-H-U-S-T-- in Czechoslovakia, 1925.
- I'm 59 years old today.
- I lived there till 19--
- till I was taken away in 1942.
- Well, tell me now, where do you live now, Larry?
- Now, I live in Cleveland Heights, in the state of Ohio,
- under the address of 2573.
- I'm married.
- I have three beautiful daughters.
- How lovely.
- Are you retired?
- Not yet.
- I see.
- But I'm in the process of retiring.
- You're not working right now, though.
- No, I can't work.
- Some of it is part of injuries.
- I received.
- And some of it is part of injuries
- that I brought with myself from the camps.
- I understand.
- And you said you're married.
- Does your wife work?
- No, my wife is an American girl.
- And fact of the matter is she's a Cleveland girl.
- She was born here.
- And her parents were born here.
- And what about-- you said you have three daughters.
- They're all born here in Cleveland.
- One is in college, going to be a doctor.
- How wonderful.
- And my second daughter starts college this year.
- And my third daughter is still in high school.
- I see.
- OK.
- Now, we're going to really get into your history--
- To really the point.
- --your history, right.
- Can you tell me what your life was like before the war?
- Let's begin with about 1939 or so.
- 1939.
- You were maybe 24 years old then, is that correct?
- In 1939.
- No, in '39, you were--
- I'm sorry.
- No, in '39 I was--
- You were 14.
- --14 years old.
- You were born in 1925.
- '25, yes.
- Yes, OK.
- I was 14 years old.
- I went to school.
- And where were you living then?
- In Chust, Czechoslovakia then.
- It still was.
- I see, OK.
- This still Czechoslovakia.
- Everything was fine, normal life,
- and going to cheder, which is the Jewish school where
- you learn Hebrew and all of the Jewish rules, laws, and so on.
- Sure.
- Can you tell me what the town of Chust was like?
- Yes.
- There was a population of about between--
- there was about 35,000-40,000 population.
- Between them was about between 8,000 and 10,000 Jewish people.
- That was a large proportion.
- Yes it was a nice Jewish--
- Population.
- --community.
- Yes, a nice Jewish community.
- There were about a half a dozen temples, synagogues--
- What big--
- --a Hebrew school.
- --city were you near?
- Munkács, Kosice.
- It was somewhere-- it's in the Carpathian Mountains.
- I see.
- And it's a section where it bordered not far with Poland,
- from one side, to Romania, from the other side, and Hungary,
- from the other side.
- I see.
- It was a beautiful, beautiful country.
- Can you tell me about your family at that time?
- We were-- yes.
- We were home.
- I had my grandparents from both sides of my parents, uncles
- and aunts from both sides of my parents.
- But you all lived together?
- In the same-- not-- in the same area, not together.
- But not in the same time--
- No, not in the same-- no.
- --home.
- No, not in the same home, but in the same area, not too far.
- Yeah, I understand.
- And also, we had some relatives here in America.
- From my mother's side, we had--
- she had two brothers and two sisters here.
- And my father's side, he had one brother in California.
- But I want to know about your household in Chust.
- Am I saying it correctly?
- Yeah.
- OK.
- All right.
- You lived with your parents?
- I lived with my parents.
- And later on--
- Did you have brothers and sisters?
- Oh, yes.
- I had four sisters.
- And we were five kids.
- I was the only boy.
- And now, I have only one sister.
- Three were young.
- And they perished with my parents.
- Now, you saw your grandparents often, though,
- because they lived in the same general area.
- Right, right.
- How did your family make a living?
- What did your father do well in those--
- just before the war?
- My father was a businessman and happened
- to be well-to-do, better than the most of the Jewish people
- around.
- He was in the wood business, in other words, like sample.
- Wood?
- Wood, yeah, buying forests and cutting them.
- Certainly.
- And making-- cutting into certain lumber.
- We would call them a lumber yard.
- Lumber yard and stuff like that.
- And he also had a wine cellar--
- wine business, which we bought the grapes and made the wine.
- And we were, so to speak-- my father was, so to speak,
- an affluent man in town.
- You were-- you would describe yourself
- as well-to-do or comfortable?
- Well-to-do, right, comfortable living.
- And I always as a kid had everything I wanted.
- And in those days, especially, sports things,
- like having my own football, skiing, skating,
- and all of that, in those days, it
- was a big thing, especially in the part of the country
- where I was--
- Sure, skiing, of course.
- --and for a kid.
- And I had all of those things.
- How would you describe your family's life?
- Well, it is an idealistic life that you can describe only
- in the most seldom-seen way, let's put it this way.
- We were all together every meal.
- We had-- were together home, especially the dinners.
- And usually, in our time, the big dinner, the big meal,
- was during the dinnertime at--
- At noon, you mean?
- --at noon, yeah.
- And we went to school.
- And we used to come home from school at 1 o'clock.
- And by the time 1 o'clock, we used
- to sit down and eat, the entire family.
- Then you went-- how nice.
- And Saturday and the holidays, there's
- nothing to talk about it, that is unbelievable.
- It's just like a feast, the family
- sitting by the table every Friday night.
- I used to go with my father to temple,
- and come home, and have a big meal,
- and sing, and go with the religious, so to speak,
- ceremonies that goes with it, and have the kiddush, the wine.
- And for Saturday morning, we used
- to all get dressed up fancy, was the holiday clothes,
- so to speak, and go to Temple again in the morning
- and come home, have a big meal.
- Religion played a big part in your life.
- Right.
- Well, it-- yes, it was not in the sense of fanaticism
- of the religion, but it was with a sensible religious way.
- How about Zionism or other political organizations?
- Was your family interested or involved in that?
- Can you remember back in those years?
- Oh, I do remember well.
- I was very much involved.
- And my father, he was involved just by being, so to speak,
- supporting one organization or the other in terms of money.
- He did not participate in too many of those meetings
- and all of that.
- But therefore, I already made up for him too.
- You were a member of a Zionist group?
- I was a member of the Zionist organization.
- I was the leader of a Zionist organization,
- the whole area of Betar.
- This was in your teen years?
- Right, of Betar.
- And as I grew older, as we come to it,
- we will come to it a little bit later on,
- you will see the whole operations
- and so forth that I was involved my entire life.
- Did socialism or any other political organizations
- play a part in your family life?
- Socialism not-- well, we knew about it.
- We talked about it.
- But my father could not--
- he was considered to be a bourgeois because the fact
- that he was rich and he was a well-to-do.
- So he could not be a communist already.
- Socialism, that was-- we knew what's going on in Russia.
- And we know-- we knew that the little success they have
- with communism.
- We know that in the '30s that the hunger has been going on
- in Russia and all of that.
- It-- we knew what's going on in Germany with Hitler.
- And we knew what was going on in the world, far as this goes,
- because of radio and as far as communication was and wasn't.
- You were aware of world things.
- We were aware worldwide what's going on.
- We knew-- for example, we even know
- what's going on in America, the Depression.
- And we had a little bit of a firsthand knowledge of that.
- In 1933, one of my uncles-- like I
- said, do you remember, I said, I have a-- my father
- had a brother.
- His brother came to visit, came home to Europe.
- From America?
- Yeah.
- And he came home from America for a visit.
- And one day, he got a telegram.
- We-- I was a kid.
- I don't remember what it was.
- But a few days afterwards, he packed and he left.
- Later on, I found out that he had some--
- he was in business.
- And he had some kind of business difficulties.
- And he-- they needed his presence
- because of the circumstances.
- And he left.
- And his mother cried bitterly that he left.
- And that was the end, probably, that he ever saw his family.
- What was the main language spoken in your home?
- In my home-- in the house, the main language that was spoken
- is Yiddish.
- We also, all the kids and the entire family,
- everybody in the family, from my uncles and grandparents, all
- the way, we had--
- they had at least three different--
- know three different languages.
- I, in school, learned already a little bit of German.
- And I knew a little bit of Hebrew
- already-- not in the sense-- there
- was one thing in the prayers, but the other in the Hebrew.
- So it was a different.
- So I knew some.
- Yeah, the spoken language.
- We spoke Hungarian, Czech, and the local, so to speak,
- Russian.
- OK.
- Were there many books in your home?
- Were you-- was your family interested in that?
- Yes, we had books.
- But there was no library in town.
- But there was a different way of doing things.
- For example, if a new book came out,
- I remember reading Gone with the Wind
- in four different languages.
- Can you imagine?
- Thomas-- what was his name, I believe, the president's man--
- and Steinbeck, I read those books
- in three or four different languages.
- Well, where did you get these books?
- The style was like this.
- For example, I had friends.
- And we knew there is a new book out.
- So I bought one book.
- He bought a different one.
- So you would-- you had your own lending library.
- Then we switched around between ourselves,
- and went from hand to hand, and so on, and so on.
- Was there a theater or a concert hall in the town?
- Yes, there was-- no.
- A museum of any kind?
- No, no museum, nothing of this nature.
- But a concert-- we listened--
- we didn't pay too much attention--
- You weren't that.
- --to the concert.
- But we had a movie house.
- And fact of the matter is we had two movie houses.
- And we used to go almost every night to a movie.
- That was the main entertainment.
- Were the movies.
- Movies.
- And then close to the Jewish holidays, like a Purim,
- or in the wintertime, usually, used to come a--
- we used to call them a troupe, a Jewish group playing
- Jewish theater.
- And they stayed for a week or two weeks.
- And would entertain.
- Right, and then they used to keep going.
- Live entertainment.
- Right.
- And then used to go to the next one.
- Did your family go on vacations?
- Yes, we used to have--
- ours was already considered a big town.
- Like I said, we had 35-40, maybe a few more thousand people.
- It was considered to be already a nice town.
- So we used to go to the countryside
- almost every summer, around July, August, something
- like that, for a month.
- And to understand how the Carpathian Mountains is one
- of the most beautiful part of--
- in any country, which you could have there mushrooms
- and all kind of berries, and swimming, and fishing,
- and mineral waters, and mineral baths to be taken.
- It was just beautiful.
- OK.
- Now, let's talk about you, personally.
- How do you remember yourself in those days?
- Myself, I remember--
- What did you look like?
- I looked--
- Handsome?
- I was a young boy who loved swimming, loved
- playing football, who loved running, bicycling, loved
- to go steal apples from the neighbor, steal pears and--
- An all-around boy.
- All-around boy.
- Did you have any special interests other
- than the sports?
- You mentioned, you love the sports.
- Yes, I played soccer almost every team--
- we had-- every day.
- And we had our own team.
- And we used to play team against team, and town against town,
- and so on.
- It was just everything right.
- You have beautiful memories of your childhood.
- Tell you the truth, that keep me going.
- It was everything beautiful.
- This is till the-- my age of 20 when I was still.
- I left the age of 17, I should say,
- because after this, it's camp and all that.
- It was nothing.
- I had everything my heart desired.
- How nice.
- I did everything I wanted.
- And it's like somebody put all together a package for me
- till the age of 17 that everything
- will be put together.
- Tell me, what kind of schools did you attend?
- Like I said, I attend cheder.
- Then I attended Czech school.
- I went to Czech--
- But the cheder is just the religious school?
- Right.
- Regular, right.
- I went to Czech elementary school.
- And then I went-- started--
- by the time change came, I started to go to Hungarian.
- And I went to high school, which was called gymnasium
- instead of high school.
- I understand.
- And till around the fourth class,
- then I had to quit because Jews were not
- permitted to go to school.
- That was-- and so how many years had you
- gone to school altogether in Europe?
- Let's see, I had to--
- I started out-- my first year was in 1931.
- And I went--
- I had altogether about nine years of schooling.
- Did you have any non-Jewish friends?
- Oh, yes, I had many non-Jewish friends.
- And I also had many non-Jewish enemies,
- with which I had to conduct it very often too many fights.
- What do you remember about antisemitism
- in those days of your-- your school days?
- In my school days, it had a peculiar sense to it.
- It was a different--
- it wasn't in the sense as antisemitism
- as it's known today.
- It was more of a, so to speak, religious bigotry.
- In the sense, for an example, we didn't know--
- we could see and feel when, let's say,
- my Gentile friends went to church Sunday and what
- the preacher-- what his sermon was and if it was anti-Jewish
- or--
- in the way they acted, in other words, in the way--
- they used to say that good morning or that good day
- or how we used to play football in the afternoon with the kids.
- Or there was times, for an example,
- that they will do anything for you,
- that you would know any-- no boundaries, no difference
- whatsoever.
- Then another time, was Jesus killer,
- that kind of rotten Jew, and all that kind of thing.
- But I would say, we could live together like this,
- if it had stayed like this, for another 1,000 years,
- and nothing would have happened.
- And everything would have been going smoothly.
- And then it gets tough.
- You have a fight there between kids.
- Well, childhood.
- Right.
- Young childhood, yeah, pranks, and then
- Jews playing against the Gentiles,
- and that kind of stuff.
- But it had no serious meaning of any kind of consequence.
- Well OK.
- Now, we'll get on to--
- all right, these were your teen years.
- What do you remember about the beginning of World War II?
- World War II--
- When were you first aware that there was a war?
- My beginning of World War two is started out
- in 1938, when Hitler started in the Sudeten.
- We already began to feel the punch in Czechoslovakia.
- The Germans and the Sudetengebiet,
- which was called, starting to make trouble in Czechoslovakia,
- then creating all kind of confrontations and all of that.
- What made you aware that there were things going on?
- Well, we knew what's going on in the world scene.
- We know that Germany occupied Austria.
- And we knew what's going on with the Jewish people and Hitler's
- Germany.
- And we knew what's going on with the Jewish in Vienna
- after he moved in in Austria and so on.
- And we knew that nothing good will come out of it.
- Excuse me.
- Yeah.
- But nobody dreamed that it will go in such a fast pace
- in the way it went and it will have such a devastating results
- as it had.
- Were there changes in the way that non-Jews acted toward you
- and your family then?
- At that point in time, we still--
- it's-- they are occupying only the Sudeten part.
- We are still Czechoslovakia.
- It's-- everybody is restless.
- And nobody knows in what direction.
- The fact of-- the truth of the matter
- is that even some of the Gentiles were afraid.
- Because they did not know what is awaiting, who is what.
- And then the major change came, I remember,
- and it was in September--
- Of what year?
- --of the month of 1939.
- No, no that was in 1939 in early spring.
- Then it came the change--
- What kind of change?
- --of a big scale.
- Czechoslovakia fall apart.
- You mean the government?
- Completely.
- In other words, Czechoslovakia as a country fall apart.
- The Germans moved in to Prague, occupied the entire top
- of Czechoslovakia.
- Poland took a part by Silesia.
- The Hungarians took the rest of it.
- And we, in the Carpathian Mountains,
- we became part of Hungary.
- We were occupied by Hungary.
- I see.
- And then the change was right away.
- Well, what changes did your family
- have to make because of that?
- First of all that Czech schools was closed right away.
- There was no school.
- Everything was changed from the Czech language
- to the Hungarian language.
- Well, you were fortunate.
- You knew the language.
- Yes.
- They didn't bother us.
- But there were some people who remembered the Hungarians prior
- to Czechoslovakia.
- You got to remember that Czechoslovakia
- came into existence after the World War I. And prior to that,
- it was under the Hungarian Austrian Empire.
- So some people remember the old Tsar and--
- I mean the old king, and Franz Joseph, and all of that era--
- my grandfather.
- And he had a certain, so to speak, feeling towards that.
- It didn't feel terrible that this was happening?
- No.
- It's just change.
- Change, right.
- And they felt that everything will in time improve.
- And it's just one of those historical facts.
- The Czechoslovakia disappeared as a country,
- as a Czechoslovakia.
- And that was that.
- But did it-- did that in itself affect your family?
- The family as a whole, it did not
- affect because we were still all home.
- We were all together.
- And each one, business as usual.
- The fact of the matter is after a little while,
- my father did command his business with the Hungarians
- because they started--
- and a year or two later down, until we were taken away
- from home in 1940 and '41, we have a tremendous business
- with them.
- Because they bought all kinds of materials--
- raw materials, wood, fruits, wines, everything.
- And they were exporting it to Germany, to the German Army.
- They were already--
- And excellent business.
- So this business was good.
- Of course.
- Yes, it was excellent business.
- Were you worried about the future?
- Or you thought things were going to be good?
- As time progressed, and as we existed, in other words,
- in our existence, we felt good.
- We had everything we needed.
- There was nothing missing.
- Nobody bothered us as on a serious way.
- We didn't realize that we have been
- living in a fool's paradise.
- Because the world burning around us.
- And you know how human nature is.
- Of course.
- So we-- if I have my loaf of bread,
- that several hundred kilometers away from here,
- something else is going on, it didn't bother.
- And it was something what's far away and is happening.
- And that's exactly the way it happened with us.
- OK.
- Then eventually, the Nazis entered your town?
- No, not yet.
- Then in 1942-- '41, slowly, laws starting
- to come out against the Jews.
- Right, the Nuremberg laws.
- Jews cannot-- these-- that-- the Nuremberg laws were out already
- quite a while.
- But they starting to take effect in Hungary.
- I see.
- Jews were beaten on the streets.
- Well, who-- were there Nazis there doing this?
- They are.
- In the meantime, a Nazi Party was formed already.
- And they started to make all kinds of propaganda.
- And in my area, the major non-Jewish population,
- they were not involved.
- They were always only the few who were involved.
- And you always will find a few in everywhere
- that they are willing to sell their soul for-- you know.
- Right, right.
- And they gave in.
- Laws came out.
- You couldn't go here.
- You couldn't go there.
- And the soldier going around on a rampage,
- beating people with a beard, and beating here.
- They found out where a Jewish family lives, come at night,
- and break the windows, and scream,
- holler, make all kind of--
- behaving just like a mob behaves.
- And we had to learn how to contend with it.
- And we did.
- But your family made their living in the same way.
- Well, the living started to go down.
- Business started to be badly already.
- And in fact, then the business was taken away and given
- to a non-Jew, who--
- some of the Hungarians brought in from deep Hungary,
- which we didn't even know who he is and took away
- our businesses.
- The only thing what was left is our house
- and that we could stay there.
- So then how long did you stay there?
- Your family was moved eventually.
- Eventually, yes, we were all moved later on.
- We came to the ghettos.
- All right.
- But so things were getting bad.
- The business was taken.
- Right.
- The business was taken.
- And everything starting to go downhill.
- Right.
- Antisemitism became more a way of life
- with the local population, with the local people.
- The young generation, the young people, friends
- with whom I used to play soccer yesterday didn't know me today.
- And it was only one, maybe two who felt sorry.
- But they were afraid to do anything.
- And that was going on not only in the younger generation,
- but also, spilled over to the older ones.
- In other words, for example, my father knew other fathers.
- And he grew up there together.
- Yet--
- They no longer spoke to each other.
- They did, but it didn't mean anything.
- They-- don't bother me.
- I can't do it.
- It was--
- I see.
- Nobody took your part.
- Nobody helped you.
- Right.
- Nobody was-- and in fact, my grandparents
- lived in a village not far from our hometown, from our town,
- from Chust, about 50 or 60 kilometers from there.
- And that small village, there were maybe
- 30 or 40 Jewish families.
- And there was about 500 or more non-Jews.
- They started-- and they grew up there.
- They lived all their life in that village.
- Yet they starting already to feel the pinch.
- They wouldn't sell them wood.
- And they wouldn't sell them products.
- They would not do this.
- And the usual thing, they used to be everything
- without any change.
- Nobody was around.
- OK.
- Looking back, and you knew-- you saw
- what was happening-- do you recall any plans, then,
- that your family made to deal with this situation?
- Or did they feel that they were helpless?
- They was-- let me give you a sense
- to understanding from the Jewish point of view what
- has been going on.
- Well, I want to know, though, about you, yourself,
- and your family.
- Yeah, it was me and my-- it was-- involves me my family.
- OK, fine.
- But in the way things been going with me and my family
- will reflect on the entire concept of--
- Right, and I understand, right.
- --existing at that period of time.
- I was a very good student.
- And in 1938, in Czechoslovakia, was
- a school in Prague for special talented youngsters.
- I had to go through, I remember, a special test.
- And I came out with flying colors.
- They sent me a questionnaire to fill out
- what I would like to learn, what sports I would play,
- and all of that.
- And they wanted to pay everything.
- I had nothing to do, just to go to the school.
- Like a scholarship.
- Yeah.
- And I wanted-- at the time, I decided
- to be an engineer, engineering.
- I wrote back.
- They accepted me.
- They even sent me home a ticket and exactly how-- directions
- how to go, where to stand, to arrive, who will wait for me,
- and what clothing to bring with me for sports and football,
- and even an instrument, a musical instrument, to play,
- and all of that.
- My grandmother from my father's side, my father's mother,
- she went to the rabbi.
- And she said to the rabbi, this and this is going to happen.
- My grandson is going to that kind of school.
- The rabbi says, gevalt, he's going to be eating treyf.
- He's not going to be able to go to temple on Shabbos.
- And he's not going to be able to put on the tefillin.
- He's not going to be able to pray
- in the morning and the evening.
- He discouraged her.
- And that kind of-- she came home all fired up against my father
- and especially against my mother.
- Because my mother was a very modern woman.
- And what are you going?
- So my father couldn't bear it.
- He had to cancel it.
- So in this kind of environment, in that kind of circumstance,
- I'm trying to give you the concept of.
- Now, we teenagers who were organized in the Zionist
- movement, we felt something is to happen.
- But we had no, so to speak, leadership.
- And as you will see further, you will understand
- what I'm talking about.
- Because it's hard to explain how the events went.
- We knew something is about to happen.
- We tried to organize the younger generation already together
- as much as possible.
- But everything was closed.
- We could not move out because we were framed in, boarded in.
- We were already Hungary.
- So we could not go back to Czechoslovakia
- because there is already trouble.
- Romanian, all the borders were closed.
- And if anybody was caught, he was shipped back.
- On the other hand was Germany.
- Germany was already in Poland.
- And Germany was already in Czechoslovakia.
- So what's left?
- We couldn't go nowhere.
- The only place to go was Romania or Yugoslavia.
- And Yugoslavia, you couldn't go because Yugoslavia
- had their own problems at the same time as we had in Hungary.
- OK.
- Let's talk about what happened to you as the war progressed.
- As the war progressed, and made--
- everything went.
- In 1942, I was out of school.
- I had to leave school.
- I couldn't do anything.
- Food became a problem, scarce.
- Black market started.
- Your father wasn't working.
- No, he wasn't.
- The business was--
- Everybody was just staying home.
- Oh, yes.
- We all staying home.
- Everything was taken away.
- And you were afraid to move, almost.
- Business didn't existed-- nonexistent.
- A Jew could not do any kind of work.
- He had no job, no businesses.
- And then things starting to go bad.
- There was a lot of problems in the Jewish community because
- of the daily needs and for the daily survival.
- So to speak, the well-to-do Jews had to open their pockets
- and do what they can to help others--
- To help others, right.
- --more than in the usual way.
- And I do remember my father selling all kind of things
- in order not only for us-- to support us or the rest
- of the family, but other people--
- To help others.
- --others who we knew and all of that.
- OK.
- Then they came in.
- And were you taken away?
- As a family, were you moved?
- Then here comes a little bit of a different--
- my life story is a unusual one.
- OK.
- That's what we want.
- And my life story is not the every survivor story.
- That doesn't matter.
- We're interested in your story.
- My story has a different, as you will see as I keep going.
- All right.
- Let's go on.
- 1943 is approaching.
- We had a meeting at the Zionist organization.
- And there was rumors that for our hometown,
- there will be four--
- at the time, we called it certificates
- available to go to Palestine.
- And this--
- Who was issuing these?
- They used to be issued from the British and from Palestine.
- And to Hungary used to--
- came that Hungary will release--
- they will be permitted to leave, at the time,
- if I remember correctly, there was 150 Jews, young people.
- My hometown received from the 100
- the quota of four to be released.
- I understand.
- The boys' decision was made that I will be one of them in going.
- I went to Budapest, discussed with the leadership there.
- And they said, yes.
- Do you want me to go for the qualities
- that I possess of the languages I possess that I may
- be in a need for a later date?
- We don't know what's going to happen.
- And they are predicting-- they feel that I should go.
- This was 1942?
- That's 1942, close to the end of 1942.
- Or it's late fall, in the beginning of fall,
- let's put it this way.
- I came home.
- And I said, I'm going to start packing.
- I'm going to leave for Palestine.
- And rumors had it that there was only four.
- And everybody wanted to get out.
- My mother-- we sit down one evening.
- And my mother says to me, are you fair?
- I looked at her.
- And I says, Mother, what do you mean?
- And she says to me-- these are the words what she said.
- After all, she says--
- I used to call me the macher, my macher.
- My mother used to call me-- here is my macher.
- The big man.
- Yeah.
- So after all, you're the big macher.
- She says, you're the guy who is running
- around all over the place.
- And you're the-- why do you--
- it will look like you're taking for yourself.
- How about giving it to somebody else?
- After all, you're a shtetl leader.
- So it doesn't look good.
- It will look like you were taking yourself.
- So I says, how about if I give it to my sister,
- to my younger sister, and let her go?
- She says, no, you give it to somebody else.
- At the time, I didn't click, but later on,
- the downtime, in-- later on in years,
- that she didn't want us to leave.
- We wanted to stick together.
- Sure.
- Keep the family together.
- So anyhow.
- But the paradox of it is the ones who left,
- they all survived.
- And they are in Israel till this day.
- So I gave it away to somebody else and the four of them.
- And they left for Israel, for then, at the time, Palestine.
- I see.
- So then what happened to you?
- Then I stayed home.
- I had to go around and make every day problems
- to accumulating-- to see for the everyday daily survival.
- Sure.
- And my headache was not only for myself already.
- Because there were a lot of older people who their kids got
- stuck all over the world in different places.
- And they could not have any-- so in other words,
- we had to get busy to help everybody in the way we could.
- In '43, things starting to go worse.
- You were still--
- We're still home.
- --19 years-- 18-19 years old.
- You had a lot of responsibility.
- Yes.
- I still-- responsibilities.
- Yes.
- In other words, I realized, I had
- to grow up overnight, simple fact.
- Then we were taken to the ghettos.
- In 1943, we have been taken to ghettos.
- All right.
- Now, tell me, the ghettos-- you mean, in your own town?
- Let me explain what a ghetto is.
- Ghetto is-- of course, Germans came in already,
- occupied the entire section, the Carpathian link.
- And it was under occupation with the Germans,
- but also Hungarians.
- The first-- right away, the first thing what they did is,
- in creating the ghetto, is they going in a section of the town.
- Mostly, they looked the sections where Jews were concentrated.
- And they clean out the all surrounding area,
- all of the houses.
- If any Gentiles, they move them out
- and they give them another house,
- of a Jewish home or a Jewish house somewhere else.
- Then they bring in all the Jews from that hometown,
- from the whole town, to that particular designated area.
- And they seal it off.
- And this is-- we moved in.
- We had to move in.
- We were five in our family--
- I mean, let's see--
- there was one boy, four--
- we were six in the family.
- And so we had one room.
- Well, there were four children-- five children--
- Five children.
- --and your parents.
- My parents.
- So there were seven.
- Yeah.
- Your mother, and father, and the seven children.
- Yes, seven.
- Yeah, four girls.
- I mean, and the five children-- four girls and you.
- But also, my grandmother was with us.
- So that there were eight.
- Eight people.
- We had to move in-- eight of us had to move into a--
- to a one room.
- In a home.
- In a house.
- Yeah, it's a house.
- But you had one room was your living quarters.
- And we got one room.
- And another room was another family, and a third room
- a third family.
- I understand.
- We were about four or five families together.
- Were these people you knew?
- People from-- yes, from--
- Jewish people from your community, right.
- --Jewish people from the community,
- from the town, what we knew very well.
- And of course, we were-- the way it
- was conducted is you come in, say, hey,
- you pack tomorrow morning.
- You are leaving.
- You can take with you this, take blankets,
- get a little bit food to last you for a couple of days.
- You cannot take your jewelry.
- You cannot take this, fancy stuff, coats, and that,
- just regular clothing.
- And that's the way it happened.
- Well, how did you--
- what difficulties did you encounter there?
- Who supplied you with food in the ghetto?
- At that time, we are moving in the-- we are just
- moving in in the ghetto.
- And we took some food with us.
- And by being in the ghetto, I remember
- that we managed to get a meeting together.
- And we decided, we are going to take the wagons, horse
- and buggy wagons.
- And we'll go from house to house.
- And whatever food is left in the Jewish families,
- we'll put it in that wagon.
- And we'll bring it in in the ghetto.
- And this is--
- Oh, you were permitted to go out during the day to do this?
- Yes.
- This is still the same process as is moving out.
- We had three, four days to do that.
- In the period of those three, four days, this is what we did.
- So we went out.
- And we brought from every house.
- We went in in every house.
- What we found food, we put it in--
- butter, oil, cheese, cream cheese, flour,
- whatever-- sugar, whatever we found,
- we put everything together.
- We brought it in the ghetto.
- And then we had another group who
- was dividing it, giving out.
- Any family who came and needed food right away was given.
- Right, right, sort of community living.
- Yes.
- And--
- How long--
- --what I didn't know at the time was
- that the Germans observed who are
- top machers who are doing things,
- and who were leading, and so on.
- I didn't know that they already knew who I am,
- and what I'm doing, and they observed me.
- After being in the ghetto, and every settled down a little
- bit, quieted down, and everybody was already--
- two days later, one of the Jewish Judenrat, so to speak,
- came in.
- And he says, Larry--
- my Jewish name was Leibe.
- He says, Leibe, this is the chief of the Gestapo.
- And the chief-- there was a big chief.
- He was-- he had a half a dozen men with him.
- He wants to talk to you.
- It was fine.
- So I came in and took my hat off.
- So he says to me now, first question
- is do you speak German?
- So I says, a little bit.
- And he says, OK.
- He says, I'm going to test you and see
- how little bit you speak.
- And he's asking me some questions,
- minor questions-- how many wagons of food
- did you brought in?
- And did you got all of it out?
- And still-- do you think there's still some left?
- Or can you still get a wagon and the horses together and get it?
- That kind of good approach.
- And then he says, how many boys do you have working with you?
- I was naive.
- I didn't know what he is shooting--
- Why he's asking this.
- --what he is shooting for.
- So I gave him all the answers.
- And he says, well, your German is pretty good.
- So he says, go ahead and do what you have to do.
- Bring in more food and all of that.
- That lasted for approximately a good week.
- Afterwards, the week is over, my father
- knew another guy, a non-Jew who was working for the Germans,
- was a Hungarian policeman.
- But my father used to give him money,
- buy him drinks-- not years back from before.
- So he was standing guard.
- They are walking around.
- So my father calls him over and says, hey, he says, be a pal.
- Let me cash in a little bit on you after all those years.
- Look, he says, see what you can find out and let me know.
- Says OK.
- And one day, he comes over to my father.
- And he says, listen, there is an order-- the Germans
- them self could not come in the camp to arrest or take anybody.
- The ghetto, you mean?
- Right.
- You had to have the Hungarians to come in.
- He says to me that listen, there is an order
- to take in your son and the rest of the boys, the names
- of another bunch of teenagers, a whole bunch of young people.
- My father heard this.
- He got busy.
- Till this day, I don't know how he managed.
- But I got-- we used to call it a [NON-ENGLISH],, which means--
- it's a-- from the army, they call you.
- In other words, you have been recruited to the army--
- I understand.
- --to the Hungarian Army.
- And I had a piece of paper by saying
- that I have been recruited by the Hungarian Army
- to report here, and here, and here at that and that day--
- A call-up
- --to call up to duty.
- Right, call to duty, right.
- Well, if you had this, there was nobody anything can do.
- You just have to go out, and pack, and leave.
- Right.
- So that's how you stayed out of their hands that time.
- OK.
- Yeah.
- But my call was two weeks.
- I still had two weeks' time.
- Well, was this a legitimate thing?
- A legitimate.
- That's everything.
- Oh, I thought he maybe paid somebody.
- Oh, yeah, he had to pay it.
- But it was legitimate.
- Oh, but it was legitimate, whether you
- should go into the army then go to the Germans.
- OK.
- Right.
- That was legitimate, yes.
- But it was bribery.
- But it was legitimate.
- But it was two weeks later.
- I still had two weeks' time.
- So in order-- we tried to figure out
- for them what to do in those two weeks.
- Well, rumors got to us that there are still some papers
- available in Budapest.
- See, Budapest was not ghetto yet.
- We don't know at the time.
- We don't know what's going on.
- But we don't--
- Papers for what?
- For Palestine, you mean?
- Not for Palestine, but to other countries,
- to be able to get away.
- I see.
- That was the time that we didn't know what's happening.
- So since I didn't look Jewish, I could get away with it.
- And not looking like a Jew, I got dressed up,
- and I went to Budapest.
- I met with my people who I knew from before.
- And they all said, it's trouble everywhere.
- And they are expecting somebody to arrive from Palestine
- pretty soon, who will instruct what to do.
- And therefore, nothing I can do.
- The only thing they can help me is they
- have two pieces of paper.
- And they don't know how much it will work
- and how much not that somebody will
- be able to go to Romania, to escape,
- that he will be able to cross the border and go into Romania.
- You preferred-- you didn't really
- want to go to the Hungarian Army.
- I'm still home there.
- I still have this.
- So they didn't know what to tell me.
- They said, we do the best we can.
- Try and stay in touch.
- And let's see what happens.
- Because we could not use telephones.
- We could have no communications.
- It had to-- excuse me.
- It had to be on a personal level.
- So nothing accomplishing, I took those two pieces of paper.
- They were like passports, two pieces of passport.
- I came home.
- And we had a meeting, who should be the two to go.
- So I wanted one of them to be my sister.
- All the thing we had to do is to put the picture on it.
- And I had a little piece of rubber
- to give it a stamp to make it--
- Official.
- --have official.
- Anything else was-- you know.
- So they said, no, we'll send another couple.
- There was a young couple who just got
- married a couple of years ago.
- And we decided for them to go.
- And we gave it to them.
- And they went to Romania.
- And they are still today in Palestine.
- They survived.
- Time came and I had to go to the army.
- I had to leave.
- And here is the saddest moment of my life.
- I kissed my parents and my sisters goodbye.
- I said, I'll be back soon.
- And I'll be watching you.
- And that's the last time I ever--
- Saw them.
- --see them.
- So you went into the army then?
- I went into the army.
- Where did you go?
- I went called a city Nagybánya.
- How far was that from home?
- From home, that was, oh, about four or five hours' ride
- on a train.
- And there-- now, I'm leaving home.
- I don't know anything what's going on home.
- I'm different.
- No communication.
- No communications whatsoever.
- No letters, nothing.
- I left home.
- And I don't know anything till after the war,
- I'm finding out details from my sister.
- I understand.
- But till then, I don't know.
- But let's talk about-- you went to the army.
- Now, how long did you stay in the army?
- Here is a different-- when you say army,
- it's a different concept.
- You got to understand, here, with the army,
- I happened to have that we had a colonel who
- was a very good guy, who later became one of those Righteous--
- Gentiles.
- --Gentiles.
- His son is writing a book right now in Budapest.
- And my name will play a part.
- What is this man's name, the colonel?
- Gee.
- Or his son's name, do you recall?
- He was called Colonel Kelety.
- Kelety.
- Kelety.
- Calady.
- Kelety, yeah.
- Can you spell it?
- K-E-L-E-T-Y.
- Oh, OK.
- And he's going display.
- He's playing a-- he's writing-- his son is putting together
- a book.
- He was here in America not too long ago.
- And he was there and back.
- And I have a special story with him.
- And he dedicated quite a little bit to that.
- How wonderful.
- Now, tell me.
- So Colonel Kelety was helpful to the Jewish
- To Jewish-- he--
- --the Jewish people in the army.
- --he was the one who issued those papers.
- But he didn't know that in between, the between-goers
- made money out of that.
- Right.
- I see.
- So in other words, he was the one
- who put the signature on it.
- And he is the one who was in--
- To call you to the army.
- To come in to be under his regiment, in other words,
- under his.
- Sure, I understand.
- So we came in there.
- I reported.
- I was taken in, registered, everything,
- issued certain military things--
- a blanket and other few little things.
- Uniform, yeah.
- No uniform, just on our own--
- we went in our own clothes.
- Your own clothing, OK.
- Yes.
- And we just received-- there was a armband with a stamp in it
- from the Hungarian Army.
- and this yellow band, yellow armband, and this
- is what we wore.
- This tells that you're a member of the army.
- Yes.
- Now, as long as I'm in the armband,
- let me go back to the four--
- I didn't talk about it.
- It was in the ghetto, when we came in the ghetto,
- that everybody had to wear the yellow star.
- And we had to-- should stop?
- No, go ahead.
- We had the yellow star.
- We had to wear the yellow star, and of course, a strict curfew.
- You couldn't go out from--
- Sure, the curfew, right.
- Right, and all the restrictions that go with it.
- Now, back to the army.
- I was been in there for about four or five days.
- We received word that the local Jewish people
- have been taken to the ghettos.
- In other words, they created the same ghetto
- that we had in our town hometown, we created here.
- In order to know what's going on, we right away--
- some of the guys there knew me.
- And we felt that something is going to happen,
- some different organization because of the Zionist movement
- that I used to be.
- I used to organize and all that.
- Right away, I organized a small group of guys who had--
- a hard core of guys around me.
- Had what?
- A hard core of guys.
- Hard core.
- Oh, to do what?
- As we will keep going.
- All right.
- Well, but we have--
- Whatever is going needed, whatever will be needed to do.
- I see.
- But you're in the army.
- Right.
- Yes.
- And we are in the army.
- All right.
- Let's take a little break now.
- And we'll come back and finish this interesting story.
- OK.
- All right?
- All right.
- OK, Larry.
- Let's go ahead now with the rest of your story.
- And pick up where we stopped with the army service.
- Yes, I'm in the army.
- And like I said before, I created a little bit
- of a hardcore around myself.
- And we found out that the ghetto does not have
- bread for two days already.
- And there is no sign.
- We're not permitted to leave to go out and buy,
- or there is no sign of improvement at this point.
- So I called in some of my guys.
- And we sit down and, what can we help?
- The decision was made that we are
- going to see if we can take bread from our soldiers, what
- we have from our Jewish boys, and deliver to the ghetto.
- Somehow, the word got to the general
- that we are planning to take some bread.
- The word got to him was like this.
- We got up early in the morning.
- And we packed a wagon full of bread,
- and we threw hay and straw on top of it,
- and put those forks in it, to make
- it look like we are traveling to deliver hay
- to another section of the city.
- And two guys got on the top and drove out.
- But one of the sergeants observed it, and saw everything
- we are doing.
- So he went to the general and told him
- that the Jew boys stole bread and went out with it.
- He doesn't know where we went with it.
- But we stole a wagon of bread.
- So he saw me.
- He called me in.
- And he says to me, you know, I have a real charge against you.
- I can arrest you right now.
- I should arrest you, he says.
- You stole a wagon of bread.
- I says, no, I didn't steal the bread.
- We took it to the other section to where our boys are,
- and they needed hay for the horses.
- He says, hay, I understand.
- But since when are the horses eating bread?
- And bread in such a big demand now.
- Then he says, don't lie to me.
- Tell me the truth.
- What did you do with the bread?
- So I says, well, we took it into the ghetto.
- There's some of our people are hungry.
- We need bread.
- He said to me, I don't want to hear about it.
- And he says, and the next time he
- says, if you want to do something don't be a dumb Jew
- and let yourself being caught.
- I saluted him.
- And I said, yes sir.
- And turned around and walked out.
- The next day we already managed, we already found out.
- So he was actually sympathetic towards--
- He was helping.
- He's trying to help.
- That was--
- And then two days later, again, we went in with one wagon.
- And then he saw me during the day.
- And he calls me in, and says to me, did you make your delivery?
- I said, yes sir.
- He says, job well done.
- And I went away.
- But things deteriorated very badly.
- Do you have any idea this man's name?
- I haven't written down at home, his son, I have the address.
- I have a letter from his son.
- I'm in contact with his son.
- I have his picture.
- I have everything.
- OK, let's go ahead.
- And things deteriorated in the city, and out of town.
- And the Hungarians didn't--
- the population didn't like that we
- as Jews who have been sitting outside and sleeping outside,
- and instead of being confined to the camp.
- So one day he came in and arrested all of us,
- and threw us in the ghetto.
- Well, they took you out of the service
- then, and into the ghetto.
- And then throw it into the ghetto.
- OK.
- We ran away from the ghetto, back to the--
- again after three or four days, there was no food.
- Myself, there is another guy here.
- He lives right here in Cleveland.
- His name is Leonard Fox.
- He was with me at the time.
- We ran back in to the army, took some breads in bags,
- as much as we could.
- I remember I had 14 loaves, and I think he had the same amount.
- And we were caught by bringing them in.
- He got beaten up very badly.
- They gave him 45 lashes.
- He passed out.
- And by the time they got to me, I somehow managed to run away,
- jumped over, went away, and I hid myself in the fields.
- And he didn't see me.
- But came at night, I didn't know what to do.
- I decided I better go back in, in the ghetto.
- Because if I would be on the street,
- as the curfew is on the street, the first thing they'll do
- is shoot me.
- Sure.
- So I didn't want to take a chance.
- I thought my chances of survival are better there.
- So I went back in, in the ghetto.
- And that was my mistake.
- Without knowing, the next morning,
- we were all rounded up, put on the train,
- and away we went to Auschwitz.
- Everybody in the ghetto, or just you who were involved?
- Everybody.
- The whole ghetto was cleared out?
- The entire ghetto was liquidated.
- OK.
- I see.
- The entire ghetto was liquidated, put in, in trains,
- and off we went to Auschwitz.
- You went to Auschwitz.
- Now, all right.
- Now can you tell me, what were your experiences in Auschwitz?
- Were you with your family?
- No.
- I have heard--
- That's right.
- You were-- I had forgotten.
- I haven't heard anything from my family.
- I don't know anything what's happening with my hometown.
- Right.
- The only thing we heard is the rumors
- they have all been taken away.
- We don't where.
- Sure.
- Do you remember how long this train ride was from the town
- where the army camp was that ghetto, to Auschwitz?
- How long were you on that train?
- Well, the ride took us about five days.
- We used to stop once or maybe twice,
- and receiving some water.
- We are not permitted to get out of it.
- Just one guy may be jumping out and filling dishes with
- and passing him water, no food, just water.
- No food, whatsoever.
- Was this-- were these regular trains?
- Were these cattle trains?
- What kind of trains?
- No.
- It was-- let me explain.
- It was a train with cattle wagons.
- In other words, they were like boarded in all around.
- But it wasn't the passenger trains?
- No, no passenger trains.
- No, no, no.
- It was commercial.
- They were freight cars.
- Freight cars.
- Freight cars.
- Absolutely, freight cars like you pushed in,
- 80 to 100 people in one sitting one on top on the other one.
- They came the families.
- They let the families be together.
- But since I had no family, nobody with me,
- so we so to speak, the whole hardcore guys were together
- again, half of it anyhow.
- And we went, stick together, and we went.
- That's the way we arrived to Auschwitz.
- OK.
- The screams, the cries, the pushing,
- the shoving in the train those five days,
- I don't know if there is any human being can describe them.
- Terrible.
- The cry from the kids, the smell from older people
- and from young children.
- And you name it.
- And it's hard.
- I don't think there is anything to describe it, just to say
- it's terrible is not a word.
- I don't think there is a word in the dictionary that
- would fit the description.
- What was your experience in Auschwitz?
- Now, we are arriving to Auschwitz.
- And there, the minute the train pulled in and stopped,
- it's like there would be a complete new world.
- Like you would fall to the bottom,
- will fall out of everything, screams, the doors opened.
- Do you recall the date?
- The date it was, two days before, Shavuot.
- Let's see.
- That would be--
- In May.
- That would be in around the 26th of May, 1943.
- This was when you were taken from the ghetto and put in.
- And within that five day period are your arrival in Auschwitz.
- Yes, right.
- OK.
- Describe your arrival in the camp.
- In the camp, like I said before, like it's a new plant.
- They opened up the doors, the screaming, raus!
- The barking of the dogs, and jumping the dogs,
- the SS holding back, they jump-- the dog
- from jumping on anybody.
- And those big sticks and black uniforms
- with a Totenkopf, the death hats on their--
- it is impossible to describe.
- And the screamings, and the pushing, and the shoving, raus!
- Eintreten, raus, eintreten, which means out.
- In line, out, get in line, out, get in line.
- That's all.
- And then kids lost-- babies lost their mothers.
- Mothers lost their husbands, and fathers lost their children,
- and screaming.
- Everybody looking for everybody.
- And the dogs barking.
- Finally everybody found everybody, got in line.
- Now, we are walking.
- They separate men on one side, women and children
- on the other side.
- Nobody in his wildest dreams would ever
- imagined that this is the last time
- that they will see each other.
- Sure.
- Now as we got in line, put us in a line,
- men separated, women separated.
- This has to be a terrible feel-- you had no idea what
- the future held for you.
- We don't see nothing.
- We don't--
- You're told you're going--
- You are so preoccupied with the events at the moment
- that your mind doesn't even wander away.
- Your mind is right here.
- But of course, it's a question for what
- is the next moment coming.
- When you were put on that train, did you
- know where you were going?
- No, no idea.
- No idea.
- OK.
- No idea.
- And when you stopped and you saw the soldiers,
- we don't where we are.
- You don't know what's going to happen to you from one
- moment to the next.
- We don't know where we are.
- We don't know what's happening.
- The minds-- excuse me-- are so occupied just
- to be from the moment.
- Sure.
- Finally, we are in a line, and we start walking.
- And there we see three SS, all beautiful dressed,
- fancy clothes, shiny boots, like a mirror.
- Later, we find out it was Dr. Mengele.
- And he's standing there and like this, you walk up.
- And you're supposed to tell them your age.
- You come to him and you say 16, 17, 18, whatever, 50, 20,
- whatever your age is.
- Sure.
- I came in front of him.
- I said, 17.
- [NON-ENGLISH] 17.
- He looked at me and makes like this,
- means I'm going to the right.
- Other guys, to the right, to the right, to the right.
- Then he makes like this.
- It means to the left.
- We didn't know the meaning of it, what it means.
- Of course not.
- Left and what it means to the right.
- And finally it's over, so to speak, that--
- Selection.
- --selection.
- We got in.
- And now we are lined up men, only men, no woman,
- no children.
- They are all separated in a different direction.
- We are lined up eight in a line, and a whole
- on the back, a whole line, I don't know how many thousands.
- And I'm in the middle.
- And we are about to walk.
- From far, I can see there is a big sign through a gate.
- And it says, Arbeit macht frei, which
- means work brings liberty.
- So to go through that gate, as we
- are walking towards the gate, on both sides are barracks.
- Are you carrying anything, any possessions?
- I just have one--
- on my back, I have a sack with--
- A rucksack, a knapsack.
- Yeah, right, a knapsack, with some,
- a few of my personal belongings, nothing else.
- And as we are walking, somehow I had the feeling
- that somebody is looking at me and that something will happen.
- I looked around, and I didn't see nobody.
- But I saw one SS man, soldier walking with a big stick
- and with a whip in his hand.
- And I saw him walking, more I came closer to him,
- and closer he came to me, somehow
- something in me starting to work harder and harder.
- And from out of the blue sky--
- It was fear.
- It was fear.
- No, it was-- I can't describe the feeling,
- and it was something.
- No fear, I wasn't afraid of anything in those days.
- Sure, you were a young healthy, young man.
- It's something--
- Something's going to happen.
- Something special-- something is about to happen.
- And he came over closer to me.
- And as soon as he came a few steps away from me,
- our eyes met, and he had a whip in his hand.
- And he started to hit me, saying [NON-ENGLISH]..
- What does that mean?
- It means the damn dark, move, that you further comes away
- from here, disappear, go, hit me a few times.
- And I was just about ready to drop my rucksack, the bag,
- and just ready to jump on him.
- When one of my friends in the back, grabbed me and says
- don't get crazy.
- Not now.
- Another time now.
- He hold me back and we walked.
- And this is happening so fast.
- And I have to keep on walking in line.
- And as I am walking, a thought came to me, why me?
- Sure.
- Here I am, I'm walking in a line.
- With so many.
- So many people and that particular feeling
- after me, if he had come in line, hit this guy,
- hit that guy.
- Yeah, hit this Jew.
- So hit me too, so tough luck.
- But why hit me?
- And I just turned around automatically,
- and I was just passing the gate to going into the camp.
- It's just from walking I was just about passing the gate,
- I looked around and I said, no matter
- what you SOBs will do to me, I will survive, no matter what.
- And something overcame me and kept
- me going through all my troubles I had for the rest of my life,
- till this day.
- It's something in me.
- OK.
- There's something that I--
- I don't know what it is.
- Isn't that something?
- And that helped me further, you'll see.
- So here we are.
- We are in the camp.
- The first thing we come in, of course, the hollering,
- the pushing, the shoving.
- You know, and all of that.
- It's undescribable.
- And then we see this guy.
- And I say, hey.
- I am here.
- I just arrived yesterday, the other day.
- Guys from different towns.
- Where is my sister?
- Your sister arrived.
- She is there.
- We have seen her last night on the other side of the wire,
- that kind of stuff.
- Right, right.
- And here we are.
- Did you find any friends?
- Oh, yes, I had the group of my--
- Well, I met other, but not from home yet?
- Oh, yes.
- I'll-- I haven't found anything yet.
- I'm still in, in my own clothes.
- Finally, we walk in.
- We go in to take a shower.
- So we're going to bathe, to take a shower,
- take off everything, and leave it on this side.
- And they say to us when you come out, you'll pick it back up.
- We know damn well that we are not
- going to come out on this side again,
- that everything what we leave here is going to be left.
- Sure.
- So anyway, we left everything here.
- We went out on the other side.
- The only thing we were allowed to take is the shoes.
- Everything was left.
- We went out on the other side.
- They gave us a shirt, a pair of underwear,
- and a pair of those prison clothings.
- Yes, right.
- And you had your own shoes, snow shoes.
- Got dressed, they took us out in front of a barrack.
- That's the first time we learned the real McCoy, what's--
- That you're prisoners.
- That what we are and what it is.
- Right away, they gave us a number.
- They cut our hair, everywhere, everything.
- They gave us a number.
- From now on, 8485.
- That was your number.
- That's my number.
- And you don't call you by name.
- They only call the number 8485.
- And you say, here.
- You know, and all that.
- OK.
- They bring us, give us everybody, we got a--
- I don't know how to call it.
- We called it a shissel.
- A canteen, a little pot.
- It's not a canteen.
- It's a pot.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I mean a little tin dish.
- Tin dish.
- So that you-- to eat from.
- They threw in some stuff in it.
- Nobody could ever have eaten it.
- Nobody, nobody.
- Terrible.
- No taste, no, we threw it away.
- After three days, he got hungry.
- He got used to it.
- And we had to drink it.
- Sure.
- So, we used to get that stuff once a day.
- Bitter water, it looked like tea in the morning,
- nothing with it.
- In the evening, we used to get a ration of bread, which
- is take a pound bread, divided in four,
- you get one rash, two slices of margarine,
- and one slice of slice of jelly.
- That was our daily--
- Your daily ration.
- --ration.
- And we had to live on this.
- So we have been sitting outside.
- We didn't know what's going on what.
- Second day, somebody says to me that in the next barrack
- there are boys from my hometown.
- I went to see them.
- And sure enough, there were boys from my hometown.
- And they all say, Larry.
- Your dad left yesterday.
- Where did he leave to?
- A transport went to Warsaw.
- And he is in Warsaw.
- This is already after the liquidation of the ghetto.
- It's already 1944.
- And this is after the liquidation of the--
- Of the Warsaw.
- The Warsaw-- and in '43, they liquidated the ghetto,
- and after the liquidation of the ghetto, he was taken to Warsaw.
- OK.
- I says, who else is there?
- They says, your uncle was there.
- And this friend, and this friend, and his father, and all
- of that.
- All right.
- I don't know anything.
- They are going to Warsaw.
- The next day, they pass us by, no nothing happens.
- You're not doing anything.
- You have no routine yet?
- No, nothing.
- You're just sitting around.
- Sitting around, and you know, nothing,
- talking what's going to be, where do we go.
- And in the meantime, we have a smell, we feel a smell.
- And we don't know what the smell is.
- Then we learn.
- They showed us the chimneys.
- They said, this is your parents going through the chimney.
- This is the crematorium there.
- This is the smell.
- And we thought, eh.
- We didn't believe it.
- Couldn't be, nobody could be so inhuman.
- Yeah.
- That's [NON-ENGLISH] who was going to do something like
- that.
- But one thing everybody said, get out of Auschwitz as fast
- as you can.
- The third day, I again met another boy.
- He tells me the same story.
- My father was here and he left with the transport.
- He went to Warsaw.
- In the evening, rumors started to spread
- that tomorrow morning there is a transport going to Warsaw.
- And it's going to be from a different block,
- not where I am, but the other block.
- So I went over.
- And I found somebody who had a friend in the other block.
- Names didn't mean anything.
- Numbers didn't mean anything.
- It's just the numbers, the count.
- In other words, if you counted 50 people,
- you had to have 50 people.
- That's all what counted.
- The rest didn't mean anything.
- So we changed He came over here, and I went over there.
- And to make the long story short,
- the next day, sure enough, got up in the morning to appell.
- Eintreten, and, so a day later, 24 hours later, I
- was in Warsaw.
- And sure enough, there was my father.
- Why were they sending you to Warsaw?
- To the same place, to work where those,
- the transport from my father before.
- Oh, I see.
- Oh, so they sent you to a work place, to work there.
- Yes, to the same working force.
- I see.
- OK, I didn't realize.
- So all right, so actually then, you left Auschwitz.
- You really weren't there maybe a week.
- Less, one day less than a week.
- OK.
- One day less than a week.
- Then you went to Warsaw.
- We went on the same transport, and they took us to--
- I didn't know.
- I took a gamble.
- But he said, Warsaw, so I said.
- Right.
- And it turned out, yeah.
- As soon as I walked in the camp, I already
- recognized my hometown people.
- OK, now what was the name of this camp?
- Was it a camp?
- No, it was not.
- It was like a camp, but it was in the ghetto
- where the Warsaw ghetto was on the same place.
- I see.
- But it didn't have a name or anything?
- No, nothing.
- Just--
- So you saw people from your town.
- Just, and I saw people from my hometown.
- And they all started to say your father is here.
- Your father is here.
- So I felt.
- How wonderful.
- I felt not bad.
- Now how long had it been since you had left your family?
- I left my family, it was six weeks, I haven't seen
- and I haven't heard from them.
- That's all the time it was from the army to--
- Right.
- From the time you left home, it's only six weeks?
- Yeah.
- OK, I just wanted to get a time--
- Late April, same year, till after Passover.
- Right, I understand.
- OK.
- OK.
- So here I am.
- And we waited till after we had to stay in line, after we
- were dismissed.
- I was with my father and, he right away he starts crying.
- And you know, and he says to me the rumors about the kids.
- And then he says, ah, it's only rumors.
- And he says, and on the other hand, I know he says,
- they're eating well and they're drinking well.
- OK.
- But I met another boy, who the fact of the matter
- is he is here in Cleveland too, who is
- a Polish boy, also in the camp.
- I don't know where I am.
- I only know it's Warsaw.
- I don't know what it is, where I am, except that Warsaw.
- Excuse me for interrupting you.
- Did your father, when he was there,
- did he know where his wife and your sisters were?
- Yeah, he didn't know anything.
- They were in Auschwitz.
- They are in Auschwitz.
- That's all.
- OK, that's all he knew.
- And he-- yes.
- And he said--
- That's where they separated the men from the women.
- Right.
- OK.
- The events were the regular process.
- And he said that somebody told them
- in Auschwitz they are going to get bread, white bread,
- and they will live yet.
- I mean live good, and there was no problem.
- All right.
- And they will survive.
- It's just a matter of time.
- Yeah.
- I already knew the truth, but I didn't
- want it to hamper with him.
- I didn't want to take away his hopes, and to make them misery.
- And I thought to myself, as long as he lives in that world,
- let him live in it.
- Right.
- So here again, the things started
- to go different directions.
- After being there for three days doing nothing,
- the fourth day, and I came out at the weekend,
- and started out on a Monday morning.
- We were called out to go to work.
- Our job was to clean bricks from the broken buildings
- and put them together on trains, which in turn took them
- to the Russian front to build bunkers
- for the winter for the German army.
- OK.
- Walking through the streets from the job,
- and from the job I read all kinds of Jewish signatures,
- Jewish sayings.
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- What does that mean?
- We were betrayed.
- I was here.
- Like graffiti written on walls.
- Yeah, on the walls.
- OK.
- All right.
- And I saw a street [NON-ENGLISH],,
- and another name of a street.
- I didn't know.
- I know that's Warsaw.
- But I didn't know--
- You didn't know that this was the ghetto that
- had been destroyed.
- Right.
- OK.
- And I saw the big walls, and I didn't know all of that.
- We didn't understand.
- You probably didn't even know there had been a ghetto there.
- Right, we didn't know that.
- Right.
- So after going on like this two weeks, finally we found out,
- we came in contact with the Polish people
- there who have been working, and being paid
- by the Army for the Germans.
- They said that this is the section where the ghetto was.
- And then one day, we went from a different direction.
- I passed by a big house.
- There was a big sign saying Judenrat.
- So then I knew that we were there.
- So that was like a Jewish council.
- Judenrat, that was the Jewish Council, right.
- Yeah, the headquarters of the Jewish Warsaw ghetto
- Jewish council.
- Right, OK.
- So here I am, in my wildest dreams
- when I have dreamed that here after six
- months after the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto,
- I'll be in there in the Warsaw ghetto.
- So we worked there.
- One day, a German comes over and he says,
- a guard comes over and he says, [NON-ENGLISH],,
- which means who knows how to read Yiddish?
- So we had a saying.
- And we had a rule.
- Never volunteer for anything, and never try to be alone.
- Try to stay with more people together.
- Because whenever anything happens,
- first the fear is not there.
- There's a lot of psychology involved with that.
- Nobody says nothing.
- Then he says, [NON-ENGLISH].
- There must be somebody be who knows how to read Jewish.
- You know?
- So finally I said, yes.
- I raised my hand, and I says, yes.
- So he comes and takes me away and he says, come out here.
- He calls me over.
- I walked with him.
- So another soldier comes with him, one of the guards.
- And I said uh-uh.
- That's it.
- And he took his machine gun off from his hand, and we walked.
- So some of my friends said, that's it.
- So he calls me aside, and he takes me in front.
- There's a bunker like going down to the ground.
- And it's with red paint to me.
- Years later, down to me that wasn't red paint.
- It was blood.
- But it looked like dried paint, you know?
- And you touch it, it falls off.
- You know how?
- Sure, flakes off.
- Right.
- And it was written in Jewish, in Yiddish,
- it was written [NON-ENGLISH]
- What does that mean?
- In other words, we were betrayed.
- Remember us.
- Later on, I found out that was the headquarters of Anielewicz
- and the whole gang of the headquarters of the group who
- fought to the last one.
- So you translated that for him.
- Yes, and I translated it for him.
- So he says to me, what does it mean?
- So I told him it means we were forgotten, and remember us.
- And he took me back there.
- And it was over.
- No problem.
- OK.
- They gave us cigarettes.
- We had the ration.
- We had no-- so to speak, besides the pushing
- around and the hollering in the usual way,
- but nothing of the brutality.
- Was it all men?
- All men, no woman.
- Nothing of a nature of a brutality.
- Were they Germans who were guarding you?
- Oh, yes.
- There were Germans there were Yugoslavs guarding us.
- There was Polish who was guarding us.
- But they were civil to you.
- Under the circumstances, I would say, yes, nothing
- of a cruelty or nothing.
- OK.
- And the first cruelty I entered was
- one of my friends developed an infection in one of his ears.
- And some of the boys said, don't go nowhere.
- As long as you have it, stay.
- Some of them said go to the doctor and let them look at it.
- He went to the doctor.
- He took a chance.
- The doctor looked at him, and he says,
- well, you got a bad infection.
- There is nothing.
- I have no medication.
- There is nothing I can do.
- Just take an aspirin.
- He give him an aspirin.
- But he needed antibiotics.
- Well, there's nothing I can do for you.
- He got a high fever.
- So the long story to make short, he took him to the hospital.
- There was a section that he called a hospital.
- He said, goodbye.
- And that's the last time I have ever seen him,
- the last time I ever heard of him.
- Till this day, I don't know what happened to him, how
- he was killed or what.
- But he disappeared.
- That's it.
- So that's the first encounter.
- Second encounter was a few days later,
- an SS, a sergeant major, and the rank of sergeant major
- arrives on a motorbike.
- And he says, we are standing outside
- in the field on the apellplatz.
- And he says, good morning.
- [GERMAN], who speaks German?
- So several guys raised their hands.
- I was there too.
- My father says, no don't go.
- Don't go.
- But I already raised my hand, so I couldn't.
- So he goes forwards, to come forward.
- I came forward.
- He went to all of them through.
- He came to me.
- And he says to me, how old are you?
- [GERMAN]
- I was siebzehn, 17.
- He says, [NON-ENGLISH].
- You'll be OK.
- You'll do.
- He says, come with me.
- This was 1944?
- Yeah.
- In the beginning of '44.
- Spring '44.
- He says, come with me.
- So you were really 19.
- No, I'm already 18.
- OK, whatever.
- OK, yes, now I'm 18.
- All right, he says come with me.
- That was before my birthday.
- All right, fine.
- Yeah.
- Achtzehn, yeah.
- 18.
- Come with me.
- So I went with him.
- And he takes me to the front.
- And he says there, he talks to the sturmführer or something.
- And then he says, come.
- And I always, when you were in camp and you talk to them,
- you're not putting your hat on.
- Your hat must be down.
- So he says, put your hat down.
- I put my hat down.
- He says, sit in the back of my motorbike.
- So--
- Were you wearing this still this same uniform?
- Sure, I was in uniform all the time, the Auschwitz uniform.
- Yeah, the prisoner uniform?
- Yes, the uniform.
- With the number here 845.
- it's all the time, nothing changed.
- So he takes me and we go several side streets.
- And then he takes me in a building.
- And the building is bombed out.
- But it's boarded in from all over.
- In other words, you know like the windows.
- They were all boarded in.
- And it's a cold feeling to it.
- It's something, it's like the shivers and you walk in there.
- I walk in.
- And it's around, a big building surrounded all around,
- and in the middle it's like a parking space.
- There are trucks, cars, half tracks, half tanks,
- and all of that.
- And it's bustling with people coming and going.
- And so he comes, takes me in one of the sections,
- takes me up and opens up a door.
- And it's a big section part of the building.
- And there are dogs.
- There are a dozen dogs.
- And they're all barking, and they're just
- if he opens the door, I'm finished,
- they'll tear me apart.
- And there is one dog walking right behind him.
- So he says to me in German, he says, look.
- He shows me.
- There is a cage.
- Between every dog there is an empty cage.
- There are cages.
- There's two dogs, but in between them is always an empty cage.
- So he says to me like this.
- You take this.
- Open up this cage, and open here.
- This dog goes in here.
- You close it back.
- You clean this out, put back in the food,
- put in back the clean.
- You open it up, the dog goes back in.
- And you open this--
- So this was your new job.
- Right, it was my job to clean the cages
- and give the dog the food.
- And he says, you give the dog the food.
- But you don't eat his food.
- He says, because you're going to have plenty of food.
- I says, fine.
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- Yeah.
- Then he says to me this dog here,
- you can walk this way till there, there was a line.
- You can walk till there, if you walk over the line,
- there's a red line, the dog will kill you.
- And you can walk this way till the red line.
- If you walk over, the dog will kill you again.
- You know what kind of dogs these were?
- They were German shepherds, but they were big--
- Big dogs, big mean dogs.
- Very mean.
- They were-- some of them were in black, and some of them
- were-- it was the real McCoys.
- And he said, if you go this way, he'll jump you.
- The only way you can go is this here.
- To do your job.
- Yeah.
- And he's going to walk behind you.
- And he's not going to do anything.
- They trained a dog.
- They didn't need a person.
- You can walk around any place you want here,
- but you cannot go there because you'll jump you, and all that.
- You can't cross the line.
- The dog came and smelled me a little bit and all that.
- And so he says, I'll come check with you back
- in a [NON-ENGLISH],, which means in about an hour.
- OK.
- He came back in an hour and he looked around.
- He liked what I saw.
- But doing the work, I had a funny smell,
- like a sweet smell that I smelt in Auschwitz.
- But I thought, ah, it can't be the same smell.
- It must be that from the dogs, the stuff and all that,
- the food, and the odor and all that.
- It must be from the dogs.
- But somehow, I didn't I had a funny feeling that it's not.
- Well anyhow--
- Well, this was on the site of the Warsaw ghetto?
- Yeah, inside, where the Warsaw ghetto used to be.
- Yeah, right.
- OK.
- So I'm doing.
- He comes back.
- He looks at the job.
- He says, job well done.
- And it's lunch time.
- He says, everybody's eating lunch already.
- He says you come with me.
- He takes me to the [NON-ENGLISH],,
- to the kitchen there.
- And he goes in and he says to the guy in the kitchen,
- [NON-ENGLISH] big man, give him to eat.
- So he comes up and he says, [NON-ENGLISH],,
- do you like noodles?
- I says, yeah.
- Oh, so.
- OK.
- He brings me out a big bowl loaded with noodles.
- Why were they so good to you?
- Me, because I worked there.
- So for a working man, you know?
- So I ate the noodles.
- I couldn't eat up all of that.
- So I just put in my shirt down here,
- and you're going to take it to somebody who's hungry.
- Took to my father, I throw it in here.
- You didn't know what tomorrow was going to be.
- Then he says to me, stick around for a while.
- And you help me clean my [NON-ENGLISH],, the big kitchen.
- And he says, I'll give you some more to eat.
- I said, fine.
- I waited.
- About a half an hour, the other guy says to him, yeah,
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- The dog was next to me watching me.
- I cleaned up everything beautiful.
- He liked it.
- He gave me a big canister, like this loaded with chunks of meat
- and all kind of macaroni.
- And it came around 3 o'clock, he says, come with me.
- Put me on the bike, and drove me back into the camp.
- And that was been going on like this
- for about three or four weeks.
- That's what made me survive with my father and all that.
- You brought food back.
- I had plenty of food.
- And I gave it to my uncles, and some of my friends.
- We had plenty of what to eat.
- I couldn't get rid of that smell.
- And I says to my father, I don't understand what's going on.
- There is a smell.
- And that taste of the smell bugged me.
- Sure.
- It didn't let me.
- And I know I had smelled it somewhere.
- One day, I don't know, after being there for a while,
- somehow he took the dog away or something happened to the dog.
- I can't explain how it happened.
- The dog wasn't present for quite a while.
- And I heard some things going on behind one wall.
- I couldn't figure it out for days
- I knew that something is going on.
- So I thought then the army is coming and going.
- Sure.
- Curiosity killed the cats.
- And I wish I had never gone.
- I wish I had never walked over--
- Been curious.
- I walked over.
- And there was, they had three cars.
- In those days, the Germans used to have like they have now,
- the cars, the vans, big vans like the parcel post
- office is carrying, you know?
- Sure.
- Locked in, no windows, nothing.
- They had like this, colored in black.
- And the Germans used to pick up whoever
- they were to pick up, the SS.
- And threw them in, in those wagons, and bring them there.
- Meanwhile, your father and the other people in this ghetto
- were working too.
- Yeah, they were working.
- They had different jobs.
- Yes, they have been cleaning bricks, throwing.
- Oh, that's right.
- Yeah, they're working on their bricks.
- And some of them are working in the fields with the farmers.
- Each one has his own job, and his own way.
- OK.
- And then when I came closer, and there
- was a split between the boards, put together,
- there was openings.
- So I could see.
- In the back of this van?
- In the back-- in the backyard of that, you see?
- Oh, I see.
- I see.
- You could see through the wall.
- Wall, yeah, through the window.
- It was boarded up.
- Between the boards, you could see on the other side.
- You peeked through.
- Right.
- And you could see what's there.
- And there I saw standing the three vans.
- And on the van naked people, tied their hands
- and on their mouth they had those taped up.
- Taped.
- They've been standing like in a line.
- And the smell--
- On the street.
- Standing in the yard.
- In the courtyard or whatever.
- Yeah, in that yard.
- Then he took him, picked them up,
- and put him down like wood, one by one, stacked them.
- One here, one here, one here, one here.
- They were not living?
- Yeah, alive people.
- They were standing.
- But their hands were tied in the back.
- Well, who picked-- you mean they were picking up bodily.
- Two guys picked them up.
- With their legs--
- One grabbed them by the legs and the other like this.
- There were women, and they were, I don't
- know if they were old or young.
- But I could see the difference between men and women.
- Of course.
- Yeah, and they put them down stacked them like this.
- Two this way, and two on top of them.
- And again, they made it three, sometimes four.
- They lay them down, you mean?
- Right, like wood.
- Yeah, OK.
- They grabbed them.
- They were tied, their legs and everything was tied.
- And they were standing.
- And their mouths were taped, so there were no sounds.
- Right.
- And they put them down.
- And another guy came in and threw full of gasoline
- on top of them.
- You saw this.
- Oh, how terrible.
- I didn't know what to do.
- As soon as I saw that, the first reaction came to me, now
- I know the smell.
- That's from Auschwitz, the corpse smell.
- And I went back.
- I couldn't move.
- I couldn't talk.
- And he came in, and he said what's [NON-ENGLISH]..
- He recognized on my face.
- He said what happened?
- What's going on?
- This is your father?
- No, my-- the SS.
- Oh, I see.
- The SS man came back with a dog.
- He saw your shock.
- He saw me.
- You're in the state of shock.
- I didn't know what to answer.
- So I says, I made like this, and holding my hand.
- And I says the dog had me [NON-ENGLISH]..
- In other words, the dog almost [NON-ENGLISH] me.
- OK.
- And he took my hand and looked down, and said, [NON-ENGLISH]..
- Yeah, I says, I took it away in time.
- He have this inside [NON-ENGLISH]..
- That's what I got.
- Yeah.
- You didn't want to tell him what you saw.
- Right.
- He says, [NON-ENGLISH]?
- What does that mean?
- Did you see anything?
- Did you hear anything?
- I says, no.
- Nothing.
- OK.
- So he took me in and came in the camp
- back, and came to my father.
- And my father saw me.
- He says, what's the matter with you?
- So I told him.
- I don't know if they are Jews or who they are.
- I don't know.
- And I couldn't eat.
- I couldn't sleep.
- At night, the more I thought about it,
- the more it started to bother me.
- And then it dawned on me at night, I says, my God.
- Can you imagine the pain those people had to go through
- by not even taking away from them their most human thing
- that even you are not allowed to scream and cry
- in your own pain.
- You can't do this to the worst to an animal.
- Who are those people?
- To this day, I don't know who they are, and what they are.
- I never knew, probably will never know.
- But it went on day after day.
- I saw this once.
- That was happened one time.
- So I assume it went on, because the smell was constantly there.
- The smell was there when I came there the first time.
- Did you see them light a flame to this gas?
- They threw gasoline and threw a match to it.
- Like, that's it.
- OK, so how long were did you stay in this ghetto?
- And we were standing like this--
- and there was all kinds of things, smelling and all
- of that.
- And it was going on, it's already June.
- It has been going on like this all the way to July.
- In August we heard some shootings going on
- and rumors that the Russians are approaching Warsaw,
- and that we will be liberated by the Russians.
- And at one night, we heard a lot of shooting,
- a lot of explosions, a lot of stuff.
- Rumors had it that the Polish underground
- tried to break in, in the camp and to liberate us.
- But they were beaten back and they couldn't make it.
- The next day, I had another taste of good stuff.
- We got up in the morning and we announced that this lager
- will be dissolved.
- And we were going to be--
- What does that word mean lager?
- Lager means camp.
- Camp, OK.
- That camp will be dissolved.
- You're going to be moved again.
- And we will be moved from the camp.
- We are going to Germany.
- Oh, OK.
- But we didn't know that we were going to walk.
- We thought that we were going to be
- taken to transport, you know, and transport to another camp.
- Sure.
- We got up in the morning.
- We stood there from the morning from 4 o'clock
- till 10:30 at night on the day outside, no water, no food,
- nothing, all day long.
- Then we were told to go back into the barracks.
- That was already 18 hours you're standing.
- Yeah.
- So we went back in.
- We went to sleep.
- The next day at 4 o'clock in the morning, again out.
- We were standing outside again all day, sun is shining.
- It looked like even heaven came down against us.
- It was a beautiful day, hot and muggy, and everything.
- No water, no nothing.
- There is collapsing a guy.
- Here is collapsing a guy.
- Take him away, never see him again.
- Needless to say, that the shoving and the screaming
- and the hollering what has been going on is constantly there.
- The pushing and the brutalizing reached a point
- where it doesn't matter anymore with you, because you're
- already used to it.
- So you take it as an everyday occurring.
- That's the way it is.
- It doesn't go any other way.
- Finally, the third day here we are for two days
- standing like this outside, without food, without water,
- tired.
- They gave you food when you went into the barrack
- at night though.
- No, no, nothing.
- This is three days with no food.
- That's the two days without food,
- without water, or anything.
- The third day in the morning, we got up at 4 o'clock.
- We stand outside again till around 9:00,
- 9:30 in the morning.
- Then they bring in.
- We got in line.
- Everybody get a Herring, a salt Herring, a half a bread,
- two slices of margarine, and two slices of cut of jelly,
- and a big soup.
- And of course, being hungry and thirsty and everything.
- You eat everything, of course.
- Eat everything up.
- Two hours later, we are on the march.
- We are starting to go.
- How everything was figured out, now the salty
- Herring after eating, everybody eating everything
- up, and walking in the heat, starts to work for water.
- Water, water, no water.
- Just keep on walking.
- Anybody, all of a sudden you hear.
- Psst.
- Shot.
- Anybody stays behind, left behind, shot.
- Throw it on a wagon.
- Some of them, that's the first days.
- The first two days, everybody got shot was thrown on a wagon.
- At night, were buried.
- Later on, you didn't even bother to pick him up anymore.
- You just left him on the street.
- So you walked for how many days?
- Do you remember?
- We walked from Warsaw.
- We walked to a little village called Kutna.
- It was on the Czechoslovakian and Polish border.
- We walked for almost, let's see for about between 8 and 10
- days.
- One day, the fifth day, we reached a river.
- When we got to the river, everybody jumped in
- and drinking water.
- We had another encounter.
- They had the Gestapo, not the Gestapo,
- but the SS, the guards and the kapos,
- if a guy were there drinking water,
- he just went, stepped on his neck.
- That's the end.
- And stood there as long as he could,
- let him, till he tell suffocated.
- Tell me, how many of you were on this march?
- Do you have any idea?
- Yes, I will come to that.
- We started out close to 10,000 from Warsaw.
- We arrived less than 8,000 to Kutna.
- In Kutna they brought in again a train.
- And this was 10 days later?
- Yes.
- OK, and the ninth day without water, God
- opened up the heavens and it started to rain.
- I was wet, not my skin from the outside,
- but already from the inside.
- Even the heavens were against us.
- And you can imagine how we have been here sitting
- walking and we were tired, in the throes,
- and by a farmer there in the field outside to rest,
- we had to lay down in the mud and all of this,
- and sitting there for two days, again without food.
- Finally, third day in the morning,
- they gave us some bread and some soup.
- We had to go.
- The train came.
- We had to go in a train, again, the cattle wagons.
- And you don't know where you're going.
- Oh, we don't know.
- We only know that we are by seeing it,
- we weren't told where we are, just what
- we could make out from our own just figuring it out and seeing
- where we are.
- We saw the sign saying Kutna.
- We know that we are in Kutna, on the border what's what.
- And being there for about a day, after we were
- put in, in the wagons.
- The wagons were closed.
- The doors were locked.
- And away we go.
- We don't know where we are going.
- My gosh, if this is hell, if there is hell on Earth,
- that sure was hell.
- We were about 120 pressed into a cattle wagon.
- And the clothes, everybody was wet,
- and it was sticky and muddy outside.
- And we started the feeling.
- And at night, they come in, and with whips and shooting,
- and hitting, and clubbing.
- God knows what.
- It's dark.
- We can't see.
- We don't know.
- I got hit with--
- I don't even know what it was.
- In the daytime, I saw the guy he had a tail from a horse
- dried out.
- He used it like a whip.
- And I got hit with that on the head.
- And in the morning, we look around there.
- Is a guy shot.
- There is a guy beaten to death.
- There is a guy died.
- To make the long story short, by the time
- we arrived from Kutna to Dachau, which took us all night
- and a little bit of the day, from the 8,000 or so left,
- and from beginning from we arrived 2,000
- and some few hundred of us.
- Lucky, my father and my uncle, my uncle
- was beaten on the head.
- But he was bleeding, but he survived.
- So we arrived in Dachau.
- Your father survived this?
- Yes, we survived.
- We all came in.
- But there was others who we knew didn't make it, friends.
- And so why do you think that the Germans took you away
- from that ghetto, because the Russians were coming,
- and they didn't want?
- Yes, the Russians already prepared their attack
- against Warsaw.
- And it was just approaching.
- And they didn't want us to be liberated by them.
- Sure.
- They needed you workers.
- They wanted you to continue working.
- Right, so they took us back in.
- They took us into Dachau.
- We arrived to Dachau.
- Dachau was already crowded, because they
- started to bring in from outside the people.
- And the first thing they gave us a shower, to bathe
- and took away our clothes.
- They took away our clothes and give us new clothes.
- And they gave us a pair of wooden shoes.
- And they let us stay.
- They gave us food, just like for the rest
- of the prisoners in the camp, once
- a day water in the morning like tea, and a soup in the evening,
- and all of that.
- And we stayed there.
- We had where to sleep, at least like regular barracks and all
- of that.
- All right.
- Let's take a break again now Larry,
- and we'll get back to it, to the rest of your experiences
- in Dachau in a few minutes.
- All right.
- Let's wait till the lights go out.
- OK, Larry.
- We're back.
- And we'll start again now I should
- say with your experiences in Dachau.
- Yeah, OK.
- Dachau it was already a more famous camp.
- It was--
- It was a what camp?
- Famous.
- Oh, famous.
- I didn't understand.
- More famous camp.
- It was kept more and orderly.
- There used to come international visits from the Red Cross
- and from so.
- So therefore, it was one of the top-notch camps.
- And it was kept.
- How lucky you were there, right?
- You ain't kidding.
- That was compared with what's been going on in other places,
- we were real lucky.
- Can you imagine?
- So, but the luck didn't last that long.
- We stayed there for three days, four days.
- And then we were shipped from there about a half a day's ride
- in a car, in a train near Landsberg called Lager Seven.
- Near Landsberg.
- Landsberg is in what country?
- In Germany.
- That was in Germany, not far from Dachau.
- This was another work camp you were being sent to.
- Work camp, another lager, yes.
- The same people that you were with Warsaw.
- In the Warsaw ghetto.
- And who had made the march with you?
- Whoever was left.
- Yes, the same group that was left from the Warsaw ghetto
- from there.
- The 2,000 of you or whatever.
- Right.
- And the first one who were there before I arrived,
- and the ones who came with me.
- Whatever-- they needed a certain number of workers?
- Yes, right.
- OK.
- So we came back.
- They took us.
- We arrived in Landsberg.
- Landsberg was in the ground, so to speak, was underground.
- It was built like the Eskimos built their houses
- from ice, the same way.
- Igloos.
- Yes, the same way was built, but made with--
- Earth.
- Earth and the top and green grass on it.
- And we lived inside.
- Inside there was plain wood and straw, and you had a blanket,
- and that's it.
- Landsberg was how far from what big city?
- Do you know, have any idea?
- Landsberg in itself is a big center point.
- It's a big city in Germany.
- Today it's still in existence?
- It still is, right.
- I see.
- That's number one.
- And Landsberg, Hitler himself was locked in, in that jail.
- I see.
- Not far from the Landsberg jail.
- So I had the privilege of being close to Hitler's own history.
- OK.
- Being there for about five or six weeks, typhus broke out.
- So they quarantined the whole camp.
- Nobody could go in and nobody could go out.
- Do you have any idea how many thousands were in this lager?
- It's in the thousands.
- I have no-- I have no idea of the exact figure.
- You mean nobody could go out of his little hut?
- No, out of our huts, you could go out.
- To work.
- The camp, you couldn't--
- Couldn't leave to go to work.
- No.
- It was sealed off completely with them,
- that whoever will survive will survive.
- Whoever will die will die.
- But after three days, they decided to take a gamble.
- And whoever was still in good shape,
- they took him out and see maybe they
- can use him somewhere to work.
- So I still was good shape.
- They took me out from there and took me
- to a camp not far from there.
- We walked, about three hours walk called Kaufering,
- lager vier.
- That's called means the same camp like there was
- Landsberg, number seven.
- Not far from there was a little village called Kaufering.
- And that was called number camp number seven.
- OK.
- But it still belonged to the same area.
- I see.
- So, and from there, we went to work to the baustelle Holzmann.
- Holzmann is a German organization.
- A baustelle, it's a construction company
- that exists till this day.
- I see.
- So what kind of work were you doing?
- So we went to work there.
- We worked there at night.
- For construction, building underground airports, and stuff
- like that, construction work.
- OK.
- The food was lousy, and we deteriorated it all of us.
- And there one day, my father couldn't go to work anymore.
- My uncle, and all of that.
- This particular older generation couldn't take it anymore.
- And they started to deteriorate.
- Did you have any idea about how old
- your father was at that time?
- At the time, 48.
- But like an old man.
- Completely broken, completely old.
- And he started to deteriorate, and deteriorate,
- water in their knees, water in their feet.
- And one day, they came in and took him away.
- And that--
- That was the last saw your father?
- One morning, I just said, I'll see you tonight
- when I come back.
- I left him in the camp.
- I went to work.
- I came back home, and he was gone, not only him all of them,
- never to be seen, never to be heard.
- And I don't know how he died or where he died,
- and what he died.
- But I assumed that he was taken from there close to Dachau.
- And he was thrown in and he died somewhere in Dachau
- in the gas chamber or something like that.
- Were you-- now we are in lager seven.
- I mean lager four.
- The Americans are approaching.
- That the--
- You've heard rumors.
- Rumors, we already know that D-day took place a long time
- ago.
- And this was already then.
- That's already '44, close to--
- this is already not '44, this is already '45.