Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska
Transcript
There is no transcript available for this track
There is no transcript available for this track
- I'll let you know.
- And then in 10 seconds, Peggy can identify everybody,
- and start it up in a moment here.
- OK.
- OK.
- I'm here interviewing Yanina Cywinska.
- It's February 8, 1993.
- We're interviewing her for the Holocaust Oral History Project
- in San Francisco, California.
- My name is Peggy Coster.
- And with me is Eric Saul, and John Grant is the producer.
- I'm going to break a few rules here.
- We usually don't give our own opinions
- on things in one of these interviews.
- But I'm going to break a few rules here,
- because I want to talk about why we go for details, first.
- It will help you sleep nights, let's put it that way.
- I cannot imagine anybody wanting to listen to all this painful
- stuff.
- But you guys must be immune by now.
- Well, extremely difficult I know for people to give the details.
- And so first, I'm going to tell you what
- the project's point of view is.
- The point of view is that it's for history, that it records
- history better to have details.
- My personal reason for wanting to go for the details
- is that since I've listened to so many stories
- with so many details, it's really changed my whole attitude
- about racism.
- It's real easy when you hear 6 million people died,
- and you hear-- because you've heard
- the shell of what is usually told about the Holocaust.
- And everybody's heard that.
- And people are immune to it.
- They don't-- I mean, I don't mean everybody.
- You can't generalize everybody, OK.
- But when you hear big numbers, and all you hear are outlines,
- it's real easy to on a surface conscious level maybe
- say, gee, that's terrible.
- But you don't feel it.
- You don't really feel how terrible it truly
- is, until you hear a personal story with details.
- It's the details that they get to you and touch your heart.
- It's the details, I mean because I
- don't know if I'm explaining this very well.
- But do you understand what I'm saying here?
- I understand that the public, American public, that has not
- experienced war, has their head in the sand
- about a lot of things.
- And it takes a long time or some kind of a very tragic figure,
- like when I make speeches, people
- don't believe what went on against the Jews,
- the young people.
- They never heard of it.
- And they're totally-- and when they see me in person,
- and quite often I break down, because I remember my mother
- or something.
- And they break down with me, and that
- means that we're touching them.
- Yeah.
- So that's what you're trying to say.
- Yeah.
- It's the details.
- So details are--
- They change attitudes.
- Yeah.
- For me, I'm much more concerned about racism.
- I mean I was raised to be concerned about it.
- So it wasn't like I was never concerned.
- But there's just something much more personal in my concern
- than there was before I started hearing stories with details
- in them.
- So I think the details are the things that
- are the most important in these stories.
- But I know they're extraordinarily hard for you.
- Well, some things you just don't remember.
- I mean do you remember what you ate three weeks ago?
- I mean that's 50 years ago, the barracks and things.
- I don't know.
- But just dirty, that's for sure.
- No facilities.
- Yeah, OK.
- In that sense, we're talking about memory again.
- And a lot of memory when people have had a traumatic event,
- it's almost like snapshots, snapshots in the mind.
- And you've got this snapshot.
- And you don't know if it's like black around it.
- It's like the page you put a snapshot on.
- And so what you remember is what's in the snapshot.
- And so for that reason, a lot of the question I'll be asking you
- today, it's fine with us if what you've got
- is a snapshot in your mind.
- Do you know what I mean?
- It doesn't matter to us if you don't
- remember the exact timeline, or how much time you were there.
- It just-- those things, if you don't know, it's fine.
- Just say you don't know.
- And I mean I just know that what we're going to get
- is a lot of vignettes and snapshots,
- and that's fine with us.
- Is that-- I want to make sure this is all OK with you too.
- Well, that's what I'm here for.
- But I'll give you my best.
- OK.
- Now today is going to be probably the most difficult
- interview of all, because we're going
- to be dealing with some of the most difficult experiences
- you had in the camp.
- I'm not going to repeat them.
- To repeat them?
- Repeat them, you already have it on tape.
- I don't want to go through that.
- You have a whole tape about the horrors.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, so you want me to go through it again.
- That's not--
- Well, what I was going to do was ask
- questions that would go for details about it,
- if that's not a problem.
- I don't know.
- Let's start.
- Let's start and go with what we got.
- Now remember, you can stop any time for a break.
- OK.
- Now do you remember anything about the transport that
- took you to Auschwitz?
- I remember train, and I remember a bunch
- of Nazis with machine guns and dogs,
- and the long march to the station.
- That's it.
- And what went on inside, people crying and the usual
- that I already told you.
- Some died and some--
- and we were thirsty and hungry, and we watched the hole
- to see how many dark and light things come in,
- so to see how many days.
- The elderly did that.
- I didn't.
- So that's how I remember about the train, and the whistle
- and the smell of the coal, and the wheels, sound of the wheels,
- and the fear.
- Where are we going?
- What's going to happen?
- Why is this happening?
- And things like that, heart attacks, some elderly.
- And there was a guy that shot his sons or something
- in the back, because he didn't want--
- he knew where he was going, he said.
- And there was screaming, hollering,
- traipsing over each other.
- That's how I remember on the train, and dark.
- Was is a cattle car, or a passenger?
- Oh, a cattle car, definitely, with a huge--
- it rolled.
- The doors rolled on the little wheel up there.
- I watched it.
- And they would shut it.
- And wherever our destination was, which was Auschwitz,
- they would open it.
- And we'd all look out in the light
- and feel like we were blind, first time seeing
- light in a few days.
- I can give you the details about days.
- Did they give you food and water?
- Some people-- in the train, no.
- Inside of a train?
- There was no food and no water.
- People had some food.
- Some people had little kerchiefs,
- and in it was piece of bread, and a szynka, they called it.
- It's a bacon piece farmers had, and a little butter.
- And they tie it up four ways.
- I had to tie one of those once, and they showed me
- how to do it four ways.
- And I don't know if they had water.
- I don't remember if anybody got water.
- I don't think so.
- They never opened those doors till we
- arrived at our destination, when they put us in.
- I don't think there was a humanitarian thought
- in their mind.
- If you died, you died.
- That was the feeling.
- Everybody was asking each other.
- There were Jewish women dressed in a very fancy hat and fur.
- And they looked like they were really beautifully dressed,
- like an actress.
- And men in their hats and overcoats,
- beautifully dressed, a few.
- And then there were the poor that had nothing.
- They were all thrown together.
- But all in all, they talked about
- and cried about why is this happening.
- Where are we going?
- And some people got in a fight.
- That's about it on the train.
- You just kept waiting to see where we're going.
- Did they provide any sanitary?
- Oh, no.
- Sanitary?
- Who?
- Who was they?
- Nazis?
- You mean walked up to the--
- stopped the train and said, here is some sanitary napkins,
- no way.
- No.
- I mean what did they do for sanitary facilities?
- Oh, what they did, did it on the floor.
- Did it on the floor in a corner, wherever you could--
- wherever you-- some of them just let it go in their pants.
- We arrived with the human stench,
- stepping over the bodies of human stuff and smell,
- and the urine has a way of getting like acid, when you're
- tight in, the smell is so bad.
- And I remember when they opened the door in Auschwitz.
- The Nazis walked up, and look at you pigs,
- you swines, you dirty Jews, you swines.
- There were a lot of people that were not Jewish,
- and they were calling us Jews anyway.
- And they look inside, and would go like this.
- There was no-- the dead, were lying,
- and they piled them up in some corner,
- so we can have a little space for the living,
- and parents protecting their children.
- And some elderly knew the rumors that Jews were being killed.
- They would talk about it.
- And others would not believe it, and get it an argument.
- No, we're just going to labor, to work.
- But the main concern inside was health, water,
- and what's happening, where are we going.
- Why?
- Everybody was asking.
- About how many were on the transport?
- Well, I never counted them.
- But you take a train and you put them,
- pack them in-- the common word like sardines.
- You couldn't lie down.
- You could just lean on somebody, or scoot down on your knees.
- I spent a lot of time squatted.
- There was no way you could lie down or anything.
- We were packed, breathing at each other.
- That's what was so scary, because a lot of people
- couldn't take that closeness, that stuffed up
- face-to-face and chest-to-chest stuff, not
- being able to separate and go.
- That was the first chaotic moment.
- And so come over here, a man would say to his wife.
- Come here.
- And the wife would say, I can't make it through here.
- And the person would say, we don't push.
- And this is all messy for a while,
- till we settled down, got tired, got hungry, got thirsty.
- Then we just kind of collapsed.
- And when they opened the doors, it was just like, OK,
- where are my legs?
- We couldn't walk.
- Most people stumbled out or fall over.
- Elderly man would just--
- just fell through when the door opened.
- He just fell down.
- He couldn't use his legs.
- He couldn't get them in action.
- And there were always the good old dogs around.
- So we couldn't run or scream, because you can argue.
- Some people argued with the Nazis,
- but when the dogs came around, there was no more argument.
- What did they argue about?
- The idea.
- I don't know.
- I couldn't say.
- They just got in real shouting matches with the Nazis at times.
- Some Jewish elderly man walk up to a Nazi one time,
- as the door opened, and where are we going?
- What's going on?
- I want to get back home.
- What right do you have to do this, this kind of--
- some spoke in German.
- Some spoke.
- I spoke a little German, but I could pick up,
- because I kind of had an inkling of a lot of languages,
- as a young person.
- We were around me Yugoslavians, and this, and that.
- So I could understand German really well,
- maybe not spell right and write in German.
- But I understood German.
- People wanted to know where they're
- going when they got off the train too,
- still asking questions.
- Where did they think they were doing
- when they were on the train?
- They didn't know.
- They were negotiating, asking each other.
- What do you think is happening?
- What will we do?
- And one person would say, oh, we're going to go to labor camp,
- to work.
- But why?
- We left the business.
- We do a business.
- Why do we have to go to labor camp?
- This was beginning of things that the Jewish people,
- especially, didn't expect.
- I had some inkling of it hanging out
- on the streets what the Jews were going through.
- But I still didn't quite understand
- Jew business, and Catholic business,
- and that one would hurt the other.
- It was not my life.
- My family life was I never heard a prejudice word,
- except for when my brother did that once
- in a while with his buddies.
- So I really--
- I was either naive or I didn't hear well.
- I had a hearing problem, because I never heard any--
- hurting a person was totally against the rules in our life,
- hurting someone else emotionally or physically, or each other.
- It was out of the question.
- So I guess they're just discussing, wanting
- to know what they're going.
- Up to till time that we went down to take off our clothes,
- they'd be asking questions.
- And there was a woman, I explained
- to you, that spoke up and yelled out, and screamed out.
- You think you're going in the showers.
- You think you're going to take a bath.
- They're going to kill you.
- And the Nazi took a few feet back, and machine gunned her.
- And then told us, if we tell others--
- out loud to everybody-- if you tell, boom.
- You get it.
- So you learn very fast when you're
- oppressed to shut your mouth and go along with the situation,
- when you know you're surrounded by men, machine guns, and dogs.
- You have no place to go.
- It's a horrible feeling, the helplessness.
- When you're in charge of your life, and suddenly
- you have no charge.
- Let's say they take you away right now.
- Somebody comes in this room and takes you away.
- They take your glasses away.
- You can't see.
- They don't give you medication for your arm, your pain.
- You can't have water.
- It's hard for your generation to understand that.
- Because I think the generation such as Clintons
- doesn't understand what even is, never experienced it.
- But maybe us, will experience wars.
- So it's ugly.
- So what happened when you got there,
- and you were told to get off the car?
- What happened at the landing?
- They just opened the train's gate, so doors,
- whatever you call.
- And there were Nazis on this side, and on this side,
- and on that side, dogs, and then some guy was saying--
- pushing people on this side, and pushing people on this side.
- There was just a lot of pushing and shoving going on.
- And if anybody resisted, they got a barrel in their face,
- or they got kicked by the boot, or they sic a dog on them.
- So we all obediently went where they want us to.
- I didn't understand what the separation was.
- I had to learn all that from history.
- I didn't know what it was.
- But we were not separated.
- So that was a blessing.
- I remember my mother saying, not you, not my children.
- Out loud, not my children, not me, not us.
- We're going together.
- We're going together.
- But nobody responded to her.
- She was not close to them.
- She just kept saying it.
- I'm going to hold my family together.
- They're not going to separate us.
- And the others were screaming.
- And there was this one name, Jacob,
- that keeps coming into my mind.
- Because this was one woman screaming Jacob, Jacob.
- It was her husband, who went in another direction.
- And she said, I can't live without you.
- I don't know what to do.
- Where are we going?
- And she was screaming and all that.
- And the Nazi would just tell, [GERMAN].
- [GERMAN] means hold your mouth.
- A lot of screaming and crying, because of separating babies,
- and the elderly, loved ones.
- They didn't want to be separated.
- It was sad to watch them being separated.
- A horrible feeling, but I didn't experience that separation
- thing, because my parents were--
- we were all together.
- But it's a horrible feeling, and I
- don't think anybody can understand that,
- till it happens to you.
- So there were both Jews and Gentiles on this transport?
- Yeah, some.
- Were they made up only from that prison you were at?
- I don't think so.
- There were people standing in line that way,
- and that way, and this way, and this way, and this way.
- It would just--
- I thought that the whole Poland was in that train station.
- It was so many human beings there.
- No end to them.
- When you look, there was no end.
- It just kept coming.
- And the train would go and the next batch, and a train
- would go next batch.
- There's just no stopping.
- As we stood there a few minutes being shoved,
- yeah, I could see that, just miles.
- I mean to the end, you couldn't see
- the stopping of human beings.
- It reminded me greatly deal of the Ukraine bread lines,
- when they have bread lines.
- What about Ukraine bread lines?
- Long, long lines of bread, waiting for bread, in Ukraine.
- When was that?
- Oh, when I was a little girl.
- There were lines everywhere.
- Russians and Ukrainians in that Slavic area
- is always known for lines, lines everywhere.
- I've seen plenty of lines as a child.
- So they just took the prison where you were at,
- just the whole prison, and just joined in
- with all these other people on this train station,
- and you all went to Auschwitz?
- They took the whole prison?
- Oh, the building, from the building?
- Yeah, where you and your parents--
- I really couldn't say that.
- I don't know what happened behind us,
- whether they shot them, whether they separated them.
- I don't know.
- I just know that the purpose of the building was to fill it up,
- and then to empty it, to get ready for new batch.
- Nobody ever stayed in that place too long.
- I couldn't say how long, but I wouldn't say more than three
- or four days, something like that.
- Maybe a week, the longest.
- Some were held up, because the Jewish families outside who
- already started to wear stars were screaming
- to their children, they're going to bring the money to the Nazis,
- and get them out.
- There was negotiation going on.
- Our daily routine was to stand in the windows
- and watch all the people watch for relatives,
- watch for relatives.
- Lots of people looked for that.
- So everybody would line up, cry mama, mama, dad, papa,
- and all that stuff.
- So maybe they took a lot of people out.
- So paid them plenty, paid the Nazis plenty to do that.
- But I'm sure that in the end, they found those too, and killed
- them, or put them in camp.
- I mean their word is nothing.
- They may have gotten a few months of freedom,
- but that's all, if they were Jews.
- So there were--
- But there were a lot of Catholic--
- I mean outside of Jews, I don't know
- if there are Protestant people in Poland
- or if there are Muslims in Poland,
- but there were a lot of outsiders helping neighbors,
- and they didn't quite get the picture that you
- can't help your neighbor.
- So they were arrested too.
- And so on this transport--
- Anybody that defied Nazis and did something
- to help a Jew, that's it.
- So there are a number of non-Jews
- on this transport with you?
- Mm-hmm.
- But you are all treated the same when you got there?
- We were separated.
- Some of them went to labor camps to work.
- Some guy was yelling [NON-ENGLISH],
- this [NON-ENGLISH], [NON-ENGLISH], [NON-ENGLISH],
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- You can't work.
- You look too weak.
- And you can.
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- Go over here.
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- Go there for work.
- So maybe some Jews worked too.
- I don't know.
- But at point, there's no separation
- between Jew and Gentile?
- No, not on the train.
- Or when you got off, in this.
- This initial selection, there was no separation
- between Jew and Gentile?
- What do you mean initial?
- When the train arrived?
- Yeah, it was between those who could work
- and those who couldn't work.
- I suppose they already assumed that everybody
- was a Jew in there, or some kind of a person.
- We were arrested.
- So we were worth nothing.
- But there were a lot of people that were not Jewish.
- There was a Protestant couple.
- So they talked.
- That's all I can say is what I heard in the train.
- Somebody would say, I'm not even Jewish.
- But you help the Jew next door, what happened to you?
- Why are you here?
- Or maybe they were criminals.
- I don't know.
- That I couldn't explain.
- Only history can explain that, or someone that was doing that,
- if they wrote a book.
- That would be nice.
- Then we can understand the details.
- So once the selection was made, and you and your parents
- were sent which way?
- Straight down the road someplace.
- It was a long walkway, and we just kept going, kept going,
- kept going, till we arrived in the area
- where it was concrete, concrete walls, concrete floor,
- and you had to undress.
- I already told you that on the tape.
- When did your father tell you that--
- were men and women all together at this point?
- Yeah.
- When did your father say he was sorry?
- Was it at this point?
- No, no.
- It was inside of the concrete gas chamber shower room.
- So the men and women were all put in the same gas
- chamber at this point?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- It was everybody in there.
- So little ones, for whatever reason
- they didn't choose us in the left and right,
- we went that straight down there.
- Everybody was in there.
- They did not select-- at that time,
- I don't remember selections.
- Once we got there, that's it.
- Did your parents try to reassure you?
- What can they do?
- We were packed like sardines again.
- Oh, it was really packed, because I started
- screaming and crying that I was choking,
- and there was no windows.
- There was a little hole, with a little glass.
- And everybody seemed to be looking up there.
- I guess they were looking for air
- Once the doors was shot, it was no lights.
- It was dark.
- It was just a--
- well it was a little bit lights.
- I don't know.
- Those things in the ceiling with holes in them.
- There were lights here in there, poorly put or something.
- But we were screaming and hollering.
- So I kept looking up at the ceiling,
- because I was trying to get out from claustrophobia,
- being trampled on, lots of people trampled
- over each other inside.
- And the horror was on their faces when this was not water.
- It's not water.
- People said that.
- In Polish, in German.
- No, it's not water.
- And then there was a lot of twisting of the mouths
- and the eyeballs going on.
- A loss of-- in my condition loss of thought, memory, or something
- was happening, where I begin to fade away.
- But I don't know what happened.
- I guess I was just going.
- Some never came back.
- But I was lucky enough to come back.
- The first time we interviewed you,
- you said that a room something like the one we're in now
- reminded you of the gas chamber.
- This one, no, too small, too painted.
- There was no paint.
- It was just cement, not this size.
- You mean a room about four times the size,
- and very low, much lower.
- We were not in this room.
- We were in another room.
- But the room was very rough.
- This is finished room.
- This is planned properly.
- You have lights here.
- The pipes where there, a lot of pipes, I
- saw a lot of pipes on the ceiling, very close to us,
- very low.
- I don't know how tall that door is,
- but the ceiling was very little above that in the gas chamber,
- very primitive, low.
- But maybe they have low buildings
- in Europe anyway, rooms.
- I don't know.
- Maybe America is the only one that has 10-foot ceilings,
- or 8-foot.
- But I don't know how far it would be.
- But it was close.
- I think Eric would have touched the ceiling
- with his head in the room.
- There was concrete here, concrete, there, concrete there.
- A door here where they put you in, and a door there
- where they open and take you out right into a room
- were the ovens, and a door outside
- to go outside from there, and door--
- a couple of doors in the crematorium that were outside,
- go outside.
- So I guess people could go in and out.
- But a lot of bodies were taken out
- through the doors into ditches too,
- if they couldn't pile them away in the ovens.
- That is after I started, after I realized I better
- keep my mouth shut and work.
- Because if they realize that you're not gassed,
- they just shoot you.
- And that's right up, a bang.
- Because that's the purpose, to get rid of us.
- To this day, I don't know why.
- I'm pretty nice.
- I agree.
- You're very nice.
- I sure like to meet a Nazi and ask him why.
- They wouldn't know either.
- There's just a lot of people that went along.
- Look out if 80% of people voting for one guy.
- That's what happened with Hitler.
- 80% or 85% voted for him.
- That is bad.
- The wonderful thing about America is 60% or 50%, maybe.
- Good, good.
- Because otherwise we got a dictator in there.
- When they have initial selection, about what percentage
- would you say were sent along the same road you were,
- and how many were selected to work?
- I mean what just whatever's off the top
- of your head as approximate?
- I couldn't make that judgment.
- How can I make that judgment, unless I had a list.
- It's just constant people being brought in constantly--
- trucks full, trains full.
- And you don't sit there and count.
- It's just no end of them, that day, no end of them to me.
- I don't know if there were days where they only had 10 of them.
- I doubt it, because they were always killing people,
- putting them in the ovens.
- So I don't know.
- I don't know.
- If I could get a thousand people right now,
- and spread them up in groups, and look at them, then maybe
- I can tell.
- OK, so there were maybe a hundred here, 50 here.
- But I can't.
- I mean that is too much to ask for because,
- nobody would be that aware of what's going on,
- except the one little spot that you're standing in,
- and your parents, and yourself.
- That's all you're aware of.
- So your parents were actually in the gas chamber with you?
- Yeah.
- While you were waiting for your turn
- to go in the gas chambers, this room where you're
- forced to undress, what did people
- think was going to happen?
- I don't think there was a room.
- It kind of outside.
- You could see the sky.
- So we were not in a room yet, when
- they started us, chaotically pushing us to undress.
- What was your question?
- What did people think was going to happen at this time?
- They were just crying and hugging,
- and I don't want to let go of my ring.
- I want my hat.
- Don't take my coat.
- I want my shoes back, my feet.
- I need my shoes.
- My feet are cold.
- I don't think there was any reality what
- was going to happen, except when I worked in that area,
- for a while that woman that told people what's going to happen.
- She didn't care if she's going to get shot.
- But the point is, what's the point of telling them,
- they're going to do it anyway.
- So you get very logical right away.
- If one mob can save them, I mean as 10 or 11,
- or whatever age I was, I knew that if I didn't
- have the same amount of guns as the Nazis have,
- I couldn't fight back.
- I'd be dead.
- You have to have--
- I used to stand around and count them, Nazis, and think, OK,
- if we had one person for each Nazi with a gun and dog,
- for each dog they have, because their machine guns were not
- as bad, because you're dead.
- But when the dogs take you, then you've got a problem.
- Because some of them really enjoyed
- watching people being torn apart by a dog.
- It was an on-and-off occurrence.
- How did you happen to be assigned
- to work in the gas chambers?
- Assigned?
- They just do it.
- Well, you can pick up rocks and carry a sack,
- or pull out a body, you do it.
- I don't know that they assign, they just,
- well we had roll calls.
- And after roll calls, we would be assigned certain jobs
- by women.
- I don't know what they were called.
- But there were some Polish women, some Jewish women, some--
- I couldn't prove that they were Jewish,
- except they were prisoners.
- And they would-- they have special privileges, I guess.
- And they would order us to do certain things.
- But we had usually roll call.
- And in that roll call there were made some people disappeared
- by nighttime.
- And some were selected to work in certain areas, just taken,
- marched, go in an area to work, and were told what to do.
- Usually when they brought us in, near the gas chamber to work,
- there were workers there already to show us what to do.
- And these women disappeared that brought us in to work.
- So they probably had lists of assignments to do, what to do.
- Were you assigned near the beginning
- of your stay in Auschwitz, or near the end,
- to the gas chambers?
- Hmm?
- Well, you were at Auschwitz about four or five years.
- Yeah, oh no.
- I don't know how long we were on the streets of Warsaw.
- But I may have been in Auschwitz three years, 3 and 1/2.
- I don't know.
- If I knew how long I was on the streets,
- whether it was a year, whether it was a year and a half
- for sure, then I could tell you how long I was in Auschwitz.
- Six years altogether from 1939 to 1945.
- But what was your question?
- Well, it was in the total length of time
- that you were in Auschwitz, were you
- assigned to the gas chambers near the beginning
- or near end of that stay?
- To work there?
- To work in the gas chamber.
- I had to do the work right away, because Gerda told me
- if I don't do it, if I don't show strength, I go.
- So there were people that were helping people out
- of gas chamber trying to save them,
- babies young people like me, older women,
- trying to help the ones that breathe still.
- I don't know how many they helped.
- But there were Jewish women who were assigned to work,
- or Polish women who were assigned
- to pull those bodies out, or men, whatever they assigned.
- At first, it was all mixed.
- Then it started to be just women and just men, separation of us.
- And towards the end, it got very chaotic.
- But I did work for quite a long time.
- What's a long time?
- When you're pulling bodies out, it could be in your mind
- forever.
- But I can safely say three years, four years.
- In Auschwitz?
- Yeah.
- Deducting a year and a half, 3 and 1/2 years, 3 years.
- I'd have to really connect it by somebody else's knowledge.
- I cannot connect.
- If I had a relative who can tell me,
- you disappeared in 1939, May so-and-so,
- and we have never seen you again since, then I can say, Oh.
- That's the day I was out on the street.
- But I can't say that, not unless somebody comes forward and helps
- me remember.
- So when you were taken out of the gas chamber
- by this woman who could see you were still breathing,
- was that Gerda?
- Yeah.
- Now how did she get you from there back to her barracks?
- She changed my uniform.
- I had a different--
- I had the star and somebody else's outfit.
- And she kept me in her barracks.
- And for whoever disappeared or got gassed, I don't know.
- You'd have to ask her.
- I'd have to ask her.
- I don't know how she did.
- But she did it.
- We did it quite a few times, we pulled people out, and held them
- in the barracks under the beds, or stand,
- so when they came in they couldn't see us.
- And then when they counted, they didn't know.
- I never seen them stand and say, oh, and who are you dear?
- I haven't seen you here before.
- There were yea, yea, yea--
- you, you.
- And she always pushed me into the second row,
- in the roll call, second, never in front.
- She was always standing there.
- She was a big, fat lady.
- She would always stand there in front, very strong faced.
- She reminded me a great deal of the president
- of Israel, the lady.
- Golda Meir?
- Yes.
- That kind of a strength, very--
- they're committed to saving people.
- So when you were in the barrack with Gerda,
- was that when you also worked in the gas chamber?
- Yeah.
- After each roll call, they would just--
- there was a regular group.
- Some disappeared, some changes, new people.
- Some stayed the same.
- Some barracks stayed the same.
- Now I read one time that they kept
- the people who worked in the gas chamber separated
- from the other people at Auschwitz.
- I wouldn't know that.
- You mean they had special barracks spots, special food,
- or special something, no way.
- Special barrack, basically what I meant
- was that they just wanted to keep
- the people who work in the gas chamber
- away from the other people.
- We didn't work inside of a gas chamber.
- We worked outside, either undressing them,
- or piling the clothes.
- One day we'd have to sweep and wash the area.
- One day we'd be working pulling the bodies out.
- There were two openings in which we
- would take a body that was still breathing,
- and pull it around behind, and somebody else
- would come in and work on the person,
- and slap them and try to save them.
- And usually the stronger women did that.
- I was small.
- Heavy-set women, they could carry
- a lot of weight and things.
- So there was a regular procedure if you
- could see somebody was still alive for keeping them alive?
- There wasn't a regular procedure.
- It was everybody's dream to save somebody.
- It was a thing you do.
- Again, back to inside of you, there
- is something that says save them.
- And I didn't know that I can get shot for it.
- I saw that woman shot.
- It didn't register with me that if I helped somebody
- that I shouldn't help somebody.
- It's just that I wouldn't talk.
- That I knew what not to say anything.
- But to save someone, if there was--
- eventually it became it was only women in it.
- Then eventually it became it was only men gassed.
- And then it would change back to chaos.
- So I don't know.
- Did you get any opportunities to help anybody stay alive,
- or were you just too young and weak?
- I got the baby out.
- I don't know if I told you about it.
- But I pulled out a baby from the gas chamber,
- and it was whimpering, [CHOKING SOUND] like this.
- And I got lost in the whole thing.
- I pulled out a live baby.
- And I was copying what Gerda did to me.
- Because she was blowing in my face.
- And I was throwing up in her, and I was pushing her away.
- And she slapped me and tell me to shut up.
- Don't make any noise.
- Because everything has to be done so instantly, so quickly,
- if you want to save a life.
- If it drags out too long, the Nazis get wise.
- So if there's too much chaos going on, somebody fighting.
- Anyway, I just picked up the baby, and it was breathing.
- And I was talking to the baby, holding it up, and I was saying,
- oh, you're not going to die.
- I was doing what Gerda did.
- And I was stroking the baby's head,
- and telling the baby you're not going to die, we have a way,
- we'll save you.
- And I was just totally engrossed in it,
- when I felt this cold piece of iron on my shoulder,
- and he just blew the baby's head off, half.
- It was horrible.
- And I just stood there talking to it, still
- without a head, a piece of ear hanging.
- I don't know what instrument he used, but it blew the head off.
- And he told me if, I do it again, my head goes.
- But we will do it again.
- If it was a baby, an old woman would do it again.
- It never seemed to stop, because we were threatened.
- But I didn't remember the threat next day.
- I just went on.
- We even, if we saw blood on the leg or something,
- tried to help the person.
- Then we realized it was dead.
- So why help, wipe or do anything?
- We did all kinds of things to try to ease the pain.
- So it was, yeah, I tried one.
- We all had that experience, I guess.
- I don't know about the other survivors.
- Maybe they didn't work there.
- But if they did, they'd probably try too.
- How many babies were saved?
- Do you have any idea?
- What would happen if a baby was saved
- and you were able to bring it?
- I don't know.
- Could you keep it quiet?
- I don't know, probably Nazi would grab it, and shoot it,
- and burn it.
- I don't know what will happen to the baby,
- because it's pretty difficult to do anything.
- I had that experience in the ghetto when a woman choked
- the baby to death, trying to keep it quiet,
- so the Nazis wouldn't hear that we were
- in the particular building.
- And she just held it and held it, and then when she let go,
- it was dead.
- So that was not the thing we were thinking.
- We were not thinking of consequences.
- We had no consequences.
- We were dead walking alive.
- We were doomed to die.
- So I never felt I was going to die.
- I always pretended, planned my life, pretended my life,
- and I always planned my life.
- I wanted to oil paint, dance, play piano like my father.
- I was going to do it.
- But when it came right down to we
- didn't think about whether they're
- going to shoot us, or beat us, or whatever.
- You just instinctively do these things.
- But what happens to the baby?
- I don't know of any baby yet that was mouth-to-mouth
- resuscitated--
- you can't have babies in the barracks.
- There was not a baby inside in the barracks.
- So I don't know what will happen to that poor child.
- Maybe it's better to kill it, hope to die.
- But you just do it.
- How many overseers or who supervised,
- were there any German guards there?
- Who supervised when you were working in the gas chamber?
- Who supervised?
- There were always Nazis with dogs and machine guns.
- They were up high on those four or six--
- I didn't count those.
- And they were on the grounds, on the fences,
- behind the fences, looking, marching around.
- We were very well supervised, watched.
- But they were not right on top of us,
- like you and I are right now.
- They were not this close.
- Once in a while, they come in this close,
- if they had to discipline someone or drag someone out.
- They would drag people.
- Some people did anything to be strong enough to work.
- And if that person collapsed or couldn't go on anymore,
- they'd grab him and take him away.
- And don't ask me where.
- OK.
- Because I wouldn't know where.
- So when people were--
- like when Gerda saved you, how did she
- manage to do it without the guards seeing
- what she was doing?
- Was there a place that you can actually get out
- of the sight of the guards?
- Yeah, behind one door from the crematorium, there was a door.
- Sometimes we take the body's through that door.
- A man would come in and take the bodies out.
- We would pull it out of the gas chamber, put it on these racks.
- The man will come in and pull them out, sometimes
- strong women.
- I couldn't tell.
- I didn't look but.
- Behind when you open that door and you go back
- behind that whole wall, you are hidden from the Nazis.
- So momentarily we could do a lot, especially
- if they didn't walk, if they just stood still.
- If they started walking around, then we'd
- have to just pretend like nothing happens.
- You just get like an Indian, American Indian.
- You start feeling things when it's safe, when it's not.
- And you must have somebody that's
- been saved from the gas chamber, not just me.
- I mean there have been a lot of people saved.
- There have been, but I don't know.
- Maybe they have been saved, and then but back in again.
- I don't know.
- But there must be people that survived gas chambers.
- I'm not alone.
- I've heard on the radio and places
- that some people survived, people talking.
- There was once on KGO somebody in San Francisco
- survived the gas chamber.
- So are lots of them.
- Do you know what happened to Gerda?
- Yeah.
- She did make it, and she went to New York.
- And we kept in touch the first year.
- And then I don't know what happened.
- By the time I got around, she died.
- You want to cut off everybody, when you first come out.
- You want to cut off everybody that you know from that area.
- You do not want to make contact with people.
- But later on, when you get older, 40 or so,
- so you get very melancholy about those things,
- and you want to do it.
- But I lived in the completely shadowed.
- I was asked to join the Holocaust survivors, people--
- not Holocaust, people that survived, on Clement Street,
- people that survived the gas chambers, and the concentration
- camps.
- They asked me if I'd like to join the group,
- and I visited a woman in Santa Barbara.
- And she had all these windows shut with black material hanging
- over it, kept the doors shut.
- She didn't trust anybody, and she's
- supposed to be the one to introduce me,
- so I can be a member.
- And I said, no.
- Because it was so depressing.
- And I didn't want to be pulled into thinking of camp.
- I wanted to make it as a dancer.
- I want to make it financially.
- I wanted to educate myself.
- I wanted to--
- I had a second chance, and I wanted
- to make the most of the second chance.
- I had been given a second chance to make something of myself.
- I paid my dues in Auschwitz for whatever reason I suffered.
- And I felt that now that I'm in America, I can help myself.
- And I was depressed enough on my own, 90%.
- I would get up in the morning.
- I had difficulty washing, and difficulty
- brushing my teeth, difficulty getting
- productive for many years.
- But then of course, the guy that married me, he was very--
- it's in my book.
- He was a very violent man.
- He beat me a lot and my daughter.
- And I stayed quite a few years, maybe five or six years
- with him.
- So that added onto my depression.
- And he did not allow me to go anywhere.
- He had a list of what I should do, and how I should dress,
- and dresses to the floor, to up to the neck.
- And that I was to become Free Methodist.
- And I refused.
- So I'd get it.
- I'd go and tell people, and they laugh at me.
- One of them said, you deserve it.
- You're a foreigner.
- We don't need foreigners here.
- So I experienced that.
- So I didn't get--
- I didn't want to have anything to do with people with Auschwitz
- or concentration camps.
- And since my daughter was born out of rape,
- he accused me of being a whore.
- And he made me go and confess in front of people.
- And he didn't want to adopt her.
- It was another Auschwitz.
- So I went along with it till a Red Cross woman told me
- that I don't have to go through it.
- And she put me in a barracks outside of El Paso, Texas.
- And he got put into a mental institution.
- And he'd get loose and threatened to kill me,
- and then they'd get MPs around me.
- And it was a constant fight to protect me.
- If I protected my daughter, I'd get it.
- He was a pervert, making love to chickens and pigs on a farm.
- And I still talk to his one sister once in a great while.
- And she doesn't even know what a pervert he was.
- But it's in the family.
- Two people were insane and in institutions.
- So how did that led into this?
- What was the question?
- What happened to Gerda?
- Yeah, well you know I just didn't--
- I don't know.
- Right now, I feel I could have learned so much from her.
- Oh God, she was older.
- She was at least 20 years older than me.
- She was an older lady.
- I don't know how she survived it.
- But she I was in a newspaper article in Los Angeles
- once with dancing, and mentioned me.
- And she got hold of it.
- And she wrote to me.
- And I went to see her in New York once.
- And we had quite a long talk, yada-yada, yada-yada.
- I promise I'll be back, and never came back.
- There was another Jewish woman.
- She went to Israel, and she too, I just
- didn't pursue the relationship.
- When we're young, I guess we don't realize how important some
- of these things are.
- It's like my papers and things disappeared,
- and people take my ballet pictures, or my family pictures.
- And they say, oh I'll get it, newspaper people, I'll
- get it back to you.
- Never returned.
- Things disappear.
- Now I'm 63, and I'm looking for--
- god, that's my life.
- Where is it?
- Some of my ballet pictures, my ballet programs with my name
- on, my daughter took it.
- She said she did.
- I don't know, and lost them.
- It's like none of those things mattered.
- And now I'm scrambling for it.
- And I didn't want to know anything.
- I didn't want to talk about past.
- Very late, I started, very late.
- In many ways, too late, because maybe there
- will be some people that knew me, or even were the same five
- barracks away and saw me.
- I mean how can you miss that girl that's a sugar plum nut?
- You know what I mean?
- I don't understand why somebody doesn't come forward.
- There were people there that could say, yeah,
- I remember that gal, because I was obvious with my ballet.
- I was made fun of 24 hours a day.
- Here comes the sugar plum nut.
- She thinks she's going to dance some day.
- She doesn't know?
- She doesn't know what's going on here?
- They would say, you don't know?
- You're going to be dead.
- You'll never get out of here.
- That's what they used to say to me all day long.
- I would say, no, I'm not going to be dead.
- You know, people do a number of things when
- they're in some sort of trauma.
- How did you handle it?
- I mean it's like--
- What do you mean trauma?
- You get hit, or raped, or what?
- Yeah, well what I'm thinking of specifically
- is that, a couple of days after you left prison,
- you arrived on the train.
- You were put in the gas chamber.
- I was a kid.
- Gerda saved you, and then you were
- working in the gas chambers.
- How did you deal with that in your head?
- It didn't mean a thing to me.
- It was just somebody told me to do something, I'd do it.
- I don't know how to explain it.
- I just was a child.
- I remember one time I broke down and said,
- why all these people-- to some woman,
- why are these people dead?
- Yet, I was inside.
- And I didn't understand why they go in alive, and come out dead.
- I didn't understand it.
- How did I deal with it?
- I didn't cry.
- I never cried.
- I cried the first few days, looking
- for my mother and father.
- And I cried my mother's name.
- Mama, come get me.
- Mama.
- I didn't mean to steal the lily.
- I didn't mean.
- So I thought that they wouldn't come back to me.
- That's how I dealt, talking to myself.
- I thought they didn't want me, because I was a bad person,
- because I stole a lily on Easter and brought it
- home from the church.
- I loved it.
- And I was punished for it, punished
- for it meaning I got spanking with a pussy-willow stuff.
- That was a regular thing, a belt once in a while.
- But I thought many times I said, they're not going to come back.
- I knew they were--
- I knew what they were not alive.
- But I didn't accept it.
- They were going to come back.
- They didn't come and get me, because I was a bad person.
- I lived with that a long time.
- And nobody wanted me because I stole the lily.
- Gee, the dumb thing to interpret.
- They didn't have any choice.
- One time, I was by the fence and there was a cat.
- And I would-- kitty-kitty-kitty.
- And I didn't realize that the cat was
- going to get the electricity.
- And I cried that time.
- I felt guilty, because the cat kept coming.
- And then I would look at birds, I
- would see you see an airplane once in a while.
- And say, what it would be like to be on the airplane.
- What does it look like inside?
- I would cope with that.
- And if I got-- quite often they'd hit you with a barrel,
- or slap you, or spit at you.
- And when that happened, I'd just stand there and take it
- like a piece of zombie.
- And I remember women in the barracks whispering,
- well, maybe we could do this and maybe we could do that.
- In roll calls, I would think about how
- to get a sharp object to stick it in one of the Nazis,
- and then usually there were women.
- And one Nazi or two Nazi women--
- I don't know how many women in the row, and the--
- whatever they call themselves.
- I don't remember the females that worked with the Nazis that
- were assigned to-- they spoke our language, which was
- Polish, or Jewish, whatever.
- They were in danger also to be killed.
- They probably were killed.
- But then I would come to a realization
- that if I stuck the knife in, and it wasn't deep enough,
- that I would have to die, and I'm not going to die.
- I'd cope with my mind on that, how to kill someone.
- And I don't know how this little girl that was locked up
- by the men in the cave, just recent news,
- how did she cope with it?
- I don't think she understands the tragedy of it,
- till she's going to be 25 or 30.
- So I don't know what the child mind does.
- But it doesn't take the situation seriously
- as a 20-year-old woman in the barracks would,
- and the 30-year-old people.
- It was harder on them than me.
- I just, moment to moment for a child, I
- consider myself a child from 10 to 16,
- because you never grow up.
- You're just stumped right there.
- And during the beatings, I remember clearly
- that I was in that hole.
- I knew she was going to come back.
- So I said to myself, it hurts bad.
- First time, it's a big cut.
- The second time it hurts worse, because it's infected.
- The lip was cut.
- And I said, I'm going to take it.
- I'm going to take it.
- It's going to hurt very bad.
- I'm not going to cry.
- I'm just going to take it.
- And I didn't.
- I just took it.
- I knew it was coming.
- I knew it wouldn't last forever.
- And I took it.
- And I had no particular plan, except that I
- wanted to dance someday, and I was going to dance some day.
- And that really sustained me a lot.
- Because I had a dream.
- I had a plan to dance, and nobody could take that away
- from me.
- And then I would go into the make-believe.
- The trucks arriving full of kids,
- and they're my competition.
- I hope they're not better than I am.
- And I'm going to get better.
- I'm going to go out in the corner
- of the barracks and practice.
- I usually did it outside, plies and stuff.
- There were times I couldn't do it,
- because people were laughing at me so much.
- I just shrunk.
- I didn't do it.
- I worked in the kitchen for a while.
- I brought in potatoes and stuff, and a piece of meat
- that Nazis didn't finish up.
- And one of the barrack women squealed,
- and that's how this Nazi woman came into hitting me.
- Then she considered me worse than a Jew.
- Because I had blue eyes, blonde hair.
- Look at you.
- Why would you save a Jew?
- And she just really was something else.
- Now when you say that the trucks coming in
- were kids for a ballet competition.
- You're talking about the trains.
- Jews, people coming in the trucks
- to enter the gates on trucks.
- There were trucks.
- There were trains.
- Now another thing I once read about,
- working in the gas chambers, was that people didn't survive that.
- That periodically they would just gas the whole people who
- worked in the gas chambers.
- How did that not happen to you and Gerda?
- How did you stop working there?
- What happened?
- I stopped working there when they put me into work
- in the experiment wards.
- They took me into the--
- but before experiment wards, I don't
- know if it was before or after.
- But I worked in the prostitution area too,
- this brick barracks where the men are.
- Underneath the bricks, several buildings had the jails,
- and we'd have to go in there, and put the water
- and piece of bread in, in the jail, which was underground
- of the building, torturing chambers.
- And little bitty rooms like, very small,
- just a size of a person and no lights, no nothing.
- They were torturing people.
- And once in a while I'd have to go in there and clean up.
- And then there were the barracks three or two.
- I don't remember.
- I can't tell you, get into details.
- They were surrounded by a--
- they were same barracks as the rest of them, brick barracks,
- and they were surrounded by iron fence with sharp things
- on the edges on the ends.
- And that was where the prostitution--
- I mean the Nazis would get their kicks.
- There were rooms with women in it, young girls.
- No older women.
- I have never seen.
- There was a lot of young girls crying, and some of them
- were just scratching their head and going, and laughing.
- I had to make the beds, clean the floor, clean the toilets.
- I worked in that area.
- One time I swept the grounds from one end to the other.
- Sometimes they would make us work in the kitchen a lot,
- Other times piling up the clothes.
- Some got assigned to picking up the bodies.
- There was an area next to this medical building.
- All those buildings look alike.
- And there was a shooting area.
- They were shooting people-- dat-dat-dat-dat-dat.
- And some people assigned to pick the bodies up,
- and some women, some men.
- Was this at the same time you were cleaning the prostitute
- barracks?
- No, no.
- Everything was periodical, maybe a week, maybe two, maybe
- a month.
- I don't know.
- I can't talk about time, because I had no concept of time
- at that time, how long.
- I mean maybe a 30-year-old woman would know.
- I stayed there 40 days, because I looked
- at the calendar or something.
- Maybe she had a calendar.
- I didn't see calendar anyway.
- But I was not of the mind to mark the time either.
- I was a child.
- Children, I don't know, maybe a psychologist
- can explain whether we marked the time.
- Well, let me just finish up with the gas chambers then.
- So you don't know what happened that you quit working there?
- No.
- I quit there.
- I didn't quit.
- They take me out of there and put me in another job.
- And then they bring me back in some other,
- later and do it again.
- You did the gas chambers again?
- Yeah.
- They just-- see they had to bring us into a lot of places,
- because we were--
- the women were in the very rotted barracks.
- I think somebody said it that it was horse stables.
- And they made that into women's barracks.
- So we had no facilities.
- Like the buildings that mean, they
- had built-in toilets, and quite modern.
- But us, we were in the horse barracks.
- We had no water, facility, we had
- to take the water from ground.
- Sometimes they bring in water We always
- got a cup of water and slice of bread, sometimes soup.
- Sometimes something hot, and potato peelings
- and a lot of goop.
- I don't know what it was.
- Sometimes it was clear.
- You can see Bobby pins, razor blades in it.
- And sometimes it was thick.
- I don't know.
- That was our food daily.
- There was no change.
- Was this barrack you were in, was it by itself
- or was it with other barracks, other women?
- There were other barracks.
- Was it the only one the used to be a horse stable?
- I don't know.
- I never made it back to the end of the others.
- Were you in the same barrack the whole time you
- were in Auschwitz?
- No, I was shifted.
- Now when--
- A lot of people were in the same barracks.
- Were you with Gerda-- how long were you with Gerda?
- Oh, no.
- I was not to the end with Gerda.
- She disappeared for a while.
- And then you found her later?
- Yeah, in New York, after that article.
- Yeah, she disappeared for a while.
- But I couldn't say it's a week, a month, three months.
- I can't say.
- But towards the end of it, when they were blowing up the gas
- chambers, and blowing up the barracks where they had papers,
- or whatever you call so that no one--
- whatever the reason was, when the blowing up started,
- she wasn't around.
- Every time they took me out to do another job,
- she wasn't around.
- Eric, do you have any questions about the gas chambers?
- Mm-hmm.
- I've got a couple.
- You said you have just no concept of how long you
- worked around the gas chambers.
- It depends what they needed.
- They were just bring--
- I heard there was a rumor that that
- was called scheisse kommando, like a shit detail.
- What?
- I mean at the gas chambers, among the inmates at Auschwitz.
- Maybe that's what the men would call it?
- Yeah.
- The women call that?
- No.
- I heard the men sometimes say that.
- So you never had a nickname for doing the dirty work there?
- They may have had it, about maybe
- I didn't understand what they meant.
- There was an awful lot of swearing in all languages.
- I don't know, in Yiddish especially.
- So in a Yiddish would be scheisse, yeah.
- Maybe, I don't know.
- Everything to us was scheisse job there.
- It was horrible.
- And what?
- So when you were working around the gas chambers,
- were you ever just tempted, just you were so fed up
- or depressed, or hurt that you just wanted to die?
- Or did you just always have that will to live?
- You'd have to ask that psychiatrist again,
- why I wasn't.
- No, I just roll along with the punches.
- That was the duty to do.
- And that is the duty I did.
- And I hate to sound like a Nazi.
- I was given a duty and I did it.
- But I contributed that to a child's mind,
- a lot, a young person's mind.
- A young person is not--
- will go through a lot of stuff without complaining.
- And I think I just did it.
- I understood one thing in Auschwitz.
- Shut up and do it if you want to live.
- And if you don't want to live, you can say anything.
- But the women wear that that way today.
- Like Madonna.
- It's your today's answer for Madonna here.
- One thing that struck me, we were standing together
- in Yad Vashem in Israel, remember, when
- they had that big ceremony.
- And you'd mentioned to me how you felt very guilty,
- about what you did.
- And that going to Israel for you was
- sort of the release of your guilt.
- I'd like to ask you about that.
- Tremendous.
- I'm a new person after Israel, like a cleansing.
- You felt guilty working around the gas chambers?
- I felt guilty all of my life.
- But I couldn't place what.
- And when I went to Israel, because you know
- I'm very intelligent.
- So my mind says, hey, you got up this morning.
- Why are you feeling guilty?
- You didn't do anything.
- But I don't know what I developed
- while putting those bodies, helping them undress,
- or telling them to get in line, and I knew what was happening.
- Whether I knew it or didn't know it,
- I developed a guilty feeling.
- I could not stop the atrocity.
- Like I prayed to God a lot, and I finally gave up.
- And the joke with me is now that he was out to lunch.
- But I frankly lost faith completely.
- What was that now again?
- Yeah, when I was in Israel, it started off
- with I don't know whether in Israel it
- was the first thing we went to see the children's place,
- or whether it was first time we went to the services.
- But all the time, I wish you could just film me inside.
- It was pain, but it was also, hey,
- look at those three survivors there.
- They're there.
- We survived and the children will know what I had to do,
- because I was a child myself.
- And all these children know now, wherever
- they are then, that I wasn't doing it
- because I got a kick out of it.
- I was doing it because that was the way of life then.
- And it was so much going on inside of me.
- But I had a terrible breakdown in the children's place.
- When they started calling the names.
- I could see the faces immediately.
- I would see the children's faces, a lot,
- everywhere in camps, and everywhere I
- would see this child, that child.
- It all flash backed.
- Because when they call off names, I could connect.
- They were probably not the same people.
- But they would connect my mind with flash.
- And I also realized that if that guilt continues that it's
- very self-destructive.
- I don't know why I got cleansed in Israel of that guilt.
- But I know that I don't wake up with guilt feelings anymore.
- You wake up with guilt feelings.
- You don't even know why you feel guilty,
- because you've done nothing.
- But I lived with it a long time, all my life.
- And in Israel, it all went.
- I also gained an awful lot of respect
- for Jews, fighting those people.
- They're surrounded.
- Like Americans make comments about why
- give the Jews the money?
- Well, do they know how much a gun costs?
- Do they know how much a bullet costs?
- And every father, and every mother, and everybody
- carries a pistol, needs ammunition
- to protect themselves.
- So it is expensive to protect yourself.
- If they just give it up, we could save some money.
- I mean not the Jews.
- They have to fight back.
- I wouldn't like it if Israel didn't fight back.
- I like the idea that they didn't fight back
- with Hussein, when they were being [? migged, ?] because they
- were waiting to blame Jews for everything again.
- So Israel didn't respond.
- So I was proud that.
- Right now I consider Israel and Auschwitz,
- what else have I got, but that?
- A home.
- He is a Catholic jerk tossed around and gains respect
- for Jews, for the way they went in with dignity, and decorum,
- and in the gas chambers.
- A lot of them went in there without a squeak,
- without a sound, just chin up.
- They lived a life in camps with a lot of religion and strength.
- Their songs were for strength.
- When they sang, they sang words of encouraging you to make it.
- And I think there are a lot to do why I made it, because there
- is tomorrow in the songs, and there's a coming of God,
- and this and that.
- They would always talk hope.
- And going to Israel, I told my husband
- that I have no place to be buried,
- because I had no relatives.
- So I said, I may just have you fly down to Israel,
- and scatter my ashes there, period.
- So don't ask me why I got so attached to Israel.
- But I found the children very intelligent, and understanding
- what's going on to them.
- They were not flimsy with jewelry and guitars,
- and I want to be a singer.
- They were really substantial citizens.
- And so I learned an awful lot there.
- I also spoke to some Syrians in the stands.
- They explained to me that they cannot--
- that they love their Jewish friends,
- but they cannot visit them.
- Because if they do, their son disappears,
- or somebody disappears from the family if they associate.
- So we want to, we like, and we can live with Jews.
- We've been living with Jews fine.
- But it's the political end of it, so I understood that.
- What Yanina was referring to was the day of remembrance,
- all day long, I think for about three days.
- They just read the names of people who perished.
- It was like 24 hours a day.
- So when we were there, it was over a loudspeaker,
- they were just saying names off.
- And you were saying, you were seeing faces behind names.
- Yeah, when they called the name.
- But also they had the twinkling stars,
- and it was all black, black walls, or black annex,
- or whatever.
- I didn't look at all.
- I didn't look at the beauty of it.
- I just was overwhelmed.
- I went outside, and news people hit me with the things.
- But I wanted to have privacy.
- I wanted privacy to let go of my emotions about it.
- But those stars, when they twinkled
- and the names were called, nobody knows what it's like.
- Other people see it, but I got faces
- connected with those names.
- And I for sure know that they were Jewish,
- because they got Jewish names.
- The little children would tell me their names.
- So biblical, a lot of it.
- It was very biblical.
- You also mentioned--
- And I hate emotion, so it was embarrassing to cry like that.
- I almost got mad that I couldn't hide it.
- Yeah.
- And you were bombarded.
- Yeah.
- I was bombarded.
- No privacy, you worked like work horse
- for the whole almost two weeks.
- I know put on a--
- I get the chin up, and I'm looking calm.
- But you're never calm when it comes to that.
- Do you any more questions before we take a break?
- Just one more, but we can wait.
- OK.
There is no transcript available for this track
There is no transcript available for this track
- OK.
- Any time.
- OK.
- When we quit, we were talking about Nazis,
- interviewing Nazis.
- Mm-hmm.
- I had a question.
- It just seems to have left my mind.
- It'd be nice to talk to one to ask him questions how they--
- although I pretty much understand.
- First, they needed-- some of them needed jobs, I guess.
- Then they do one thing.
- And then they see them killing people.
- And they stand and watch and say nothing.
- And slowly, they turn into a stone, some of them.
- Some of them are already there with hate and resentment.
- But it will be interesting to hear--
- to come face to face with one.
- You think you'd be able to handle it emotionally?
- I keep-- depending on my logic, what's
- the point of attacking this person if I didn't see him
- in camp, if he didn't touch me?
- I don't-- what's the point of--
- it would be better to understand what he thinks
- or did think in the past.
- But there were times that I'd like to string up a Nazi
- and keep him in one room and cut off a finger at a time.
- But that's past.
- Yeah.
- I used to fantasize about that and tell
- my husband it would be nice to take this piece and this piece.
- I'll come back to this later and with a bucket of water
- and sprinkle it a little.
- And he'll beg me for it, these fantasies.
- But I really don't think I have the capacity
- to do what they did.
- But you can't understand how it is that so many of them did it.
- But would you be able to hear the excuses, because sometimes
- I think what happened was what they did was so horrendous
- that--
- and people who were-- they felt this anger
- engendered towards them.
- So when people tried to say, why did you
- do it, all they felt was the anger.
- And they, instead of--
- maybe they couldn't have gone inside themselves
- to say why they did it.
- But even the ones that could have didn't, because all they
- felt was anger and judgment.
- So they just came up with these excuses.
- They came up with these excuses.
- But can you really talk to Jeffrey Dahmer?
- You know Jeffrey Dahmer, right?
- He's the guy who--
- Ate the bodies or something, then murdered the boys, men,
- and ate the bodies or something.
- Maybe not.
- Can you really talk to him?
- What explanation will he give you to why he did what he did?
- I think that's very often a problem.
- You cannot come up with an answer.
- For us victims, we cannot get a logical answer.
- If we had a logical answer, we could let go.
- But we don't have a logical answer to this.
- We don't have one Nazi come forward and say,
- I fell into this and I kept doing it.
- And I'm sorry.
- This was horrible.
- I had one child, 14 years old, in Dachau tell me that.
- Tell you what?
- I came out looking at Dachau with Eric
- and all the people, Japanese people.
- There were German young girls sitting there.
- And one blonde girl was crying and approached me.
- And she says, you have a number.
- And she says, I don't understand why my parents did this to you.
- And I'm ashamed.
- And I said, well, you needn't to feel the burden.
- You just learn from it so it doesn't happen again.
- And she just wouldn't let-- she just
- said she couldn't forgive them.
- She couldn't forgive her country.
- And she has to live with this heaviness.
- She comes to Dachau once a week to look at it.
- And she says she doesn't understand
- how they could have done this.
- She's trying to understand it.
- She's coping, trying to understand it so she can go on.
- I'm coping, trying to understand so I can go on.
- And it leaves a lot of damaged people behind.
- Maybe it's not a logical explanation.
- Maybe it's-- I don't know how to say this exactly.
- Maybe it's the heart explanation.
- How do you explain the fact that they
- had Red Cross come in or some officials come in in--
- was it in Auschwitz or someplace?
- I didn't see it.
- And they spruced everything up, made
- everything look so beautiful.
- Didn't anybody from Red Cross say
- you have no right to lock these people up behind bars?
- How come that person believed the Nazis?
- How come they didn't say, well, why are they in these camps
- to begin with?
- Because they're Jews?
- Why didn't they question it further?
- Why didn't take a step further and say,
- but why did you take them away from the business?
- Why did you take the store, loot the store?
- Why didn't they do this?
- Why?
- They had Red Cross people go through Auschwitz or some camp.
- Terezin.
- Huh?
- Terezin.
- OK, some camp.
- And I heard about this someplace.
- And the Nazis took him and look how they work here.
- They do the artwork here.
- They made it look like a picnic.
- They had music and tea time.
- But didn't it dawn on this Red Cross person,
- why do they have these people behind bars?
- Why didn't they question it further?
- That is the answer I'd like to know.
- Why did they just accept it?
- If we're going to be accepting things,
- then where are we taking ourselves?
- We're accepting right now.
- We're accepting murders.
- We're accepting prejudice.
- We're accepting murders.
- So how far are we going to accept this?
- Maybe that's the--
- The rape of women.
- How long are we going to keep on making the--
- any time that somebody doesn't believe my story
- and has the nerve to come and tell me, then I only tell them,
- do they believe a woman that's raped and they put her
- through trial?
- I told this to Eric.
- But they don't believe a woman is raped, either.
- A lot of people still don't.
- In fact, in the '60s, it was only foolish women would get--
- Yeah.
- Right.
- Well, the weak ones end up in--
- now, I was a weak one.
- I was weak at 16--
- end up raped.
- Or the ones that are vulnerable or something--
- because I can't see myself.
- When I walk the streets, I don't walk against the walls.
- I walk outside of the cars.
- Now?
- Yes, all the time.
- I could not survive rape right now.
- I could not survive what I already know.
- I think it'll break me.
- So I avoid it like plague--
- not be found in a position.
- So in a way, being stronger makes you weaker?
- Yeah, in a way.
- But the thing is that I don't find myself in situations,
- unless I want to follow up with it.
- I'm sorry?
- Unless I want to have sex with a guy, I don't go in his room.
- I don't go in hotel rooms.
- I wouldn't go in the alleys.
- There are places you just don't go.
- I've been protecting myself since my case a lot that way,
- being careful.
- I've been interested in this question of why
- did the Nazis do what they did.
- And why after the war did you get basically--
- you either got excuses.
- Or you got surface answers.
- It really is true men needed a job.
- So this is a job.
- It's really true that German nationalism was really
- a big movement at that point in time.
- And so there are many secret societies
- that were very nationalistic and very prejudiced.
- Why did they believe that Jews were a problem or diseased
- or vermin of the Earth?
- When it started the propaganda, why--
- Christ killer or whatever they want to do.
- So what?
- That happened so long ago.
- I can't pay a price--
- I can't feel guilty for something
- that Blacks were brought as slaves here.
- I can't feel guilty for that.
- I didn't do it.
- And I wouldn't do it.
- So I'm in the modern era.
- Yeah, there are some times that I make a slight explanation
- to myself on that.
- But does that satisfy?
- No.
- I say to myself, well, if you lived next door
- and I'm your friend and you're my neighbor
- and you suddenly disappeared and I went to the Nazis
- and asked them where you are and they told me to shut up
- my mouth or they'll take my son and kill him,
- I'll shut up my mouth.
- Or if I knew--
- if there's a neighbor to neighbor
- and we know that you're going to be--
- we know that you're Jewish, but we're not going to tell.
- But if we don't tell, my family is going to be killed,
- then maybe I tell.
- I don't know.
- Maybe that's the emotional part that we victims
- have to come to understand to what people
- do under what circumstances.
- We're not talking about--
- we're not talking about all killers.
- We're talking about several thousand
- that actually took the bodies and killed.
- And there are rumors that he took criminals out of jails
- and made them captains and lieutenants.
- And they were the ones shooting and killing people,
- like you and I think take Dahmer and Manson
- and we make them soldiers, proud of themselves.
- Give them guns.
- Kill these Jews.
- Maybe there is a group of those.
- I can't accept--
- I was in Munich from Israel.
- And I looked at the door, and they
- have all these beautiful little cupids and things, artistic.
- And I couldn't help but make a remark.
- People with all this beauty around,
- could they really kill Jews?
- I can't put it together.
- Most people can't, because to people--
- the more reading and talking I've done,
- it's very hard for people to put together
- that people who loved classical music could also do the things
- that the SS men did.
- Well, to kill--
- I'll never be able to understand it,
- either, to talk classical music and to murder a girl
- age of his daughter maybe and never ask himself a question
- and say, well, I'm sorry, but I have a daughter this age.
- This could be my daughter.
- Where's the conscience?
- This, I have a hard time to understand,
- the ones that really did the killing.
- But there are a lot of Germans that
- just fell into bureaucratic jobs and around.
- Maybe those are the ones making excuses.
- Or maybe they're so ashamed, it will
- crush their whole life's belief if they
- accept that they did this.
- But one explanation somewhere would be nice.
- I think you may be right.
- It may be impossible to get the-- it's sort
- of like-- you're right.
- Asking Jeffrey Dahmer why he did what he did
- is ultimately futile.
- It isn't necessarily that he wouldn't tell you if he knew.
- He doesn't know.
- He doesn't know.
- And those Nazis don't know.
- I knew a girl once who she started
- having those kind of psychological problems
- when she was 13.
- And she was taken to a therapist.
- And they wanted to know what's wrong.
- And she said, my mother makes me do housework.
- Everybody's mother makes them do housework.
- That doesn't make you psychologically have problems.
- And they believed her.
- They believed that this was the reason.
- Nobody ever caught on to the fact
- that she was a victim of incest.
- Nobody ever got that.
- My question is how Hitler was able to attract
- the people to do this job.
- They had-- is it in 60 Minutes?
- No, on something else--
- young boy that was adopted that had "mom" and "dad"
- on the bullets.
- And he shot his adoptive parents.
- He called his adoptive mother and said, come home.
- I have a beautiful present for you.
- And he blew her brains out.
- And he's now on trial.
- He says, how many times do you want
- me to say I'm sorry, judge?
- So there you are.
- This is a born killer.
- How are you going to get an explanation from him?
- He said he wanted them to suffer like he suffered,
- but they never did anything to him.
- But you see, my opinion is that's not true.
- My opinion is that they never thought they did anything.
- And he couldn't really identify what they did.
- But most abuse is very subtle and very difficult to identify.
- And that's what I was talking about with the--
- But they investigated the parents.
- There was no abuse.
- They were very warm adoptive parents.
- But the guy obviously resented being adopted.
- He took out on adoptive parents what
- he wanted to do to the real mother that rejected him,
- probably.
- How old was he when he was adopted?
- Year or so.
- That could be.
- They say the first year of life is the most important.
- But I hate to get away from the Holocaust here.
- And my point when I started talking about that
- was that with these SS men, I don't think--
- I'm wondering if it's possible to get a real answer,
- the deep-down, soul-deep answer--
- to their actions if they haven't gotten really good therapy.
- And I really sincerely doubt most have.
- I would say that air of the times--
- it was the air of the times.
- It was in the air to kill Jews.
- And some of them shut the doors and didn't look.
- Some of them fought back and got the same treatment.
- They can't tell us that they fought back.
- Some of them died on the streets spitting at a Nazi's face.
- Some of them lived being married to a Jew
- and having a Jew, their husband or wife, in the camp
- while they were a pure German.
- And they just lived with this and couldn't understand it
- and dealt with Nazis--
- maybe talked to them and said, get my wife out and all that.
- But sorry, we can't because they're of different species.
- They're sick and terrible people.
- Every day, people rationalize their behavior.
- If I murdered my parents, I have two choices.
- I would want to be killed for it, because I wouldn't want
- to live with the guilt. But if I'm kept alive long enough,
- I would say I've paid my dues with my guilt.
- And I don't want to talk about it anymore.
- So I think that's what the Germans are doing.
- They know what they did.
- And there's nothing they can repair,
- the ones that are sane enough to have a conscience.
- And the ones that are really guilty of killings,
- they don't have a conscience.
- How can you talk to sociopaths?
- Hitler had a way of gathering sociopaths
- around him, criminals.
- I'm wondering, we always talk about preventing
- another Holocaust.
- I'm wondering if it's possible without getting
- the very deepest answer and then being satisfied--
- Yeah, it's possible by rising up when one family disappears.
- What right does one family have to disappear?
- Where did they go?
- And we pursue it till we get an answer,
- before the machine guns face our faces.
- Fear is a bigger bullet than a bullet.
- If you have a choice between life and death,
- maybe you'll take death and speak up to a Nazi.
- Or maybe you shut up and stand still.
- We don't know when we're put to test what we're going to do,
- at a moment when the pistol faces our brain.
- We don't know.
- I know what it feels like.
- I only know that it didn't go off.
- And it's a shock when it doesn't go off.
- It's total shock.
- It blows your mind.
- If it goes off, then it's the end.
- You don't feel a thing.
- But when it doesn't go off, you've
- got that to cope with for years, too.
- You mean the fact that--
- The fact that they pulled the trigger and nothing
- happened, no bullet.
- That's horrible, how close you can come,
- because once you're in front of a gun, you want to die.
- You want to get it over with.
- You don't want to spend another day waiting to be shot.
- So you don't know.
- I think we can prevent this from happening by the fact
- that the Jews now have a country,
- have a good army-- never ever.
- I think America's making mistakes
- getting rid of all these bases and things.
- Come on, we have to have military all the time.
- We're just leaving ourselves wide open.
- But I don't think Jews will ever let it happen to them again.
- But of course, it depends on the new generation, doesn't it?
- So if we don't find out from the people who did it
- the soul-deep answer as to why they did it
- and why people who watched let it happen,
- have we really made any progress?
- If all you do is interview the victims,
- can you really change anything?
- I think it's already changed in America.
- I don't think America could--
- American human beings could do this.
- In our country, it's already changed.
- I don't think we would allow anything like this
- to be happening.
- There's too many of us with conscience and goodness.
- And we preach goodness.
- We talk goodness.
- But it's mind boggling how Hitler got--
- all I want to know is how did he get so many people to join him.
- And that's where the answer lies, isn't it?
- How in the first place did he get all these people
- to do it with him?
- And that's the same problem as we have
- with Jeffrey Dahmer, which is--
- Why did you do--
- We're never going to get that answer.
- Yeah.
- Well, how?
- Hitler's dead.
- Who is left?
- Did they ever interview any Nazis yet?
- John Steiner has actually interviewed about 50.
- And what's his answer?
- I don't know because they're all in German.
- We're in the process of trying to get them translated
- so we know what's in them.
- He knows because he knows German.
- So what's his answer?
- I haven't talked to him.
- But I'd like to.
- Who is he, somebody here in town?
- Oh, no.
- He's actually at Sonoma.
- Oh, John Steinbeck.
- Sounds familiar.
- John Steiner.
- Steiner.
- John Steinbeck's the writer.
- Steiner.
- But there's a few people who have interviewed Nazis.
- Yeah.
- And?
- And they very seldom get anything
- more than the surface answer, which is I needed a job
- or I would have been killed or whatever.
- But it's not a satisfactory answer.
- What about-- have you read--
- Well, what would be the satisfactory answer to you?
- To me?
- The real psychological reason behind it.
- And I've read-- have you read Alice Miller's book,
- For Your Own Good?
- Have you heard of that?
- No.
- She's a Swiss psychiatrist.
- And in it, she uses some well-known Nazis
- and their well-known childhoods to explain
- what she thinks was the ultimate reason behind it, which
- doesn't mean all the other reasons weren't reasons also.
- The ultimate reason is religion.
- It says in the Bible that Jews killed Christ.
- That's where it all began.
- But you also had your Christians who saved Jews.
- True.
- When your--
- But Hitler picked up on that one point.
- He picked up on that comment, that comment.
- Why was that comment there?
- Did the Jews killed Jesus?
- Well--
- What did they do to him?
- Are you asking me?
- Yeah.
- I don't know what religion you are,
- but I'm asking why was that in the Bible
- to begin with, because he kind of lived up to that.
- It was in the Bible originally because he was born a Jew.
- And the Jewish people wanted him dead.
- In fact--
- Jewish people wanted Jesus dead for what?
- Not the Jewish people, a few Jewish people whose incomes
- and whose lives were--
- Threatened--
- Threatened by him.
- So it's politics.
- The Nazis-- tell me the Nazis took
- over your jewelry, your clothes, your houses, your property.
- It was business with them.
- Yeah.
- It was business.
- They wanted-- you guys are so good at business.
- And they had to be in the background someplace.
- And you would charge them a dollar more,
- whatever the national money is.
- They developed a resentment towards successful people
- that live in mansions and lovely houses.
- Jealousy, politics, and greed is--
- So that wasn't religion, though.
- That's jealousy, politics, and greed.
- But Hitler used the story of the Bible that--
- Christ killer.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- And that, unfortunately, at the time
- was something that people had in their heads.
- I would like-- since you asked me, at this point,
- I don't want to leave it at what I said because that's
- the straight fact.
- But I don't believe the Jews alone killed Christ.
- They needed the Romans to do it.
- Discuss.
- So everybody did it.
- Yeah.
- And that's the theological truth.
- But they put it in the Bible that the Jews did it.
- Well, that's because of the fact that he was born Jewish.
- And it was those politicians.
- What I'm saying is the pen is mightier than the sword.
- Yeah.
- What I'm trying to say is that I'm not
- saying the Jews killed Christ in the sense that Hitler used it.
- Do you understand what I'm saying?
- Mm-hmm.
- I'm very sorry I got into this because I don't--
- Why?
- Because you can't carry it out?
- No, because I find it very hard to say it
- in a way that doesn't sound like Hitler said it.
- But I don't mean it that way at all.
- I mean the fact was Jesus was a Jew.
- He lived in a Jewish state.
- He made some Jewish people very angry with him.
- They wanted to kill him.
- They used the Romans to do it.
- Theologically--
- So it's politics.
- It was politics.
- Religion is politics.
- And it certainly wasn't every Jew.
- And it certainly didn't carry down to any Jew
- beyond the few who did it.
- So that's what I'm trying to say, I guess.
- Well, I'm trying to say that if the Jews did not
- get so involved in the religion, maybe they would
- have fought back, because I'm mad about that.
- I was just a child.
- And I could see the Jews lined up.
- And there were only a few Nazis.
- If we split in half, we could have died in glory.
- They wouldn't split in half.
- They just went like lambs to the slaughter, Jews.
- Yeah.
- Why didn't they fight back right there and then on the trolley
- tracks, everywhere they could?
- Dogs?
- So what?
- I couldn't understand that.
- I couldn't understand that.
- They have to get armed.
- I understand.
- But couldn't they just go ahead and die in glory
- by attacking the Nazis?
- Every 20, 30 Jews, there were just two Nazis.
- We could overwhelm them, take the guns,
- shoot the hell out of--
- I always was thinking of that in camp.
- But everybody was praying and believing
- that no, they couldn't kill us.
- We're going to live.
- We're going to work.
- Why did they believe the stories?
- They were such a good people.
- But good doesn't work when you're with enemies like that.
- But I had a very interesting thing happen to me.
- Speaking of religion or prejudice,
- there's this Jewish lady is 90-some years old.
- And when I lived in San Francisco, I gave her--
- I would volunteer a day to drive her
- to Ahern's bakery to pick up her pastry, groceries, and stuff.
- I would work as a volunteer.
- So she knew my story.
- And I said, well, I'm going to have to go to your synagogue
- sometime and see what it looks like.
- And she says, I wouldn't have a dirty Catholic dirty up my--
- what do you call those places where you pray for?
- Where you sit?
- That was an unusual remark.
- Vestibule?
- It's a seat you buy and sit in in the synagogues.
- I don't know.
- Yeah.
- That was-- I never saw her again.
- I was dirty, too dirty to enter a Jewish synagogue
- because I'm Catholic.
- You see, this is where it starts.
- This is the beginning.
- This is why I get mad with my children in the ballet school.
- If they're laughing at one child that is clumsy and cannot move,
- I am furious, because to me, that's where it begins.
- With each person.
- With each person.
- And how you treat them.
- And how you treat them.
- Insensitivity to that child--
- I have one child that's a cripple.
- And she's so clumsy.
- And she comes to me.
- Nina.
- Hey, Nina.
- Nina, help me.
- I want to know the step, but they'll laugh at me.
- She clutches at my stuff.
- And I say, you go there and do it, darling.
- Just do it.
- Don't pay any attention to them.
- And one of them was actually standing there making fun.
- And I actually asked her to leave the class.
- I said, I want you to go home.
- And I want you to talk to your God or your Buddha or whatever
- to why you're making fun of this child that's born with a harder
- time and no grace.
- But watch her three months from now.
- I'll give her that grace.
- And I'll work with her.
- I can't stand it when people are bad to each other.
- I can't stand it between Norman and I. What?
- You have to yell?
- You can't talk to me?
- We can talk to each other.
- This is where we have to clean up
- our act is among human beings.
- We have to-- oh, boy.
- Am I getting myself in trouble--
- get rid of religions.
- Sorry.
- They breed this.
- They breed this.
- Don't marry the Jew.
- Marry Catholic.
- You Catholic, marry Catholic, da, da, da, da.
- That right there is where it begins.
- Right there, there's some saying that the Jew smells or the Jew
- is less human being.
- Or Catholic-- or a Jew making a remark about
- don't marry that Catholic.
- That's already implying something's
- wrong with that human being, that that human being is
- inferior.
- That right there is a problem.
- So just artificial barriers?
- What's that?
- Barriers people create to say that other people are
- different--
- Yeah--
- In essence?
- Or feeling that they're better because they're Catholic
- or they're better because they're Jews.
- I believe that these groups should be together in beliefs,
- because I tell you right now, I don't-- when somebody tells me
- that I'm prejudiced against Blacks, Black people,
- I say to them, I am not prejudiced.
- But you're taking my choice away.
- You're taking my right to choose a white man for a husband
- or lover because I like the way white people act.
- And I don't want to get into one of those feathery things
- and shake around in church and yell hallelujah.
- That's not my style.
- So that's the only reason I don't
- want to marry a Black man, because I
- don't want to be in a church screaming lungs out.
- I'm brought up to be more quiet and subdued
- in my group of people.
- So yes, I'll group.
- But I'll be darned if my father would ever allow us to say,
- don't marry a Jew or don't marry Catholic or don't marry Iranian
- or don't marry a Black.
- So you're not talking about differences being the problem.
- You're talking about judging one to be superior than another.
- That's right.
- I'm talking about superior brains
- that think they're better because they're Catholic or--
- show me Japantown.
- Is there a white person being hired?
- Their excuse is-- no Blacks, no whites.
- The excuse is because they don't speak Japanese.
- But if we wanted to speak Japanese all the way,
- then don't ask white people to buy your food in a restaurant.
- We'll go to Japan for that.
- Here, they should have both.
- They should mingle.
- But everybody seems to go in their little corners.
- And then they fight.
- It's just like, why is it going on what's going on in Bosnia
- and starvation and all that?
- Why?
- Why destroy houses, time, children?
- Why?
- Because they feel that they're better than this.
- They're better.
- Come on.
- When are we going to be 1993?
- But I believe that religions are breeders of prejudice.
- So how do you hold God then in respect?
- I have a God.
- Oh, yeah.
- My God is something unexplainable,
- something within me.
- And if I can get my family not to throw garbage out
- in the streets, not to murder people,
- to be kind to the neighbors and help them with the yard
- if the old lady can't do it, then I'm doing God's work.
- That is my God.
- It's me running my life right and me helping other people
- not to be prejudiced and make remarks like this clumsy girl
- that they were making fun of in the dressing room.
- I literally physically took the girl by the hand,
- told her I never want to see her again.
- She's back with apology.
- But I didn't expect to see her back.
- I was depending on the parent.
- Is the parent going to tell her, you're wrong, dear.
- and Nina is right?
- Or is she going to hate me?
- See?
- But I won in this case.
- Little by little, I do this.
- So you're saying you believe there is a God,
- but that the expression of God is not necessarily
- happened through for religious organizations?
- I believe that religions are a crutch, that people--
- if somebody tells me that Jesus helped me to do this
- and Jesus helped me to do that, I worry about it,
- because they did it, not Jesus.
- They did it.
- They cleaned up their act.
- They got off the dope.
- But believing in God to me is something--
- I would connect it more with chemistry
- than I would with the body.
- I'm not sure how you mean.
- Well, the air, the heat, the sun, the moisture, the God,
- that's all in there.
- But I don't connect it with a man or woman or Buddha.
- I think that God is within us.
- And we have to do the right job by each breathing person.
- And we have to learn.
- We've come a long way.
- And we have to become more civilized towards one another.
- And it's your duty when you get out of here
- to do everything you can on your way home
- to be courteous and polite.
- And it's my duty to do the same all day today.
- This is, to me, God.
- But the person that throws garbage out
- in the streets and the person that
- rapes people or beats on children,
- they're not doing God's work.
- They don't have God in them.
- Something is wrong.
- And that's where the psychiatrists come in, I guess.
- I believe psychologists can create no miracles.
- All they can do is open up a person about what's
- blocking their reasonable thinking
- and guide them into doing the right job so that--
- what do I always say to my girls?
- They say, well, I don't have any self-esteem, Yanina.
- I said, hey, self-esteem is nothing more than that you
- didn't lie to your mother.
- You didn't steal your girlfriend's sandwich.
- You didn't prostrate yourself.
- You did wash the cars daddy asked you to.
- And you go in the mirror and you look at yourself
- and you like yourself, because you did everything
- so nice today.
- But if you're not doing these things
- and you yell at your mother and you run away and lie
- and go to your girlfriend and smoke pot,
- you're going to have no self-esteem.
- This is more or less what I feel that self-esteem is.
- It's doing well self-respecting things.
- God?
- Yeah, I believe in God.
- But I cannot explain it, no more than you can explain love.
- I don't know how many times people ask me, you love Norman.
- What do you see in him?
- If I could explain it, I wouldn't love him.
- So that's a mystery, just like Nazis can't explain it to us.
- You don't need an explanation about Nazis
- because the murderers are going to murder.
- There's-- out of a billion people,
- there is a small amount of people that are movers
- and shakers, presidents of America and corporations.
- There is the group that is insane.
- There's the group that drinks.
- And there's the group that kills.
- And it's always in society.
- And there must be some reason for it.
- Maybe the reason is because if they didn't kill,
- we wouldn't appreciate the living, to live.
- And if somebody didn't hurt you, you
- wouldn't know what no pain is.
- I don't know what the reason is.
- I'm hoping someday I go someplace up or down
- and find out.
- But even if we knew when we die, it's no good,
- because if I knew that a week from yesterday,
- I would be gassed in Auschwitz, I
- don't think I would have tried and did what I did.
- I remember helping the whole barrack of us Jewish people--
- I say "us Jewish people"--
- to have a Hanukkah.
- Oh, but we don't have candles.
- Hey, we have rocks.
- Let's put rocks and one on top and make it like six or seven
- and pretend it's a candle.
- This was my way of thinking.
- But they didn't think that way, some of them.
- So how do you explain God?
- I think Jesus was a wonderful guy.
- He had some nice things to say.
- To some people, he was liked.
- Some people believe him.
- Some don't, just like some people believe me.
- Some don't.
- Does that answer your question somewhat?
- There's no answer, is there?
- I think there is no answer is the answer.
- I guess-- I think it's a very difficult question.
- And it's a philosophical question in some ways.
- Well, I had gone to an opening of a new newspaper office.
- And I have a Mormon student.
- And she is the star in the company.
- She's beautiful.
- The Catholic priest was there.
- And I said, you know Rachel Aspen?
- He says, oh, yeah.
- She's Mormon.
- And I said, she's the star of my company.
- And you've seen her dance?
- Oh, yeah, she's beautiful.
- But I wouldn't have them join our religious--
- different religious groups.
- I wouldn't have a Mormon on the board--
- prejudiced just like that.
- Boom.
- See?
- I said, coming from you, it's sad.
- I really told him.
- I said, coming from you to me, it's sad to hear you say that.
- What's wrong with Mormons?
- There you go.
- You see, little by little, the Nazis
- said Jews this, Jews that, Jews this.
- And pretty soon, everybody started hating Jews, right?
- So I'm not so sure about religions.
- Don't hate me for it.
- I don't hate you.
- I feel that I do God's work more than some
- of the people that go to church, because I see to it
- nobody's ever cruel to each other.
- And sometimes you can win.
- Sometimes, a parent will come to me and say,
- you leave my child alone.
- But all the time, it's our duty to stop a person
- in a small way like that.
- That's where it all begins to breed.
- Any more questions?
- Yeah.
- I kind of wanted to go back and finish up Auschwitz.
- We've talked about it a lot.
- So let me just ask a couple more questions here.
- Was it possible to obtain special privileges?
- Oh, of course.
- How did-- how?
- Well, I don't know.
- I didn't get any special privileges.
- But there were people that had bread and cigarettes
- and liquor.
- I don't know.
- Maybe the women slept with the Nazis.
- Maybe the men spied.
- Yes, that was common knowledge.
- Actually, it seemed like there was a pretty brisk trade
- in cigarettes.
- What's "a brisk trade in"?
- What does that mean?
- Oh, lots, lots of trading the cigarettes.
- Mm-hmm-- piece of meat, bread, butter, special things.
- Yeah, it went around a lot.
- But again, I couldn't explain to you what they did for it.
- Or how they got--
- Or how they got it there.
- But it was and plenty of it going on.
- How did inmates tend to treat each other in general?
- Angry sometimes, angry sometimes,
- just like sisters and brothers in the family fight.
- They get into fights.
- And then they apologize.
- And then they attack one because she said,
- you're going in the gas chamber.
- And they would say, well, that's not true, things like that--
- very normal as the people were out of their mind and starved,
- too starved to move or walk.
- It was pretty much like teenagers, like people.
- But they all come together on the end of the day.
- And if they had fights or anything, they work it out.
- But there were some people who disliked each other immensely
- and never stopped.
- Did certain groups tend to stick together and exclude
- other groups, like, say, the Hungarians
- and the Greeks and the Poles?
- Just--
- Well, I myself, I never saw this because I never asked anybody,
- are you a Hungarian Jew?
- Or are you a Polish Jew?
- And in many ways, I understood Hungarian, too.
- So I knew automatically.
- But it was--
- I don't remember seeing anybody group.
- Maybe they did.
- I don't know what the older people did.
- I would get out of the barracks and play with a cockroach
- or whatever with a stick.
- I never stick around that much with people--
- so always a loner, so to speak.
- Can't answer that.
- Do you recall musicians?
- Oh, yeah.
- What do you recall about them?
- Violin music, mostly strings and a little place where
- they always sat and played.
- Sometimes, they walk around the grounds.
- Were they official--
- I don't know.
- What's "official"?
- Official camp musicians, like if anyone tells them--
- Always the same ones till one or two
- would be chosen for someplace else-- maybe gas chamber.
- Then a new one would come in.
- So they were six people, eight people.
- That's the biggest.
- I never counted them, but it couldn't
- be more than that in a group.
- Nazis were always looking for musicians.
- What happened to people who got sick that you recall?
- Were you ever sick?
- Yeah.
- I had colds and infections, shivers.
- I don't know what sick-- we'd throw up a lot.
- Yeah.
- If the Nazis noticed, they just disappeared.
- If the Nazis-- you don't let anybody know you're sick.
- Sometimes, people got sick deliberately,
- saying they're sick to get to the dispensary
- or whatever because the better treatment.
- But the real sick ones, they disappear.
- They're finished.
- They're useless.
- Did you become friendly with very many people besides Gerta?
- No.
- And you managed to stay alive without having--
- Well, friendly-- I would say that on the contrary,
- I was very rejecting of people and tried
- to look for places to be alone.
- How easy was that?
- It's a matter of walking out the door and sitting on the outside
- and taking a stick and making a house
- and living room with a stick, like sketching.
- But most of the time, I didn't get
- involved in too much of their conversations.
- And they would push me around and say, oh, you're just a kid.
- Get out of here, things like that.
- But I said, I'm not a kid.
- Then they laugh.
- There were a couple other women that were nice.
- But I never showed my needs.
- I never showed my needs to anyone.
- I'd cry a lot.
- No, I didn't become--
- they come and they go.
- You don't get attached to anybody.
- They come and they go so fast--
- always people disappearing.
- Did you ever see any children in the camp besides yourself?
- Able-bodied.
- I don't know how old they were, but there
- were some little people around in there.
- But I didn't consider myself a child there, really.
- I didn't think of myself as a child.
- I just thought of myself as one of the people
- doing a job or whatever-- sleeping, eating.
- Once in a while, I'd see a child.
- Yeah.
- 10 years old and over, nothing--
- small ones were never around.
- They get rid of them--
- never, just the able-bodied people.
- About how old would be the little people you saw?
- It depends.
- You see, I wasn't that able-bodied.
- But I kind of looked stronger, looked more adult.
- I was more developed at 10 than most girls.
- And I guess I just was good enough to work.
- I don't know.
- But there was a Jewish girl, tall.
- When I asked her how old she was in 10,
- she was younger than I was.
- But she was tall and looked like a woman.
- So in there-- at that time, she was younger than I was.
- I don't remember what age she said she was.
- But I asked her.
- And I don't remember what she said.
- Yeah.
- Do you recall any escapes from camp?
- Oh, there were rumors all the time trying
- or people talking how to rebel.
- They couldn't make it beyond the fence.
- You just get electrocuted and hang on the fence.
- No-- always talking about it.
- Do you recall the camp canteen or scrip?
- Place to eat?
- In between the beds.
- No a camp canteen and scrip, which is basically--
- Long tables and lots of us sitting around eating?
- What was it?
- Was that--
- Long tables, wooden tables in a room.
- In Auschwitz?
- You mean in the barrack?
- Sometimes that.
- Sometimes we have it in between--
- here's the sleeping quarters.
- Next one is where you eat.
- Were you always in that little barrack
- that used to be a stable?
- Yeah, except for work.
- Yeah, I don't remember any other.
- But you were never moved to a different barrack.
- I never remember any walls, white or brick,
- or decent wood on the windows.
- No.
- And you would never moved to a different barrack?
- Oh, yeah.
- I was moved in the female area in there--
- never stayed long enough in one barrack.
- Gerta moved me.
- So I really can't recall much about it.
- But I don't remember being in good facilities.