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Oral history interview with Leo Laufer

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1991.A.0112.14 | RG Number: RG-50.045.0014

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    Oral history interview with Leo Laufer
    Transcript
    You're on.
    Can you start by telling us about your background,
    your name at birth, some facts.
    My name is Leo Laufer.
    I was born March 15, 1924 in Poland.
    The name of the city is Lódz.
    It's spelled L-O-D-Z.
    The background of my family is a Hasidic family,
    very, I will say, ultra-religious.
    And what I remember as a youngster is my father
    was married previously.
    He had two children, a son and a daughter,
    which were my half brother and half sister.
    Then my father married again, and with my mother
    he had six children.
    There was an older brother, and then myself.
    Then there was a sister, a brother, and two other sisters.
    The ages were from--
    I'm going back to 1937.
    They were from 15 to about seven at that time.
    My immediate older brother died in 1938, and my older half
    brother married, and he moved out of our house in--
    I believe it was 1937 or '36.
    So, still, we were a family of eight.
    Let me go back a little bit before to give you
    a little outline of how we lived,
    and the type of living that we lived.
    Since my father was very religious,
    his time and devotion was mainly to the Bible,
    to the rabbi of his sect.
    And he felt that the living will come like manna from heaven.
    But manna from heaven did not come.
    And recalling, as a youngster, the standard
    of living even then, back before the war,
    I would say we were way below poverty level--
    if there is such thing as poverty level.
    We lived before the war in two little rooms.
    The dimensions are exactly 10 by 10,
    because I measured it in 1983 when I returned back to Poland.
    And I was fortunate enough to found the house
    that I was born still standing.
    Without facilities of water, toilet, or cooking facilities.
    In other words, we did have a stove,
    but you had to chop your own wood,
    and we burned wood and coal.
    The water was pumped downstairs.
    We had to bring it up two flights from the yard.
    The toilet facilities are also in the back yard, which you
    have to go down, downstairs.
    But even though that the poverty level was so bad,
    I believe that the love for the family and God was--
    it was very close.
    I mean, I do not remember at any time
    that there was any arguments or dispute between my mother
    and my father, even though that I always
    considered that my mother, to describe us now
    in this day and age, that she probably was a slave.
    If you can imagine having a family,
    eight children, a young mother who has to cook,
    wash every child without any whatsoever facilities,
    it was just a constant chore from 6 o'clock in the morning
    probably till 12 o'clock at night.
    You know, as a youngster, and as children, we do not realize it.
    We feel that this is a must.
    A mother must do it.
    We never realized that the father had to help,
    except making a living.
    And unfortunately, my father was not,
    I would say, a good businessman or very ambitious enough
    to go out in the world and fight for a living,
    because his devotion to God and to the rabbi
    was more important than anything else in the world.
    But I did, I believe, learn very good values
    even from my father.
    As poor as we were--
    and I remember as youngsters, my brothers-- of course,
    my sisters never went to the synagogue,
    because the girls did not go to synagogues in my day and age.
    Only the boys.
    And the synagogue was not as a synagogue
    as we would describe it now, a beautiful edifice
    and a beautiful place to go to worship,
    and have affairs, and dances, and weddings, and so on.
    It was just a room.
    It was a room just like any other room, that had a Torah,
    had benches.
    And the benches were not padded.
    They was strictly wooden benches that you sit on.
    And you had to go with your father,
    especially on Fridays and Saturday morning.
    And I remember vividly that every Friday night and Saturday
    morning, after services, which were about 12, 1 o'clock,
    he used to bring home a person of less deprived circumstances
    even as we were.
    He was a man-- he brought him home for many, many years,
    as I recall.
    He was a elderly man who did not have a family.
    And my father, he used to sit him to the right side of him.
    He felt that this is a privilege and a honor
    to have him next to him.
    And if I recall, he was a very big man.
    And we, as children, were always worried
    that he is going to eat up everything [LAUGHS]
    and there will be nothing left for us.
    But I remember a verse that-- a little
    saying that my mother used to say.
    She said, if there's going to be enough for 10,
    there's going to be enough for 11.
    And I believe I learned certain values,
    that it was worth bringing it over to me and my children.
    Even though that you don't have anything,
    there is always room to give somebody
    else who is less privileged.
    Let me give you a little background of my country
    that I remember, even though that I was not
    involved in politics or I did not know what politics are.
    We lived in a very, very unfortunate, poor neighborhood.
    I remember the first time, in 1937,
    where the first little notes on telephone poles--
    or electrical poles, rather.
    I don't think--
    I don't remember seeing really a telephone.
    I'm sure they probably had some kind of devices,
    but we were not familiar with.
    We saw some little signs printed,
    Żydy do getta, which means, in English,
    "Jews, go to the ghetto."
    And ghetto to us, you can refer to the Bible
    that the Jews lived in a separate place
    in Syria, or in the Middle East, or somewhere else.
    But being a youngster of 13 then, I did not feel it.
    I did not realize it.
    But I did know, as I grew up, and when I got to know anything
    about my country, I always felt that I was a second-class
    citizen--
    not me, but the rest of the Jewish people too.
    That is an inner feeling in you that you were not
    wanted in this country.
    You always heard Żyd, Żyd, Jew, Jew,
    and all this kind of thing.
    But we did not, I guess, believe that this thing is going
    to draw to this extent when the war broke out,
    what really would happen to us.
    And we kept on living, we kept on fighting,
    and we kept on making a living.
    And it was very hard to live under the circumstances.
    And of course, this probably brought the Jewish people then
    in Poland to the type of living that we lived.
    And let me give you an example on what I mean by it.
    My father would not let me and my brothers and sisters
    go to a public school, which there were public school,
    and you could have attended, because the abuse that you
    would take, being a Jewish boy, and especially
    of the type of kids we were--
    I wore a Jewish type of clothes when I was a youngster.
    I had payos-- little curls under my ears.
    I wore a special type of hat which
    was identifying me as Jewish.
    And with this kind of attire, to go to a public school
    would mean suicide.
    So my father did not send his children
    and my sisters and brothers to a Polish school.
    Of course, we were deprived of, also,
    of learning the language of Polish in a very proper way.
    But we did learn Jewish--
    Yiddish-- which was the common language, especially in Poland.
    And I say that because I reflected it
    later on what actually happened to me as the only survivor
    of the rest of the family.
    And as I told you, in '37 you could feel it more.
    We could also feel it when the first transport
    of Jewish people from Germany, which came into Poland,
    and the Polish-Jewish gmina, which is community,
    had actually to resettle the German,
    some German-Jewish people.
    And of course, if you read in history,
    Germany was an entirely different society
    as Poland was.
    They were more intellectual.
    They were more educated than us in Poland because
    of the reasons that I outlined.
    And it was very hard for them.
    But we did find room for them.
    And then we felt that something is happening in Germany.
    We did not know what actual would happen in the future,
    and we kept on living.
    And of course, then came 1939.
    In 1939, I remember it real, very, very vividly.
    I lived, as I told you, in a very, very poor neighborhood.
    The landlord of the building was a Pole of German descent.
    And it just by thinking of it, I recall even the name.
    His name was Otto Weingold.
    It's a typical first and second German name.
    And it was a four-story brick apartment building.
    I already told you the facilities in the building.
    And there was some Jewish people live
    there, mostly Jewish people, really, except for a few Poles.
    And some of them--
    we felt they were all Poles.
    But in 1939, as soon as Germany took over Poland, and Lódz,
    the city that I was born and lived
    in when the war broke out, was a very industrial city.
    It was a city.
    The population had about a million people.
    The Jewish population at that time in 1939 had about 25%
    of it--
    250,000 people-- which is really unheard of
    percentage-wise in the city.
    But since it was an industrial and especially textile city,
    mostly the Jewish people were involved in it.
    And when the war broke out, and Germany took over,
    I remember so vividly we were staying outside this building.
    And the street was Dolna 4.
    It's spelled D-O-L-N-A. I was born there,
    and I lived until I was 15, until 1939--
    till 1940, rather.
    And all of a sudden, from the building, neighbors
    that we have known all our lives put swastikas on,
    and they were acclaimed as what we call Volksdeutsche.
    A Volksdeutsche is a Pole of German descent.
    Maybe his grandparents were Germany,
    or his great grandparents, or his uncle, whoever.
    They had some ties from Germany from previously.
    And suddenly the landlord, plus some other neighbors,
    became Volksdeutsche.
    And of course, what was going on in Germany we heard.
    We were absolutely scared to death.
    But we lived September 1939, when the war started.
    And of course, right away, they started with the Jews in Lódz.
    Since my father was so religious,
    and, as you can imagine, he wore a beard,
    and he wore his long robe, really identifying him
    as a Jew, he was scared to death to go out of the house.
    He stayed in his house day after day after day
    without going out, trying to do anything.
    And of course we were very poor, as it was before.
    Now this tragedy with the Germans taking over,
    my father not doing anything, and nothing coming in,
    and just waiting for the little coupon
    to go downstairs and stay in line at the bakery for you
    daily bread rations, was a tragedy in itself.
    And I remember so vividly because we lived,
    as I told you, on Dolna 4.
    And across the street, Dolna 9 was a bakery.
    So it was very easy for us, especially
    between our children, to go down early,
    like 11 o'clock at night, and start staying in line
    until they opened up the next morning, that we shift,
    my brother and myself, my sister, and so on.
    And you could see--
    and it happened to us too--
    where the Polish people used to pull the Jewish people out
    of line.
    And they said, you can die.
    You don't need to stay in line.
    You don't need bread.
    And they called you by unbelievable name,
    because now they really had the power, because the Germans were
    with them.
    Now they finally had the opportunity
    to really unleash what they really meant by Żydy do getta.
    And of course it hurts you to see your own people that you
    lived with all your life.
    They lost their country, and still
    their hatred toward the Jews was unbelievable.
    When the war broke out--
    I believe even before that--
    I changed my attitude on life a little bit.
    I think-- I call it something.
    Maybe I was the black sheep of the family,
    and this is why I survived.
    I felt that I couldn't go on this kind of living.
    I wanted something better in my life.
    So I cut off my curls when I was about 14 or 15.
    I remember, I had a friend of mine, David Lemberger.
    And already he used to go out, when
    I was 14, with some young girls, as friends.
    We used to go out.
    And I used to go out with his sister, Bella.
    Where do you go?
    They had movies.
    They had places to go, but you had to have money.
    I decided to go to work, right, when I was around 13 or 14.
    I made some money, not a whole lot,
    but I had enough to probably go out maybe for a dinner,
    or maybe go out to a movie.
    And I wanted a little better things in life.
    And I remember I went and bought me
    a short jacket with a different type of hat,
    with a different pair of pants so I wouldn't
    be so recognizable as Jewish.
    Of course, the tragedy would have been,
    if I would have kept this new attire in my house,
    it would have been thrown out immediately
    if my father would have detected it.
    So I kept it at David Lembergers' house.
    And whenever we went out, like on a Saturday night,
    I went over to his house, and changed my clothes,
    and we went out.
    And this kept on until almost when the war broke out.
    When the war broke out, I felt, if I will not
    take what we call in English "the bull by the horn,"
    some of my family is going to definitely die
    of starvation in the house.
    And I then decided to do something
    when they closed the ghetto.
    Now you must remember, September, the war--
    the Germans took over Poland from September of '39
    until May of 1940.
    It was about almost eight or nine months.
    And starvation in the ghetto was not in the ghetto,
    but even before the ghetto.
    It was unbelievable.
    There still was some food that you could buy.
    The prices were enormous.
    The rations that the Germans gave you was,
    really, was absolutely nothing.
    And it was horrible.
    But then, when the ghetto closed, I felt at that time
    that we were the most fortunate people.
    And let me tell you why I'm thinking this way.
    As I told you, we lived in the poor area of Lódz, which
    the area was called Baluty.
    It was the part of a city where you really have poverty.
    Like in any city, like in Dallas, or Houston,
    wherever you are, there is a certain part
    of the city where there is poverty,
    and this is where we lived.
    When they closed the ghetto, the Germans took the area of Lódz,
    where the poverty-stricken area actually
    was, to herd in the 250,000 people
    to the area where really poverty was.
    And we were fortunate, as I said.
    We did not have to move.
    We lived in the ghetto before there was a ghetto,
    not even realizing that we were going to wind up down there.
    So that's the reason why I said we were fortunate.
    The second thing we were fortunate,
    I believe the German governor had some kind--
    the German government had a certain quota of how many
    people could live in a room--
    family or whatever.
    And since we were then eight--
    my brother already moved out a couple of years ago,
    my other older brother died, but we were still
    eight in the family.
    So they felt that the two rooms, 10 by 10,
    is sufficient, that we did not have
    to take in additional people, because some people did,
    if you would have three rooms, and it would be eight people,
    you would have to give up one room
    and take in an additional family.
    So we remained just the way we were in the two room
    with our family.
    So we didn't have to move, and this
    was the most fortunate thing.
    Furthermore, the ghetto was surrounded.
    The back of our building where I lived,
    Dolna, was actually the end of the ghetto.
    On the other side of our back of the building
    was where the Christians lived.
    And of course, it was surrounded by all barbed wire.
    And you had guards every few hundred feet.
    It was really a big concentration camp
    with barbed wire.
    And then they had gates where you
    can go from one side of the ghetto
    to the other side of the ghetto.
    When they closed the ghetto, as I told you,
    the poverty was so bad.
    I came up with an idea, and I had also a feeling,
    if I will not pursue it, that very soon I
    will see some of my brother or sister,
    or maybe father and mother die, actually, from starvation.
    I was a little different kid already, as I told you.
    So we used to play soccer in the streets.
    And we had some other friends-- not only Jewish.
    We had some gentile friends too.
    I had a very good friend.
    His name was Joseph Grabowski.
    And he was my age.
    And we played together soccer.
    He was a good kid.
    And I remember he used to go over to their house
    sometime, even before the ghetto.
    And I recall, even in 1938 I believe,
    or '39, before the ghetto, that his father was already
    serving in the Polish Army.
    And I had never called his father whatsoever.
    I remember his mother very, very well.
    And I came up with an idea when I was over one time,
    when the ghetto was already closed.
    I slipped across the barbed wire from the ghetto
    toward the Christian side, and I went over to their house.
    It was, like, the next street.
    And I came up with an idea, talking to his mother.
    I said, Mrs. Grabowska, I have an idea
    that you could make a lot of money,
    and you can also help us survive.
    It was a tremendous risk for her to take.
    It was also a risk for me to take.
    And I felt this is the only way, if she consented to, that this
    would be the way to survive.
    She consented, and we started what
    we would call in English smuggling food
    across from the Christian side to the ghetto.
    Now this is not smuggling on a broad, broad scale.
    I mean, I'm talking about smuggling one pound of butter
    across the barbed wire one day, and maybe
    the next day a couple of loaves of bread,
    and maybe the third day something else-- a food
    products.
    Everything food, nothing else but food products.
    And I felt that if I can get a pound of butter,
    I can sell maybe 3/4 of a pound, get a tremendous amount
    of money, pay her maybe five, 10 time on what she
    has paid for it, reward her.
    And by the same token, I can take some of the butter
    and exchange it for bread or whatever.
    There was nothing that you couldn't get.
    But you have to pay dearly for it.
    People were given away diamonds for a loaf of bread.
    This is how horrible it was in the ghetto.
    And to tell you the real truth, that from around May,
    maybe two weeks in the middle of May, until October of 1940,
    from May of '40 until--
    on October 1940, that my family was probably
    the best-fed family in the entire block.
    I felt it, because we had everything
    that we did not have before.
    We and my family had more food in the ghetto,
    in the five months, than we had before the war.
    We never went hungry.
    My father didn't have to go outside.
    My brothers and sisters stayed home.
    And I did the real work.
    What were the risks that you took?
    The risk was very easy-- to get shot very quickly.
    But I guess I didn't know any better.
    I was 15 years old, and I felt a strong urge of survival,
    and I felt if I don't do it, somebody will die.
    And you got to understand the circumstance in the house.
    My father couldn't do it, and he wouldn't do it.
    It would be impossible for him to take the risk just
    to go out of the house, because the Germans would
    have caught him and cut his beard,
    or whatever they could have done to him.
    My immediate older brother died in 1938.
    I was the head of the house already.
    Then I had another sister, and she couldn't do it.
    Then I had a little brother.
    And I was only 15, so he was 11, so he couldn't do it.
    There was only little bitty children.
    And I felt this man of the house, like I wanted
    to tear it down, the world.
    And I did.
    I became a real fighter.
    And I believe at that time I felt so good for what
    I did, to bring the food.
    And we ate so beautifully.
    And we didn't have to worry, to stay in line
    and wait for this card for ration to get this bread.
    We didn't need it.
    We really didn't need it.
    We had enough.
    And of course, it didn't last too long.
    October of 1940, I was approached by a young man--
    unfortunately, Jewish too.
    And he evidently was probably for a while
    tracing me to see that I am the smuggler, and I am doing well.
    And when I took a package across the barbed wire, when--
    And you got to understand, it wasn't
    easy for the Christian lady to throw packages.
    The way she threw a package-- let
    me try to describe it to you so you'll get it.
    It's not a easy task.
    She usually used to take a dorozka.
    A dorozka is a horse and buggy, that you
    used to transfer passengers, like a taxi,
    but it was a horse and buggy.
    And she used to have this big stole over her.
    Like in Europe, they wear the big stoles.
    And under the stole she kept a little package.
    And evidently she must have bribed or paid
    this dorozka too, because the dorozka always came just about
    a foot away from the barbed wires.
    And she was watching the guard.
    When the guard changed to go the opposite direction,
    she took this package and just slipped it across
    on a predetermined way, because she used to send me notes
    through the barbed wire with a little stone wrapped
    with a little twine around, a little note,
    telling me I will be at this particular street around 12
    o'clock.
    And I used to be there, try to watch the approach.
    And sometimes she might have gone three, four time
    back and forth because the guard was not
    stationed at the proper way.
    And then, when the guard, turned she threw the package,
    and I was there to grab it and run.
    Sometime it wasn't easy.
    I was shot at one time, but the bullet didn't hit me,
    so I survived.
    And this was going on, as I told you, for five months.
    Then, at that time, this youngster approached me.
    It wasn't a youngster.
    It was a man, much, I would say, in their 20s.
    And as I grabbed the package, he came right in front of me
    on the inside in the ghetto.
    You must understand, on the inside
    the ghetto, for the only ones that we were scared of
    is for the Jewish police, because they could take you
    to the police station, maybe not give you the kind of penalty
    that the Germans would, but we were scared.
    And this fellow approached me.
    And the wording that he said, he said
    that he wants to be a partner.
    And I did not understand, really, what kind of a partner.
    And I said, what did you do to become a partner?
    I said, what risk did you take, and so on.
    And it was plain English--
    I mean, plain Polish that he told me.
    He said if I'm not going to be a partner, next time, when
    I catch you, I'll turn you over to the Gestapo.
    And then it irritated me.
    And I said you go and do what you want.
    And little did I realize that one Jewish person would
    have the courage to go to the Gestapo
    and turn me over-- not to the Jewish police, which
    I wasn't so scared, but turn me over to the Gestapo.
    Well, a couple of weeks later, it was another incidence.
    This was already in October.
    And sure enough, the same man approached.
    And I was, I guess, very arrogant.
    And I told him, I don't need a partner.
    You can do what you want.
    And sure enough, he did.
    He did go to the Gestapo.
    He told them who I am.
    He had my address.
    He had my name.
    And a few days later, the Gestapo did come to my house.
    I remember very well.
    It was past midnight.
    And we heard knocking on the doors--
    I mean, real rough.
    And my father opened the door.
    And the first thing they did, they hit my father,
    and he fell right across the room.
    And they ask for Leibek, which was my--
    Leibel, my Jewish name, my first Jewish name.
    Of course, I got up, and they hit me.
    And they said, put your pants on.
    And I put my clothes, whatever, I had quick.
    And they took me in a car.
    And they did take me to the Gestapo,
    which was across the street from the big church.
    Everybody knew-- this was actually located--
    you could go in from the ghetto because they
    had the station down there.
    And immediately, the same night, I was severely beaten.
    And all they wanted me to tell them
    is who was the supplier, who gave me the package.
    Little did I realize--
    and I thought I'm going to got myself out
    of it telling him that you got the wrong man,
    and I didn't smuggle, and so on.
    Little did I realize that in the Gestapo
    they called this man who told me I wanted
    to be a partner, confronted him at the Gestapo in front of me.
    And they asked him, is this the man who got the package?
    And sure enough, he said yes.
    Then I didn't know what to say.
    And to this day, I don't know who it was,
    I don't know his name, I've never
    met him before in my life, and I don't
    know what happened to him.
    They kept on beating me, and wanted to know where.
    And I think prior to that, people have warned me.
    They said, Leo, if you get caught,
    the best thing is to keep silent and don't tell them from--
    because you're going to implicate the party who gave
    you, and they want to help you.
    But if you keep on saying no, you're a youngster,
    and maybe they'll let you go and be all right.
    Well, this went on for almost two weeks.
    Every night, they used to take me, like
    in a isolation in the basement, and beat me up unbelievably,
    and telling me that they got to know where they come from.
    And I kept on saying no, and he kept on the same thing,
    until I almost got immune to it.
    And I told myself, I'm not going to tell them.
    And I did not.
    After that-- of course, the beating was getting worse
    and worse every day--
    I wound up in a hospital.
    They were beating me so much that I needed an operation.
    Excuse me to tell you, but this was on my behind.
    And I came to the hospital.
    And I remember so vividly that at the hospital, at the door,
    there was a Jewish policeman who was guarding me
    like I was a vicious criminal.
    And he was guarding me so I wouldn't run away.
    Of course, the operation was over, and I survived.
    And then they sent me back to the Gestapo,
    and from the Gestapo they sent me home,
    and everything was over.
    When I came home, which was about almost three weeks later,
    I saw exactly what I was expecting will
    happen if I wouldn't smuggle.
    The family was like skeletons.
    It was unbelievable.
    My father still didn't go out the house.
    Yes, he did go out of the house, and they beat him up.
    They took him.
    Every day they used to come and take him down and take him out
    of the city or somewhere to dig ditches and so on, then
    bring him home.
    He was like a skeleton.
    And my mother, of course, my poor mother was almost dead.
    And the brothers and sister.
    It was a tragic thing.
    Then I found out what happened, actually,
    after when they took me, because I
    didn't see the family for almost three weeks.
    So they told me they came back, and they searched the house,
    and they took everything of valuable that they had.
    Because in the five months we accumulated certain things.
    We had a lot of food, and this and that.
    Everything was gone.
    They took everything out.
    And two weeks later--
    and then, when I saw all this happen,
    I said to myself, should I try all over again
    or should I give up?
    I mean, I had just going through such a trauma for three weeks.
    Believe it or not it didn't take two days.
    I took a little stone with a little note
    and threw across the barbed wire to Mrs. Grabowska.
    And Grabowska didn't know what happened to me for the three
    weeks.
    I told her-- I didn't want to tell her anything.
    And they didn't do anything to her
    because I didn't tell her who gave me the package.
    And she consented.
    She say, sure.
    And we started smuggling again.
    And it started very good for a few weeks.
    And then it didn't last too long-- two or three weeks.
    And they selected people for the first slave labor camps
    to be shipped out.
    And of course, I guess I must have been on their black list
    or whatever, and I was selected to be sent out
    with the first transport from Lódz to a slave labor camps.
    There is nothing I could do, because this was the German--
    actually not the German, but the Jewish police came for you,
    and they put you in a quarantine somewhere.
    From there they ship you on cattle cars.
    And we came.
    We arrived at the first camp, which is called Ruchocki Młyn.
    Can you describe-- just go back and describe the cattle car
    and the transport from Lódz?
    The transport from Lódz, we went through like a quarantine.
    And they told you all the most significant thing of what's
    going to happen to you.
    You going to a Arbeitslager.
    Arbeitslager is labor camp.
    That you're going to go to work.
    You're going to be rewarded very good.
    You're going to have a lot of food.
    Your group is going to go to a farm, which you're
    going to have a lot of food.
    It's around near Poznan, they told us.
    And of course, the transportation
    as it was during the war, I'm sure you've heard of it,
    was strictly cattle cars.
    They put us-- I think there was one car
    and they put practically all of us in.
    There was about 200 of us.
    And we traveled from Lódz to Poznan, which
    is a pretty good distance.
    I don't know exactly, but I would
    estimate 150 mile or 200 miles.
    We had cans of water with us.
    We had some kind of buckets for toilet facilities.
    And we traveled just like this.
    It wasn't really so horrible, because we were all youngsters.
    I was 16.
    I was the youngest one and the smallest one.
    I was a little shrimp.
    I probably didn't weigh over 90 pounds, or maybe a hundred
    at the most.
    And the rest of them were big kids, up to 25-year-old men.
    And we came to Poznan.
    From Poznan we got out at the railroad station.
    And from there we had some trucks, like farm trucks.
    And they put us in.
    And we went from there to Ruchocki Mlyn,
    which was on the outskirt of a little town called Wolsztyn.
    Ruchocki Młyn really is not a city.
    It was the name Ruchocki Młyn.
    Ruchocki, I don't know what it is.
    It must be a name.
    But Młyn is actually, translated in English, it's mill.
    What it is.
    The place was a mill where we worked.
    And when we came to the mill, it was really--
    the reason I know so vividly now, because all my life,
    from 1940 until 1983--
    43 years-- I was dreaming, and fantasizing, and thinking,
    and maybe exaggerating about this camp.
    And I was telling my children and my wife,
    who is born Dallasite and it's hard for her
    to comprehend what kind of camp it was.
    And I myself got almost to a stage
    that I didn't believe myself.
    I thought maybe I am fantasizing, or exaggerating.
    Maybe I'm dreaming that there was
    such a camp called Ruchocki Młyn, until 1983, when
    my wife and my younger daughter, Lisa, really persuaded me.
    Daddy, you must go back to Poland.
    You must search for some roots or something.
    Let's go, let's see if it's all that
    what you have told us sometime.
    And believe me, what I told them is probably not 1,000th of 1%
    of what really transpired.
    And I was persuaded.
    I didn't want to go to Poland.
    I had no respect for the government.
    I just didn't feel like I lost anything down there.
    I know I was a second-class citizen, but I was persuaded,
    and I went back.
    And this is why I so vividly can describe the camp now to you
    as I saw it in 1983, and remembering
    what happened in 1940.
    You come into the camp.
    In fact, it was even--
    something happened.
    I guess you might call it a miracle.
    We came to Warsaw.
    And from Warsaw we rented a taxi.
    And I wanted to see four things, really,
    before I went to Poland, is to see the grave of my brother
    who died in 1938.
    I wanted to see if, by sheer miracle,
    if Mrs. Grabowska is still alive.
    And if she is, she would be about 75 to 80 now.
    The third thing, I wanted to see if the house that I was born in
    is still there, which would be remote,
    because I was born 60 years ago.
    The home was already--
    was then maybe 40 years old.
    So it's impossible.
    And I also wanted to see this Ruchocki Młyn.
    This is so vividly to stand up in my mind
    that I wanted to see.
    And sure enough, we traveled, and we went back
    to Ruchocki Młyn.
    Let me describe you the first camp when
    we came then in 1940--
    not now.
    We came into the camp.
    It is actually situated in the woods.
    There is no such thing as a city, Ruchocki Młyn.
    It's a one farm house, a big farm,
    with a barn, two big barns, plus a little house on the left
    where this farmer lived.
    And incidentally, this farmer was also,
    as I told you before, a Volksdeutsche,
    a Pole of German descent, with the swastika and with a rifle.
    When we came then to the camp in 1940, the trucks came.
    They unloaded us.
    And we saw this big barn to the right, plus the other barn
    straight out, plus the little house to the left
    where this Volksdeutsche lived.
    And between the house and the barn there was barbed wire.
    And there were three other guards,
    and all-- they're all civilian.
    Now I want this really for record,
    that from 1940 until September or October of 1943
    we did not at any time see any German guard with us
    in all the camps we were.
    Only when we came to Auschwitz in October of 1943
    did we see the German soldiers, the German guard.
    Until from '40 until '43 there was
    all Poles of German descent.
    They were all Volksdeutsche.
    We never had saw any German guard at all.
    We came into this camp, and we were lined up.
    And try to think of us.
    We were all youngsters, civilian, coming absolutely
    with no baggage at all, just the clothes that we had on ourself,
    whatever we could grab when we were called, and that was it.
    Then these four guards, these Poles,
    told us in Polish to go to this other barn straight out
    and get some shovels.
    So we went down there and we got shovels.
    And they told us to go into this barn.
    They opened the gate, and the let us
    in through the barbed wire.
    And when we came in, it was almost like a joke
    to us, that my gosh, this is not the place
    we're you're going to be here.
    They just want to give us a hard time.
    So they told us to clean up the manure from this barn.
    And honestly, we could smell it, and see it with our eyes,
    that the cattle is probably out in a field,
    because there was nothing there.
    It looked like the cattle's just left.
    And then, when we cleaned it out as good as
    we possibly could, without any water or anything,
    just whatever we could get together with the shovels,
    and they told us to go back to the other barn.
    And there is plenty of straw.
    And we brought straw, and we laid it out
    in this first barn right on the cement
    where we just cleaned the manure out.
    And the smell was unbelievable.
    It was horrible.
    And then they told us that this is where we're going to sleep.
    So you're under the gun.
    We didn't want to fight back, but we
    couldn't understand what made them do this thing for us
    to sleep this night.
    So we were trying to philosophy and give
    them answers that we didn't even know.
    We thought maybe the barracks that we supposed to be in
    are not ready.
    We'll sleep in here one night.
    It won't kill us.
    To tell you the truth, we wound up
    staying down there until March of 1941--
    almost six months.
    The tragedy in this camp I think cannot be minimized.
    I have been in many, many camps.
    I've seen gas chambers.
    I've seen all kind of torture.
    But this camp was, I believe, the worst
    that human being can really instill on others.
    And the reason for it is, I want you to remember,
    there wasn't any gas chambers there.
    There was not any random shooting.
    There was not anybody come over, and grab you, and take a gun,
    and really shoot you.
    We died like flies down there.
    When we left the camp in March of 1940, we had less than 100
    left.
    Let me give you a little illustration,
    if you can really absorb it, on what we went through.
    The area that we worked, the farmer had a mill.
    He was grinding his corn or whatever, flour that he had.
    The mill was a typical mill, as you could possibly
    see if you would go to Holland, a mill which operates by water.
    The blades picks the water up, and it picks it up
    from the-- the water runs, and it picks it up,
    and the mill runs it, and he grinds the corn.
    The reason we were sent down there--
    and later on, I realized that why we were sent down there
    at the latter part of 1940, because the weather,
    especially around in Poznan, is much colder than it is
    in the city that I came from.
    The weather down there could probably
    reach in the winter time between 10 to 20 or 25 below zero.
    In the summertime, we couldn't work down there
    because the turf was shaky.
    You would actually sunk in.
    So you had to work it when the turf was actually
    frozen or real cold, that you can actually
    cut in with the shovel.
    And our work was to straighten up this Dojca River, which
    is around down there, so the water could run smoothly
    instead of crooked.
    The river was going a little crooked.
    So we straightened up for quite a few miles this area.
    And if you can imagine, working in this kind of condition
    without any gloves, without any winter clothes whatsoever,
    just the things that we had on our back.
    So people started dying.
    And I think the main cause of death
    was there was from hygiene.
    And let me give you what I mean by hygiene.
    There were no facilities of taking a shower.
    There was no facilities of even washing yourself,
    less a shower.
    We slept in this barn for almost six months.
    The first week we were confronted
    with lice, which we never got rid of in the six months.
    Our pastime was really, I hate to say it,
    but I must, is scratching.
    And the lice were actually penetrating our skin.
    It was unbearable and unbelievable.
    The only water facility that we had
    is in the morning, two of the boys used to go to the river
    and take a tin container with two little ears on it,
    and get the water, and bring it to the front of the gate.
    And everybody was privileged to take
    a little water with their two hands and wash your face.
    This was the extent of hygiene for almost six months.
    Toilet facilities was in the back
    of the barn against the barbed wire,
    right in a open space, no facilities whatsoever.
    And there was a little kitchen in the front
    as you come into the gate, and as you came in from work
    you got your bowl of soup.
    Of course, around 12 o'clock, when we worked,
    we got a bowl of soup, and in the morning
    we got some what I call ersatz coffee,
    or some coffee made up--
    I don't know--
    --down there.
    And later on I realized why we were sent down there
    at the latter part of 1940, because the weather, especially
    around in Poznan, is much colder than it is in the city
    that I came from.
    The weather down there could probably
    reach, in the wintertime, between 10 to 20 or 25
    below zero.
    In the summertime, we couldn't work down there
    because the turf was shaky.
    You would actually sunk in.
    So you had to walk it when the turf was actually
    frozen or real cold, that you can actually
    cut in with a shovel.
    And our work was to straighten up this Dojca river, which
    is around down there, so the water could run smoothly
    instead of crooked.
    The river was going a little crooked.
    So we straightened up for quite a few miles this area.
    And if you can imagine working in this kind of condition
    without any gloves, without any winter clothes whatsoever,
    just the things that we had on our back.
    So people started dying.
    And I think the main cause of death
    was there was from hygiene.
    And let me give you what I mean by hygiene.
    There were no facilities of taking a shower.
    There was no facilities of even washing yourself,
    less a shower.
    We slept in this barn for almost six months.
    The first week, we were confronted
    with lice, which we never got rid of in the six months.
    Our pastime was really--
    I hate to say it, but I must-- is scratching.
    And the lice were actually penetrating our skin.
    It was unbearable and unbelievable.
    The only water facility that we had is, in the morning,
    two of the boys used to go to the river
    and take a tin container with two little ears on it,
    and get the water, and bring it to the front of the gate.
    And everybody was privileged to take
    a little water with their two hands and wash your face.
    This was the extent of hygiene for almost six months.
    Toilet facilities was in the back of the barn,
    against the barbed wire, right in an open space.
    No facilities whatsoever.
    And there was a little kitchen in the front
    as you come into the gate.
    And as you came in from work, you got your bowl of soup.
    Of course, around 12 o'clock, when we worked,
    we got a bowl of soup.
    And in the morning, we got some what I call ersatz coffee,
    some coffee made up, I don't know from what,
    except it was dark, and a piece of bread.
    This was the extent.
    But the food was not the killer.
    The first thing was the hygiene and the second thing
    was the frostbite.
    If you could see some of the boys
    coming home, or falling actually in from the top, when
    we straighten this little river, falling into the water,
    and totally dead.
    And then we used to fish them out with the hook
    and take them to the back of the camp in the woods, which
    was like a common grave, and put them in with their clothes,
    with everything, and just bury them.
    This was, I believe, the worst that I have ever been in one,
    and this was the first one.
    And this is why it was so vivid in my memory.
    And as I said, I didn't believe it myself
    until I went back in 1983, and I saw the same barn,
    and I saw the cattle inside, and I saw the barn where
    we used to take the shovels out, and I saw this little house
    still standing down there just the way it was in 1940,
    except the farmer is different.
    The one who was our guard died.
    In fact, I even found out his name, which I didn't know then
    but I know now.
    And another Pole of German descent owns the farm now.
    So this was the first one.
    Let me tell you what happened at the end of this first camp,
    called Ruchocki Młyn.
    Around March of 1941, we felt the one who really survived,
    and the one who survived this first one,
    I don't know if there would have been a movie
    to take the way we looked in March of 1941.
    When I said "we survived," we looked like all of us
    like zombies walking, dead bodies walking around.
    Really, we couldn't walk.
    We couldn't talk.
    We didn't know what happened to us.
    We were so mesmerized that it was all-- all was a dream.
    So all of us, or most of us, decided that enough is enough,
    and we're going to strike.
    All of a sudden, we became heroes.
    And we're going to strike, and we won't go to work anymore.
    And we had some kind of an idea.
    If we could possibly persuade this Volksdeutsche,
    who were guards of ours, and this farmer, who requisitioned
    us to do his work--
    also a Pole, to see if he can get a doctor.
    And actually, in our mind, we felt
    that if he get a doctor who has more intelligence
    than a farmer, he would see the circumstances that we look.
    And you know, we're still human beings.
    Maybe there will be something, some mercy,
    something that in our dream was--
    maybe they will send us back home
    to the ghetto, because we did not even
    know that such thing existed as labor camps,
    as slave labor camp, because we thought this is the only one.
    We are the only ones out of the 200,000 Jewish people who
    were really forsaken, sent in here to Ruchocki Młyn.
    We did not know of any other camp.
    So we decided to strike.
    So what did we do?
    And I will tell you of a courage that it
    took on one of the guys who did it, that we thought
    we're all going to get shot.
    But we didn't.
    In the morning we decided, all, that we're not
    going to go to work.
    So of course the time came, 6 o'clock.
    That bell rings, and you got to go out, and get ready, and get
    your bread and coffee, and go to work.
    And nothing doing.
    The gates-- we don't open our gate.
    We had a gate too for our barn, and then there
    was a gate to the barbed wire.
    We don't go.
    Then the German came, this owner, this farmer,
    and knocked on the gate, on our gate.
    And he opened it up.
    And one of the guys threw a bunch of lice on him.
    And we thought we are all going to get shot.
    The guy run away.
    He didn't know what happened.
    He run out of the gate.
    And one of the guys started telling him
    that we are not going to work, that we are sick
    and we need a doctor.
    And we felt that if we get a doctor, maybe
    they will send us back home.
    Well, the doctor didn't come until a few days,
    and we didn't go to work.
    And they cut our food.
    They gave us only one bowl of soup a day.
    And we almost died then inside the-- inside this barrack
    with all the lice.
    And finally a doctor came.
    And the doctor was a civilian, but he was German.
    He spoke fluent German, and you could tell he wasn't Polish.
    Of course, prior to the doctor coming,
    which took several days, some guy decided--
    he said, listen.
    If the doctor comes, and if he not
    going to show him any kind of physical effect
    on what's hurting us--
    what are you going to show him?
    That you are skinny?
    That you're dried up?
    It doesn't make any different to him.
    If he didn't know to the extent what
    the doctor is going to do with us.
    So some guys got ideas of self-inflicting wounds,
    if I can describe it to you.
    In this time and age it's hard to really even think about it,
    and what it is.
    You think of suicide.
    But we were not suicidal.
    We wanted really to live.
    We wanted to fight the whole thing
    on to the last bitter end.
    So some guys came.
    There were an idea of if you take some rusty nails,
    and punch your body, and you pour it in with salt--
    rub it in, actually--
    within a day or so you'll get some wounds.
    And believe me, you're talking about pain.
    Some of the guys must have really--
    I don't know how strong you are if you want to live.
    I think a person is stronger really
    than he thinks when it comes to wanting to be alive.
    And then some guys took some strips of the clothes,
    and we wrapped our arms around real tight,
    on your legs and even your abdomen,
    and you swell up after a few days.
    And you should see some people, the way we looked.
    It was horrible.
    Finally, the doctor came, and we stayed.
    And the doctor didn't even go close to the barbed wire.
    We were, like, inside the camp between the barbed wire
    and the shed.
    And he was on the other side, about 100 to 150 feet away,
    looking at us like monkeys, and ask
    each one, what's wrong with you, what's wrong with you?
    And we showed him we got swollen legs, and with sores and so on.
    It didn't take him two minutes.
    He told this German who owned it, this farmer, not
    to let anybody out.
    It's quarantined, because we are undesirables, and we will--
    what do you call it-- infest the whole--
    everybody around us, not to let us out completely.
    Fine.
    So we didn't know what to do.
    We went back to the barn, and we stayed down there.
    A few days later, there came some trucks again,
    and they transferred us out from there, from this barn.
    And we came to the city of Poznan.
    We came to the city of Poznan, they took us
    to a place for delousing.
    I'll never forget.
    This was the first shower that we have ever
    gotten in six months.
    And you're talking about some guys say they went in
    with 10 lice, they got out up to thousands,
    because it was unbelievable what was going on down there.
    It was good in the long run, because they shaved
    every blade of hair from us.
    And we-- I don't know how to describe
    it, the feeling of like a new-born baby after we got out.
    And of course they didn't let us out of sight.
    When we came to this de-lausung, to our surprise,
    we found out that there are other camps.
    We met other people from different areas
    who were confronted with almost the same tortures as us.
    They told us our stories, we told us their stories,
    and we found out there is camps all over the place,
    and they had the same almost fate.
    They were also broken up, almost dying.
    And they brought them over here, and also they got, like,
    a community bed, and there must have
    been over 1,000 of youngsters, all from my city.
    From there they took us to a place in Poznan, like a--
    what do you call it?
    Quarantine camp.
    You didn't go to work.
    But it was more orderly.
    It was, the way we understood, an old camp
    for Polish soldiers, also with bunks
    and so on, but buildings, and a big place.
    That was a tremendous place.
    And all of us wound up down there.
    And we thought from there, maybe they
    will make some kind of selections
    to send you to labor camps, and really
    start living a normal life, or they will send you home.
    This was our hope.
    I remember in this camp, they had a Jewish man from Germany
    who was the head of the camp.
    I'll never forget his name.
    His name was Sali, Sali Galecka.
    And I even run across him because I searched him.
    He went back after the war to Düsseldorf,
    and he died there, just about six months
    after the liberation.
    He was also in different camp.
    He was in Auschwitz, but I never knew him.
    Only in this camp.
    When we came to this camp, as I told you,
    we thought they're going to send us home.
    It didn't happen.
    We stayed down there not too long, probably a month or so.
    But let me give you a illustration of a camp
    where people die from hunger.
    This was a second thing.
    And I still went through this one.
    It wasn't a camp.
    It was actually a--
    what do you call it?
    Like a quarantine.
    You go through, you know.
    And down there, when we came in, the camp
    was such a luscious green, like you go to a farm.
    You wouldn't believe it, that in less than a month
    you couldn't find a blade of grass
    in the entire perimeter of this camp.
    We had a pastime, when we got a bowl of soup,
    to go down and pull the grass, and pull
    it, to little bitty piece it, and put it in the soup
    so the soup would get thick.
    And the sicknesses that arise from down there,
    first of all, the major cause of sickness was--
    what did they call it?
    Diarrhea or dysentery.
    And it was unbelievable.
    But people didn't really care anymore.
    It was just to fill your stomach up with something.
    They didn't know what.
    And this was the closest thing.
    You couldn't eat dirt.
    So grass was the only thing we put it in, the soup.
    And there was-- this camp was clean.
    And from there, we started--
    they started making selections to different camps.
    It's going to be a long story if I have to tell you each camp
    and what we went through.
    So let me pass a few camps.
    We went through five more camps in the vicinity of Poznan.
    And we worked at the railroad.
    We built the railroad between Poznan and Warsaw.
    We also were transferred to another camp
    that we worked on a highway from Warsaw to Poznan.
    We worked in a aeroplane factory doing very manual work,
    and some other types of work, all kind of labor,
    in the forest and so on, smaller Kommandos and so on.
    The camps, the rest of the camps, were more,
    I would say, humane as the first one was.
    The first one I will never forget.
    The second one, of course, it was starvation.
    There was no work.
    You stayed inside.
    You didn't do anything.
    Of course, the other ones was if you had any ability,
    that you could--
    any stamina, that you can still put the shovel in the ground
    and work, they needed you.
    They want you to work.
    We worked on-- we did very heavy labor.
    And thank god, some of us survived.
    A lot of them didn't.
    They couldn't.
    Of course incidents happened in some of the camps,
    whereby it's probably hasn't been written,
    and I can assure you that are camps all over Poland.
    The Jewish people have slaved, and worked,
    and transferred, that now, in 1985,
    nobody knows that a camp existed down there.
    Nobody survived.
    It's like a forgotten thing that nobody probably
    knew where it was.
    It is impossible to know.
    And I am a firm believer.
    We talk about Auschwitz.
    We talk about Buchenwald.
    We talk about Sachsenhausen.
    We talk about so many camps.
    Because this was the highlight of the liberation.
    But until the liberation, there are camps
    that have been eliminated.
    There isn't any slightest idea that there was any camp at all.
    Only the people, the Polish people
    who lived in the city, only the ones who were guards down
    there, they're the one who are the silent one who
    do not want to talk about it.
    And the example that I'm giving you, and I know for a fact
    that it's true, is this camp that I mentioned
    to you, Ruchocki Młyn.
    Ruchocki Młyn is not even mentioned in Yad Vashem.
    Nobody knew about it.
    Nobody knew that the first transport from Lódz Ghetto
    went to Düsseldorf until when I went back in 1983.
    And this is when I opened my eyes
    to see that I'm the only one.
    And I have searched and searched now, and probably will,
    and I haven't found it.
    I haven't found anybody.
    The other camps had--
    [SIGHS] let me give you another camp,
    even though that the camps that I described
    are as more humane, on what transpired.
    And also, I want you to remember--
    this is very important-- that we did not have any German guards.
    This was all Poles of German descent, Polish citizens
    of German descent.
    In one of the camp that we worked
    for the highway from Poznan to Warsaw,
    we had two young fellas who were familiar with the area,
    escaped.
    Several days later, they caught him, and they brought him back.
    And you probably have heard or been
    told that the Polish citizen--
    not the Christian population--
    were informed of, even though some of them were very good,
    but a lot of them were not, were informed
    that if they catch a prisoner from a concentration camp,
    that they will be rewarded.
    There was always a reward for prisoners who escaped.
    And this is why they were searching so carefully,
    and whenever they caught somebody,
    because we were identifiable with our hairdo
    and with our uniforms.
    And it was very hard to escape.
    So I'm sure somebody got rewarded.
    These two boys ran away, and they caught them
    several days later.
    They brought him back.
    Let me give you a torture that very little has been said
    about, and I don't think it's ever been written about,
    but I was there, and I saw it with my own eyes.
    They called the whole camp out.
    You have to go on what they call Appell.
    You got to go outside and line up in five at 4:00
    in the morning before you go to work.
    They took these two boys.
    Each camp at that time did have a delousing truck.
    It was a truck where you used to put your clothes
    and delouse it for hygiene, which was good for us,
    and I guess it was good for them too,
    because they were scared that they're
    going to get poisoned from us.
    So we used to put our clothes, and then we
    got another set to keep.
    They turned this oven on.
    It's a truck.
    Actually, it looks like a cement truck,
    like a round thing, where you open up the door in the back,
    and you put your clothes in.
    And I guess they turned on high speed of--
    what do you call?
    Steam or whatever it is.
    And one by one, some of our boys had to take, one by one,
    and put them in into this truck.
    And they turned on the steam.
    And to describe you when they took out
    one of the boys, and the other one,
    who was just about to be going, in the second one,
    to describe him how he looked.
    And they showed it in front of all of us
    so there would be a deterrent not to run away.
    I remember the first one, when they got him out,
    it was the most horrible sight that I've ever
    seen in my whole life.
    Is one arm shrunk like almost to nothing.
    The other one was long.
    The head was blown up.
    It was a caricature of a human being that I've never--
    I've never seen it.
    And I didn't even know if it could happen
    by getting into steam then.
    And then they put the other one on.
    And this was the deterrent.
    So from then on, I don't think anybody ever run away.
    And then we had another camp.
    You see, the torture by some of the Volksdeutsche
    was probably--
    I'm talking about-- I'm not talking
    about mass murder, like gas chambers, and so on,
    which was a horrible thing, but I
    am talking about on a one to one basis what they did.
    It was tragic.
    We were in another camp.
    We had one boy who was sick.
    And you know, the barracks did not have their own toilet
    facilities.
    You had to go to the last barrack at the end of the camp.
    And this was one barrack which you have all
    these little toilet facilities.
    It was a hole with the cut-out little holes,
    and this is your toilet facility.
    And he couldn't make it all the way to the end of the barrack.
    He probably had diarrhea.
    And he did it behind a barrack.
    And one of the guards caught him.
    You wouldn't believe, for this little incident,
    not for being vicious and not trying to run away,
    the next morning some of the boys had to dig a grave
    and put this young man in alive.
    And they buried him all the way to the head.
    The head was out.
    I don't know how long it takes for a person to succumb
    to this, but I remember we went to work afterwards.
    When we came home, he barely lived.
    [CRYING] Anyway, we took him out, and we buried him.
    And this was another episode of the torture.
    Now this is not the famous camps.
    This is not Buchenwald, and this is not Auschwitz,
    and this is not Sachsenhausen.
    This is not even Ohrdruf.
    But this is a plain labor camp where
    I describe it more humane.
    Of course, we went to other camps.
    And then, in October of 1943, all the camps around in Poznan
    were liquidated.
    And I guess I was fortunate still to go along with it.
    And we came to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
    Let me just ask you for a minute,
    what did you think was happening on the outside
    in these couple of years that you were in Polish labor camps?
    Well, to be very honest with you, we knew very little.
    There was no such thing as communications
    between the outside, or radio, or any information
    from anybody.
    The only time that we knew that--
    how the war was going on is if we came to a camp,
    and we were fortunate enough to have
    newcomers coming from a city who would give us some information.
    Otherwise, we did not know, to be very honest and true.
    We did not know who was involved in the war.
    We knew that Germany has taken Poland.
    We did not know that the Soviet Union was involved in a war.
    We didn't know anything.
    We were like cattle, really.
    We didn't know too much, honestly.
    In Auschwitz, when we came to Auschwitz,
    we knew a little more from coming
    in with so many thousands of people.
    They came from different parts of the country.
    Then you could discuss it, like from Hungary or Romania.
    But until 1943, we were absolutely dumbfounded.
    We did not know who was fighting the war.
    I myself compiled some statistics.
    I don't know if you can imagine.
    When we came to Auschwitz, we did not
    know what Auschwitz is all about it.
    We did not know.
    Unless you lived around the area,
    and you knew that there was a town
    called Oswiecim, which was actually Auschwitz.
    We did not know anything about it.
    But I remember, when we came to Auschwitz,
    and we saw the discipline of the German guards, the erect type
    of nice-looking young soldiers with whips, and I mean,
    really, I said to myself, and I still do,
    which might not be very proper, I
    said it was like going from hell to heaven when we
    came to Birkenau, to Auschwitz.
    And I think I can verify it, that it really
    was because being in Auschwitz over a year,
    from September or October of 19--
    in fact, I compiled it now in 1983
    by checking with the office in Auschwitz
    to know exactly how many came in from our transport,
    and what actually transpired then.
    I found that there were so many documents,
    that I could compile that they even had the record of me
    being down there.
    When I gave him my number, that I got tattooed on my arm,
    and I said my number is 143248, they
    told me, are you Leo Laufer, and I said, yes.
    And they told me when I came into-- the date, when
    I got out, how much money I made, even,
    that I wasn't aware of, for 40-some-odd years, that I
    made money in Auschwitz.
    They told me that I was making 4 Deutschmark a day
    while being in Auschwitz and working.
    And I said, what happened to my money?
    They told me that the money went for the guard, for the food,
    and for the lodging.
    And they showed me in the document,
    signed by an SS Oberscharfuhrer, that I was making 4 Deutschmark
    a day.
    Let me give you an example, exactly.
    They got the date.
    We arrived in Auschwitz August 29, 1943.
    The numbers that they gave from the group that we came in
    was 142, from 142570 to 143861.
    A total of 1,291 from all the surrounding camps
    came in because this was all small camp.
    And now I got the idea, when I got into Auschwitz, why is it
    that out of about maybe 1,400 that almost 1,200
    got into Auschwitz.
    Because we came from labor camps--
    see, we were strictly men.
    It wasn't families.
    And since we survived, we were the capable workforce.
    So this is why we all got in.
    And I compiled so many documents that I wasn't
    aware of myself what date.
    It's very hard to--
    because we didn't have any pencils,
    or notes, or knew that we're going
    to survive even to make notes.
    And when I said-- and I made this remark, that we came in,
    we said it was like going from hell to heaven.
    And I really mean it.
    I mean it now, and I meant it then.
    Because when we came in, they took us to a delousing thing.
    We were in the quarantine for about a month.
    It's also a quarantine in Birkenau.
    You have to go through the quarantine.
    And we had showers.
    The showers were cold, but they were beautiful.
    They gave us new clothes which was clean.
    You couldn't find any lice like we had in all the other camps,
    or like the first one especially I described.
    And then we didn't get a lot of food.
    But it was sufficient to sustain yourself.
    If you get sick, so you go to the gas chambers.
    It's the easiest, believe me, way to die.
    The tortures that they did to us from 1940 to '43,
    it is hard for me to describe.
    I don't believe that many, many--
    that many, many could have survived
    from this kind of-- even though there wasn't any gas chamber,
    I wished that they probably would have had a gas
    chamber in some of the camp, instead of the way some
    of our boys dies with frozen arms and legs,
    and walking around until they actually fell on their face,
    and then we dragged them and we buried them.
    It was probably a much easier way--
    not that it is a good way.
    I'm totally against it.
    But to us at that time, this is the way we felt.
    And then the few who were fortunate to get out
    of Birkenau from the quarantine, to go into Arbeitslager, which
    we went to Camp D in Birkenau.
    I was never really in Auschwitz.
    I was in Birkenau all the time.
    And from our barracks, I was in in Block 28.
    And you could see, when you get out in the morning,
    you could see the chimneys burning,
    and you could smell it.
    And we knew exactly what it was after you were a while in camp.
    But we never got close to the crematorium to really feel it,
    on what really could happen to you if you really get sick.
    So I guess-- I don't know why I survived.
    I think I had a strong will.
    I wanted to live so bad, because first I was so inquisitive.
    I was anxious to find out what happened
    to my rest of the family.
    Mind you, I was taken away all by myself,
    never to know anything about it, and what happened, from 1940.
    And this is already when I was in Auschwitz, in 1943, nothing,
    absolutely nothing what happened,
    or a letter, or a note, or a friend who has seen my parents,
    or how did they live, or how did they die,
    or what happened to them.
    Nothing.
    And this, I guess kept me alive, I wanted.
    And I think secondly, I believe it was--
    food had a lot to do with it too.
    I was very small I didn't need a lot of food.
    I probably weighed, I guess, when I was in Auschwitz,
    maybe 75 or 80 pounds.
    You didn't need a lot.
    I remember I used to get my bread, and put it in my pocket,
    and I used to nibble on it for half a day
    until I finished it, just to keep my mouth working
    or whatever.
    And this is what kept me alive.
    And--
    Did you believe it would end?
    Oh, sure.
    If I wouldn't believe it's going to end,
    I don't think I would have--
    I would have lived.
    I had a strong desire that I'm going to get out somehow.
    I don't know-- unless somebody's going to kill me.
    Then I would have no alternative.
    But I had a feeling--
    I was so anxious to live, I really wanted to live.
    Of course, Auschwitz, we have seen so many things
    in Auschwitz, that--
    I remember in 1944.
    We were in Birkenau.
    And when we came the day before--
    no, two days before I arrived.
    Two days before, in October of 1944, we were next--
    I don't know if you can visualize
    30 barracks on each side.
    Then, between the barracks, you had to go from Camp D,
    you go to Camp E, which had barbed wire
    on both sides, electric barbed wire.
    And you say-- you can get immune sometime to certain things
    when you get used to it.
    We got used to it, all of us who were in Birkenau, to seeing,
    when we got up in the morning, when we went to work.
    Each one had his own Kommando to go to work.
    And you see at the barbed wire which were on both sides.
    Camp D, you have barbed wire here and here,
    and you go out to the front gate.
    And you see people hanging on the electric wires.
    It was no novelty.
    It was an everyday occurrence for a year and three months.
    When I was in Birkenau we saw it every day.
    There wasn't a day that you couldn't
    see bodies hanging, the arms stretched out,
    holding on to the electric wire.
    And that was it.
    And then they pulled them off.
    And it was-- you really get immune to it.
    But I guess I'm alive.
    I didn't feel this way, that I want
    to finish my life this way.
    And in October of 1944, I remember one time we--
    there was Camp E. And Camp E was called the Zigeunerlager,
    the gypsy camp.
    I don't know if you heard about the gypsies.
    And there were a bunch of people, really, that some of us
    derived some pleasure after work, when you got out,
    you go to the back of the barrack.
    I wasn't in the front.
    I was in the back of the barrack.
    When you opened the doors, and you could see him.
    It wasn't too far away to the next one.
    And they were on their side in the back of the barrack,
    playing sometime harmonicas.
    And see families totally together, not like us.
    With us, it was strictly men.
    There was no woman in our camp, in Birkenau.
    And the gypsies had a privilege, I guess, of the whole family
    was down there-- their grandparents,
    their grandchildren, their wives, their daughters.
    The whole family was all in the same type of barracks,
    but they probably lived, like, together as a family.
    And all of a sudden--
    And they used to sing and so on.
    We used to get a little amusement sometime out of it
    once in a while.
    And all of a sudden, one night, when we got up in the morning,
    believe me, it was such a tragedy
    that I'll never forget it, we saw the whole barrack--
    I mean blocks, thousands and thousands
    of people, totally gone.
    Not a soul.
    The barracks are empty.
    And when we went to work, when we stayed--
    in the back of the barrack we used to line up for going
    to work--
    the chimneys were just blasting.
    And the smell was unbelievable, because it wasn't too far away.
    You could see the chimneys.
    And everybody says, see, here they go.
    They're going out the chimney.
    And we knew they were gassed, and we knew they were burned,
    and this is what it is.
    And we went to work.
    We came home from work, there was a new crowd of people
    down there in the same barracks that the gypsy lives.
    And believe it or not, you know who the people were?
    They made room for the last transport from the Lódz Ghetto
    in October of 1944.
    Of course, the ones who were from Lódz, from my city,
    you can imagine the anxiety to find out everybody
    was next to the barbed wire, screaming their lungs out.
    And it wasn't--
    I would estimate 200, 250 feet, away screaming, hollering,
    because you couldn't see it.
    Did you see my brother, and everybody at the same time.
    And believe it or not, then I found my brother, who
    came at the last transplant.
    This was my half brother, Szmerel, who came from Lódz.
    And I told him to go a little farther down where there wasn't
    so many people, that I could hear,
    because the screaming was unbelievable.
    And I ask him what happened to my family?
    What happened to the father, and mother, and so on.
    He told me the following, that I still don't know anything,
    that my father was taken away in 1942 with my only brother, OK?
    And then he said they took Mother with the sisters, also
    the latter part of '42.
    Where they went or what happened to them, he don't know.
    But I surmised they probably took them to Chelmno,
    because this was the time when they gassed 400,000 people
    or whatever it was in Chelmno on these gas trucks.
    And there is no sign, there is no memorial.
    There is a memorial.
    I went through Chelmno in 1983.
    But there is no names, nothing.
    There's nothing that I can find out up until today.
    And with my brother at that time,
    and I was so involved on what happened to the family,
    little did I realize that my first cousin, who
    was named after my same grandfather, Shmuel Leib
    Laufer-- his name is the same, identical,
    because his father and my father were brothers--
    was standing next to my brother, and I didn't even realize.
    I just found out two years ago, when
    I put an ad in the paper in Israel,
    that this cousin is alive.
    And he was telling me episodes that I did not
    remember between me and my brother by the--
    what I told him and what I asked him.
    Because I guess I had so much that I wanted to forget, maybe,
    that he reminded me.
    He said, do you remember when you threw some bread
    across for him?
    Certain episodes.
    And sure enough he's alive, and I just found him two years ago.
    So this would happen in Auschwitz.
    From Auschwitz, we went again to other camp,
    because Auschwitz, I believe, was about
    almost finished at that time.
    I believe the Russians were approaching.
    And a lot of them met a terrible fate.
    They killed a lot of people.
    They gassed a lot of people.
    They took everybody who couldn't walk or whatever.
    They finished them up.
    And us, they still kept on for labor.
    They took us out of camp, and from there we went to Dachau.
    We stayed in Dachau a few months, not long.
    All this, mind you, is October 1944 until March 31, 1945.
    So it's a very few months.
    We went to Dachau.
    From Dachau we went to Sachsenhausen.
    From Sachsenhausen we went to Buchenwald.
    And Buchenwald was pretty bad too,
    but we were down there probably not over a month.
    And from Buchenwald, they selected some people,
    and they send them to Ohrdruf.
    Now Ohrdruf is another camp that I remember vividly,
    because this was my last one.
    And I really run away from Ohrdruf.
    And I believe this--
    10 minutes.
    OK.
    In Ohrdruf, where I run away from.
    And I was liberated by the United States Army.
    And this was March 31--
    actually April 4 of 1945.
    I don't know if you have enough time.
    Do you want me to tell you--
    You have about 10 minutes.
    If you can summarize some of what happened at Ohrdruf.
    I know that we have--
    OK, let me tell you in Ohrdruf what happened.
    On march 31, 1945, suddenly the camp
    was evacuated at a very short notice, because the day before,
    and maybe two days before, even, we heard some artillery shots.
    Right.
    This we have on tape from last week, about the liberation.
    Is this something you want to tell us about Ohrdruf itself
    prior to the liberation?
    Well, I can tell you that we-- actually the liberation
    was working.
    We run away, and then I was hiding out
    in a air raid shelter.
    From there, we came back to the camp.
    And we were liberated by the United States Army in Ohrdruf.
    And from there, I worked for the United States Army
    until September of 1945.
    Then I was fortunate enough to met a captain
    by the name of Ben Kaplan, who was then the director of supply
    and transportation for UNRRA under Fiorello La Guardia.
    I was his boss.
    And he took a liking to me.
    He said, Leo, you come along with me.
    And I had a really wonderful time from 1945
    until 1948, until when there was the Berlin blockade.
    I remember when we had the Berlin blockade,
    we sent a transport of food and clothing
    from Hanau, with tanks.
    And he told me-- he said, Leo, you are still a DP, which
    is a Displaced Person.
    He said, let's go to Frankfurt, and we'll make your papers,
    and you'll go to the United States.
    And then, of course, we still had
    to have a sponsor, one of them from work and one of them
    for lodging.
    And Al Schwartz, which I mentioned before,
    was with the 134 Anti-Aircraft that I met a few days
    after the liberation.
    He signed his affidavit that he will keep me in his house.
    And Ben Kaplan secured a friend of his
    in Nassau County in New York to give me a job.
    And even though I didn't need either one of them,
    but we had to have it.
    Legal.
    I know our filming time is short.
    Could you just maybe briefly tell us what effect this
    all has had on your life?
    It had, I believe, probably good and bad.
    Let me tell you the good and then I'll tell you the bad.
    The good, I believe it makes you a much stronger human being
    to fight for the right of humanity.
    You see the inequities that has been done to humanity,
    and you want to preserve a better future.
    You want your children to have more than you had.
    You want to give them the best education that money can buy,
    because I didn't achieve it.
    The bad that you have, the bad thing about it,
    is it is to me that anyone who went
    through this type of atrocities, I would hardly
    say that he could be 100%, not normal,
    but not being the way it should be.
    And I can tell by my own family and my own daughters,
    my own wife, who is a second-generation Dallasite,
    it is hard for me to tell her, because I feel that the person
    born in this country, where it's so free,
    and so taken for granted about America,
    that I feel that they cannot understand it,
    that it's something missing there.
    Maybe they don't believe it, and what transpired.
    It's hard.
    And this is, I think, the dilemma probably
    of a lot of our survivors.
    And I don't think that any of our survivors who
    has gone through some traumas, that you could be really
    100% normal.
    It's very hard, including me.
    I know I've been a good father, and a good husband,
    and a good provider.
    But still there is this anxiety of the past.
    I'll give an example.
    Where could I go to find a grave [CRYING] of my parents?
    This is the dilemma.
    When I went back to Poland, at least I
    saw the grave of my brother, and I can
    relate that tragedy happened.
    He got sick.
    He died.
    He's buried down there.
    I don't know the rest of them.
    And you know there are so many things.
    And when you grow up, especially when you left as a youngster,
    that you would want to ask about my father.
    I don't know anything about my father's family.
    I didn't know the names.
    I was too young to absorb all this, or to make notes.
    Where do you get it?
    I probably die and I won't know.
    But there are certain things, if you live you can find a lot.
    I just was in Israel not too long ago.
    And I found out that my great-grandfather
    was a rabbi in Poland.
    I did not know until a few months ago.
    And he is buried on Mount of Olives.
    But the new life, my daughter researched it
    while she is attending Hebrew University.
    And she found, actually, through the chevra kadisha,
    that he was the beit din, the chief rabbi,
    at that time in the 18--
    the latter part of the 1800s--
    1890, I believe.
    That he died down there.
    And the grave is still there.
    And we went to the cemetery, and I found the stone.
    Can you imagine that?
    It's almost 100 years.
    It's over 100 years.
    But where are my parents?
    Where can I search for them?
    There's no place.
    I hope-- I'm searching now to find anybody
    who has lived in the house when they took me away in 1940 so I
    can find out at least the fate.
    How did my mother look?
    When did they take them away?
    How was my brother?
    How was my sister?
    This is the dilemma.
    I think that we have to--
    I think we have to stop now for the time being.
    Thank you.
    Thank you very much.
    And we thank you.
    Thank you.
    I'm sorry.
    It's-- gets emotional.
    Nothing to be sorry for.
    Understandable.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Leo Laufer
    Interviewer
    James Pennebaker
    Alan Griffin
    Date
    interview:  1985 October 27

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Laufer, Leo, 1924-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    James Pennebaker and Alan Griffin of the Dallas Memorial Center for Holocaust Studies conducted the interview with Leo Laufer on October 27, 1985. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History branch received the tapes of the interview from the Dallas Memorial Center for Holocaust Studies on January 8, 1991. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the interview by transfer from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History branch in February 1995.
    Funding Note
    The creation and display of the time-coded transcript for this collection was completed with assistance from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance and the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future.
    Record last modified:
    2024-06-13 16:20:06
    This page:
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    Contains interviews with 31 Holocaust survivors in the Dallas, TX area

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    Oral history interview with Max Biderman

    Oral History

    Max Biderman, born February 11, 1917 in Luków, Poland, describes his family; growing up in Poland; the beginning of the war; his family hiding during the roundups; the execution of Jews by the German Army; being caught with two of his brothers and forced to walk to Siedlce, Poland, where they were put in jail; being marched to a town 20 kilometers away and escaping with one of his brothers; returning home and hearing of the deportations to Treblinka; the creation of a ghetto in 1942 during the New Year; hiding during a deportation and the death of one of his brothers; living in the ghetto; working in a German factory; avoiding another deportation by hiding in the woods; contracting typhoid; witnessing the shooting of one of his brothers; being hidden by a Polish couple; hiding with several other Jewish boys; being hidden by a Polish farmer named Bronkevitch; defending themselves against a group of 40 armed men (possibly the Armia Krajowa); hiding in the forest; his group taking revenge on a farmer who denounced hidden Jews; reading newspapers; the arrival of the Russian Army; returning to Luków; finding the Prengler family (he later married Helen Prengler, RG-50.045*0001); going to Brest-Litovsk (Brześć Litewski), Poland after the war; going to Katowice, Poland then Munich, Germany; immigrating to the United States in September 1949; his children and grandchildren; not sharing his story with his children until recently; visiting Poland in 1984 and showing his children where he hid; the importance and danger of having a gun during the occupation; and testifying against a war criminal.

    Oral history interview with Ala Danziger

    Oral history interview with Ala Danziger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Martin Donald

    Oral history interview with Martin Donald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bela Einhorn

    Oral history interview with Bela Einhorn

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marie Fauss

    Oral history interview with Marie Fauss

    Oral History

    Marie Fauss (née Lucet Marie Selek), born August 25, 1925 at Pont-à-Mousson, France, describes her Catholic mother and Jewish father; visiting the synagogue with her father when she was four years old; her education; beginning college when she was 12 years old; her father reading Mein Kampf and warning her of Hitler’s intentions; her family’s Jewish and Catholic friends; her father deciding she should attend Catholic church; the invasion of Poland; the scarcity of coal; being out of college in July 1940; being warned by an Italian of the impending invasion; her fear of the Germans; fleeing with an Italian family south on minor roads; seeing an exodus of people moving south as they arrive in Nancy, France; being in Nancy during a bombardment; the German restrictions during the occupation; the taking of a census; the round ups and deportations; rumors about concentration camps; taking in other refugees; collaborators; becoming silent and withdrawn; being required to take German at school; being interrogated six times and having their house searched by the Germans; being beaten by interrogators; her belief that the mayor betrayed her to the Germans; being told to report to the town square to be sent to a work camp; being taken to a farm that produced food for a concentration camp in Lorraine; being taken out of the camp after three months with the help of her father; contracting tuberculosis; the arrival of American troops in September 1944; the Germans burning the college and hospital; how the war affected her; and getting married in 1945.

    Oral history interview with Max Glauben

    Oral history interview with Max Glauben

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bela Goldberg

    Oral history interview with Bela Goldberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Goldberg

    Oral history interview with Henry Goldberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alli Itzkowitz

    Oral history interview with Alli Itzkowitz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mike Jacobs

    Oral history interview with Mike Jacobs

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Miriam Joseph

    Oral history interview with Miriam Joseph

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abram Kozolchyk

    Oral history interview with Abram Kozolchyk

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helen Neuberg

    Oral history interview with Helen Neuberg

    Oral History

    Helen Neuberg (née Chaja Miemacher), born December 12, 1926 in Ostrowice, Poland (possibly Ostrowiec in powiat sokołowski), describes her Orthodox family; growing up Jewish and her interactions with Gentiles; the German invasion; the restrictions placed on Jews; people being killed for breaking the curfew; her experiences in the ghetto; hiding during the deportation of her family, all of whom perished in Treblinka; witnessing acts of brutality and cruelty; obtaining false papers; moving to Warsaw, Poland; finding work as a waitress in Stuttgart, Germany, where she lived in fear of discovery; being aided by a Jewish American solider after the war, who assisted her in finding relatives in North America; meeting her husband, who was a survivor of concentration camps, in a displaced persons camp; and immigrating to the United States with her child and husband.

    Oral history interview with Jack Oran

    Oral history interview with Jack Oran

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sol Prengler

    Oral history interview with Sol Prengler

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lori Price

    Oral history interview with Lori Price

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ann Salfield

    Oral history interview with Ann Salfield

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rosalie Schiff

    Oral history interview with Rosalie Schiff

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Schiff

    Oral history interview with William Schiff

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack Stein

    Oral history interview with Jack Stein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Erica Stein

    Oral history interview with Erica Stein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Manya Wozobski

    Oral history interview with Manya Wozobski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Greta Zetley

    Oral history interview with Greta Zetley

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leon Zetley

    Oral history interview with Leon Zetley

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with James Hirsch

    Oral history interview with James Hirsch

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alegre Tevet

    Oral history interview with Alegre Tevet

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Zohn Milam

    Oral history interview with Zohn Milam

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Nanasi

    Oral history interview with Eva Nanasi

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Schiff

    Oral history interview with William Schiff

    Oral History

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