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Oral history interview with Arnold Zweig

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.8.33 | RG Number: RG-50.063.0033

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    Oral history interview with Arnold Zweig
    Transcript
    Then I come back and I stay here till the light is on.
    You, too.
    Take care.
    Yeah.
    This is an interview with Arnold Zweig
    for the Oral Documentation Project of the Holocaust
    Center of Greater Pittsburgh by Rosalind Kent
    at 10:10 on June the 2nd, 1989 at the Holocaust Center.
    I'm going to start asking you some questions.
    Let me know if you have to stop, and we'll break any time.
    Sure thing.
    What you're saying is very important for all of us.
    Mr. Zweig, let me start by asking you
    a few questions about the city where you were born,
    what you remember of your very early life, where
    you came from.
    I was born in Lódz, Poland.
    It was one of the biggest Jewish communities in Europe.
    The street where I was born was 99.9% strictly Jewish.
    It was next to the biggest synagogue in Europe.
    The synagogue was burned November the 11th, 1939.
    And we had to move out from our house
    because the fire was so strong that we had--
    the police told us to move out.
    And the next day we moved back to the house,
    and everything was in ruins.
    This was in 1939.
    1939, November 11, 1939.
    Tell me what you remember of your early years,
    how far back maybe that you remember.
    I remember as I was a child.
    We had a bakery.
    My father-- I knew my father worked day and night
    in a bakery.
    He had to work day and night.
    Did your mother work also?
    No, my mother didn't work.
    How many were in your family?
    With were three in the family.
    I have a sister, and I had a brother that died.
    And where were you in--
    I was in between.
    My sister is the oldest.
    Sister was the first, you were second.
    I was second, and the brother was the youngest.
    And your sister's name?
    My sister's name is Maria.
    Maria.
    Kleiman.
    And your brother?
    My brother was Harry.
    Harry.
    And there were no other people living in this--
    was this a house, an apartment?
    This was an apartment.
    60 Jewish families lived in that apartment.
    In that apartment, you could live all your life
    not to go out from that apartment.
    We had-- in the back we had cows.
    We had chickens and geese.
    And in the front, in the apartment
    were a tailor and a shoemaker and a carpenter.
    In that apartment you could live all your life,
    not go out from that apartment.
    All in the same apartment building.
    All in the same apartment building.
    It were two buildings.
    One was in the front with a big tower, a big arch
    to go through.
    And in the back was another apartment,
    and the yards in the back.
    And it was like a little shtetl.
    Everybody was like one family.
    Did you have grandparents, other relatives living nearby.
    Living by about 10 minutes, 15 minutes walk, yeah, my father--
    my father had 1 brother and two sisters.
    And my mother had five sisters and four brothers.
    And they all vanished.
    The children-- they were married already--
    they all vanished.
    Not one survived.
    One aunt survived after the war.
    And she lived in New York.
    In 1973 she took a heart attack, and didn't survive.
    Were you attending school?
    Oh, yeah.
    What sort of school?
    I went to private schools up to gymnasium.
    What you call gymnasium, here is, I think, pre--
    Pre-high school?
    No.
    Higher than high school.
    Beyond high school.
    Beyond high school, yeah.
    And you-- it was a Jewish neighborhood,
    so all your friends--
    All Jewish friends-- I never had any kind of other friends
    except Jewish friends.
    Was there any interaction in the non-Jewish world?
    No, we never had.
    We lived in strictly-- like today we can call it a ghetto.
    In fact, when they closed the ghetto in Lódz,
    this was a part of the ghetto.
    Our neighborhood was a part of the ghetto.
    And this-- the name of this town was Lódz.
    Lódz-- L-O-D-Z.
    In Poland?
    In Poland, yeah.
    That was the second-largest city in Poland.
    After the capital of Warsaw, then it was Lódz.
    Yeah.
    Did you read newspapers.
    Oh, sure.
    I got the newspaper.
    I remember the Volkszeitung.
    The name of the paper was the Volkszeitung.
    It was issued by the Bund organization.
    In our house, everything was involved with the Bund.
    The Bund was what?
    Social Democratic.
    Social Democratic.
    Social Democratic organization.
    And this is a form of a political organization.
    A political organization.
    What did membership in the Bund mean?
    You attend meetings?
    My father attended meetings, yes.
    And compared to like here, the Democratic Party.
    It was like here, the Democratic Party.
    They were very involved in the life
    and in the operation of the Jewish community
    and the community of Lódz because they had--
    my father was almost elected to the council of the city of Lódz
    because they had a big party.
    The Bund was--
    It was strong party.
    It was a strong party, one of the strongest in the Social
    Democratic Party, not like the Zionist or the other one.
    But this was a Social Democratic Party.
    What's the date of your birth, Mr. Zweig?
    November the 28th, 1924.
    1924?
    Yes.
    So at this point, you'll
    I'll be 65.
    You will be 65 in November.
    November, yeah.
    All right.
    What language was spoken at home?
    Yiddish.
    Not Polish?
    Not Polish, Yiddish.
    In school we learned Polish.
    And then when-- in the gymnasium,
    the language was Polish.
    So you understood Polish?
    Oh, sure.
    I speak Polish.
    At the gymnasium was in Polish language.
    The grade school was in Yiddish because it
    was a private school.
    Oh, OK.
    It was a private school.
    Was it connected to a shul, a synagogue of some sort?
    No.
    The synagogue we had, like I told you,
    my father was a baker.
    We had a bakery.
    The bakers union had a little shul.
    Yeah.
    But the school was not part of it.
    At that time, you were not affiliated.
    In Europe you were not affiliated
    to synagogues like in here.
    You could go anyplace.
    There's no such a thing like affiliated to a synagogue.
    To be a temple member or--
    To be a temple member--
    it didn't exist, this.
    Were you a close family?
    Very close, very close.
    What was the difference in age between your sister
    and your brother?
    Two years and four years.
    Your sister two years older than you, and your brother--
    Older, and my brother was four years--
    Younger than you.
    Younger than me, yeah.
    What was the first word you heard of any problem
    with Jewish and with antisemitism.
    Oh, we knew.
    We knew.
    I wasn't allowed to go out from the street
    because my mother always watched.
    Like, we went-- in the summer we went to a little village.
    And we always watched--
    we knew.
    The Polacks, let me tell you something, the worst
    nationality--
    Polacks worse than the Germans.
    Personally, I would say the Polacks were worse
    than the Germans.
    They made life so difficult for Jewish people.
    Our janitor always, when he was mad,
    he used to say, Jew, go to Palestine.
    Yeah.
    Your janitor then was Polish.
    Yeah.
    Only the janitor was Polish.
    The storekeepers in the neighborhood were Jewish?
    All Jewish.
    All Jewish.
    And Friday afternoon, like today,
    not the rabbi but the sexton, he used to knock Sechar Shabbos.
    Sechar Shabbos.
    Because--
    To tell you it's time.
    Because the people brought cholent.
    You know about cholent.
    Cholent, it cooks for a long time.
    To put it the oven.
    And he used to scream Sechar Shabbos.
    Sechar Shabbos.
    This I remember.
    So that they wouldn't do no more cooking.
    No, no.
    Not to put it in the oven anymore because it was Shabbos.
    This I remember.
    And I remember one more thing.
    When Pesach, we used to bake matzos.
    And I used to go out and look for girls or Polish women
    to come because we all made the matzos by hand.
    All the matzos were made by hand.
    And I remember my father didn't sleep for two weeks
    when the matzos.
    At the Seder, he used to fell asleep.
    This I was a child, but I remember.
    Because he was tire.
    He was tired because he worked day and night.
    And this is something, when I came here, I thought,
    I have to do this the same.
    I neglected my children because I thought
    I have to work day and night.
    This is all you knew.
    I didn't know nobody to tell me you can't do this.
    You have to rest up.
    I worked 18 hours a day, seven days a week.
    At what age did you become aware of problems?
    Well, my teenage years were already got into the war.
    And we learned that we had problems.
    But you know, to recall it back, until we came into Auschwitz
    in '44, I never--
    I never knew that we're not going to survive.
    I never knew that they're going to kill everybody.
    We didn't accept this.
    We lived--
    In 1939, you were 15.
    Yeah.
    So you have some memories of that time.
    I have memory, yeah.
    But we moved in in the ghetto.
    And we didn't--
    Well, how did this happen, that you moved into a ghetto?
    In 1940--
    Tell me what you remember.
    In 1940, we got up in the morning one day,
    and we saw big notices hanging, that May the 1st,
    1940, every Jewish family has to move into the ghetto,
    to the area.
    This is the first you heard of this?
    This was the first we heard of it.
    And between, they already--
    before the ghetto, they made--
    they came in and took the stores away,
    took the merchandise from the store,
    hit some Jewish people in the street.
    And everybody thought, oh, it's going to go away.
    It's going to go away.
    Who came in?
    Were they soldiers?
    The Germans.
    The soldiers.
    German soldiers came in--
    German soldiers.
    --to your town?
    Yeah, German soldiers came in.
    They were there already.
    So they took merchandise from the stores.
    Yeah, from the stores, and the beet Jews in the street,
    shaved off the beards from old Jewish men.
    And it was bad.
    It was bad.
    But it wasn't-- the first month--
    it was worse for people what had the--
    had to move to the ghetto area because they
    had to leave everything.
    We lived in the ghetto.
    You were in the ghetto.
    We were in the ghetto area.
    If these people moved, into what did they move?
    They moved to other families.
    Like my youngest brother's teacher moved in with us.
    They moved in, the teacher moved in with us.
    And this is what all the Jewish families did.
    They took in those they took in those that [CROSS TALK]..
    They took in few-- they have to take it in.
    Yeah.
    And then what happened?
    You saw these notices about--
    Yeah.
    And we had to move into the ghetto,
    and everybody tried to get an apartment.
    And families moved together, and friends moved together.
    And May the 1st, 1940, they closed the ghetto.
    And they closed the ghetto, and we
    started to open up factories.
    In the ghetto?
    In the ghetto-- everything was in the ghetto.
    The Jewish people opened up factories?
    The Jewish people opened up.
    I started May the 2nd--
    May the 3rd, I think, right after I
    went to the Tischler resort.
    They called the factories resort.
    And everybody started to work.
    And you had to have a work permit.
    If not, they started to take out Jews
    to go-- in at that time, when they send away people,
    we didn't know where they send them.
    People were being sent away, out of the ghetto?
    Oh, yeah.
    Right away out of the ghetto.
    Right away.
    Which people?
    How did they--
    They grabbed the people in the street.
    Did you have to stay indoors?
    Yeah, we stayed indoors.
    Yeah.
    No school?
    No school.
    No school.
    No, the first two, three months, I
    remember it was still school because in May was vacation.
    And then in September, it was no school in the ghetto anymore.
    No, no school.
    Then they started already to take out the sick people
    from the hospital.
    And we never knew.
    But then we started--
    then we found out they threw children from--
    through the windows.
    You saw this?
    Yes.
    And that started.
    And that started.
    Then we opened the bakery.
    The bakery was still functioning?
    Yeah, the bakery functioning.
    Yeah.
    Now what were you three children doing during this time?
    There was no school.
    We worked.
    Everybody worked.
    No, you had to go to work.
    And I worked in the Tischler resort, in a mill,
    in a wood mill.
    And my brother worked in a metal resort.
    That's a--
    Metal of some sort?
    Metal-- metal factory.
    And my sister worked in a factory.
    From schmattas, they made rugs--
    weaved.
    From rags.
    Yeah.
    And my mother worked in that factory too,
    fictitious because we knew the president.
    Fictitious-- she had a card, and she worked there,
    but she worked a little bit and then she--
    Not using her name.
    Using her name, but as working in the factory
    and she stayed home as much as she could.
    And my father worked in the bakery.
    And everything was rationed.
    And it was bad.
    There was still food.
    Not too much, no.
    It was no food at all.
    It was food, but no meat, no butter, just essential things.
    And everything was on coupons, rationed-- everything rationed.
    Then this was being--
    In the ghetto.
    German soldiers were--
    Watched the ghetto.
    --watching the ghetto.
    Yeah.
    It was fences all around.
    The main street-- the ghetto was two parts.
    The main street was the streetcar
    was going through with the Gentile people.
    And they--
    Went through the ghetto?
    Yeah, through the ghetto, through the main street.
    The streetcar was going through.
    But it was fenced on both sides, and we had a wooden bridge
    to go over.
    And soldiers were used to watch that bridge.
    And whenever they liked it, they shoot the people on the bridge.
    This was a bridge that led into the ghetto?
    From one part of the ghetto to the other part of the ghetto.
    You were able to go over.
    To go over that street.
    I see.
    Yeah.
    And normal transportation went through the ghetto,
    the streetcar.
    No, no.
    Not through the ghetto.
    How did the streetcar go?
    The streetcar went to the ghetto,
    with the Gentile people, to that area because the main street--
    to get, they cut through the main street in Lódz.
    And the people went through the ghetto, but you couldn't go in
    and you couldn't go out from the ghetto.
    No.
    So you felt that the non-Jewish people were aware of--
    Oh, yeah.
    Sure.
    --this ghetto
    Sure they were aware.
    Sure.
    Knew the Jewish people had to stay here.
    Sure.
    Sure.
    What happened if you left the ghetto?
    You got killed.
    You couldn't leave.
    It's like being in a prison.
    You escaped, you got shot.
    And they shot people in the ghetto.
    For what reason did they--
    Anything.
    No reason at all.
    Whatever they liked it, they killed, they shot.
    And they made razzias, what they call it.
    They closed up a neighborhood, and they picked so many people,
    and sent them away.
    What was the talk at home?
    When you were with your family, what did you talk about?
    What was going on?
    How we going to get-- how are we going to survive,
    and how are we going to live through this.
    In fact, when they closed the ghetto--
    that was a little bit before the ghetto,
    a gentleman came in and told my father
    to go out from the bakery.
    He want the bakery.
    And that was the first time I saw my father crying.
    And my mother said, oh, Fischel, don't worry.
    If we live through the war, you're
    going to make a dough in a wooden barrel.
    Don't worry.
    But nobody survived.
    He got killed by the Germans in the ghetto in 1940.
    They took the bakery away.
    Before they closed the ghetto.
    Before they closed the ghetto.
    Yeah, a German came in and wanted the bakery.
    But he didn't make a success because they closed the area
    right in May.
    It was only three months.
    So what happened when the ghetto was closed?
    When the ghetto was closed, we had to do all, everything.
    And they made a government.
    The Germans made.
    We had a president in the ghetto.
    We had police.
    We had fire department.
    We had everything in the ghetto.
    It was self sufficient?
    Self-- we had our own money in the ghetto in Lódz.
    So the Jews managed their own lives right there.
    Their own lives, yeah.
    How long did this go on?
    This went down till 1943, until they
    start liquidating the ghetto.
    Then what happened?
    Then we went to Auschwitz.
    They took your family?
    They took all the people in the ghetto?
    And during the three years, they took a lot of people
    out from the ghetto.
    People were just being--
    leaving all the time.
    Sure.
    Took a lot of people out from to ghetto.
    Yeah.
    And I worked in that Tischler resort.
    I was one of the last people to go out from the ghetto, 1944.
    And you worked in this factory.
    I worked in this factory from May 1940 till '44.
    And your father and mother?
    The father was at home, and we had the bakery.
    And the father worked in the bakery.
    Mother was still working.
    1943-- The Kripo, that was the [INAUDIBLE] Gestapo took
    my father and--
    Were you there when they took your father?
    Yeah, sure.
    They came in from the house.
    And they asked him to give everything what he has.
    Yes.
    He gave it, and they beat him so much that they got his kidneys,
    and he lived about two weeks.
    And--
    Was he already taken from the house at that time?
    Yeah, he was.
    And he lived about two weeks when he came back.
    And he died in March 1943.
    They took him.
    They took him from the house at that time.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Where did they take him?
    To the headquarters in the ghetto, for the police.
    Yeah.
    Were you able to see him when he was there?
    No, no, no.
    When he came back.
    And then they permitted him to come back?
    No, he was already in bad shape.
    They threw him out, and we picked him up.
    He lived two weeks.
    Was he able to talk to you?
    Yes.
    What did he tell you?
    That they beat him.
    They want everything, to give the gold, and give the--
    To give whatever you have.
    Yeah.
    And he died.
    Were you with him when he died?
    Yeah.
    Sure.
    He died at home?
    At home, yeah.
    At home.
    And it was from the beatings.
    And he's hurt bad.
    And I buried him.
    That was March the 5th, on a Friday.
    And he was a kohen, you know.
    I'm a kohen.
    This is a--
    And a kohen has to be buried by Jewish tradition in a casket.
    And we didn't have wood.
    Then we took a barrel, and we made a casket from the barrel.
    You made the casket from a wooden barrel.
    And I remember, I was a child.
    I remember, a good friend of his came to the funeral
    and had a little speech at the grave.
    That was in March.
    It was spring already.
    It was nice.
    And then we lived together with the mother,
    and the mother took it very serious.
    And we took it very serious.
    But it was-- well, what could you do?
    Yes.
    And I worked inside that factory.
    And you remained in the house with your mother,
    with the three children.
    That's right.
    Well, how did she manage?
    How did she manage?
    We managed because it wasn't rationed, everything.
    We managed.
    We managed.
    So that you had food to eat.
    Yeah, we had not much, but we had.
    And clothing?
    Clothing?
    And clothing we had, I remember.
    Mother made a suit for my younger brother
    from my father's suit.
    I'm going to take a break.
    Let's go on Mr. Zweig.
    I know this is difficult for you to discuss.
    After father died, he was buried.
    Mother and the three children lived together
    with other people in your apartment?
    No, at that time, we were--
    It was just your own family.
    We had one big room, I would say maybe bigger than this room.
    We lived all four of us.
    Yeah.
    And were you still working in the factory?
    Yeah, I was still working in the factory.
    What was your older sister doing?
    Was working in a factory too.
    She made rugs, you know.
    And your brother?
    And my brother worked in the metal factory.
    I didn't see him very often.
    I saw him-- because he worked at night,
    and I worked in daytime--
    very, very little, but I was very close.
    And there were friends and neighbors,
    they were supporting all the time.
    Oh, yeah.
    We had friends.
    We lived in the building for 30 years.
    And all the neighbors lived there.
    They knew each other.
    Were you still going to shul, to your synagogue?
    No.
    No.
    No, not at this time.
    No, it wasn't a shul anymore.
    It was closed.
    Was there any thought about resistance to what
    was happening?
    No.
    In the ghetto you couldn't resist because
    it was something--
    you couldn't-- you know that you don't have nothing with what
    to resist.
    You don't have-- hopeless.
    To escape, you got shot, and that was it.
    The only hope was maybe, maybe we're
    going to live until the war comes to an end.
    That's all.
    But to escape, to resist, no.
    The resisting started when they start to liquidate the ghetto,
    not when the ghetto was in--
    like normal life, nobody resisted.
    Then what was the next thing that you remembered?
    I remember when they started to liquidate the ghetto.
    What did that mean?
    They said that we're going to evacuate to different places,
    each individual.
    In fact, I was one of a group, they took us from our factory,
    and they said they going to set up our factory in a village.
    They took everyone in this factory?
    No, just a group.
    A group.
    Men?
    Women?
    Men.
    Men.
    Young boys.
    Young boys?
    Young men.
    And I was with that group.
    And we took a part of machinery, and we dropped it in a village,
    in a big place.
    And he said that we're going to come back and work there.
    Was this one of the soldiers that--
    Yeah.
    No, that was civilians.
    But they're in charge of that factory.
    Polish civilians?
    No, Germans.
    Germans.
    German.
    And I came back and I said to the mother, Mother,
    we're going into that village and everything.
    Was it a village that you knew?
    I didn't know.
    No, but I said this is a village,
    and this is a big barn.
    We set up the machines.
    And we're going to go there.
    And I came home.
    That's what you were told.
    Yeah.
    And I said to mother, Mother, we're
    going to go to that village.
    We're going to work.
    And she took candlesticks and took tablecloths
    and took everything and--
    Things for you to use.
    To use, yeah, because she said we're going to live there.
    We're going to live in the house.
    We need this.
    And--
    But you were going with a group.
    Your mother was going too?
    No, no.
    We came back.
    You went to the village--
    To the village.
    --then came back.
    And we came back.
    And I told mother, Mother, we're going into that little village,
    and in that barn we're going to worth there,
    and we're going to live there.
    And instead we went to Auschwitz.
    How?
    They took us to Auschwitz.
    On a train?
    By train, yeah.
    You and who else?
    My-- we were 14 people on the last transport-- mother
    and my sister, my brother and myself, and three neighbors.
    Others from the village?
    No.
    From the factory?
    From the factory and from the same house where we lived.
    The same house.
    Yeah.
    How many people?
    14 people.
    That time, that was the last transport.
    If he wouldn't-- if we would have stayed two more hours,
    we wouldn't left.
    You would not have left?
    No.
    But that was the last transport.
    Bread was laying already in the street.
    Was no people to pick it up.
    I was the last to go out from the ghetto.
    How did that happen?
    Because they took every day a different--
    A different group.
    --a different group until it was no people.
    And I remember when they took the fence already.
    The Polish people start to take the fence apart.
    Bread was laying in the street.
    There were no people.
    There was no one left to eat it.
    No.
    No one's left.
    So you and-- you were 14 people, were taken on a train.
    Yeah.
    And that one--
    And you took with you whatever.
    Yeah.
    In one train, it was a lot of people,
    maybe 300 people there on that transport.
    And we arrived in Auschwitz.
    Can you describe the conditions on the train?
    Very terrible, terrible.
    We didn't have-- whatever we had--
    You carried with you.
    --we used up.
    We carried with us.
    Some food and candlesticks and--
    And when they opened the door from the train,
    we thought that we're going to be in that village.
    Instead we were in Auschwitz.
    And in Auschwitz--
    You knew nothing about where this train was going?
    Knew nothing.
    No, nothing, nothing, nothing.
    No word came back to came back to you in your village?
    No word came back, nothing.
    Nobody knew it, nobody.
    So you had no contact with the outside world?
    No.
    No.
    Nothing whatsoever.
    No.
    And when we came down in Auschwitz,
    right away they took my Mother away and my sister.
    How did that happen?
    It was soldiers, were staying, said right and left, right
    and left.
    They separated the families.
    They separated family.
    You were taken away from--
    Yeah, I was taken with my brother.
    Was your brother you?
    Yeah.
    My brother was with me all the time.
    All the time?
    All the time.
    And your mother and sister went together?
    Went together.
    No, they took my mother away, and sister was--
    Did you understand anything that was happening?
    Did anyone say anything?
    Was there any--
    No, they took us in-- then they took us into Auschwitz.
    And they call it Zigeunerlager.
    That was a Gypsy camp.
    And about a week before--
    It was called the Gypsy camp?
    The Gypsy camp.
    It was a part of Auschwitz.
    And then we found out, that time-- we found out
    that about two days before we came,
    they had to make room for us.
    Then they killed the whole, the whole lager, the Gypsy camp.
    And we found out it was not Gypsies.
    It were political.
    They were the only thing--
    that was the only place they had the whole families were there.
    In one night, they killed everybody to make room for us.
    How did you know this was happening?
    Someone told you?
    Someone told us, yeah.
    Someone who had been in Auschwitz?
    In Auschwitz, yeah.
    When you came here, you were shocked by what you saw.
    Sure.
    Then we left already.
    We know, oh, we're going to get.
    Oh, we're going to go-- and we saw
    the fire burning, the ovens.
    You knew what this was?
    Oh, sure.
    Then we knew it, yeah.
    Then we knew it.
    You were with your brother.
    Yeah.
    You did not see your mother and sister again?
    No.
    That was the last?
    This was the last time.
    Then five months after the war I found out that--
    I found my sister--
    that mother perished in Auschwitz.
    She was only 43 years old.
    Can you tell us what was life like in Auschwitz,
    in this camp?
    What do you remember?
    How did you live?
    How did you sleep?
    The food--
    Dead bodies.
    We saw more dead bodies in Auschwitz
    than living people in--
    We were in one room, about--
    a little room like this, maybe smaller, about 50 people.
    That was where you lived?
    Yeah.
    And what kind of sleeping did you have?
    In the floor.
    On the floor.
    On the floor.
    And everybody lived in--
    then we turned.
    Everybody had to turn because it was so crowded.
    And Thank God.
    You had [INAUDIBLE]
    I was only there for two months.
    And then they took us away.
    What were the days like during the two months?
    Were you working at anything?
    No, just beating us and--
    You had food, some kind of food.
    No.
    Food we got only one meal a day.
    And what was that?
    A soup.
    A soup.
    That's all.
    And clothing?
    No clothing.
    They took all the clothing away.
    We had only the clothing--
    Just what you wore.
    --what we had left on us.
    And the things you brought from your home?
    It was-- we weren't allowed to take it.
    When we left the train, everything
    had to be left on the train.
    Whatever you were on this-- and then they took us in,
    and we didn't get our clothes.
    You had to change, and you got clothes what they gave you.
    Special clothing that you wore?
    Yeah.
    This was-- who headed this up?
    There were Germans?
    Polish?
    Germans, all German.
    Germans and Polish people.
    And Polish.
    German and Polish.
    Soldiers in uniforms?
    Soldiers-- the Polish were civilians,
    but the soldiers were in uniform.
    Was it winter, summer?
    It was September.
    We came in in September.
    It was cold already.
    And they woke us-- we had to go out on Appellplatz to count us.
    What was that?
    That, we stood from 5 o'clock in the morning
    till about 1 o'clock in the afternoon.
    Just standing?
    Just standing there.
    And people dropped like flies.
    What about medical facilities?
    It didn't exist there.
    If someone got sick?
    Sick, you died.
    They took him away.
    You stayed in the same room?
    Sure.
    Sure.
    Was there disease?
    Yeah.
    Diarrhea disease was.
    Everybody turned into an animal because we got up
    in the morning, and we looked who was dead.
    And that's it.
    You grabbed-- you looked in his pockets if he had something--
    Something that you could use.
    --that you could use.
    And that's it.
    Did they remove the bodies?
    We removed the bodies, the prisoners.
    And you brought them where?
    We took them outside, and then other people
    came in a little wagon.
    And they took them away to the crematorium.
    I was only two months in Auschwitz.
    That was '44.
    And some of the Pollacks came in and start asking--
    they need carpenters, they need tailors.
    And everybody tried to get out because we saw this is dead.
    So you said that you could do something.
    Then you could do something.
    And one day they said they need metalworkers.
    And everybody said, yes.
    And we went away.
    And--
    You and your brother?
    My brother and myself and other groups, about 200 Jew--
    from Lódz, the people.
    Mr. Zweig, what were the toilet facilities?
    Nothing.
    No toilet facility.
    It was a ditch.
    You went outside of the room?
    Yeah.
    And that's where you took care of yourself.
    And were you well during this two months
    that you were in Auschwitz.
    Yes, I was, thank God.
    You and your brother were all right?
    Yeah.
    So after two months, this is already about November.
    November, yeah.
    1944.
    '44.
    Then you went to work because they needed metal.
    Yeah, they a transp--
    They said we're going to a metal factory.
    And from there from there, from the-- they
    gave us a piece of bread, and we didn't know
    how long it's going to last.
    And they said that we're going on the train.
    Before to go to the train, I had to lift up,
    about 10 times, my arms.
    Who had a number was not allowed to go out from Auschwitz.
    Oh.
    Why?
    Because that was the jurisdiction of every number
    was in Auschwitz.
    And who had a number wasn't allowed to go out.
    Why didn't they put a number on you?
    Because at that time, when we came in Gypsy camp, we transit.
    They knew that we were going--
    You were in transit.
    --to go in transit.
    So you were not permanently in Auschwitz.
    In Auschwitz.
    Whoever they considered would be permanent--
    They gave a number.
    --was given a number.
    Yeah.
    So they knew they were going to ship you someplace else.
    Yeah.
    We were in Gypsy camp, in Ziguenerlager.
    And we were transit.
    And finally, when I lift my hand, and my brother,
    we didn't have a number, we went into the train.
    And we arrived-- about three days we went on the train.
    You were on the train for three days.
    They gave you something to eat?
    Nothing.
    Nothing.
    This one piece of bread what we got.
    And we arrived in Silesia, in Sudetenland.
    Silesia.
    Silesia, in Sudetenland.
    And when we arrived, we thought that we're going to be killed.
    Soldiers with bayonets, with guns and dogs,
    and we marched from the train, and we saw the camp.
    The camp had electric wires.
    And we came in, and we looked at the camp.
    And they started talking.
    We were only over 200 people.
    That was the first camp.
    And they gave us food.
    Electric wires?
    You mean around the camp?
    Around the camp, all electric wires.
    Not to escape?
    No, not to escape.
    And the soldiers were Ukraine.
    Ukraine?
    They were not Germans.
    Russian.
    Russians-- spoke Russian, in German uniforms.
    And we were there for about a week.
    They gave us food.
    They gave us potatoes and beets, they gave us.
    That was in November, they had beats.
    They had potatoes.
    And the oberscharfuhrer, the head of the soldiers,
    had a speech that we're going to survive by working.
    And we're going to be good, treated good.
    In what language?
    In Germany.
    In German.
    In German.
    And that we're going to a factory work.
    And we make propellers for B-57s, for the--
    Airplanes.
    --airplanes.
    And we went to that factory.
    And you're still with your brother.
    All with my brother, yeah.
    Did you make any other relationships there?
    Yeah.
    Did you have friends?
    People?
    I had a friend, which we were like brothers.
    And after the liberation, I lost him.
    And I never found him, never.
    And--
    Was there much interaction among the prisoners?
    Oh, yes.
    Yes.
    All Jewish?
    All Jewish.
    And then in that-- about a month later,
    a transport of Hungarian Jews came in.
    Hungarian Jews.
    So these were all Polish Jews?
    We were Polish first, and then Hungarian Jews came in.
    And it was--
    All ages of men?
    All ages-- young, not--
    And only men in this camp?
    Only men.
    Only men, yes.
    But it was-- the camp wasn't bad.
    In the beginning, they taught us how to make the propellers.
    And it wasn't bad.
    The camp wasn't bad.
    The oberscharfuhrer, the head, was an elderly fellow,
    maybe in his 60s, I would say.
    He was not cruel?
    He was not cruel, no.
    We didn't get beatings.
    No, it wasn't bad.
    This was in Silesia?
    That was in Silesia.
    But about the first week, when we didn't work,
    a friend of mine died.
    And I didn't know.
    Then a soldier comes into the room, picks up four people,
    said we should go down in the basement and take something.
    And I didn't know we go down.
    We didn't see nothing.
    And then we went down, and I saw the body.
    The body was naked, and written the number here
    and the number here.
    I had-- my number was 56595.
    And he had--
    This was your prisoner's number?
    The prisoner's number.
    And this was your friend?
    This was my friend, yeah, from metal-- from Tischler resort.
    What did he die from?
    Do you know?
    If I recall it, he died--
    I think he had something.
    I don't know what he died.
    But they took you down.
    And we took the body out.
    And we took him to a little--
    to a cemetery.
    But it was a Gentile cemetery.
    And two soldiers watched us.
    And we dug the grave all day.
    And it was very tough to dig, like stone.
    And the two soldiers were talking to each other.
    In German.
    In German, yeah.
    And one man came from the Russian front.
    He was wounded.
    He had bandaged the whole arm.
    And the other soldier just went into the service.
    It was a young fella and an elderly fella.
    And it took us, to dig that grave, all day.
    And they talked, and the Russian what came--
    the German soldier what came from Russia talked to this old
    man, said they're going to lose the war because, they said,
    what the Russians can--
    if they want to take something, people, it's nothing.
    They can throw millions of people.
    And they talked to each other all day.
    And that elderly German that was--
    he was a little soft, and we dropped the body in the grave.
    The body was hanging like this on the grave.
    And he said-- and he noticed who's a little bit harder
    by character.
    And he said to one of the foremen,
    you go down and straighten him out.
    This was just drop the body into this grave.
    Just drop the body in this grave, and we covered this.
    But it was on a hill.
    And we had the body laying down.
    And we couldn't carry that body up.
    It was so bad.
    Then in come that-- it was a shed next to that cemetery.
    And he said, take the door off.
    Then we took a door off.
    The door of the shed.
    Of the shed-- we took--
    we laid the body on the door, and we carried it up
    on the hill.
    And I remember that it was the fence,
    and we counted the sticks on the fence
    because we had to flatten the grave.
    No grave-- just the ground has to be flattened out.
    He said, if we live, let's remember where,
    that I was liberated there.
    And after the liberation, we made a cemetery there.
    So this was still in Silesia?
    This was in Silesia.
    And how much time were you there?
    We were till May the 8th, 1945.
    We were liberated--
    I was liberated May the 8th, 1945 By the Russians.
    Do you remember-- you say at this camp they were kinder.
    Yeah, they were kinder.
    They were not as cruel as--
    The German soldiers were not as cruel,
    but the Ukrainians were very cruel.
    The Russians?
    The Russians, yeah.
    They were working for the Germans?
    Yeah.
    They were the Vlasov army.
    They were-- the Russians what went over to the German side.
    General Vlasov went over with two divisions
    on the German side.
    And they were very bad.
    They beat us all the time.
    Now you heard the Germans talking at the grave,
    so you learned something about what was going on in the war.
    Yeah, we knew it.
    But did you-- before that, did you
    know anything, any word from the outside world?
    No, we never, never had anything.
    No.
    No.
    Three months before the liberation, a friend of mine
    escaped from that camp.
    And he told me to go with him, but I
    said no, I have my brother.
    And when we went to work--
    Did you know about the escape?
    Yeah, I knew because I carried for him a package of bread.
    And he escaped from the factory at night.
    Why did you not think about escape?
    Because how could I leave my brother?
    I couldn't escape.
    And the two of you could not do it.
    No, the two of us couldn't go.
    No.
    And then sometime we spoke to a soldier,
    like sometime he was friendly, and we used
    to ask him what happened to--
    three escaped in the same time.
    And he said they didn't get caught.
    And when you talk sometime to another soldier and you say,
    oh, these [NON-ENGLISH].
    Dead a long time.
    Dead a long time.
    When we liberated, they came back.
    They survived.
    So some of them would communicate with you.
    Yeah, in fact, let me tell you a little story in the camp.
    It was a vote about in January what
    to do with us because the Russians started
    to come back closer.
    They were already in Breslau.
    Breslau is now Poland, but it used to be in Silesia.
    And they voted what to do with us.
    The Germans were discussing--
    The little village.
    How to handle the prisoners.
    How to handle us.
    And 90% of the village voted to kill us.
    And we were scheduled to die May the 12th.
    You mean the village people?
    The village people voted to kill us.
    Yes.
    To kill the prisoners?
    To kill the prisoners because they
    couldn't take care of them.
    They had to evacuate.
    They had to take.
    But we had a soldier, he was very friendly to us.
    And he told us this.
    And this is something--
    he gave us a machine gun.
    And he said to put up a fight.
    This was a German.
    That was a German.
    Not a Polish?
    No.
    That was a German, a master soldier what
    worked with us in the factory.
    And he said, whatever happens, you put up a fight.
    You're going to get killed, let them get killed.
    May the 6th-- and this was about three weeks
    before the liberation.
    And we put a watch.
    In each room, we had one man watching.
    If he didn't go to work in the morning,
    he was up at night to watch if--
    we were afraid of them to come in.
    Then we would--
    To fight.
    To fight.
    May the 6th--
    To defend yourself.
    To defend.
    May the 6th, May the 6th we got up in the morning,
    and we stayed outside to pick us up.
    And the masters didn't come to pick us up.
    To go to work, this is.
    To go to work.
    Because we had to walk for about--
    from the camp to the factory was about three miles.
    And we used to walk through that village.
    And May the 6th in the morning, we didn't go to-- the masters
    didn't come and didn't pick us up to work.
    And the oberscharfuhrer, the head soldier, came in
    and he had a speech.
    And he said, that they're waiting for the Russians
    to come in.
    And who is escape is still the todesstrafe--
    who escapes still gets killed, the tode.
    So that you should still not try to escape.
    Not try to escape.
    But when he said so this, and the head,
    the kapo from our camp-- we had a kapo.
    A kapo was--
    A kapo is--
    A man what was in charge from our prisoners.
    But instead saying fluechtlinge, prisoners, he said "men."
    And when he said "men," we all said hurrah.
    Hurrah.
    But he said right away be quiet and to go back to the rooms
    because--
    The kapo, the man that was in charge was a German?
    No it Jewish.
    It was a Jewish man.
    Jewish [CROSS TALK].
    Someone was made a kapo.
    Was made a kapo, yes.
    I see.
    And when he said "men," we made hurrah,
    and he said go back to the rooms and be quiet.
    Instead go into the rooms, we ran to the kitchen.
    We blocked the door from the warehouse.
    And everybody grabbed a piece of bread
    and a handful of brown sugar.
    Hold.
    I'm going to have to turn this around.
    You grabbed--
    We grabbed a piece of bread and a handful of brown sugar.
    And the kapo, the alteste, said how long is this going to last,
    we don't know--
    to save it.
    But I can assure you, nobody saved it.
    Everybody ate it in the same time.
    That was May the 6th.
    And our camp was on the highway.
    May the 7th, the English--
    no, the French and the Italian prisoners, they
    were in a different camp.
    They came in and said that we should escape from the camp
    because the soldiers, the Sprengkommando, that
    was what bombed the bridges, they will see a camp.
    They will throw a couple grenades.
    And--
    These were prisoners of war.
    Oh, yeah.
    They were prisoners of war.
    In the same place where you were?
    In the same village, but not in the same place.
    The Jews were separated.
    I see.
    And they were in prison, but they could move around free.
    They could work in farms.
    And they said that we should escape in the woods
    because they can kill us by throwing a bomb.
    Then May the 7th, we didn't know--
    we had about 30 sick people.
    And we didn't know what to do with them
    because we couldn't carry them.
    And we said-- we took the doors off from our rooms
    and nailed on in their room, put buckets of water in their room.
    And whatever we could have spared food,
    we left with the sick people and said--
    and we escaped in the woods.
    And we went through in the morning,
    till 7:00 in the morning.
    And we went through the village.
    And I ran into a farmhouse, and I grabbed three eggs.
    And I ate it, and I didn't take sick.
    And when we came in the woods, in the mountains,
    we saw Germans from the village.
    They escaped too.
    How many people were you?
    Our camp was about 150.
    And that many people were with you?
    Escaped in the woods, sure.
    We were in the woods.
    But when we went through, we went to the farmers
    and told them, if they see the Russians, they should whistle.
    But between the 7th--
    when we got in the woods, the Germans were afraid of us
    and we were afraid of them.
    And we moved deeper and deeper in the woods, in the mountains,
    in the woods.
    They had machine guns.
    The Germans--
    No, they didn't have the machine guns.
    They were the Germans, the German people from the village
    escaped because the Russians came in.
    And they were afraid of us, and we were afraid of them.
    But from May the 7th and the 8ths, the whole mountain,
    they bombed that village all night.
    The mountain shook.
    We were scared to death because they bombed all night.
    And in the morning, they--
    These were the Russians that were bombing.
    The Russians, yeah.
    The Russians were bombing.
    The Russians came in.
    And May, in the morning, we start moving closer back
    from the woods, closer to the--
    and we heard screaming.
    We didn't know what was going on.
    But between the screams, we heard whistling.
    And we start moving down, moving down.
    What was the screaming?
    When the Russians came in to the Krankenstube,
    to the sick people, they were screaming.
    And we didn't know.
    We thought they--
    With joy.
    With joy.
    Yeah, with joy.
    We thought that they were killed or they're doing something.
    And we--
    So they never-- then they never bombed that camp.
    No, they never bombed the camp, but they
    bombed the whole village because it was all a lot of factories
    of airplanes.
    And in the mountains, when we came into that village,
    we dug the hole in the mountains by the clothes.
    I had the coat.
    We had the reverse.
    And the people, like ants, we were in the line day and night
    with a shovel and dirt to dig out
    that hole we made there from the factory in the mountains.
    We made it.
    So it was hidden?
    That was hidden and it was--
    And protected.
    Yeah.
    And when we ran down, we saw them screaming.
    And we saw Russians with a gun.
    He was scared of us.
    He didn't let us close to him.
    He realized who you were.
    Oh, sure.
    He saw we were shaved out.
    He realized that was the camp.
    Your head was shaved?
    Yeah, here it was two inches shaved out in the middle.
    Why is that?
    To recognize that you're not a civilian.
    And we start, and right away a few people started talking,
    this one was bad, and this one he want to kill these people.
    But he took control.
    This was a Russian?
    The Russian, yeah.
    He was wearing a full hat, I remember
    with a red cross on top.
    He was a Cossack.
    Were you able to communicate with him?
    We talked a little bit, but they were afraid.
    But we were in the camp.
    That was May the 8th.
    And about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, a Russian soldier
    came in on a horse.
    And he spoke Yiddish.
    A Russian Jew.
    A Russian Jew, he came in and he spoke Yiddish.
    And he said that we should go to the German homes,
    take clothes and go home.
    That was 2 o'clock in the afternoon.
    Go home?
    Go home.
    He said to go home from where we come.
    To go back where you came from.
    To go back where we went.
    But Everybody started to run into German homes,
    took clothes.
    I looked--
    Now the people were not in the home not anymore.
    They had left.
    They had left, yeah.
    It was empty.
    And I ran, and I got a pair of pants and a shirt.
    And the next day, a lot of boys couldn't get up,
    took sick, diarrhea and everything.
    The boys that had run out with you.
    Yeah.
    And they took them to the hospital.
    They took us to the hospital.
    The Russians took--
    Yeah, they had a hospital.
    They did.
    And they took us to the hospital.
    And I had a friend--
    two miles from us was a women's camp.
    And we knew about it because we had a good doctor in our camp.
    They took him to this camp.
    And some people took sick.
    And he came back and he told us that some Polish women
    are there and Hungarian women.
    This was a German doctor?
    No, that was a prisoner.
    From your group?
    From our group.
    And we knew it.
    And I grabbed a bike, and I ran down.
    I thought maybe I'll find my sister.
    And my-- I found two girlfriends of my sister.
    Now your brother is still with you?
    Yeah, my brother was still with me.
    So you went-- this was already when you got back.
    You went on bicycle to that other camp.
    My mother died in [PLACE NAME] in a car accident,
    to go to everything.
    In 1950--
    From this camp, from the women's camp.
    From this camp.
    I said, come with us.
    Come with me.
    They were my girlfriends, my sisters
    girlfriends from school.
    Did they know about your sister and your mother?
    No.
    They didn't know.
    You had no news yet.
    No news.
    No.
    They didn't know.
    I found my sister five months after.
    My sister escaped from camp.
    And she lived with a German lady.
    This is-- I'll tell you this is something else.
    In January of 1945, a transport of 10,000 women,
    the Germans took, and they walked.
    And they walked to Konigsberg, to the Ostsee.
    They throw them in and shot them all.
    And nine girls survived.
    And one of the nine girls was my sister.
    From how many girls?
    From 10,000, nine girls survived.
    And--
    How did she survive?
    Then by three girls survived.
    And they were laying in morning in wet clothes
    in the winter, January.
    A lady came down to pick driftwood for fire.
    And she heard them crying.
    A German lady?
    A German lady.
    She heard them crying.
    And she took the three girls in.
    She took the three girls in, and she had a shack.
    And they stayed in the shack.
    And she gave them food.
    And she saved their lives.
    They were [INAUDIBLE].
    Yeah.
    I call this lady Mutti, mother, after the war.
    Yeah.
    You know who this lady is?
    Oh, sure.
    When I found my sister, she started to write to her.
    And I went to see her.
    In fact, one girl went to Israel, and two girls
    from the three--
    From this group that survived.
    From that group.
    Yeah.
    And we want to bring her to the States.
    And one girl want to bring her to Israel.
    She didn't want to leave because she was an elderly lady.
    So your sister was with her friends, stayed in the shack.
    As Germans.
    After about three weeks, she took them into the house.
    She took them into the house.
    She took a chance.
    She took a chance.
    And one day the husband goes up to pick up driftwood.
    This is the German lady's husband.
    The German lady husband.
    She didn't have children.
    They were the two.
    He went to pick up driftwood.
    A bomb drops and kills him.
    And the lady's left with--
    This was right near the house?
    In the backyard.
    And the lady's left with the three girls.
    How did they manage?
    She managed until she went up once to that little village,
    to the Rathaus, to the city hall,
    and said she has a a hello from McKeansburg.
    I give you an example, say McKeansburg.
    She has a hello from McKeansburg.
    Who is here from McKeansburg?
    And then nobody said a word.
    Then the next day, she said she has three nieces.
    You mean she was giving regards and meanwhile
    trying to say something.
    Yeah, who is there.
    Then the next day, she went up and she
    said her three nieces came from McKeansburg.
    They were bombed out down there, to give them cards.
    She was trying to give a message.
    And she saved their lives.
    Yeah.
    And let me tell you that the two girls,
    they live in New York in one apartment for 30
    years in the same apartment.
    Where they go, they live like one family.
    Your sister's friends?
    Yeah, my sister and my sister's friend.
    The three women.
    The three live in New York.
    And my sister has already four grandchildren.
    But they're so that they don't go nowhere.
    And the two girls, one girl was a granddaughter
    of the biggest rabbi from Lódz.
    All right, let's go back now.
    You went to the camp.
    You found the friends of your sister.
    Yeah.
    You went back to your village.
    I went.
    And I went to pick clothes up.
    And I said-- and I picked clothes for the girls.
    And I said, this is for you, Tela.
    This is for you, Hala.
    And this save for my sister.
    I didn't know my sister was alive, but something told me.
    I said, this save for my sister.
    You gave to the friends to hold.
    I gave to the friends to hold.
    Five months later, my sister went home to Lódz.
    And I went after the liberation.
    You went back to Lódz?
    Yeah, two days-- my mother said, wherever you're going to be,
    remember you have a home.
    Come back.
    And I went back.
    How did you get back?
    By horse and buggy.
    A horse and buggy.
    By train, we got back.
    When I got back, I didn't find nothing.
    The house was all bombed-- not bombed out,
    but the Polacks went into the house, to the bakery,
    grabbed the steps, the windows, the doors.
    They took whatever they wanted?
    They took whatever they can because I
    didn't find a picture in it.
    And we had big ovens, from tiles, made ovens.
    And my mother said--
    they saved something.
    They covered.
    And [INAUDIBLE] said, when you come back, whatever
    you see, you come back.
    They hid something.
    Yeah.
    But we didn't find nothing.
    And two days later, I went back to Germany.
    But I went to the committee.
    Which committee?
    To the Jewish committee.
    In Lódz?
    In Lódz.
    There was still a Jewish--
    Lódz was liberated in January of '45.
    And you were liberated--
    In May.
    In May.
    When I came back, was life already.
    People had already returned.
    Your neighbors?
    Very few-- didn't come in.
    No, very few.
    But I got to my--
    I went into the federation, and I said that I'm alive.
    My brother is alive and everything.
    And when my sister came back, she
    found out that we are alive.
    Then when we start to write, she was in Poland
    and I was in Germany.
    And I said--
    Wait.
    You left Lódz then, with your brother,
    still with your brother.
    Sure.
    All the time with my brother.
    Where did you go in Germany?
    Back to the village where we were liberated.
    We lived in that village.
    I lived in that village for six months
    because this was like the home.
    The village-- the camp was like home.
    We concentrate all the--
    The same camp where you all were.
    The same camp, yeah.
    Where you had worked.
    No, but we moved into homes.
    And the camp was abandoned.
    The camp was destroyed.
    This was the camp near Silesia.
    Yeah, in Silesia, Friedland.
    The name of that little town was Friedland.
    It belongs now--
    And there were German people there?
    German people, they came back.
    Yeah.
    They came back. yeah.
    How did they treat you?
    They treated us nice.
    Yeah.
    We took a house with the two girls, my brother,
    and another friend.
    We took a house.
    And we found in the house about 20 rabbits.
    And we killed a rabbit every day, and we ate.
    We made-- we lived like this.
    This was just an abandoned house?
    No.
    That was a house, but they went out.
    The people left the house.
    People had left there.
    We found out later, it was the police chief of the village.
    But five months after, my sister found out that we are alive.
    And she, with the two other girls--
    they were like sisters.
    Came to the same place.
    Came to the place.
    And she said to the girl, come with me.
    You'll live with my brothers.
    Wherever we live, you're going to live.
    And when we went to the train station, she came.
    I had a friend staying with me, watching.
    And this was his sister.
    He didn't know that this was his sister.
    And we lived until--
    and that was-- the Russians were there, and they occupied.
    And we stayed.
    They occupied this German village.
    This German village.
    They made a hospital for the Russians.
    For Russian prisoners.
    No, for the Russian soldiers.
    And the head of this hospital was a Jewish doctor
    by the name of Fishman.
    This I will remember as long as I live.
    He was from Kyiv.
    And when we recuperated, we were--
    I was healthy already, not undernourished.
    We worked in that hospital.
    You had built up a little bit.
    And we worked in the hospital.
    One day, the Polish government comes to that village
    and said that we the Polish citizen,
    we have to go to physical to go to the service
    because we were young boys.
    That was 20, 21 years old.
    We have to go to the Polish army.
    And he couldn't say no.
    He said, you go.
    This is Dr. Fishman.
    Dr. Fishman.
    You go.
    And when we came back, we told him.
    He said in Yiddish-- this I remember-- he said,
    for I is America.
    For you is America.
    And two days later, we escaped to Czechoslovakia.
    How did you do it.
    He helped us.
    He helped you.
    He helped us.
    He gave us five guns and two canisters of gasoline
    because the Czechoslovakians didn't have gasoline.
    And he said to go through the border
    and watch for the Polacks because you put a fight up.
    But thank God, they watched us in here,
    and we crossed in here.
    70 people crossed the border.
    70 boys?
    No, no, girls and boys.
    Girls and boys.
    In between this group was a man what was--
    he was the mayor of that village,
    and we didn't know him.
    He was Polish, but whatever we went
    to help us because we were Polish,
    because this was Russia but the Polish territory.
    He didn't want to help us.
    We didn't know.
    He was Jewish.
    And we found out, when we were in that room at night
    to escape, when I walked in in that room,
    I thought we got caught.
    He double-crossed us.
    He escaped with us.
    And he went with you.
    He went with us.
    And it was a cousin in the boys, which
    they given each other away.
    He knew it.
    But until the last minute didn't tell us.
    Nobody knew about it.
    And he was so--
    Why do you think?
    He was afraid.
    He was afraid.
    He was so rude to us, when we went to ask him for something,
    he didn't want to help us.
    He was afraid he's going to give himself away.
    He was living as a Polish boy.
    He was protecting himself.
    Protecting himself.
    He is in New York.
    He's a pharmacist.
    And when we escaped and we crossed Czechoslovakia,
    we gave the guns and the gasoline to the soldiers.
    And they took us to Nachod.
    That time already, transport of Jewish halflinge,
    displaced people, went already to Israel.
    That was '45.
    the Haganah at that time started it.
    And they were able to go to Israel.
    Yeah.
    And they made camps--
    This is from Czechoslovakia?
    In Czechoslovakia.
    And they made camps working.
    And they took us to--
    In preparation for going to Israel.
    To go to Israel.
    And we went from the Russian side,
    from-- because Czechoslovakia was still Russian.
    We went to Austria, on the American zone.
    And from Austria, the three boys who I was so close,
    my brother and that other boy, we went to Salzburg.
    And we lived--
    From Austria to Salzburg.
    Salzburg is in Austria.
    It is part of Austria.
    But we went.
    So you moved to Salzburg.
    We moved to Salzburg.
    And In Salzburg, I stayed till 49, till I came to the States.
    You were working and living there till 1949.
    Yeah.
    What were you doing in Salzburg?
    I went to school.
    I went to school.
    And your sister?
    And my sister took care of us in the house.
    You and your brother-- the three of you were living together.
    Yeah.
    And then I met my brother-in-law.
    This is your sister's--
    Husband.
    --husband.
    And when they got married, they moved to Munich,
    and I remained in Salzburg with my brother.
    So at that time, your sister was not
    worried about moving back to Munich.
    No.
    No.
    No.
    When she moved back, it was a displaced persons camp.
    I lived in a house in Salzburg because I
    came into that little village next to Salzburg, Freilassing.
    It was a little village.
    And I went into the warning sound that the, like,
    the [NON-ENGLISH],, that was the housing authority to ask
    for an apartment.
    They told me they don't have apartments.
    And then that girl, the receptionist,
    said, oh, down their lives a big Nazi in that house.
    Go to him.
    Maybe he will give you an apartment.
    And I went over to that house and knocked at the door.
    He opened up, and he said--
    I asked him for an apartment.
    He said, no.
    In Ainring is a camp, a DP camp.
    I said, you go to the camp.
    And I kicked the door, and he let me in.
    And I lived with him until I came to the States.
    With this man?
    With this people, yeah.
    How was that?
    He was a big Nazi, but we lived in--
    You were able to live there.
    Oh, yeah.
    Yeah.
    Did you find religion helped you in anything here, your faith?
    Had you had bar mitzvah?
    All of this was happening when you were 13, 14.
    We had bar mitzvah, but not in a way we have it in here.
    We went to the shul, had bar mitzvah, and that's it.
    This was already 1939.
    Something-- before-- during the year.
    '37, you would have been 13 years old, 1937.
    Yeah.
    So you had a bar mitzvah before.
    Yes.
    But religion-- in our house, religion
    didn't play a big role.
    It was not strong.
    No.
    Father was a Bundist.
    He was revolting.
    And he was-- in fact, I have the only one picture
    from an aunt from Israel.
    She found out, and I have when he was a yeshiva bocher
    in school in the yeshiva.
    But when he was--
    he revolted against religion.
    He was very educated in Hebrew and Jewish, but he revolted.
    But not religious.
    Not religious.
    So during all this time there was no religion.
    There was no rabbi that tried to help--
    No we.
    --services of some sort, when the holiday came in--
    In the beginning, yeah, we kept the holidays.
    But after the war, as boys, some became very religious.
    More religious.
    More religious.
    In fact, the second day after the liberation, a boy of us
    turned kosher.
    He didn't eat in the restaurant.
    Because we were young boys, we only
    could eat in the restaurant.
    And he got a hotplate and made food.
    He became kosher the second day after the liberation.
    So he turned to religion.
    And some walked away from religion.
    Some revolted against religion because the anger was so big
    that you couldn't--
    it was nobody to answer you why.
    And then you look for the scapegoat.
    Then you turned against--
    to blame it on somebody.
    Then you're angry, angry.
    Oh, yes.
    And the anger never left me.
    The anger never left me.
    This is what it means to you today to be a survivor.
    That's right.
    Anger.
    The anger and, a survivor, the hope.
    I saw boys they lost their hope, in two days they were gone.
    In two days they were gone.
    So you needed to have hope.
    Yeah.
    But not religion.
    Yes.
    Religion didn't--
    Hope for the future.
    --didn't play a role because you revolted against religion.
    If you would say, why should this be so.
    You revolted against it.
    You didn't deny that you were Jewish.
    You suffered so much that you revolted against it.
    How did you happen to come to America?
    Through the federation.
    And you were living in Munich.
    From Salzburg, I came to New Orleans.
    From Salzburg.
    Oh, your sister was in Munich.
    My sister was in Munich.
    My sister came six months before me.
    She came here to Pittsburgh.
    So you were communicating with her.
    Yeah.
    And I came with my brother to Oklahoma City.
    In Oklahoma City I met a lot of German Jewish people.
    But they spoke German.
    And they spoke English.
    And when we came, my brother and myself and another boy, and we
    couldn't speak English.
    And we spoke very little German.
    Why did you come to Oklahoma City?
    They assigned us Oklahoma City.
    It was not your decision?
    No, not my decision.
    I didn't know where Oklahoma City like I don't
    know where Yukon, Alaska is.
    But when I start to write letters to my sister, she said,
    oh, in Pittsburgh you have people.
    You can speak Yiddish in the street.
    You have Jewish this.
    Then we came to Pittsburgh, to this.
    How did she happen to come to Pittsburgh?
    My brother-in-law had an uncle in here.
    And he requested that they should come to Pittsburgh.
    So then you moved from Oklahoma City.
    Then moved from Oklahoma and moved to Pittsburgh.
    With your brother also.
    With my brother.
    I never went without my brother.
    You married in Pittsburgh.
    I married in Pittsburgh, yeah.
    How do you feel about Israel?
    Oh, I feel I will die for Israel.
    This is the hope of our future.
    So are you, today, a religious person?
    I believe in God.
    I'm not a religious.
    But you don't practice.
    I don't practice.
    You have children, Mr. Zweig.
    Yeah.
    Two children?
    Two children.
    I have a daughter and a boy.
    The daughter is 33, and the boy is 30.
    They both live in Florida.
    And you see, this is something, till today I never talked
    to my children about this.
    And this is something, when I start talking to my children
    is when they show the show the Holocaust a few years ago.
    My children didn't know because I--
    They didn't know your history?
    No.
    They didn't ask about my grandmother.
    They asked, but I deny this to them.
    And this is something which I should have told them.
    I denied it.
    Like they used to play in the street with other children.
    On holiday grandmother used to come.
    They used to run in, Daddy where is Grandma.
    How could you tell him Grandma was killed by German.
    You couldn't-- you couldn't put hate in them.
    You understand?
    From one side, I feel I should have told them
    because they were already--
    like, a few years ago, my daughter said, Daddy,
    why didn't you tell me this?
    I said, how could I tell you to hate people?
    Or--
    They live in the United States.
    I denied them.
    I hid by working because I missed my parents.
    I couldn't give them as a parent,
    and I hid this, which I know I was wrong.
    But I took it out.
    This was my--
    That's how you took it--
    I took it out.
    Yes.
    And this was-- that's something which it will never leave you.
    It will never leave you.
    And then it was at that time told about what
    happened to their grandparents.
    Then I told them that I'm a survivor.
    I was in camp and everything.
    What was the effect?
    It was a little bit-- it affected them.
    It affected them because they realized
    where the grandparents and the uncles and aunts--
    Because the had no family.
    They had no family.
    Maybe they guessed something about this.
    Of course, they're older now, they understand now.
    But they missed this part of life.
    I can see they missed this because the other children,
    they had friends, and when holidays came, uncles came,
    grandparents came.
    And they missed this.
    They missed it.
    They kept to themselves because of this.
    They missed this.
    Do you have grandchildren?
    No, they're both not married yet.
    No.
    My sister has four grandchildren already.
    Yes.
    How do you feel about the future?
    For me, I don't give a damn because life is a [INAUDIBLE]..
    Life is nothing to me.
    I don't care if I die tomorrow or something
    because I don't see nothing.
    I accomplished everything and nothing.
    I have nobody, nothing to show.
    If it's far as a holiday or something--
    To show it to your family, you have mother and father. and--
    That's right.
    It's nothing.
    You really have only your sister.
    Only my sister.
    It's life that's--
    I'm angry.
    Inside I'm angry.
    Outside I might laugh.
    I might do this.
    But inside, I'm very angry.
    I'm not angry at nobody, but I'm angry at everybody.
    The situation.
    Because they denied this.
    And my children pay for it.
    I pay for it.
    My wife pays for it and everything.
    Was your wife a survivor?
    My wife lived in England, but the Elton, the parents
    died in Auschwitz.
    So you shared that with her.
    Yeah.
    And you know, it's something.
    When I came to the States, when I was alone,
    I always had in mind to marry a girl with parents.
    And fate, she doesn't have parents.
    Because my grandmother lived with us.
    I never-- like people started talking, oh,
    grandmother or this--
    I never realized.
    I never believed that it can be a dispute between something.
    I wasn't born--
    I was born and raised in a family
    where love the family was.
    And I couldn't understand that was in me.
    I always said, oh, I wish I could have a mother or father.
    It was very important.
    Very important.
    Very important.
    All right, Mr. Zweig.
    I want to thank you for talking about this.
    Would you like to tell me anything else?
    I can tell you stories from now till next year.
    Tell as much as you can.
    What we left-- what we left.
    What I went through.
    Yes.
    If you'd like to add something.
    Oh, it's so much to add.
    It's so much it never ends.
    It never ends.
    You have some friends that you--
    Friends.
    But you see, even till today--
    Friends from that time.
    Even friends that time, the home vanished completely.
    When we come together, like in Florida--
    You are still seeing people from--
    Yeah.
    --from the camps.
    We always ask from what camp you come, not from what home,
    from what camp.
    When you say the camp, you know who you are.
    The home vanish--
    That's the way you identify yourself.
    That's the way we identify.
    The home doesn't exist anymore.
    The home doesn't exist anymore.
    In fact, I had, till last year, I was so--
    I wanted so much to go to Poland.
    And my wife talked me out of it.
    Finally, my friend went.
    And he came back and said Arnold, forget about it.
    Don't go.
    This is someone from your hometown?
    From my hometown.
    And he told not to go back.
    Not to go.
    No.
    He went back.
    He went to my father's grave.
    He said don't go.
    Don't go.
    The Polish are still the worst, and don't go.
    They went to the grave, to the cemetery.
    It's like a jungle.
    Took them about two hours to cut the bushes from the grave.
    He said, Arnold, don't go.
    Is this all Polacks living now, Polish people
    living in that town?
    All Polish.
    No more Jewish town there.
    No, no more.
    Maybe 2,000 Jews.
    They even don't say they're Jews.
    And it was before the war, 300,000 Jews lived in Lódz.
    So you still see some of these friends?
    Oh, yeah.
    And we get together in Florida in general,
    in general all the time.
    Maybe from 300,000, maybe 6,000 Jews survived from Lódz.
    Anyone in Pittsburgh aside from you?
    Yeah, a couple from Pittsburgh, what we were in the ghetto
    together.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Konsky, you know, the daughter works in here.
    Oh, yes.
    Yes.
    Her father, she comes from-- the father
    comes from Lódz, from my hometown.
    Yeah.
    You forget.
    You run, you go here, you go--
    Life goes on.
    Life goes on, but still inside is still the page didn't turn.
    The page didn't turn.
    Page didn't turn.
    And on top of it, I go to the cemetery to my brother.
    Made a home.
    What a tragedy.
    I made that monument.
    I made the top for him, and on the bottom
    for my father and my mother.
    This is something.
    Can you tell me, Mr. Zweig, a little bit
    about your early family, whatever you remember?
    Yeah.
    My family was a very close family.
    My mother, my father, my sister, myself, and my brother, and we
    were very close-knit, very.
    We didn't go, like, out.
    It was something when the family was so close.
    And Saturdays, I had to go to the aunt.
    I had to go to visit.
    If you didn't go and visit, was like a sin.
    The family tie was so close that it's still missing till today.
    You know, it's a pleasure to see Shabbos in Square Hill,
    when you see a Hasidic Jew with children go to--
    it brings back so memory that I go away, and I go there.
    Can you recall any antisemitism in the town?
    Yeah antisemitism was always--
    prejudice was always there.
    You were aware?
    I was aware all the time, yeah.
    Tell me a little bit about your being deported to Auschwitz.
    From the ghetto, we were deported to Auschwitz in '44.
    That was the last transport from the ghetto.
    And your feelings today, how do you
    feel about what you lived through?
    Angry.
    Very angry.
    Very angry.
    Material things don't mean nothing to you.
    You go, you chase one thing after the other
    to get away from it, to hide.
    But you cannot hide from nothing.
    It's fine.
    Thank you very much.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Arnold Zweig
    Date
    interview:  1989 June 02

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Zweig, Arnold.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh conducted the interview with Arnold Zweig on June 2, 1989. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the tape of the interview from the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh on January 9, 1990.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:10:35
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn508056

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    Also in Oral history collection of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh

    Consists of 35 interviews of Holocaust survivors and liberators in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, area.

    Date: 1989-1991

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    Oral history interview with Thomas Detre

    Oral History

    Thomas Detre, born May 17, 1924 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his family; living in a small town outside of Budapest; learning German and Hungarian as a child; being taught in a strict Catholic order and receiving lessons from a local rabbi; his Bar Mitzvah; not experiencing discrimination until he was a teenager; how his family was protected by early antisemitic laws because his father fought in WWI; how people disregarded the German invasion of Poland and how he was unaware of the anti-Jewish laws being passed; not being able to register for certain classes because he was Jewish; auditing medical courses in Budapest; different expressions of Judaism that were practiced in Hungary; how his family was integrated into Hungarian society and disdained the more cloistered orthodox Jews; how in 1942 the Arrow Cross became more violent and destroyed more Jewish property; how his cousins were drafted into the forced labor battalions; working in a Jewish hospital in Budapest in 1943 and learning from Jewish refugees about the camps and atrocities occurring in Nazi-occupied areas; the loopholes in the antisemitic legislation; being only vaguely aware of the ghettoization of Hungarian Jews; being arrested in 1944 and sent to a work compound; escaping with 100 other inmates and being captured later; being detained and correctly diagnosing a guard, who fell ill; feigning suicide and being sent to a rehabilitation hospital as required by Hungarian law; escaping the hospital and being recaptured; being sent to a detainment hall in Óbuda, where people were either sent to a Swiss safe house or a death camp; sneaking into the group of people going to the Swiss safe house; obtaining legal papers from a cousin and living in a safe house in Budapest; living with hundreds of others in cramped conditions; how in May 1944 his entire family was deported to Auschwitz and only one uncle survived; his reflections on the reasons for decreased Nazi cruelty in the last months of the war; his contact with the Zionist underground during his months in the safe house (he mentions Raoul Wallenberg); a Yugoslav partisan he lived with in the safe house; coming down with typhoid fever in the safe house; being liberated by the Russian Army in February 1945; learning about his parents via the bulletins issued by the International Red Cross; retrieving family jewels that friends had safeguarded and selling them for food; beginning his medical training three weeks after liberation; going to Italy to get his medical degree; immigrating to the United States in 1953; not experiencing survivor’s guilt and how it was luck that kept him alive; his belief that many Americans participated in denial en masse during the war; his questions about the effectiveness of widespread education on the Holocaust; and his belief that there should be more study of the psychology and behavior of groups.

    Oral history interview with Bertram Dinman

    Oral history interview with Bertram Dinman

    Oral History

    Bertram Dinman, born August 9, 1925 in Philadelphia, PA, describes his Jewish family; being affected somewhat but not greatly by the Depression; entering the army in January 1944; how his company was sent to Liverpool, England around the time of the Battle of the Bulge; being sent across the channel in December 1944; experiencing some antisemitism among the U.S. troops; being hospitalized for pneumonia; going with the 4th Army Division of the 3rd Army as an engineer; going through Eisenach, Germany to a small town and smelling rotting flesh; going to a small holding camp (Ohrdruf); how the troops killed the remaining German army personnel they found in the camp; the anger of the soldiers; how the troops rounded up the people living in the small town and showed them the inside of the camp; digging hundreds of graves and burying each body individually; taking inmates for medical treatment and giving them food and cigarettes; being discharged in June 1946; and his belief in Holocaust education.

    Oral history interview with Harry Drucker

    Oral history interview with Harry Drucker

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fanny Federman

    Oral history interview with Fanny Federman

    Oral History

    Fanny Federman, born August 10, 1922 in Lokuch, Czechoslovakia, describes her religious family; having 15 siblings; how Catholics and Jews lived peacefully in her town; doing household chores; first experiencing antisemitism in 1939; being taken to a ghetto in Moonkash (possibly Mukacheve, Ukraine) and being forced to make bricks; being transported to Auschwitz; being separated from her family and going through the selection process; being shaved; how people tried to commit suicide; seeing an entire barrack of Roma exterminated; how pregnant women often give birth in the barracks and the other women would choke the new baby to spare the mother's life; her sisters in the camp; being sent to a factory in Reichenbach, where they were fed more; being forced to march to Parschnitz (Poříčí, Czech Repbulic), where they dug trenches; being taken near the Sudetenland (Czech Republic); how conditions began to change: they were fed more and allowed to take clothing from factories; how the German soldiers disappeared; traveling home with 10 women for two weeks; not finding any of her family at home; going to Bucharest, Romania; returning home and eventually being contacted by her sisters; being arrested and imprisoned because her cousins’ clandestine activities; being freed and reunited with three of her sisters; getting married and going to Dierdorf, Germany; immigrating to the United States; never telling her children her story; and still being affected by her experiences in the camps.

    Oral history interview with Hyman Federman

    Oral history interview with Hyman Federman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irene Furst

    Oral history interview with Irene Furst

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Samuel Gottesman

    Oral history interview with Samuel Gottesman

    Oral History

    Samuel Gottesman, born in Irsava, Czechoslovakia (Irshava, Ukraine) on October 20, 1923, describes his town in the Carpathian Mountains; his family; the languages he spoke; his Orthodox father; having only Jewish friends; the peaceful co-existence of Jews and non-Jews; having to learn to speak Hungarian; how his father had to shave his beard and do forced labor; how the Arrow Cross Hungarian Nazis, were not as bad as in the larger towns; being forced to subscribe to a German-leaning newspaper published in Budapest, Hungary; how Hungarians were brought in and took over Jewish businesses; how the Jewish Hungarians had to prove they had lived in that area for three generations or face deportation to Poland; the deportation of his sister; how about 10 percent of people in Irsava were deported to Galicia, Ukraine and shot; the black market; how the Jews in Irsava were told to report to the synagogue; hiding their jewelry in their shed; how one third of the town was designated as a ghetto; being sent after a week to Mukacheve, Ukraine; the brutality of the German SS guards towards the elderly Jews; how Eichmann came to Mukacheve for an inspection; being transported to Auschwitz; his first impressions of the camp; being shaved and dunked in disinfectant; being put on a train three days later with his father and sent to Wolfsburg, Germany; performing forced labor, digging ditches and putting in foundations for buildings; being transferred to a camp in Silesia and contemplating suicide; some bombings and an air raid one night; convincing the German guards not to send him the Auschwitz because of his young age; how having his father with him kept him going; how they were sent to Gross-Rosen, where they could take showers and had access to potatoes and bread; being evacuated; going to Hannover, Germany; returning to Czechoslovakia; returning to Irsava; contacting a cousin, who was in the U.S. Army, and going to live in a home he appropriated in Augsburg, Germany, where lived with his father, sister, uncle, and three cousins; registering in a displaced persons camp near Ulm, Germany; the death of his father in 1961 and the impact it had on him; getting married and having children; and how his wife is unable to talk about her experiences at Auschwitz.

    Oral history interview with Dora Iwler

    Oral history interview with Dora Iwler

    Oral History

    Dora Iwler (née Zuer), born in 1923 in Chodorów, Poland (Khodoriv, Ukraine), describes her family; being educated in a Catholic school; becoming aware of antisemitism in her adolescence; how her father’s fruit store was expropriated; learning Russian and going to work for the Russian government; how the Russians discriminated on wealth instead of religion; how the Nazis arrived in Chodorów in the summer of 1941 and persecuted the very religious Jews, homosexuals, and Romanies; how a large Ukrainian population of her town collaborated with the Nazis; how her father made a bunker under a kitchen cupboard for the family to hide in; the deportation of Jews, including her mother, in 1942; how her sister was shot and killed while running away from Nazi soldiers; how one of her brothers was taken away; working as a gardener for a Ukrainian family outside the city during this time; being sent to a concentration camp (Janowska) near Lwów, Poland (L'viv, Ukraine);being assigned to a wheat field; witnessing the murder of 1,000 people one day and 2,000 the next; escaping the camp and running to Lwów; working as a janitor for an elderly couple and pretending to be a Christian; being recognized and turned in by a classmate; successfully pleading with the officers not to harm the couple with whom she had been living; being taken to a jail in Lonzski; being sent to a ghetto and a 45 km death march; being helped by a train conductor during the death march and escaping; resuming her Christian alias; living with a Polish family for six months; going to Sanok, Poland after the Russians liberated Poland in January 1945; getting married in February 1945; the antisemitism in Poland after the war; fleeing to Italy with the help of Haganah representatives in Germany; staying in Italy four years; immigrating to the United States in 1949; settling in Pittsburgh, PA; how her children know her Holocaust story; still having nightmares about the Holocaust; leading a secular lifestyle; and her reflections on persecution.

    Oral history interview with Herbert Joseph

    Oral history interview with Herbert Joseph

    Oral History

    Herbert Joseph, born in January 1923, describes his Byelorussian parents, who both moved to the United States before they met; graduating from the University of Pittsburgh with a major in business; his secular-Jewish parents; being in ROTC in college; being sent to basic training in 1943; arriving in Le Havre, France; being a Second Lieutenant with his own platoon in the 80th Division; fighting in the Battle of the Bulge; how at the end of 1944 he got sick from being in foxholes and was in the hospital for three weeks; fighting in Germany; arriving in Chemnitz, Germany at a concentration camp (Sachsenburg), which they liberated; being in Austria when the war ended; receiving a battlefield promotion and a Bronze Star for heroic action; hearing antisemitic comments when he was in the military; being transferred to the military police in Starnberg, Germany in October 1945; being transferred to Landsberg, Germany; his duties at the Landsberg Prison, which involved escorting convicted SS troops to be executed; the riot in the Landsberg displaced persons camp; returning to the U.S. in July 1946; being sent to Fort Dix; the horrors of combat and dealing with his experiences; how the civilians in Landsberg claimed to be unaware of the atrocities that were going on during the war; not being able to forgive Germany; and his friends who were in camps during the war.

    Oral history interview with Georg Keleti

    Oral history interview with Georg Keleti

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sara Kohane

    Oral history interview with Sara Kohane

    Oral History

    Sara Kohane, born in Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania), describes her family; attending public school for Jewish children in Poland; her semi-religious parents; the violent antisemitism in her town; the invasion of Russians in 1939; how food become more scarce; how the Russians left in 1940; being 12 years old during this time; how her brother served in the Polish Army as a radio engineer; having to learn Lithuanian; hearing bombs in 1941; how her father disappeared after he was told he would be shot; how her Jewish friends began disappearing; the creation of two ghettos; being told to leave their apartment by German soldiers; how their apartment super had all her family’s paintings; getting food from the nuns, who worked at a nearby candle factory; conditions in the ghetto; hiding with her family in an attic during a roundup of Jews one night and how she was shot in the arm and left for dead; how her brother was part of the resistance; smuggling food into the ghetto; digging a tunnel out of the ghetto, which her brother used to get out and join the partisans; being marched out of the ghetto and experiencing a selection process; being taken to a cattle car and traveling to Latvia; being sent to a work camp in Riga, Latvia where she worked for a year; conditions in the camp and the psychological impact on her; working on a sugar beet farm; going back to Stutthof; being snet on a march and how her sister came down with typhus; waking up one day, seeing Russian soldiers, and being told that they were free; the beatings she remembers witnessing in the camps; and life in the camps.

    Oral history interview with Edward Kosewicz

    Oral history interview with Edward Kosewicz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jack La Pietra

    Oral history interview with Jack La Pietra

    Oral History

    Jack La Pietra describes being sent to England as a part of the 9th Air Force, Tactical Air Command, supporting the 3rd Army; being a pilot for The Black Widow (Northrop P-61); being in the Battle of the Bulge during December 1944; getting to Buchenwald but having to wait for the Russians; visiting the camp with some of his squad members two days after the SS had fled; bringing his camera and being accompanied by a guide and translator, Reinhold; writing a detailed letter about the experience (which he reads and shows accompanying pictures from the camp); conditions in the camp; the crematoriums and nearby nooses; giving the inmates cigarettes and chocolate; details about Block 36, where prisoners underwent medical experimentation; the Commandant of Buchenwald, Karl Koch, and his wife, Ilse Koch; a monument made by carpenter inmates; the murder of Russian soldiers at Buchenwald; his personal philosophy and family history; how he is a liberal Catholic with sons who are Baptist ministers; his daughters, one of whom is married to the journalist, Bill Curtis; how the trip through Buchenwald had a lasting effect on his life; and using his letter as a teaching tool.

    Oral history interview with George Lauer

    Oral history interview with George Lauer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edward Levant

    Oral history interview with Edward Levant

    Oral History

    Edward Levant, born in June of 1915 in Pittsburgh, PA, describes his Russian father and Austria-Hungarian mother parents, who came to the United States in 1910; how his family was Jewish but they were not very religious; experiencing antisemitism when his family lived in Ambler, PA; graduating from dental school in 1939; seeing the changes in Europe and the migration of Jews to the U.S.; joining the army and being placed on limited service because of his eyesight; being sent to Carlisle Barracks near Harrisburg for a "basic training" program for medical personnel; going to Liverpool, England on the S.S. America; going to Le Havre, France; landing in Normandy, France on D-Day with the 474th anti-automatic weapons; going to Verviers, Belgium via box car in December 1944 and the retreat of his unit after encountering a German offensive; how his unit was at the Ludendorff-Brücke in Remagen, Germany; going to Nordhausen, Germany; going to Dora concentration camp; conditions in the camp and speaking to the inmates; how his commanding officer wanted German civilians to dig trenches in which the bodies could be buried; experiencing open and latent antisemitism within the army; continuing on to Mansfeld, Germany; being changed to another unit; returning to the U.S. in December 1945 as an independent replacement; the importance of sharing Holocaust stories; and his thoughts on Israel.

    Oral history interview with Albert Lewin and Fritz Othenheimer

    Oral history interview with Albert Lewin and Fritz Othenheimer

    Oral History

    Fritz Othenheimer describes his long lineage of German ancestors; living in Constance (Konstanz), Germany; how his parents owned a small menswear store; the rise of Hitler; the anti-Jewish laws passed; how father had to sell his store; how his parents took in a Jewish family from Austria in 1938 and helped them cross the border into Switzerland; how his family helped more families and he and his siblings took the people across the border because as children they would be less suspicious; his father’s friendship with a lieutenant of the criminal department and how this man helped get more Jews across the border; how on Kristallnacht all the synagogues were blown up and the Jewish men were taken to concentration camps; how his father was arrested and taken to Dachau and released a month later; immigrating to the United States in May 1939; how his family did not cross the border into Switzerland because they were scared of being sent to work camps there; and how he did not find out about the gas chambers used by Nazis until he was in the U.S. Army and going through Germany after the liberation. Albert Lewin, born in Berlin, Germany in 1925, describes how when he was 16 years old his private school was closed and he was sent to a forced labor camp in Berlin; being sent to Auschwitz when he was 18 years old; going through the selection process; working as a mechanic in the tailor shop that repaired German uniforms; getting a number and a triangle tattooed on his arm; finding out later that 26 of his relatives were killed in 1943, including his grandparents, parents, and brothers; being transferred to Warsaw, Poland in 1943, where he was a runner for the German government headquarters; having to pull the gold teeth from dead prisoners in the morning and managing to steal a few, which he later traded for food; helping a man escape so he could tell the Russians to stop bombarding the camp; how the Germans found out about his role in the escape and tortured him by hanging him from his ears to make him talk; how he did not give up any information and managed to stay alive; being transported to Dachau and being sent on a death march for three days; being sent to Mühldorf; escaping from a transport train that was bombed in May 1945 and staying in a farmer’s house for a few days; his memories of the captain from Columbus, Ohio who liberated him; spending time in a hospital; immigrating to the United States in 1947; not speaking about his experiences until recently; and a note he wrote about Kristallnacht.

    Oral history interview with James Lynch

    Oral history interview with James Lynch

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Henry Marinelli

    Oral history interview with Henry Marinelli

    Oral History

    Henry Marinelli, born February 9, 1923 in Pittsburgh, PA, describes his catholic family; doing odd jobs during the Depression; how in 1939 when he was 16 years old the only information he received was from the newsreels at theaters; his focus on his education; being drafted in 1942; being in the 12th Armored Division; teaching his Italian parents English; going to Bristol, England on October 1, 1944; how his division set up a make-shift camp near a glider base four months after D-Day; how the men in his division were excited to fight; how his division relieved the 4th Armored Division; how they fought in several German towns; not leaving the front line from November 1944 to April 1945; how he had dreams of combat for many years after; being in a tank with four other men with a 105 Howitzer; the purpose of the German 88 tank gun; not being aware of concentration camps before coming upon labor camps; his response to the conditions; a picture he has of the bodies the Germans had burned; visiting Dachau after the war; only being in Landsberg for a few hours; going through German towns such as Munich and Berchtesgaden as well as the Brenner Pass, Austria; how his experience gave him more compassion for people; his views on American youth; and his advice on life.

    Oral history interview with Robert Mendler

    Oral history interview with Robert Mendler

    Oral History

    Robert Mendler, born on July 6, 1925 in Novitar, Poland (60 km from Kraków, Poland), describes his Orthodox Jewish family; finishing seventh grade before the war started; his many non-Jewish friends; the numerous Zionist organizations in his town; how his father did not believe Jewish emigration from Poland was necessary at the time; the pogrom in his village in 1936 organized by Polish farmers; being segregated in the classroom and having to sit in the back; living in fear; how his father went to the Russian side without telling the family; the creation of a ghetto in Novitar; being forced to wear white armbands with the Star of David; working on a super highway and a lumberyard; how they paid gentiles to bring them food covertly during the night; how the Nazis turned their synagogue into a warehouse and later into a movie theater; conditions in the ghetto; how the killing of Jews started in 1940 and the process of murdering Jews; the spread of information in the ghetto via word of mouth; the Jewish police force in the ghetto, which did not work with the Nazis; the deportation of Jews from the ghetto; the deportation of his mother and sister and the murder of his father; being sent to a concentration camp in Czarny Dunajec, Poland, where he stayed for nine months; how he is the only person in his family who survived the Holocaust; the Czarny Dunajec camp’s commander, Miller, and his aggressive dogs; killing one of the dogs, burying its body, and exhuming it periodically to eat the meat; being moved to a camp in Krakow (Płaszów); the commander of the camp, Geth, who rode on a white horse around the camp, randomly shooting Jews standing at attention; being in good health; digging up skulls while working and removing the gold teeth, with which he would trade to the Ukrainian guards for bread; still having violent memories of the Holocaust at night; being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau; building roads and cleaning canals at Birkenau; wearing a red triangle with a yellow bar, indicating to everyone that he was a Polish Jew; staying at Auschwitz until January 18, 1945; being sent to Gleiwitz, then experiencing a 10 day journey to Berlin, Germany in an open boxcar; how Czechs threw them bread from bridges during the trip; reverting to cannibalism on the dead bodies with the other passengers because they lacked real food; being sent to a camp at Pocking (subcamp of Flossenbürg); being 75 pounds when he was liberated; immigrating to the United States; seeing a member of the Gestapo on the journey to the U.S. and the man’s arrest for pretending to be a displaced person; why he thinks he survived; not being a religious now; and his distrust of Germans.

    Oral history interview with William J. Moran

    Oral history interview with William J. Moran

    Oral History

    William J. Moran, born on September 5, 1917, describes his catholic family; his high school education; the poor conditions his family lived in during the Depression; moving to a home with a Jewish landlord, Abe Joseph, whom he liked very much; attending the University of Pittsburgh; being drafted into the army in October 1941 when he was 24 years old; training at Fort Bragg, CA; going to Casablanca, Morocco in 1942; the campaign in Kasserine (Qașrayn), Tunisia; being under the British Army; his experiences in combat; the conditions in Tunisia; being in North Africa from 1942 to 1943; their biggest battle in Trolina; being sent to England and only being 140 pounds; being in a secret outfit; how the troops had a difficult time in combat because they had to carry food and equipment and sleep outside in the cold; the many mines they encountered during their journey; his thoughts on Eisenhower as well as the German general Günther Blumentritt; the campaign outside of Germany and losing friends in battle; the Ardennes campaign; going to Hallstadt, Germany, and killing two deer on the way, which they gave to an escaped concentration camp refugee; going to Nordhausen, Germany and not knowing there was a concentration camp there; his disbelief that the local Germans did not know the camp was there; his shock at seeing the camp (he reads a letter he wrote in April 1945 to the United Jewish Federation concerning this experience); seeing the surviving inmates; making the civilians of Nordhausen remove the dead bodies from the camp; having anxiety attacks after the war; and his feelings towards antisemitism and Jews.

    Oral history interview with Arthur F. Peternel

    Oral history interview with Arthur F. Peternel

    Oral History

    Arthur Peternel, born in 1915, describes his Yugoslavian parents and nine siblings; being raised Roman Catholic; his father’s involvement with the coal miner’s union and the local government; attending public school in Wilcox, PA; being 24 when the war started and joining the army; being assigned duties with a construction battalion; being transferred to the Air Force as a construction engineer; designing and constructing airfields; volunteering in the ground force as a combat engineer; going to basic training in Louisiana, Air Force training in Santa Rosa and March Field, CA, and officers candidate school at Fort Belvoir, VA; getting information from the radio and newspapers; how his first cousins in Slovenia were executed for resisting the Nazis; landing in Europe in 1943; his unit’s daring activity in Cassino, Italy, which won them a presidential citation; his role as a combat engineer, serving the 5th and 7th Army; receiving amphibious invasion training south of Naples; being in charge of underwater demolition; the route the 7th Army took through France; landing in Saint-Raphaël, France, where they encountered resistance; arriving in Germany during the winter of 1944-1945; the Jewish sergeants in his unit and the Holocaust experiences of their family in Europe; coming across Dachau a day after it was liberated; photographs he has from when he entered the camp (he shows this images during the recording); conditions in the camp; seeing the prison guards who had been killed by the inmates; the crematorium; seeing piles of bodies and clothing as well as urns of ashes; speaking with a local German girl who thought the camp was for prisoners-of-war; his shock and horror at the concentration camp; and his view of the role of the U.S. in the world.

    Oral history interview with James Priest

    Oral history interview with James Priest

    Oral History

    James Priest, born in Steubenville, OH on August 16, 1920, describes his family; being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942; being sent to Fort Benning, GA; being sent to Scotland on July 1, 1944; being in a medical detachment in Europe; landing on Utah Beach, Normandy, France on August 13, 1944; driving an ambulance with the 104th Infantry Division; arriving at Nordhausen on April 13, 1945 as a part of the 114th Infantry Regiment; the other men in his unit, including Jacob Danish and David Kenny; the conditions in Nordhausen; not believing that Gerneral Patton visited Nordhausen; seeing deserted mental hospitals in Europe during the war; returning to the U.S. in December 1945; how he was in the medical detachment because he worked in a funeral home before the war; feeling that the US troops were not trained on how to react to being prisoners of war or other atrocities; and his regrets.

    Oral history interview with Fred Roth

    Oral history interview with Fred Roth

    Oral History

    Fred Roth, born in Jersey City, NJ on October 8, 1921, describes attending an Orthodox temple with his family; enlisting in the army in 1942; his altruistic Austrian parents; having a lot of non-Jewish friends as a child; attending a Jesuit university in New Jersey; his family’s efforts to send money to relatives in Berlin, Germany so they could leave and hosting relatives when they emigrated; his strong relationship with his father; joining the aviation cadets in California; qualifying as a twin engine bomber pilot and receiving his training on B-25s (Mitchell bombers) and B-26s (Marauder bombers); graduating in September 1943 from the Air Force; being sent to Europe in June 1944 a week after D-Day; flying supplies into France for Patton's troops; being shot down during Operation Market Garden in September 1944; his resentment toward Field Marshal Montgomery for his failure during the operation; being shot at while they attempted crossing the English Channel; his memories of the bullets hitting his place, which sounded like a typewriter; landing in the ocean with his engines cut off and at a very low speed; the survival of the all four men in his plane; escaping to their raft and being blown toward Holland, Netherlands; surrendering to the Germans; keeping a diary along with his crew on any pieces of paper they could find; being interrogated thoroughly by the Germans, but only giving his name, rank, and serial number; being sent to Dulog Lauf, where there was a school that had been converted into a camp; being separated by military rank; being sent in October 1944 with his crew to Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany, where he was put into the Jewish sector of the camp; being liberated by the Russians on May 1, 1945; celebrating with the Yiddish-speaking Russians; liberating a small nearby labor camp; conditions in the labor camp, where half the inmates had died; being discharged on October 28, 1945; his emaciated condition upon liberation; and his strong faith and belief in the state of Israel.

    Oral history interview with Abe Salem

    Oral history interview with Abe Salem

    Oral History

    Abe Salem, born in Warsaw, Poland on December 3, 1919, discusses being the oldest of seven siblings in a strictly Orthodox family; attending religious schools; his father’s leather accessories shop; the lack of socialization between Jews and non-Jews and the common antisemitism; daily life; how the Jewish community took care of their own; one instance of antisemitism, during which a Polish soldier thought him too arrogant and smacked him; being politically active in the Jewish community; following Vladimir Jabotinsky’s movement and later the Chalutz (HeHalutz) movement; hearing Jabotinsky speak to a crowd of some 8,000 Jews in Warsaw in 1938 and the response of the crowd; hearing a speech by Wolfgang Wiesel, who told the Jews in 1938 to buy guns and take up target practice; speaking to Wiesel in 1943; social conditions in Poland for the Jews; how after the war broke out the Chalutz leaders fled to the free city of Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania); keeping informed by listening to German radio; trying to leave Poland by registering for permission to emigrate; helping to organize young adults but experiencing resistance; conditions after the bombings; the Chevra Kaddisha; being thrown out of a building by a German soldier; fleeing to Vilna; going between Vilna and Warsaw three times; being captured by Russians; being sent to a labor camp until 1942; being released; getting a false birth certificate; being caught with false papers and escaping; going to Tashkent, Uzbekistan; stealing food from a woman on a train; getting a job in a bakery; learning about the fate of his family in 1946; going to Breslau (Wroclaw , Poland) after the war to find Jewish children for the Chalutz organization; smuggling the children to Palestine with help from the Jewish Joint and the Jewish Brigade; meeting his wife in 1945; staying in Germany from 1946 to 1949; being brought to the United States by the Joint; settling in Evansville, IN; and his life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Jack Sittsamer

    Oral history interview with Jack Sittsamer

    Oral History

    Jack Sittsamer, born in Mielec, Poland in December 1924, describes his Orthodox Jewish family; attending Catholic School and Cheder; having many non-Jewish friends; the Nazi invasion, during which the synagogue was burned and there was a roundup of Jews who were then murdered in a slaughterhouse; being made to do forced labor with his family; a selection process in March 1942, during which the weak and old were killed and the others were marched to the airport; being selected to be a worker; the deportation of his mother and siblings and the murder of his father; suffering from typhoid fever for three weeks, which he cannot remember but being taken care of by an inmate; working in a factory until June 1944; being moved to Wieliczka for a week then shipped to Auschwitz; being classified as productive workers and refused by Auschwitz; being sent to Flossenbürg; seeing the piles of shoes upon arrival and realizing it was a death camp; being showered, deloused, and given numbers and suits; going through another selection and being sent to Leitmeritz (Litoměřice), where the Luftwaffe was in control; working on the tunnels for an underground factory; being sent with 400 other prisoners to Mauthausen; the guards in Leitmeritz versus those in Mauthausen; being sent to Gusen II after two weeks; working 12 hour shifts in a factory, going to work sick often; being liberated on May 5th, 1945, at which point he weighed 80 pounds; staying with a woman in Linz, Austria; being helped by Austrians; going to Salzburg, Austria; staying in a refugee camp for a month; staying in a tent city in Bologna, Italy; going to Germany; living with a friend in Eggenfelden, Germany until 1949; registering to go to Australia; immigrating to the United States in 1949 after deciding not to go to Australia; being the only survivor in his family; losing a lot of faith; and how he may have to give a testimony at the trial for a commandant from the Mielec camp.

    Oral history interview with Pauline Staman and Rose Weingarten

    Oral history interview with Pauline Staman and Rose Weingarten

    Oral History

    Rose Weingarten (née Berkowitz), born on September 27, 1918, in Velky-Bockov, Czechoslovakia (Velykyĭ Bychkiv, Ukraine), describes the Jewish population in her town; her father, who was a storekeeper, and her mother; speaking Yiddish at home and Hungarian and Russian outside the home; her nine siblings; being in an Orthodox Jewish family; the importance of education in her family; how they kept informed by reading newspapers from Prague, Czech Republic; the lack of antisemitism before the war; her non-Jewish friends; how at one point Ukrainians came in and began to foment antisemitism; her father’s belief that the war wouldn’t come; the beginning of deportations in 1939, starting with individuals without a long ancestry in Czechoslovakia; being scared, but her father’s insistence that they stay put; a neighbor who joined the SS; the economic downturn in 1943; the deportation and murder of family members who lived elsewhere; having to sell the family business in 1943; experiencing antisemitism; being sent to a ghetto in Mátészalka, Hungary in April 1944; conditions in the ghetto and remaining there only a few weeks; the torture of individuals who tried to escape; being sent on cattle cars in April 1944 to Auschwitz; conditions on the train; arriving at the camp and having their heads shaved; her parents and their two grandchildren being selected for the gas chamber; being with two sisters and a sister-in-law in barracks 14 section C, from which they could see people going to the gas chambers; digging ditches; being in Auschwitz until December 1944; her feeling that she wouldn't have survived without her sisters; at one point being told that their barracks was going to be sent to a new camp and hiding with her sisters to avoid this transport; daily life in the camp; being beaten by a female guard for bringing an abandoned bowl of soup to her barrack; the pain of roll calls; the atrocities in the camp, including infanticide and people being burned alive; being sent to Lenzing, Austria in December 1944; working in a munitions factory, sorting refuse; being liberated in May 1945 by the Americans; being sent to a youth home called Jugendheim; being sent to Prague; getting married in 1945; immigrating to the United States in 1947; and the importance of family to her. Pauline Staman (née Berkowitz), born in 1929, describes working for the SS female guards in Lenzig in from 1944 to 1945; her efforts to bring the refuse of the SS women's meals to feed her sisters; how the SS women took her for treatment when she got a bad infection in her hand; and immigrating to Israel and later to the U.S.

    Oral history interview with Mark Stern

    Oral history interview with Mark Stern

    Oral History

    Mark Stern, born on June 5, 1923 in Gorlice, Poland, describes his family; moving to Kraków, Poland; being raised Orthodox, though they were partially assimilated and lived in the non-Jewish section of the city; his good Jewish education; first experiencing antisemitism in 1937; how his father sent his brother to Palestine for his university education; hosting two of his aunts after Germany began its expulsion of Jews; the family’s unsuccessful plan to leave in 1941; conditions in Kraków after September 1939; his father’s escape and never seeing him again; taking responsibility for his family; how their bank accounts were closed and all of their valuables were taken by the German Army; the Germans taking over their business; moving with his family to live with his grandmother in the Gorlice ghetto; forced labor in Gorlice; the death of his grandmother; being selected with his sister and mother to leave in 1942, but trading his stamp collection to spare their deportation; his mother’s deportation despite his efforts; the deportation of his girlfriend and sister on the next transport and never seeing them again; remaining and working in the Hobag (Holzbau A.G.) labor camp making pre-fabricated housing for the German Army; the brutal conditions in the camp and the violence from German shepherds; being sent to Mielec camp, making parts for German airplanes; getting sick but not being killed; being an inspector of parts and assisting the underground with sabotage; being caught once but saved by his supervisor; prisoners’ talk of escape and the hanging of the leaders when the plan was discovered; hearing the shooting from the front lines of the war; being sent to Płaszów; going through a selection after several weeks; the terrible conditions during the journey to Germany and how half the passengers died; arriving in Flossenbürg and being completely dehumanized; thinking of his grandmother in order to remain strong; witnessing inmates commit suicide on the electric fences; working in an airplane factory; the relations between the prisoners and how everyone took advantage of the Jews, who were in the minority; being approached by a homosexual Kapo; being evacuated via train in April 1945 and the bombing of the train by American forces; going on a death march to Schwandorf, Germany, which lasted 10 days; being liberated by Americans right before the prisoners were going to be executed; how the Americans kept going and threw them food; being confused about his origins when he went to an American Red Cross station; going to Hamburg, Germany and drinking all day; deciding to go to Palestine to see his brother; meeting his wife in a displaced persons camp; staying in Italy from 1945 to 1947; learning labor skills at a kibbutz; immigrating to the United States in 1947; experiencing survivor’s guilt; and being the President of the Survivors Organization of Pittsburgh, PA.

    Oral history interview with Irene Sulzman

    Oral history interview with Irene Sulzman

    Oral History

    Irene Sulzman, born in Łódź, Poland on July 13, 1928, describes her middle class, non-practicing Jewish family; her pre-war life; antisemitism in Polish literature; having no Jewish education until she went to the ghetto; her parents’ view of Hitler; the shortage of food; not being allowed to attend school; the German treatment of Jews in Łódź; the creation of the ghetto in 1940; her mother’s desire for the family to stay together; conditions in the ghetto; having her tonsils removed in the ghetto without anesthesia; learning English; growing vegetables in the ghetto; the Jewish policemen and her parents’ view of Chaim Rumkowski; the psychological breakdown of Jews in the ghetto; rumors, the threat of deportation, and the black market; being deported to Auschwitz; arriving at the camp and going through a selection process; the loss of one of her sisters; roll calls; being sent to Bergen-Belsen for several weeks; volunteering to go to Buchenwald; the female SS German guards in Buchenwald; being chosen with her mother and sister to maintain the barracks; being sent on a death march in April or May of 1945; being liberated by the Americans; her feelings about the Germans and Americans at that time; going to Frankfurt, Germany; working in General Eisenhower's headquarters as a translator; finding her father; being slightly ashamed of having an intact family; meeting Eleanor Roosevelt; immigrating to the United States; her first husband and getting divorced; her current husband, who is also Polish-American; being open with her children about her experience; her children and life after the war; and her thoughts on being Jewish in the US.

    Oral history interview with David Zimmerman

    Oral history interview with David Zimmerman

    Oral History

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