- Camera 14.
- Can you tell me what life in Poland
- was like before the war started?
- My family came to Poland from Russia.
- Escaped in '24, 1924.
- And we settled in Vilna, which was not too far
- from the Russian border.
- My father was a physicist.
- And he was raised in Russia.
- And he believed that the moment the system in Russia
- will change, we will be back in Russia.
- But we never went back to Russia.
- And Poland was very different.
- We felt in Poland that we are Jews.
- That we are second-rate citizens.
- And I, for me, it was a very painful
- and a very lasting realization.
- Because I didn't feel it in my hometown in [PLACE NAME]..
- But Vilna had a very large--
- a third of Vilna were Jews, a third were Poles,
- and a third of Vilna were Belarusian,
- Russians and Lithuanians.
- It was a very cultured city.
- It had a big university.
- It had many conservators.
- And I had to learn a new language, which was Yiddish.
- And I had to learn a new language, which
- was the language of the country, Polish.
- And I was very fascinated with the new experience.
- The experience of the Civil War in Russia affected me.
- I always looked for some disaster,
- for some changing of armies, for some part of the city burning.
- But the war was over.
- And slowly, slowly I got adjusted to a new reality.
- It was very important to me that at a very young age,
- I started to paint.
- And since I was a very restless and a very unhappy child--
- not because of my home, but because
- of the political and social situation in Russia
- --my teacher had a great deal of problems with me.
- And one day when I was in the lower grades,
- and I had difficulties with adjusting to a new language,
- she gave me a little piece of paper and said, draw.
- And that decided about my whole future.
- I started to draw and I forgot about the whole world.
- And my teacher said, you never drew before?
- I said, no, but--
- and then she came over with another teacher
- who was the art teacher in my school.
- He was a very interesting, a very unusual personality.
- He was, by profession, a soldier in the occupational forces
- of the Prussian army in Vilna.
- And after the revolution when the army retreated,
- he stayed in Vilna and became a teacher in the Yiddish schools.
- I guess he became a teacher in the Yiddish school
- because he believed that we spoke a straight German accent.
- He [? could ?] understand it.
- And in order to get adjusted to Yiddish,
- he used German words with a few Hebrew words in between.
- He was a very loving and a very unusual
- and a very creative person.
- Can I stop you here?
- OK.
- Can you tell me where you were when World War II broke out?
- What were you doing?
- Who you were with?
- After graduating from the University of Vilna,
- I went to Warsaw.
- And the last two years before the war I spent in Warsaw.
- When the war broke out, I waited to be mobilized.
- But I never got the card from the army
- because Warsaw was bombarded.
- The city started to get up in flames.
- And my landlady told me, what are you waiting for?
- You're a young man.
- You know what the Germans are going to do with you.
- I said, but I'm also a soldier of the Polish army.
- I waited for my card.
- Well, she told me that she is working with a--
- she was a doctor, dentist.
- She working with a Polish dentist.
- And she told me that her husband is
- working for the headquarters of the Polish army.
- It wouldn't be the resistance in Warsaw.
- And all young men should go to the Eastern border of Poland.
- So I took two or three paintings.
- And I said, well, wherever I go I'll show my paintings.
- I'll make a living.
- My wife, my first wife, was a nurse.
- So we just packed and left the country, left the city.
- We didn't have any penny, because the bank were closed.
- The trains didn't move.
- So we walked out from the city.
- And outside of Warsaw we met many, many, many people.
- Most of the time, young people who
- didn't want to be captured by the Germans
- and went to the eastern part of Poland
- believing that some sort of resistance would be organized.
- Where did we get food?
- Where did we get water?
- Where did we get places to sleep?
- The little towns on our way were burning
- and the people left them.
- They ran out.
- In the countryside, the peasants came out and they gave us food.
- They said take it, eat it.
- We don't want to wait with all our cows and pigs and horses
- for the German.
- You're our brothers.
- It was an atmosphere of fear and expectations.
- On the way, we were all the time bombarded
- by the German's Luftwaffe.
- Many people were killed.
- Finally, we went to the eastern part of Poland,
- to the eastern and southern part of Poland.
- And at that time, we all of a sudden
- got the news that Poland will be divided between Stalin's Russia
- and Hitler's Germany.
- And we didn't know what to expect.
- We cross the river Bug and we ended up in the city
- of [? Rovna. ?]
- Could you hang on a second?
- How are we doing on sound?
- [INAUDIBLE]
- What is that other [INAUDIBLE]?
- OK, so let's go back to you knew that Poland
- was going to be divided by the Germans and the Soviets.
- Shall I start from now?
- Yeah.
- Now, you were interested where we slept.
- We slept in the woods.
- We were young people.
- It was not too difficult. The most frightening thing
- was what's going to happen after the Germans capture us.
- But since we cross the Bug, we were in the power
- of the Russian marching forces.
- As you know, I was born in Russia
- and I was educated in Poland.
- But I spoke fluent Russian and I became aware
- that the whole approach of the Russian army
- was, strangely enough, anti-England, anti-France,
- and pro-Germany.
- Germany is our ally and they didn't
- want to hear anything about the violence
- of the new system in Germany.
- It was a very, very painful experience.
- I didn't have any money and my wife didn't have anything.
- We started to look for work.
- And there were big posters all over the city of Brest-Litovsk
- that writers, musicians, painters,
- actors would get a job, but they have to pass an exam.
- Since I was a painter, I decided that I
- would try to pass the exam and see what's
- going to be offered to me.
- A delegation of Russian artists came from Minsk.
- Why from Minsk?
- Because this part of Poland was included
- in the Russian Republic of Byelorussia and the capital
- was Minsk.
- So the delegation, the Russian delegation came not from Moscow
- but came from Minsk.
- And we had to pass an exam.
- And the exam was very simple.
- We had a model and we were supposed to draw the model.
- Since I was quite well-versed in the Russian literature
- and in the Soviet approach to art,
- I knew more or less what they expected from me.
- They expected to do almost precise, like a photograph.
- And I wanted to pass the exam because I wanted to work,
- so I did it.
- I mention it because next to me was a famous Polish artist.
- And of course, he didn't know anything
- about the requirement of Socialist Realism.
- So he did a very beautiful drawing
- but in a stylized cubistic style.
- And I told him you won't pass the exam.
- And so he asked me why, don't you like my drawing?
- I say I love your drawing, but it is not good for propaganda.
- He didn't pass the exam, which was--
- I passed the exam.
- And so I got a little two rooms and I could get paint.
- You must realize that the Russian artists didn't
- have to his [? exposal ?] a free market
- where you can buy canvases and paint.
- He had to be a member of the union.
- And through the union he would get paint,
- he would get necessary materials,
- and he would get some support.
- So for the moment, we were very happy.
- We got two rooms.
- And I got canvases and paint.
- Then came the saddest part.
- Let me interrupt you.
- I'm going to have to--
- we're going to only need like 30-second or 20-second
- stories--
- very short stories --and yet your emotional response.
- All right.
- And I have--
- I need short answers, OK?
- So when did you go back to Vilna, you and your wife?
- Or how did you get-- you had to cross Bug River.
- Was it frozen, or?
- I'll tell you, you'll have to cut my answers
- because when you reach 80, 85 years, everything is very long.
- [LAUGHTER]
- When you are 30, you can spit up.
- I traveled by using horses.
- I didn't travel by planes.
- So please forgive me.
- To make it short, I had to leave Brest-Litovsk
- because at a certain point, the Russian required from us
- to decide whether we want to go back to Poland
- or whether we want to stay in Russia.
- And if we want to stay in Russia,
- we had to accept Russian citizenship.
- That was one obstacle because I didn't want
- to become a Russian citizen.
- The second obstacle was that we had to paint one of [? 18 ?]
- subjects.
- The [? 18 ?] subjects had to do with the life in Poland.
- And everything was very negative, very negative
- in the subject.
- I couldn't paint anything negative about Poland.
- Because Poland was defeated by a very evil force, by Germany.
- And though I had very many objections
- about the system in Poland, it was better,
- it was more noble than Germany.
- So I said to one of the artists, I cannot paint any one
- of the subjects.
- And so the artist asked me--
- I remember her name, [PERSONAL NAME],, why don't?
- I said, I only paint flowers.
- I only paint still life.
- It was a lie.
- But anyway, they tried not to make any negative conclusions
- from my resistance.
- And I painted some still life and the background
- or some portraits anyway.
- They are chosen from the group of artists three artists,
- and I was one of them to go to Moscow.
- And then, so I had--
- I didn't know to go to Moscow or not.
- I didn't know.
- I knew that I didn't want to be a citizen.
- And all of a sudden, it was 12 o'clock at night.
- Somebody knocked at my door.
- And it was the artist.
- She was a female artist.
- She was a very lovely person.
- And her husband was [PERSONAL NAME]..
- Also a very lovely person.
- We never spoke about politics, but we became friends.
- And she opened the door.
- And I remember it like it would have happened yesterday.
- "Please disappear.
- Run.
- You are in danger."
- I said, [PERSONAL NAME], why?
- She said, don't ask me.
- You are in danger.
- Take your wife and go to the train.
- And remember, if you are arrested
- and you mention my name, I'll denounce you.
- I'll tell that I always expected that you are a spy.
- Please run.
- So I understood that somebody denounced me.
- For what?
- That I wasn't happy with the Soviets.
- That I was in Warsaw a member of the Socialist Party.
- That I didn't want to take citizenship.
- I don't know why they denounced me.
- It's very funny to think that this little boy who
- was, at that time, 22 years was a danger to Stalin.
- But that was the system.
- So we left everything and went to the train.
- Did I answer the question?
- Too long.
- Yeah.
- But that's all right.
- That was good.
- It was a very good description.
- Yeah.
- Can you try and look at me?
- You seem to be looking over your left.
- Because he got very interested.
- OK, I'll look at you.
- The conversation is with me.
- OK.
- I know.
- And so once you were Vilna, how did you live?
- What did you do?
- Vilna was already, at that time, Lithuania.
- The Soviets took Vilna and gave it to Lithuania,
- and then took it back.
- That is a historical event.
- Because we tried to get to Vilna, but Vilna was Lithuania.
- So we crossed the border.
- And we were arrested by the Soviets
- because it was illegal to cross the border.
- And we were in jail.
- And in jail, everybody who was arrested
- went to Siberia for seven years.
- Why didn't I go to jail?
- Because I told my wife--
- my first wife at that time --that we should, in order
- not enrage the Bolsheviks, we should
- say that we don't run from them to the Lithuanians
- but that we came from the Lithuanians to them.
- So we were fortunate.
- The judge, he was a captain, said, oh, you like us.
- And instead of getting seven years, we were free.
- Even more, he wanted to know what my profession.
- And I said that I am a painter.
- So he asked me whether I need money.
- So I said no.
- So he said I know that painters are very bashful people.
- And they let us go.
- So we went to another little town.
- And then we made a second attempt to cross the border.
- And we came to Vilna.
- So you can see life is full of miracles.
- But in the war, miracles are reality.
- A reality is, in itself, a miracle too.
- I came to Vilna.
- And a few days later, the Bolsheviks
- took Vilna again from the Lithuanians.
- But in the meantime, I found out that there
- was a Japanese honorary consul who gave to the refugees
- many visas to Curacao, who was a Danish free colony
- and everybody could go to Curacao.
- But it was important that in order to get to Curacao,
- they had to cross Japanese territory.
- So he was kind enough to give a permit
- to cross Japanese territory.
- And if you had a permit to cross Japanese territory,
- you could apply to the NKVD for a permit to cross Siberia,
- to cross Russia.
- Do you get the complications?
- Yes.
- I didn't create them.
- History created them.
- And I am not responsible for history.
- So I tried to get a visa.
- But the consul didn't--
- the consulate, the honorary consulate was closed
- and I couldn't get a visa.
- But I found out from my friends from the socialist movement
- from the Bund that many had two and three visas so they could
- share them with other people.
- So I got a visa.
- But the visa didn't have my name,
- didn't have my photograph.
- So since I'm an artist, I put in another photograph.
- I forged the stamp.
- And my father was a physicist, so I created a chemical mixture
- and we took out the old name and put
- in my name and the name of my first wife.
- And that allowed us to go through Russia to Japan.
- Now, in order to get a Russian visa, we had to go to the NKVD.
- Shall I continue?
- Sure.
- But try and talk to me again.
- OK, OK.
- I went to the NKVD.
- Everything in my passport was faked.
- Only my photograph and my name was real.
- I put in another city because nobody could leave Vilna.
- Because the Russians said, well, you're in Vilna.
- It's already a liberated city.
- Why do you want to run away?
- So we could only get a visa as refugees.
- So in my passport was written that I'm
- from some little town in Poland.
- I walked in to the NKVD and to my dismay, the man at the table
- was a student whom I knew from Vilna.
- He was probably a communist.
- So he got the job of checking who is going to get a visa
- and who is not going to get a visa.
- He graduated from the same gymnasium as I,
- and he knew me quite well.
- So I said, that's my end or the end of me.
- This I cannot foreshorten, because people survive
- because of politics and cruelty in concentration camp.
- Some human pulse is always ticking and ticking.
- And because of that, the world didn't come to an end.
- He looked at me.
- He recognized me.
- And he said, oh--
- and he mentioned this little town.
- And said, OK.
- You don't want to live in Russia.
- Go ahead.
- Go ahead to the capital this country.
- But he gave me the stamp.
- And I will never forget his name.
- I tried later to find out.
- His name is [PERSONAL NAME].
- And because of him, I'm alive.
- He gave me the stamp.
- And he knew that he's committing a crime against his system
- and against his beliefs.
- But the human element was stronger.
- And then, I got the visa for my wife, myself.
- And some other people for whom I falsified the documents
- got visas too.
- And then we cross Siberia on false documents.
- And we came and then to Vladivostok.
- And from Vladivostok, we crossed with a Japanese freighter,
- [PERSONAL NAME].
- We came to Japan to the city of Kobe.
- Had you ever been to Japan before?
- Or what did you expect and what did you find when you got?
- One word I would add.
- From the train, which crossed--
- the train, it took about three days and three nights.
- Many people, many refugees disappeared.
- So probably the NKVD still checked who is dangerous
- and had to go to Siberia.
- And who is no danger there and had
- to go to the capitalistic countries
- because they're worthless anyway.
- Luckily enough, I was one of the worthless people.
- And I reached the shores of Japan.
- And what did you expect Japan to be like?
- And what did you find when you got there?
- And how did you live?
- And what did you do?
- I didn't know what to expect.
- It was so clean.
- It was like a painting of Vincent van Gogh--
- little houses, beautiful skies.
- Two groups of people met us at the train.
- Russian Jewish refugees from the First World War
- settled in Japan, escaped from the Russian revolution,
- and became quite prosperous.
- And a group of Japanese which decided they're
- our blood brothers.
- Because according to the Jewish history, 10 tribes--
- in Israel, there were 12 tribes.
- 10 disappeared.
- We don't know what happened to them.
- They got assimilated.
- And two of the [INAUDIBLE] survived.
- So they decided they are--
- there are many legends.
- Members of the disappearing 10 tribes.
- And we were very happily received by them,
- and received by the Russian Jews.
- And we got some support from the Joint
- and from the colony of Jews.
- And Japan was so beautiful for the eye--
- mountains, clean skies.
- But of course, our heart was with our relatives behind us.
- And the news were terrifying.
- And as a painter, how could I survive emotionally?
- That was more important than even physically.
- So I got some money and went to a store to buy paint and paper.
- And the storekeeper didn't understand a word of Russian,
- of German, a few words of English.
- So some young man came over to me and he showed me a brush.
- And then he gave me a brush.
- He was Japanese.
- And he showed me the two brushes kiss each other
- to understand that he is a painter too.
- And he helped me to find the paint.
- But in Japan, we waited for a possibility to go to Canada
- and to join the Canadian or the formation
- of the Polish army in Canada in order to fight the Nazis.
- But there was no contact.
- There was no communication with the other world.
- It was very clear that Japan is preparing for war.
- We saw Hitler's pictures.
- We saw German slogans.
- And we had a strange mixture that the country
- was preparing for war.
- The old people were very nice.
- The young people were marching and screaming and yelling.
- And after spending six months in Japan, all of a sudden
- we were all taken by force to the ships and sent to Shanghai.
- We came to Shanghai and two days later, the attack
- on Pearl Harbor took place.
- How did you [INAUDIBLE]?
- [TEST TONE]
- OK.
- So how did you react when the Japanese actually bombed
- Pearl Harbor?
- We know the Japanese, by bombing Pearl Harbor,
- joined the Germans.
- Because the German already at that time not only
- occupied Poland, they also declared war on Russia.
- And we didn't know what's going to happen.
- We didn't know how we were going to survive.
- We didn't know how the Japanese will treat us.
- Everything was very, very confusing.
- In Shanghai, there was, again, a large Russian colony
- of Russians.
- It was a very large.
- Much smaller, but very large Jewish colony.
- They were all refugees from the Civil War.
- And they were quite well-to-do.
- There was also a huge colony of German Jews
- which escaped from Germany after Hitler
- came to power because Shanghai was a free city.
- You didn't need to have a visa in order to settle in Shanghai.
- So it was really at that time an international city.
- You could find beggars which were in Russia before the war,
- counts, and nobility.
- You could find very rich people, which their business was opium.
- You could find people who came from America because they
- were in danger in America because they were--
- we didn't know at that time the term mafia.
- Maybe didn't exist.
- But they were here, escaping from jail.
- It was a colony.
- Very colorful for writers.
- But very difficult to find a niche in this colony.
- There were multimillionaires, there were criminals,
- there were forgers, there were spies, there were refugees,
- there were intellectuals, there were merchants,
- there were bankers, there were bandits, everything.
- How did you live?
- Where did you live in Shanghai?
- Or how did you survive?
- And use the word Shanghai.
- Yes we, the Polish refugees, consisted
- of many different groups.
- There were lawyers, there were writers, there were merchants.
- There were a whole yeshiva of religious Jews.
- We tried to get through all different channels with New
- York.
- OK, sorry.
- And with the channel.
- Sorry, sorry.
- The channel, the main--
- Hold on, hold on, hold on.
- You have to talk to me, you keep talking over here.
- I know.
- And use the word Shanghai because we don't know.
- OK.
- We tried to get in touch with the Jewish organizations in New
- York.
- And probably, they tried to get in touch with us, too.
- But we knew there was a law that no money from America
- could be sent to places which were occupied by enemies.
- So no money could be sent to Poland, even
- for the resistance movement.
- And no money could be sent to Shanghai, because it
- was occupied by the Japanese.
- And we really couldn't survive in the beginning
- because it was a different country, a different language,
- a different situation.
- But we did get in touch.
- I cannot be precise, or whether somebody looked us up and tried
- to help us through Switzerland.
- And we got some support.
- The Joint supported all the stateless refugees
- before the occupation.
- So they established some kitchens and some dwellings
- for the 30,000 German Jewish refugees.
- It was a very mixed up group.
- So it seems that they extended, from the help which
- they gave to the refugees before the occupation, to us.
- We didn't get any money, but we had
- some meager funds to open kitchens
- and to rent very cheap rooms.
- That was crucial because after a month, two months,
- after a year, we got some jobs among the colonists,
- the European, and other citizens who lived in Shanghai.
- Shanghai before the occupation had two very large settlements,
- a British settlement and a French settlement.
- And they were under the control of the British
- and the French embassies.
- But after the Japanese took over,
- they didn't have anything, any jurisdiction
- over their settlements.
- But there were many Europeans who
- had stores, who had some professions.
- And through them, we did find some meager income.
- My wife got a job in the hospital.
- There was a very nice hospital created by the Jewish colony
- from Russia.
- And I started to get some work.
- There was a magazine, so I started
- to write some articles about art.
- A magazine in Russian.
- And I started to try to get some commissions to paint paintings.
- Of course, nobody was interested in paintings.
- But I knew that everybody who is successful and prominent
- all over the world like to have his own face.
- And he thought, if it's painted well, and he has a smile,
- and he looks important, it'll end up in a famous museum,
- and he'll have eternity.
- So I did paint some portraits and I had a meager income.
- You must realize that to eat twice a day
- or once a day is enough to survive.
- The main thing is not to be killed, not to be arrested,
- not to be threatened, not to be in jail.
- And since we weren't in jail, we did survive.
- And the news from Europe were so devastating
- that nobody dared to complain about anything.
- Everything-- one meal, two meals,
- a little corner in a house was a gift from heaven.
- Because we knew that day by day, the Nazis
- were killing all we left behind, our families, our life,
- our cities, everything.
- Of course, we were getting information from America.
- And they were devastating because the Japanese were
- moving, and moving, and moving, and one victory over another
- was in their grab.
- But as far as America, you have to take it from a witness.
- We didn't doubt a minute that America will save us
- and the end defeat the Germans.
- We knew that they would defeat.
- And somehow, we had underground radios,
- and we found somebody who understood English,
- and we heard the speeches of Roosevelt.
- And we knew that we will survive unless the Japanese will
- kill us.
- And then came a very sad moment when the Japanese, at least we
- heard that a U-boat of German Nazis came to Shanghai.
- And something started to change.
- They left us alone in the beginning.
- They were so mean to the Chinese,
- and to the American, and English citizens
- that they left us alone.
- They didn't have time for us.
- And they were mean.
- All the Americans and all the British went to the camps.
- And the Chinese were humiliated terribly.
- And we were just shadows which they seemed not to see.
- And then came a change, they created a ghetto
- for all the refugees.
- And we were forced to live in a ghetto.
- But it was nothing, nothing in comparison with the ghetto.
- So we could come out.
- Some Japanese were Nazis.
- The majority looked at us not with hatred.
- They fear for the Chinese was so strong.
- The premonition that they would lose the war
- was so strong, too, that they really didn't have time for us.
- So we lived in the ghettos.
- They were very sad.
- But it was no comparison.
- I didn't live in the ghetto.
- Since my wife worked in the hospital, which
- was outside of the ghetto, I lived together with her.
- But I was the secretary of the union of the refugees.
- So I had the chance to come out from the ghetto
- and to go in into ghetto, and to do
- all the things which was necessary for the survival
- of the refugees.
- We were a very close and very tight community.
- And we lived in the constant expectation
- that the war will come to an end.
- And this terrible premonition that our war will be won,
- but our life will be-- half of our life will be destroyed.
- And that's true.
- Let me ask you.
- How long did you live in Shanghai?
- And how did you find out about the Holocaust
- and the atrocities that were happening?
- And also if you could tell me--
- There were letters from Russia.
- Wait.
- Hold on, hold on.
- Hold it.
- You also told me that when you actually found out
- about that there were Jews killed, that people in Shanghai
- committed suicide.
- There were radios, there were information from America.
- There were.
- It came from different sources.
- I'll give you an example.
- I'll give you an example.
- Got it.
- Hold on.
- You have to tell me what you're talking about.
- So you have to say, we found out about the Holocaust.
- We found out that the German destroyed
- the whole Jewish community which consisted of 3 and 1/2 million
- in Poland.
- We found out.
- We couldn't believe it.
- But we found out.
- There were facts that came from Russia.
- They came from underground radios.
- They came from different sources.
- But a crime, an international crime, cannot be hidden,
- like the crime which took place in Kosovo.
- You cannot hide it.
- We knew what happened.
- And we knew that we will--
- How did people react when they found out?
- Well, there were-- our life was cut in two.
- The memories were more alive than reality.
- Reality was just a period of waiting.
- It's like you sit in a railroad station
- and wait for your train.
- The time in the railroad station, in that time,
- the waiting time is almost minimal.
- It's what is going to happen later.
- I tried to paint portraits, I tried to write,
- and everybody tried to function.
- But it was-- Life emotionally?
- What is the question?
- Try to repeat it to me.
- So I'll try to be as precise as possible.
- The response to hearing about the Holocaust.
- When we heard that in Eastern Europe
- is liquidated one Jewish colony after another,
- we felt that we lost everything we know, that we knew.
- But at the same time, we felt that our life, our life
- was a gift.
- Because it was a miracle.
- And we didn't have any illusions that it was an accident.
- We weren't better than the rest, we
- weren't richer than the rest, we didn't have more connection.
- So we tried not to struggle with the question, why?
- Why do I deserve to be alive when my brothers died?
- When my family died?
- We tried not to question this because it was an accident.
- And we tried, everyone in his own way, to accept the accident
- and to give our life a meaning, a certain new meaning.
- It's very difficult to define what is a new meaning.
- But I would say not to have in the future only a private life.
- That would be aware of mankind, of our people, of history.
- Everyone felt that he has, as a survivor, a certain obligation.
- We couldn't, we didn't use the word mission.
- Because we weren't geniuses, we weren't Shakespeare,
- we weren't Dantes, we weren't prophets.
- We couldn't use the term, it was too big for us, mission.
- But everybody, in his own way, has
- to add something to the future of our people, of mankind.
- And as strange as it sounds, to the brotherhood of man.
- And for me, it was very clear that from now on, art
- is not going to be my profession,
- it's going to be my life.
- And I wanted to paint something that
- had to do not with a still life, not with a portrait,
- not with a sunset, not with rainbows,
- but with the struggle of man to live,
- to exist, to build, and to hope.
- So and I later read the phrase that to believe
- is a biological necessity.
- I understood it.
- To believe is a biological necessity.
- This feeling was very strong in everybody.
- And everybody asserted it in his own private, personal way.
- But when I came to meet you the first time, you also--
- you said that some people's response
- was to actually commit suicide.
- Yes.
- When the war came to an end, and we
- had the embassies, the American embassy, the English embassy,
- the Russian embassy were installed,
- people tried to get in touch with their relatives
- or to get in touch with the embassy directly.
- But not all.
- Some people didn't want to go back
- and didn't have the feeling to struggle for any--
- lost the feeling that it's worthwhile to struggle
- for a new future.
- And for the first time, there were many, many suicides
- of people.
- They didn't want to live.
- It was not all a breakdown of their private life.
- It was a breakdown of their view on the world.
- As I said, to believe is a biological necessity.
- If you don't believe in anything, how can you live?
- So they just embraced the world of shadows, the past.
- Moving back to Japan, how did you live in Japan?
- Did the Joint help?
- Yes, yes.
- But tell me that story.
- When you got to Japan, how did you?
- We stayed--
- Start with when we got to Japan.
- When we got to Japan, we knew that it wouldn't last long.
- It would never become our home.
- It wouldn't last longer than they war in the country.
- It was a stop for a short while.
- So we really enjoyed the beauty of Japan.
- And Japan still wasn't in the war.
- We enjoy the beauty of Japan, we traveled a little bit.
- We went to Tokyo.
- We went to Kobe.
- In Kobe we stayed.
- We went to Tsuruga, to the other places.
- We saw Japanese painting, Japanese sculpture,
- Japanese houses.
- We really enjoyed it.
- It was a beautiful rest.
- The only thing was that--
- For everything, and how did you eat?
- Well, they provided that with little houses.
- Who provided them?
- Joint.
- And plus, plus the Jewish community.
- Can we start over?
- Can we start over?
- Can you just start by saying the Joint provided us.
- Now, one second.
- With houses, where we--
- everybody, the families had their room.
- The bachelors--
- Sorry.
- Could you start with the Joint, when we were in Japan.
- Japan, as a country, from the first step
- was an overwhelming experience.
- The beauty, the cities, the cleanliness, the order.
- And even the funny things about Japan.
- When we would go to different cities,
- we would try to remember our address.
- And the old refugees who came to Japan way back told us,
- don't worry about getting lost.
- Wherever you go, there will be a Japanese policeman behind you.
- And if you're lost, he will direct you to your home.
- So we didn't have to worry about addresses.
- There was always, wherever we went,
- somebody was looking after us.
- And how did you eat and where did you stay?
- They Joint provided us with small living quarters.
- And we had our own kitchen.
- Life was very normal.
- They gave us a little bit of money.
- We could go to the Japanese market.
- You couldn't get too much food.
- The Japanese were with a diet.
- So we had no right to.
- Because they were preparing for war, everything was restricted.
- So we had very meager meals.
- But we didn't suffer in Japan.
- We were aware that it won't last.
- And as I mentioned, after six months, all of a sudden,
- they took us and without explanation,
- without any warning, we were shipped to Shanghai.
- OK.
- And so let me know, in Shanghai, did you
- paint and have any art shows?
- And what was the subject of your painting?
- In Shanghai, it was under the tremendous pressure of war,
- of loneliness, of uprootedness, a human
- being makes the decision what is his place in life?
- From a formal point of view, I was
- a stateless, penniless refugee.
- But from a more metaphysical point of view,
- I was a human being who could be a part of history.
- And that's what I wanted to be.
- Even this part isn't mentioned in a book, or in a dictionary,
- or the history, but to me, this part
- of playing a part in a history was very important.
- And I felt, as I mentioned before,
- that I'm going to paint history, I'm going to paint struggle,
- and going to paint the fluctuation of events
- and transformations.
- I'm going to paint something very dynamic, very haunting,
- very tragic, and very promising.
- How to do it?
- I didn't know.
- I was a young boy.
- So I painted here and there, painting realistic portraits.
- But I wasn't satisfied.
- And I knew that sooner or later, I'll
- find my own way of coping with aesthetics.
- Aesthetics, which include also ethics,
- a certain pride of being a human being.
- I did see bad men, the good men.
- I saw virtues, I saw evil.
- And I know that the man is not good or bad by nature.
- But I knew for sure that he knows,
- he really knows the difference.
- And he has a chance to choose between good and evil.
- And though I couldn't define exactly what is good,
- I knew what's evil.
- Murder, lie, betrayal.
- And I have hope that I will never, never be involved in it.
- Great.
- Going again.
- OK.
- Who did you leave behind and why?
- And what happened to them?
- I lived in Vilna.
- I didn't have any relatives in Poland
- because our very large family lived in Russia,
- in different places in Russia.
- So we left Russia, my father and mother.
- We settled in Vilna.
- And we had only--
- so I left my father, my mother, and my father's brother
- lived in Warsaw, and his wife.
- So the closest family was very small.
- But we had many friends and people whom we loved.
- And they all perished.
- Why did your father not go?
- My father was ill.
- And we couldn't think about making a passport for him
- because he had multiple sclerosis multiplex.
- He was quite a well-known person,
- he was a beloved teacher.
- And when the ghetto was created, and together with the ghetto,
- there was a group of Partisans which lived in the woods.
- And I've been told that they came a certain day
- and offered my mother and father to join the Partisans.
- Well, the father couldn't do it because he was bed-ridden
- and my mother wouldn't leave him.
- So they stayed in the ghetto without any hope.
- And the ghetto was liquidated in 1943.
- And the largest part of Vilna was exterminated
- 60 miles from Vilna, in Ponar.
- That was when Germany already started to lose the war.
- They decided to do their final commitment
- to exterminate the last remnants of the Jewish people
- in Poland, in Lithuania, in Latvia, and Estonia.
- Did you communicate with them at all while you were in Japan?
- And when did you last hear from them?
- And when did you find out that they were killed?
- No, there was no way of communicating with them.
- I found out exactly everything about them
- because my father was quite well-known.
- He had many students, ex-students.
- He was like I, a socialist.
- And there was a socialist movement.
- So had a member of the socialist underground.
- And later, after the war, they wrote to me about my father.
- And some of them live in New York.
- And they told me exactly, day by day,
- how he lived, how he struggled, how he retained,
- together with my mother, dignity and hope.
- And of course, their son, their only son wasn't with them.
- He didn't protect them and didn't die with them.
- So I cannot elaborate about that.
- But didn't you get some postcards from them when
- you were in--
- We have to change tape here.
- Camera roll 16.
- You have a question?
- Any postcards from your parents?
- As long as I was in Japan, I received postcards
- from my father.
- He had to be very careful.
- He just wrote to me that they are surviving,
- and that he is very happy that I am in a safe place.
- But the moment when Germany attacked
- Russia, of course, Vilna was taken in the beginning
- and I didn't have.
- The postcard I still have.
- But we can't--.
- They were very lovely, very carefully written.
- We were a very close family.
- I was the only one son.
- I had very loving, loving parents, mother, father.
- And I will never forget.
- Maybe it was, in a way, the most important thing
- I have heard in my life.
- Before I left, my mother told me--
- my mother, who was a rather controlled woman
- and liked to talk in a very direct, tender manner,
- told me something which I think is unbelievably important.
- She embraced me and told me, my son, I
- hope you'll never, never be in a situation in which you will
- have to sacrifice somebody else's life
- in order to save your own.
- I think it's something which should be written
- as the first law of our life.
- And then we parted, and I never saw them again.
- Is that OK, Mark?
- I think so, because I don't think you're going to cut it.
- It's just a tiny fade in of an airplane and fade out.
- Should I check for it?
- Sure.
- But don't feel like you don't have it.
- OK.
- Unfortunately, there was an airplane going overhead
- and it came on the soundtrack.
- Do you want the airplane to go down in order
- to have a conversation?
- [LAUGHTER]
- Well, no.
- Good.
- [LAUGHTER]
- So we won't sacrifice anybody for our benefit.
- Right.
- Exactly.
- Could you tell me that story when you left your parents
- in Vilna again?
- What did your mother say?
- Well, I mentioned to you that I think--
- Sorry.
- Sorry, you're going to have start with--
- My mother embrace me.
- Say when I left Vilna--
- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- Before I left Vilna--
- You have to wait until John stops talking before you start.
- OK, any time.
- Before I left Vilna, I parted with my parents,
- with my father, who was bedridden.
- And I embraced him.
- I still didn't have the feeling that I will never
- see them again.
- And then my mother took me to the door
- and kissed me, and said something which
- was so revealing years later--
- my son, I hope you will never be in a situation in which you
- will have to sacrifice somebody else's life
- in order to save your own.
- I think there is no phrase which is
- more ethical, more revealing, and more human
- than what she told me.
- And I hope, though I check my life and look back,
- that I wasn't always right.
- I wasn't always noble.
- I wasn't always on the level.
- But I never, never sacrificed anybody's life
- in order to save my own.
- So that's my consolation for a very dramatic
- and a rather painful past.
- Thank you.
- So how long did you live in Shanghai?
- And how did you get out of Shanghai?
- After I lived in Shanghai--
- we have all kinds of calculations.
- Helen, which is my wife of the last 40 years,
- is sitting behind me and checking
- whether the dates are exact.
- I think I was there five or six years, a very long period.
- And--
- I'm sorry.
- We can hear your voice on the soundtrack too.
- So, Helen, you have to be quiet.
- And Yonia, could you say how long you spent in Shanghai?
- I need the whole sentence.
- In Shanghai, I mentioned to you--
- when I look back, it looks like a long, long night, one night.
- But when I look at the calendar, it's close to six years.
- And in Shanghai I decided that I'm a painter.
- And a painter means not a man or a woman
- who paints, but it's the bridge to the essence of life,
- is the driving force.
- And I decided, believe it or not,
- because of American magazines and of Time and Life.
- There was a description of Mexican mural painters
- and of Diego Rivera.
- And I decided that since I don't want
- to be a private painter, a portrait
- painter, a painter that decorates
- a wall in a private home, I want to paint history,
- I must go to Mexico.
- And since I have heard about Diego Rivera from before,
- and he had such a wonderful write-up in Life,
- I said I'm going to Mexico and I am
- going to talk to Diego Rivera.
- And I'm going to ask him, please give me a wall.
- I want to paint the history of the young generation who
- got old in Europe during the terrible time of Stalin
- and Hitler.
- Hold on one second.
- How long were you in Shanghai?
- Well, I think I was between 24--
- and I was 30 years when I left Shanghai.
- I got about 25, and I left when I was--
- I cannot tell you.
- I gave you the curriculum vitae.
- I was a young man.
- I was a very young man, very naive, very, very trusting.
- And dedicated to live for humanity,
- not to have just a private income,
- just be grateful for my life.
- Have you painted a lot about the Holocaust?
- I painted about the Holocaust.
- I had two shows.
- But I painted in a way which later didn't satisfy me.
- I painted what I saw, but I felt that there
- was something overlapping.
- There was the element of history, the element of fate,
- the element of vision.
- The eye cannot be a judge.
- It had to be a close dialogue between the eye
- and the intellect, between the heart and the senses.
- So I painted, and I felt that I didn't
- reach a point in which I could say it expressed not only
- vision, but also experience.
- In other words, as the great English poets say,
- the eye is a window, but you have
- to see what's behind the window.
- And my desire to go to Mexico was
- to find myself in terms of a challenge,
- because I didn't want to paint, as I said, still lives,
- portraits, walls, ceilings.
- I didn't want to be protected by the private elements of life.
- I want to be open to the horizon.
- When you look back on your time in Poland and in Vilna,
- and even in Shanghai, were you a different person then?
- Was it a different--
- Well, I'm ashamed to say the beliefs are the same,
- but the person is different.
- Now, the beliefs, I still believe in progress.
- I still believe in compassion.
- I still believe in mankind, in spite
- of all the viciousness I saw.
- But the person is a little different.
- The person is more careful.
- The person is a little bit more suspicious.
- And the person is more private.
- I cannot give my time to everybody.
- I cannot spend my time with everybody.
- I want to save it for painting and writing.
- So maybe there's a selfishness.
- It made me a little bit more selfish.
- I have always in front of me my father, who
- was a great scholar, but he was so giving to his students,
- gives them day and night.
- He loved mathematics and physics,
- but his students were even more important to him
- than any scholarly accomplishment.
- To me, it's very important to save my life
- for painting and painting and writing and painting.
- And somehow I feel maybe you should be aware of the people
- around you.
- And I am aware, though not as much as before.
- Why do you think it's important to tell
- the story of what happened to your parents and to you?
- Because I felt that people should live aware
- of the grandeur of existence, of the grandeur of history,
- of the grandeur of feeling and seeing and making conclusions.
- I spoke once to a friend, a nice, loving person who said,
- nothing makes sense.
- So I said, how can you say it?
- Your heart works for you.
- Your brain works for you.
- Your liver works for you.
- Your memory works for you.
- Aren't you grateful for that?
- How can you nothing makes sense?
- You just don't see sense.
- Sense makes sense when you reach out for sense
- and you improve a little bit.
- And to write, to compose, to paint is an addition to life.
- It isn't only life.
- It's an addition to life.
- It's the life on an level of timelessness.
- And I would like to live my private life,
- my private big windows, but the window in me
- is much bigger than the window I put in here, with Helen's help.
- OK.
- Do you remember the Wandering Jew exhibit?
- The photo exhibit in [? Kovai ?]??
- Did you see that?
- I don't remember it.
- I was in two exhibitions organized by the artist,
- but this show I don't remember.
- The shows were very important shows,
- but they were important as a resistance against despair
- and nothingness.
- But as art accomplishment I don't
- think they were very important.
- You probably saw the catalog that I figured there.
- I wasn't happy with my work.
- I was happy doing it, but I felt that something was missing.
- What role do you think luck played in your being
- here today?
- What role?
- Luck played.
- Luck?
- Luck.
- Well, when you get up in the morning it's good luck.
- When you enjoy your meal, when you enjoy friendship
- it's good luck.
- As a painter, I am an outsider in American art.
- I'm an outsider, and I shouldn't be.
- I was an outsider when the Russians wanted propaganda.
- Painting is not propaganda.
- Painting is sharing of your experience
- without any superimposed answers.
- I here felt that after the terrible, terrible
- disappointment in Europe--
- concentration camps in Germany, gulags in Russia, death camps
- in Germany, the Lubyanka in Russia--
- that the artist turned into a more abstract,
- a more nonobjective kind of painting.
- And I found in the works of Jackson Pollock,
- or of de Kooning, who had some European background,
- or of Rothko, I found some very exciting accomplishment.
- But I felt that there are other experiences.
- There are more direct human experience,
- which cannot be painted in the style of Mondrian,
- or cannot be painted in a very subconscious manner.
- There are some experience which have
- a more direct, not a verbal, but a more direct
- conversation with events, with recognizable forms,
- and with historical rhythms.
- Not only aesthetic rhythms, but historical rhythms.
- And I painted this way.
- And I find that there can be a Jackson Pollock,
- and there an be a de Kooning, there can be a Rothko.
- But there should be room for other experiences too,
- because they are a part of a very rich--
- you cannot only play a violin.
- Why not a piano?
- You cannot play only Bach.
- Why not Mozart?
- Not only Mozart, but Stravinsky.
- I felt there is a certain rigidity in the field which
- I feel has to be the most experimental
- and the most free art.
- So it is not luck.
- I didn't join the movement in America
- because I felt that I represent something
- which has validity too.
- I don't care whether it's saleable.
- But it has a real validity in the roots
- and the experience of art.
- So I am an outsider.
- Do you still paint about the Holocaust?
- I paint about the rhythms of history--
- uprisings, genesis.
- I don't illustrate.
- I don't perceive paintings in terms of verbal,
- though I am not afraid of verbal expression.
- But I paint the storm of history.
- And if you ask me where are you, I'll tell you.
- I'm in the storm of the eye as a painter.
- I don't paint on a very safe--
- I like to see myself on a boat.
- It goes right and left and is driven by waves.
- And I call the waves the rhythms of reality.
- I cannot paint something which is a static as final
- as classical painting, as Mondrian,
- has a horizontal and a vertical.
- I don't negate those paintings.
- I enjoy them.
- But they don't add to my development
- and to my sentimentality.
- I'm not ashamed to be sentimental.
- I'm sentimental in a very prosaic manner.
- OK.
- Great.
- Let's take a little break here.
- You got more?
- Yeah, just one more question.
- Do you have any constant dreams or nightmares
- about your experiences during the war?
- I told you that to paint is to share the experience.
- And some nightmares are very haunting.
- Not the last 10 years, no.
- But I had two experiences.
- One I was running and running and running,
- and somebody was behind me.
- And I was sure that he'll catch me.
- And I would wake up and Helen would tell me,
- why are you screaming?
- So it's an old dream.
- And the other dream was very funny.
- I'm in my class.
- I'm a young boy.
- And my teacher of Latin asks me to read a passage of Virgil.
- And I said, I don't have to do it.
- I'm a teacher myself.
- He said, once a student, always a student.
- Read it!
- And I get scared and I wake up.
- So how can you relate it to dreams?
- I don't relate it.
- But they are real.
- That's great.
- What happened to your wife, Nute?
- My wife, she loved paintings.
- But life--
- Tell me the story.
- You both left Shanghai together and went to Mexico?
- We went to Mexico.
- Sorry.
- Start with Shanghai.
- What?
- Tell me the story of you and your wife,
- starting with Shanghai.
- I tried to make a living by painting and by writing.
- There was a Russian magazine, and I wrote about the painting.
- A weekly.
- And my wife was in the hospital.
- She was in there.
- She was a nurse also in Warsaw.
- It was very tense life in Mexico.
- There was almost no moment of peace.
- But still, people who were not single
- had a little less comfort than people who had a family.
- And then we went to Mexico.
- And somehow we parted in Mexico.
- And she went to America.
- As I said, she lived in Berkeley.
- She passed away half a year ago.
- And I lived in Mexico.
- And in Mexico I had the good luck to meet Helen.
- She is my wife till now.
- When you were in Shanghai, you did some painting.
- One was of a [? Semek ?] Kushner?
- I had several paintings.
- I cannot show them because a few days ago they came and they
- took it to the exhibition.
- That's all right.
- But can you tell me what they are
- and the significance of those paintings,
- and what happened to the people that you painted?
- To the people who are--
- I don't have any portraits.
- I had only one portrait I painted of my ex-wife.
- And this portrait I don't have anymore,
- because Helen and I send it to her daughter in Canada
- from another marriage.
- Can we take a little break?
- In Shanghai?
- In Shanghai, beside painting portraits,
- in order to get a living I did many, many drawings.
- I couldn't use paint because the quality of oil paint
- was very bad and the paintings would get dark.
- So I used Chinese ink, which is very flexible,
- and I painted figures of refugees, concentration camps,
- portraits of imaginary, historical people.
- And when I look back at them, I feel they are very honest,
- direct remarks about my surrounding.
- The basic difference between what I do now
- and what I did then is that I was then
- aware of exciting, meaningful, captivating details.
- And now I have a concept how to relate details
- into a moving, dynamic composition.
- My people are not separated.
- They are related to each other--
- emotionally and from a point of view of composition.
- Just one last thing.
- You started to say in Shanghai I drew pictures
- of people running, fleeing.
- Could you do that one more time?
- Elaborate more time?
- No, no.
- Just list what you painted.
- You said in Shanghai--
- In Shanghai, I painted people running, fighting, begging,
- dying.
- They were always in a very realistic environment.
- You could see the sky.
- You could see the walls.
- You could see the chair, the floor.
- And you could see their features.
- I didn't have a chance or I didn't
- know how to relate them to something which I didn't
- see, but had to be invented.
- Not only the person, but how one person is related to another,
- and how the people are related to their environment,
- to the movement of events.
- Excellent.
- Do you guys have any questions?
- You feel what you imagine and what you actually event.
- You have to add something to life in order
- to come out according to what I feel with a painting.
- Otherwise you come up with a document.
- And a document is not enough, the inventiveness of the person
- should be inside and outside when you paint.
- If you don't record it, I'll tell you something.
- I had here a friend--
- are you promising?
- We're rolling.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- I like crazy people.
- So I said, why was he crazy?
- So he said my sculpture.
- So he would say, from looking nothing will happen.
- OK.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Yeah, we had very difficult times in New York.
- Helen felt that if I don't get some recognition some place,
- I will lose my mind.
- And I told her I will never lose my mind because I
- don't know how to lose my mind.
- My mind is me.
- How can I lose it?
- It's very difficult to come when the country's new,
- when you love it, and it's so promising,
- and you cannot find a place for yourself.
- You cannot find a gallery.
- You cannot find a job.
- But I never doubted.
- I knew that's a part of the game.
- And I decided this is an experience.
- And if I am going to handle that experience,
- I will be all right.
- And I try to handle.
- I always said-- it sounds like a joke--
- it's still better than a concentration camp.
- They don't give you a gallery.
- It's still better than to be in Russia under Stalin.
- And it helped.
- Because I was very young.
- You cannot take it now.
- But I was very young.
- I was very trusting.
- I had friends, good artists, and they liked my work.
- And they were supportive.
- I got my first job because [PERSONAL NAME]
- took me and said he is as good as I.
- And he already was selling for 100,000.
- So they gave me a job.
- And then the director told me, you are a very good teacher.
- I said, of course.
- He said, but you don't know what's the best thing in you.
- I said, I want to say my knowledge, my honesty.
- So I said, your accent.
- [LAUGHS]
- So I enjoyed working.
- He has always a way of going a step farther
- than the momentary.
- So I related my person to another person.
- So there was a relationship.
- And I related the bad moments to the promising moments.
- I had a way, experience of cheating
- the pessimistic thoughts.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- [INAUDIBLE]
- OK.
- Great.
- And you call it.
- Room tone.
- End room tone.
- More seconds of room tone, please.
- Thank you.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Yonia Fain
- Date
-
interview:
1999 June 09
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
3 videocassettes (Betacam SP) : 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
- Fain, Yonia.
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Firstlight Pictures, a film production company contractor for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, conducted the interview with Yonia Fain on June 9, 1999 in preparation for the exhibition, "Flight & Rescue." The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the tapes of the interview from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Exhibitions Division in June, 1999
- Funding Note
- The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:56:58
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn508235
Additional Resources
Transcripts (3)
Time Coded Notes (3)
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Contains oral history interviews with twenty Holocaust survivors and witnesses recorded in preparation for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's exhibition, "Flight and Rescue," which opened May 3, 2000. The interviewees discuss their experiences of their journey from Lithuania to Shanghai, China, via Japan
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