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Oral history interview with Joseph Korn

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1994.A.0329 | RG Number: RG-50.039.0001

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    Oral history interview with Joseph Korn
    Transcript
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    From Peach State Public Radio, this is Georgia Journal.
    I'm James Hargrove.
    And I'm Anna Marie Hartman.
    Is the disintegration of the former Soviet Union
    creating new problems for Moscow?
    On today's program we'll talk with former Soviet official,
    Dr. Igor Khripunov.
    Last March, when I was there, people
    were not sure about the future.
    It was a tug-of-war between Yeltsin
    and the conservative parliament.
    Susanna Capelouto travels to Germany
    to explore the effects of the Holocaust
    on two Georgia men and their families.
    Dad, when he was 17, escaped from one of the ghettos.
    And that was the last time he saw his family.
    And we'll tell you about a new book
    by University of Georgia Professor Richard
    Westmacott that traces the history of gardens
    among Black families in the rural South.
    It's all just ahead on Georgia Journal.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    A few weeks ago, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC
    opened its doors to the public.
    Its mission is to teach future generations
    about the atrocities committed in Nazi Germany.
    The Holocaust took place in Europe almost 50 years ago.
    But it affected many lives around the world, some of them
    right here in Georgia.
    Reporter Susanna Capelouto accompanied an Augusta family
    to Europe and listened as they tried to understand
    the fate of their ancestors.
    [BELL CHIMES]
    [INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]
    [BELL CHIMES]
    Each year on April 11, hundreds of people
    from all over the world meet under the bell tower
    of the Buchenwald concentration camp,
    near the German city of Weimar.
    They are there to commemorate the day
    the prisoners and military forces
    liberated the camp, putting an end to the Nazi persecution
    of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, communists, socialists,
    Catholics, Protestants, men, women, and children.
    This April, Joseph Korn traveled from Augusta
    with his wife and teenage son to attend the Buchenwald ceremony
    and remember his father, Abram, who spent part of his youth
    as a prisoner at the camp.
    Dad, when he was 17, escaped from one of the ghettos,
    and that was the last time he saw his family.
    And he tried to help them by being
    outside the walls of the ghetto.
    And he just went to what was then an open ghetto.
    But soon he was placed in another one.
    Then fairly soon after that, he was
    put in a concentration camp.
    Then he was moved from one concentration camp
    to another for a period of about five years, four to five years
    in concentration camps.
    Abram Korn died in 1972.
    He was 49.
    In the years between Buchenwald and his death,
    Abram Korn found his way to Augusta,
    where he worked and raised a family.
    He spent a few years in Germany, where he got some education,
    put a little bit of order in his life.
    He met my mother, who was not Jewish.
    She was a German Lutheran, as a matter of fact.
    And they eventually married and came over here to America
    to find the virtual American dream.
    And they found it.
    Joseph Korn says his father rarely talked about his life
    in Buchenwald and in other camps,
    including Auschwitz, where he was imprisoned by the Nazis.
    He says he learned most about his father's early life
    from a book Abram Korn wrote in the late '60s.
    My parents' generation, the generation that
    survived the war, whether they were survivors of the Holocaust
    or just people that lived through it,
    they didn't want to talk about it.
    They found it difficult to talk about an era
    that they let happen.
    It was just like it was there.
    It was something that we really didn't talk about.
    But I had asked enough questions to know
    that dad was a part of that, but really
    didn't know much about it.
    When I really learned about his life
    was after he died, when I finally read his memoirs.
    And I began to feel closer to him than ever before.
    This is the chapter in my father's book
    that discusses liberation. (READING) Late that afternoon,
    as I was resting, my strength having
    been exhausted in fighting my foot infection,
    without nourishment or medical attention, I raised my head.
    I heard singing.
    Was it my imagination?
    Was I losing my mind too.
    The singing became louder and more distinct.
    The huge door, which was made to admit or enclose horses,
    now swung open.
    I believed my ears because my eyes saw
    a sight I shall never forget.
    I beheld a miracle.
    In front of me, in full view, were the German SS guards,
    their hands and bodies were bound,
    and our fellow prisoners were now pricking them and sticking
    and goading them with their own rifles.
    They were singing to us and for themselves.
    Behind the singing prisoners came the American soldiers.
    It was unbelievable, but it was true.
    I was human again.
    I reacted like a human being.
    I was touched.
    And the only thing I could do was to cry, and cry, and cry.
    I was not alone.
    Other men, who, like me, had withstood years of persecution,
    of being pushed around, of being treated worse than animals,
    of hunger, of deprivation beyond description, of whippings
    and psychological torture, all without shedding a tear,
    all without feeling pain, now began to feel again,
    to react again, to be human.
    We had been resurrected, brought back
    from a life, which was worse than death.
    And our liberators, the Americans,
    were there before our eyes.
    Among the US forces at Buchenwald
    that day in April 1945 was a young soldier from Georgia.
    Tom McIntyre was part of the Third Army's 737 tank
    battalion.
    And I was there, that there were concentration camps.
    And what I did, I was throwing away D bars.
    You know what D bars are?
    Candy.
    Chocolate bars about this long, about that wide,
    and about that thick--
    almost 100% pure chocolate.
    And I was throwing them out.
    And they said, well, you got to go get them back
    because if they eat them, it will kill them.
    Too much chocolate in their system--
    see, chocolate has got caffeine.
    And all that chocolate-- so we had
    to go take it away from people.
    Have you ever tried to take something
    from somebody that was--
    I mean, they fight you like a cat.
    But you had to take it away to get it.
    One of the prisoners Private McIntyre took the candy away
    from was the young Abram Korn.
    Years later, fate would throw them together again,
    this time in Augusta.
    Whenever I came back to the United States,
    I never in my wildest dream that I'd
    ever associate meeting, of being with anyone
    that I'd ever seen--
    that had seen me rather, from overseas.
    I was out at Jan's Lake one day.
    My wife and I and my kids were swimming.
    And I seen this man, he kept noticing me.
    And I got nervous.
    So I moved on down away from him.
    And so they moved there, on down there where I was at.
    And he kept looking at me, kept looking, kept looking.
    And I got nervous, and nervous, and nervous.
    So I moved on down a little farther.
    And finally he came up and approached me.
    And he asked me was I in a tank outfit.
    And he says, you're the [INAUDIBLE]..
    I said, yeah.
    And he says, Buchenwald.
    I said, yeah.
    He said, I was there.
    And I says, you were there?
    He says-- he said, y'all come through giving out D bars.
    Come to find out, he was in the same place
    I was, but I did not know him.
    And at Jan's Lake, so we became friends.
    Tom McIntyre is now in his 70s.
    He and his wife own a 22-room Inn
    in Pisgah Forest, North Carolina.
    [BIRDS CHIRPING]
    The peaceful serenity of his mountain retreat
    is a sharp contrast to what he saw as a 20-year-old soldier
    in Germany.
    I seen lampshades with tattoos on them.
    I seen all that.
    When you see children stacked up, that's bad.
    And it's things like that that you see, you don't want to see.
    Do you understand?
    And to me, I just upchuck, could just almost
    pass out when you look at it.
    And the stench, you'll never believe.
    There's only one stench like it.
    And if you ever want to smell it, you'll never forget it.
    And this will be the last time I'll ever talk about it.
    I won't ever talk about it again as long as I live.
    This is it.
    And it took a lot to bring it up.
    I mean, I'm not trying to repeat myself.
    Such reticence on part of the people who
    survived the war may be one of the reasons
    why a movement that claims the Holocaust never happened
    is growing in the US and in Europe.
    That idea is horrifying to people
    like Tom McIntyre and the Korn family,
    especially Abram Korn's 13-year-old grandson, Jason.
    I have shared the story of my grandfather with some classes,
    like in language arts or social studies,
    about when we have to do reports about our relatives.
    I usually tell a story about him.
    And we haven't really learned much about Nazis
    in Germany and all the concentration camps.
    But we might learn about them in World History, when
    I get to that book in school.
    Jason never knew his grandfather Abram.
    Most of what he knows of his grandfather's life
    he learned from reading the book.
    I feel that I know him better because I know a little more
    about his past.
    And it makes me think how fortunate I
    am that I don't have to live through any terrible things,
    such as the concentration camps that he was sent to.
    And I just feel a little closer to knowing him.
    Could you read us something out of your grandfather's book?
    Yes.
    This is chapter 7 of my grandfather's book.
    And the name of the book is Fate.
    And I'm starting a little into the chapter,
    where my grandfather has to leave his family.
    And now I'll begin.
    (READING) My heart broke when the moment
    of departure and separation from my parents and sisters neared.
    I ran to meet the outstretched arms of my mother.
    She held onto me with a grip that expressed volumes.
    It said, "go."
    It said, "stay."
    It said, "how sad."
    It said how much I love you, now and forever.
    It said, "God, please watch over my son."
    It said the unspeakable.
    It spoke of a mother's love for her only son.
    My sisters cried and held onto me
    as if to hold on to the memory of this moment and to life.
    My father, who had always been as my strength, as my shield
    and by my side, waited until last to come over.
    His rugged face and simple short mustache
    and head of premature gray born of pain.
    My father removed his pinched spectacles,
    fell on my shoulder, hugged me with all of his might,
    and then abruptly let me go.
    "Don't ever forget us.
    Don't ever forget your identity and who you are
    and what our religion teaches us.
    Watch yourself, and may The Eternal, who watches
    over all of us, mercifully protect you."
    I had to summon all of my strength
    in order to make my feet take me away and be on my way.
    I was never to see my family again.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    Abram Korn's autobiography, Fate,
    ends when he arrives in Augusta.
    His son Joseph is currently editing the work.
    He has plans to publish it next year.
    For Georgia Journal, I'm Susanna Capelouto.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    With us now in the studio is Sylvia Wygoda.
    She is the president of the Georgia Holocaust Memorial
    Council.
    Thanks for coming today.
    I want to begin by my asking you,
    what is the mission of the council?
    The mission of the council is to provide Holocaust education
    to the community at large and to the schools,
    to the young children.
    So this commission has been functioning for two years now.
    It is established through the governor's office
    but has no funding.
    There's no government funding whatsoever,
    or any funding except private contributions.
    I understand that you are--
    well, you and I have talked before.
    And it's quite shocking that this part of history
    really can't be found in any of the textbooks in any
    of the classes, well not only in the rest of the country,
    but especially here in Georgia.
    It's very hard to conceive that children grow up
    and they read social studies texts or world history texts,
    and they do read about World War II with no mention
    of the Holocaust.
    If children grow up and have no mention of it in a textbook,
    or their teachers don't tell them,
    their families have no reason to mention that occurrence,
    why should they believe that it happened?
    Why shouldn't they believe the neo-Nazis and the skinheads,
    who are out there with their revisionist information,
    saying it was a hoax, it never happened.
    Well, there's nothing to make them feel otherwise.
    So the commission has developed a project.
    And this is with the cooperation of the State Department
    of Education, several other organizations in the Atlanta
    and the Georgia community, the Anti-Defamation League,
    many other organizations, the Atlanta Interfaith
    Broadcasters, Christian ministers.
    And they are providing services to produce a video documentary,
    an accurate video documentary of the history of the Holocaust
    from a Georgia perspective.
    The people who will be interviewed
    will be survivors of the Holocaust, men and women who
    were in concentration camps or who were partisans hiding out,
    resistance fighters.
    The other segment will be liberators,
    many American soldiers, Christian soldiers who
    came into the camps, who opened the camps,
    liberated them, and found what had happened,
    people who can testify to the fact that it did happen.
    We are securing the funds for that
    now through the William S. Scott Fund for Holocaust Education.
    Well, it sounds like you have a lot on your plate.
    Are you looking for help in terms of, perhaps,
    people to come to you at their stories,
    perhaps for the documentary, maybe people
    who would like to contribute or people who
    would like to help in some way.
    Is there a number they can call just to get in touch with you?
    That would be wonderful.
    They can call the governor's office at the State Capitol
    and ask for the Commission's Department.
    And they will be able to reach us.
    They will be given an address to write.
    And we would be more than happy to hear from anyone
    who would like to assist.
    We anticipate having the historical documentary
    finished by December.
    And the best part is it will be disseminated to every school
    system in the state of Georgia.
    So that's a start.
    Public and private.
    What will Georgians do with this information,
    particularly children, something that happened a long time ago.
    And we know that family members are
    quite reticent about bringing it up,
    which is why this movement to admit that it's happened is--
    admit that it didn't happen--
    Yes, it's been very difficult for people
    who lived through this to discuss it,
    even with their own families.
    So we're trying to help them tell the story.
    And if we don't, if children don't hear this, they--
    the chances that this will happen again are great.
    Well, that's what I wanted to ask you.
    You, being a child of a survivor, perhaps
    the next generation, your children, if they knew more,
    do you think that it would decrease
    the amount of hate crimes and help with racism a little bit.
    I certainly hope so because this is an example
    of the end product of hate.
    When one instance is allowed to go on,
    many people who are just as guilty as the Nazis
    were the people who stood by and did nothing.
    They knew about it, and they did nothing to help someone.
    Children, we hope, will get a lesson.
    This video documentary also is a lesson on values.
    What do you do if you're on the playground
    and a bully starts pushing someone around?
    Do you turn your back?
    Do you help them?
    What do you do?
    That is a way to bring this down to a value judgment,
    for people to see the consequences of their choices
    in life on a grand scale, what can happen, what can hatred do.
    Thanks for being here.
    Thank you so much for having me.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    Coming up on Georgia Journal, Melissa Hampton
    travels to Moscow with the Friendship Force
    and shares with us some memories of her trip to this struggling
    city.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    University of Georgia professor, Richard Westmacott,
    is breaking new ground in the research
    of African-American culture.
    Earlier this year, he published an unprecedented book
    that traces the development of gardening among Black families
    since slavery.
    The book, African-American Gardens and Yards
    in the Rural South, is the first of its kind in the US.
    It's an exploration of the history
    and traditions of African-American families,
    as well as their spiritual beliefs and family values
    as seen through gardening.
    Peach State's Rob Hilton spoke with Westmacott
    about his new book and met with several gardeners.
    He has this report.
    [ENGINE CRANKING]
    At a small farmhouse just east of Athens,
    69-year-old Buddy Burgess cranks the engine of his 1945 tractor.
    [ENGINE STARTS]
    He says it's time to plow his 10-acre farm
    for spring planting.
    But the ground is too wet.
    Until there's a break in the rainy weather,
    he'll have to wait.
    But he stands beside a tiny shed and looks out over his land,
    a rich expanse of Georgia soil framed by long rows of trees.
    For nearly 20 years he's farmed the property entirely
    by himself.
    A gray sky hangs overhead as Buddy points
    to the empty fields and describes his plans
    for the new season.
    I'll tell you what.
    It's a beautiful sight when I get it in.
    I'm going to get my tractor, till all this land up,
    start to planting corn, peas, squash, tomatoes.
    Sometime I go down and don't carry nothing.
    I come back to the house and get me a bucket.
    I got several five-gallon buckets.
    I start picking tomatoes, start picking tomatoes,
    start picking beans, start cropping okra, just--
    you know, it's just really fun.
    Buddy grabs a large white bucket that's sitting in his yard
    and walks to what remains from last year's garden.
    There isn't much left, just some collards
    and a short row of okra that's grown dry and brittle.
    But he begins to pull the okra pods from their stems
    and drops them in the bucket.
    He wants to use the seeds for this season's planting.
    That's what you call "okry."
    Yes sir, some of the best want to eat, brother.
    Yes, sir.
    How many plants do you get from just one of those seed pods
    there?
    Oh, my Lord.
    I'm just glad when somebody else might want some seeds.
    One of these here will plant a whole row.
    Buddy is just one of nearly 50 rural Southern gardeners
    featured in Professor Richard Westmacott's new book.
    Like many, he's been farming all his life.
    He and his wife Rosina live almost entirely
    on what they grow each year.
    They rarely eat meat and store vegetables in large freezers
    to get them through the winter months.
    Tucked into a corner of the garden
    is Buddy and Rosina's home.
    It's a small, one-story white house, neatly kept.
    In the front yard are a few scattered shrubs and flowers.
    Inside Buddy sits in the living room
    and remembers his father, who was a sharecropper.
    He says he learned how to garden from his parents
    and still practices traditions that have been handed down
    for generations.
    Now, my dad always told me, when you plant a white potato, when
    you cut it turn it down.
    Turn the cut part down to the ground.
    And he said it will come up a heap quicker.
    And he's right about that.
    Another thing, he said always, anything
    that makes in the ground, under the Earth,
    set it out dark nights.
    He said if set it out light night, light crop.
    That's a fact.
    Corn, you got three days.
    You can plant it three days before the full moon or three
    days after, and it'll grow just about like that.
    But if you plant is on the growing of the moon,
    that corn will grow so tall and the ears
    will be so high you can't hardly reach them.
    Now you can try that.
    That'll work.
    That ain't no superstition.
    That's actual fact.
    The moon has something-- it controls it.
    Buddy and the other gardeners in Westmacott's book
    represent a way of life that was once commonplace in the South.
    During the time of slavery, gardens
    were the only thing many African-Americans had.
    Because of this, Black families often
    incorporated gardening into every aspect of their lives.
    They used the land to teach children
    long-held values, like hard work, dedication, and respect
    for the environment.
    Through gardening, many young African-Americans
    learned about their heritage and spiritual beliefs.
    Despite this, Professor Westmacott
    says gardens are an often overlooked and forgotten part
    of African-American culture.
    I think one can't fail to be impressed by the impact
    that African-Americans have had on the arts, the performing
    arts-- music, and the decorative arts-- painting, sculpture,
    and so on.
    And yet, in my own field, in garden design,
    designers didn't seem to look to African-American yards
    for any inspiration.
    In fact, you know, I even discerned rather the opposite,
    a certain sort of disdain, that these places weren't
    really worth looking at.
    Through his studies, Westmacott also
    learned that gardens reveal how many African-American families
    structure their lives, manage their resources,
    and cared for each other.
    For example, he says many gardeners and farmers
    raised food in order to provide security as well as build
    relationships with others.
    Well, the vegetable garden was quite clearly
    seen as a real symbol of commitment to the community.
    For instance, in the north of Oglethorpe County,
    there are two families in the Vesta community.
    Now, they clearly sell some produce and so on.
    But a lot of what they grow they give away.
    I think the garden is seen as a sign of commitment,
    not only to community but also to family.
    [BIRDS CHIRPING]
    In a quiet Athens neighborhood stands a small one-story house
    surrounded by colorful flowers, groomed hedges,
    and an assortment of leafy green plants.
    A short concrete path weaves its way
    through the garden to the home of 71-year-old Eloise Cook.
    Mrs. Cook has lived in Athens all her life
    and was an inspiration for Westmacott's new book.
    Today she keeps only a flower garden.
    But when she was growing up, Mrs. Cook
    helped her mother raise vegetables.
    She describes her childhood as a simple time,
    when people used their gardens and yards to help each other.
    My mother was a gardener.
    She used to have a good garden because at that time,
    we used the compost that come from the chickens
    and from the cow.
    And sometimes she would have so many string beans
    she would just give a big mess to the neighbors.
    And my mother was the type of person, when we killed our hog,
    she would share messes of meat with the neighbors.
    And my dad used to tell her, "we don't have nothing
    to make no sausage out of.
    You're going to give it all away."
    She said, "I know what I'm doing."
    [LAUGHS] And so she believed in sharing.
    Like Buddy Burgess and other gardeners,
    Mrs. Cook has preserved techniques and traditions that
    were taught by her parents.
    She talks about growing on the full moon and following signs
    and the Farmer's Almanac.
    But Mrs. Cook most remembers singing songs with her mother
    while they worked together in the garden and around the home.
    Today she lives right across the street
    from the house she was born in, the same house
    where her parents raised vegetables and livestock.
    Now when Mrs. Cook works in her garden,
    she can see her childhood home, remember her mother, and sing.
    And now, when I sing these old-time songs,
    sometime I know my mother is nowhere around,
    but look like I can just feel the vision of her helping me
    out with this song.
    You know?
    And one of her favorite songs was
    "Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray."
    (SINGING) Well, I couldn't hear nobody pray.
    Couldn't hear nobody pray.
    I was way down yonder by myself, and I
    couldn't hear nobody pray.
    Today there aren't many people left
    who keep gardens and yards like those
    featured in Westmacott's book.
    Most African-Americans have left rural communities and family
    farms to start new lives in the city.
    Westmacott says changing times and modern conveniences
    have made it hard for people to maintain gardens and preserve
    traditions.
    Well, I think most of the traditions that are being lost
    are being lost for very practical reasons.
    Things like eggs-- no way can you
    raise eggs at the same price that you
    can buy them in the store.
    I think it's sad that many of these changes are coming about.
    But I think it's simply a reflection of younger families
    don't have the time to do it.
    They may not have the need or the necessity
    to raise food at home, as they used to.
    And it's purely a practical consideration.
    While others continue their mass consumption
    of prefab supermarket foods, silk ferns,
    and plastic flowers, gardeners like Buddy Burgess
    and Eloise Cook will still be working the land.
    For them, gardening is almost a religious experience.
    Mrs. Cook says her yard is like a spiritual sanctuary.
    Now, I can be feeling bad, and I go out dozing
    and start working in the yard.
    I either start feeling better or just forget
    about how I'm feeling, one.
    But it really does help me.
    Now I begin to get arthritis in my hand.
    I resist against the pains, other words.
    It hurts, but I just go ahead and resist against them
    because I feel like if I don't do that, then it's
    just going to cripple me more and more
    at a more earlier time.
    I know one day, if I live long enough,
    I'm probably going to really have to give into it
    and give up.
    But I'm going to fight it for as long as I can.
    [LAUGHS]
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    From Peach State Public Radio, this is Georgia Journal.
    I'm James [? Hargrove. ?]
    And I'm Anna Marie Hartman.
    Is the disintegration of the former Soviet Union
    creating new problems for Moscow?
    On today's program, we'll talk with former Soviet official,
    Dr. Igor Khripunov.
    Last March when I was there, people
    were not sure about the future.
    It was a tug of war between Yeltsin
    and the conservative parliament.
    Susanna Capelouto travels to Germany
    to explore the effects of the Holocaust
    on two Georgian men and their families.
    Dad, when he was 17, escaped from one of the ghettos.
    And that was the last time he saw his family.
    And we'll tell you about a new book
    by University of Georgia professor Richard
    Westmacott that traces the history of gardens
    among Black families in the rural South.
    It's all just ahead on Georgia Journal.
    A few weeks ago, the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC
    opened its doors to the public.
    Its mission is to teach future generations
    about the atrocities committed in Nazi Germany.
    The Holocaust took place in Europe almost 50 years ago.
    But it affected many lives around the world, some of them
    right here in Georgia.
    Reporter Susanna Capelouto accompanied an Augusta family
    to Europe, and listened as they tried to understand
    the fate of their ancestors.
    Each year, on April 11th, hundreds
    of people from all over the world
    meet under the bell tower of the Buchenwald concentration camp,
    near the German city of Weimar.
    They are there to commemorate the day
    the prisoners and military forces
    liberated the camp, putting an end to the Nazi persecution
    of thousands of Jews, gypsies, communists, socialists,
    Catholics, Protestants, men, women, and children.
    This April, Joseph Korn traveled from Augusta
    with his wife and teenage son to attend the Buchenwald ceremony,
    and remember his father, Abraham,
    who spent part of his youth as a prisoner at the camp.
    Dad, when he was 17, escaped from one of the ghettos.
    And that was the last time he saw his family.
    And he tried to help them by being
    outside the walls of the ghetto, and he just
    went to what was then an open ghetto.
    But soon, he was placed in another one.
    And fairly soon after that, he was
    put in a concentration camp.
    Then, he was moved from one concentration camp
    to another for a period of about five years, four to five years
    in concentration camps.
    Abraham Korn died in 1972.
    He was 49.
    In the years between Buchenwald and his death,
    Abraham Korn found his way to Augusta,
    where he worked and raised a family.
    He spent a few years in Germany, where he got some education,
    put a little bit of order in his life.
    He met my mother, who was not Jewish-- she
    was a German Lutheran, as a matter of fact.
    And they, eventually, married, and came over here to America
    to find the virtual American dream.
    And they found it.
    Joseph Korn says his father rarely talked about his life
    in Buchenwald, and in other camps,
    including Auschwitz, where he was imprisoned by the Nazis.
    He says, he learned most about his father's early life
    from a book Abraham Korn wrote in the late '60s.
    My parents' generation, the generation that survived
    the war-- whether they were survivors of the Holocaust,
    or just people that lived through it--
    they didn't want to talk about it.
    They found it difficult to talk about an era
    that they let happen.
    It was just like it was there.
    It was something that we really didn't talk about,
    but I had asked enough questions to know
    that dad was a part of that.
    But really didn't know much about it.
    When I really learned about his life
    was after he died, when I finally read his memoirs.
    And I began to feel closer to him than ever before.
    This is a chapter in my father's book
    that discusses the liberation.
    Late that afternoon, as I was resting,
    my strength having been exhausted in fighting my foot
    infection, without nourishment or medical attention,
    I raised my head.
    I heard singing.
    Was it my imagination?
    Was I losing my mind, too?
    The singing became louder and more distinct.
    The huge door, which was made to admit or enclose horses,
    now swung open.
    I believe my ears-- because my eyes saw
    a sight I shall never forget.
    I beheld a miracle.
    In front of me, in full view, were the German SS guards,
    their hands and bodies were bound,
    and our fellow prisoners were now pricking them and sticking,
    and goading them with their own rifles.
    They were singing to us, and for themselves.
    Behind the singing prisoners came the American soldiers.
    It was unbelievable.
    But it was true.
    I was human again.
    I reacted like a human being.
    I was touched.
    And the only thing I could do was to cry, and cry, and cry.
    I was not alone.
    Other men who, like me, had withstood years of persecution,
    of being pushed around, of being treated worse
    than animals, of hunger, of deprivation,
    beyond description, of whippings and psychological torture,
    all without shedding a tear, all without feeling pain,
    now began to feel again, to react again, to be human.
    We had been resurrected-- brought back
    from a life which was worse than death.
    And our liberators, the Americans,
    were there before our eyes.
    Among the US forces at Buchenwald
    that day in April 1945 was a young soldier from Georgia.
    Tom McIntyre was part of the Third Army's 737 tank
    battalion.
    And it was there that there were concentration camps.
    And what I did, I was throwing away D-bars.
    You know what D-bars are?
    Candy, chocolate bars about this long, about that wide,
    about that thick.
    Almost 100% pure chocolate.
    And I was throwing them out.
    And they said, we got to go get them back,
    because if they eat them, it will kill them.
    Too much chocolate in their system--
    see, chocolate has got caffeine in all that chocolate.
    So we had to go take it away from people.
    Have you ever tried to take something from somebody was--
    I mean, they fight you like a cat.
    But you had to take it away to get it.
    One of the prisoners Private McIntyre took the candy away
    from, was the young Abraham Korn.
    Years later, fate would throw them together again.
    This time, in Augusta.
    When I came back to the United States,
    I never in my wildest dream that I'd ever associate-- meeting--
    of being with anyone that I'd ever seen--
    that had seen me, rather, from overseas.
    I was out of John's Lake one day, my wife and I, and my kids
    swimming.
    And I seen this man--
    he kept noticing me.
    And I got nervous.
    So I moved on down, away from him.
    So they moved there--
    they go down there where I was at.
    And he kept looking at me, kept looking, kept looking.
    And I got nervous and nervous and nervous.
    So I moved on down a little farther.
    And finally, he came up and approached me.
    And he asked me, was I in a tank outfit?
    And he says, you're the Panzer?
    I said, yeah.
    And he says, Buchenwald.
    I said, yeah.
    He said, I was there.
    I says, you were there?
    He says-- I said, you all come through giving out D-bars.
    Come to find out, he was in the same place
    I was, but I did not know him.
    And at John's Lake, so we became friends.
    Tom McIntyre is now in his 70s.
    He and his wife own a 22-room inn
    in Pisgah Forest, North Carolina.
    The peaceful serenity of his mountain retreat
    is a sharp contrast to what he saw as a 20-year-old soldier
    in Germany.
    I seen lampshades with tattoos on.
    I seen all that.
    When you see children stacked up, that's bad.
    And it's things like that, that you see, you don't want to see.
    You understand?
    And it, to me, I just up-chuck.
    Could just almost pass out when you look at it.
    And the stench, you'll never believe.
    There's only one stench like it-- if you ever once smell it,
    you'll never forget it.
    And this will be the last time I'll ever talk about it.
    I will never talk about it again, as long as I live.
    This is it.
    And it took a lot to bring it up.
    I mean, I'm not trying to repeat myself.
    Such reticence on part of the people who
    survived the war may be one of the reasons
    why a movement that claims the Holocaust never happened
    is growing in the US and in Europe.
    That idea is horrifying to people
    like Tom McIntyre and the Korn family,
    especially, Abraham Korn's 13-year-old grandson, Jason.
    I have shared the story of my grandfather with some classes,
    like in language arts, or social studies,
    about when we have to do reports about our relatives.
    I usually tell a story about him.
    And we haven't really learned much about Nazis and Germany,
    and all the concentration camps, but we
    might learn about them in world history
    when I get to that book in school.
    Jason never knew his grandfather, Abraham.
    Most of what he knows of his grandfather's life,
    he learned from reading the book.
    I feel that I know him better, because I know a little more
    about his past.
    And it makes me think how fortunate I
    am that I don't have to live through any terrible things,
    such as the concentration camps that he was was sent to.
    And I just feel a little closer to knowing him.
    Could you read us something out of your grandfather's book?
    Yes.
    This is chapter seven of my grandfather's book,
    and the name of the book is Fate.
    And I'm starting a little into the chapter
    where my grandfather has to leave his family.
    And now, I'll begin.
    My heart broke when the moment of departure and separation
    from my parents and sisters neared.
    I ran to meet the outstretched arms of my mother.
    She held on to me with a grip that expressed volumes.
    It said, go.
    It said, stay.
    It said, how sad.
    It said, how much I love you now and forever.
    It said, God, please watch over my son.
    It said the unspeakable.
    It spoke of a mother's love for her only son.
    My sisters cried and held on to me, as if
    to hold on to the memory of this moment and to life.
    My father, who had always been as my strength, as my shield
    and by my side, waited until last to come over.
    His rugged face and simple, short mustache,
    and head of premature gray, born of pain.
    My father removed his pinched spectacles,
    fell on my shoulder, hugged me with all of his might.
    And then, abruptly, let me go.
    Don't ever forget us.
    Don't ever forget your identity, and who you are,
    and what our religion teaches us.
    Watch yourself, and may the eternal, who watches
    over all of us, mercifully protect you.
    I had to summon all of my strength
    in order to make my feet take me away and be on my way.
    I was never to see my family again.
    Abraham Korn's autobiography, Fate,
    ends when he arrives in Augusta.
    His son, Joseph, is currently editing the work.
    He has plans to publish it next year.
    For Georgia Journal, I'm Susanna Capelouto.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    With us now in the studio is Sylvia Wygoda.
    She is the president of the Georgia Holocaust Memorial
    Council.
    Thanks for coming today.
    I want to begin by my asking you,
    what is the mission of the council?
    The mission of the council is to provide Holocaust education
    to the community at large, and to the schools--
    to the young children.
    So this commission has been functioning for two years now.
    It is established through the governor's office,
    but has no funding.
    There's no government funding whatsoever, or any funding,
    except private contributions.
    I understand that you are--
    well, you and I have talked before,
    and it's quite shocking that this part of history
    really can't be found in any of the textbooks in any
    of the classes.
    Well, not only in the rest of the country,
    but especially here in Georgia.
    It's very hard to conceive that children grow up,
    and they read social studies texts, or world history texts,
    and they do read about World War II,
    with no mention of the Holocaust.
    If children grow up, and have no mention of it in a textbook,
    or their teachers don't tell them,
    their families have no reason to mention that occurrence,
    why should they believe that it happened?
    Why shouldn't they believe the neo-Nazis and the skinheads,
    who are out there with their revisionist information,
    saying it was a hoax, it never happened?
    Well, there's nothing to make them feel otherwise.
    So the commission has developed a project,
    and this is with the cooperation of the State Department
    of Education, several other organizations in the Atlanta
    and the Georgia community, the Anti-Defamation League--
    many other organizations, the Atlanta Interfaith
    Broadcasters, Christian Ministers,
    and they are providing services to produce a video
    documentary-- an accurate video documentary--
    of the history of the Holocaust from a Georgia perspective.
    The people who will be interviewed
    will be survivors of the Holocaust.
    Men and women who were in concentration camps,
    or who were partisans hiding out--
    resistance fighters.
    The other segment will be liberators-- many American
    soldiers, Christian soldiers, who
    came into the camps, who opened the camps,
    liberated them, and found what had happened.
    People who can testify to the fact that it did happen.
    We are securing the funds for that
    now through the William S. Scott Fund for Holocaust Education.
    Well, it sounds like you have a lot on your plate.
    Are you looking for help in terms of, perhaps,
    people to come with you--
    come to you with their stories, perhaps
    for the documentary, maybe people
    who would like to contribute, or people who
    would like to help in some way?
    Is there a number they can call, just to get in touch with you?
    That would be wonderful.
    They can call the governor's office, at the State Capitol,
    and ask for the commissions department.
    And they will be able to reach us.
    They will be given an address to write,
    and we would be more than happy to hear from anyone
    who would like to assist.
    We anticipate having the historical documentary
    finished by December.
    And the best part is, it will be disseminated to every school
    system in the state of Georgia.
    So that's a start.
    Public and private.
    What will Georgians do with this information?
    Particularly children?
    Something that happened a long time ago.
    And we know that family members are quite
    reticent about bringing it up.
    [AUDIO DROP]
    --admit that it didn't happen.
    It's been very difficult for people
    who lived through this to discuss it,
    even with their own families.
    So we're trying to help them tell the story.
    And if we don't-- if children don't hear this,
    the chances that this will happen again are great.
    Well, that's what I wanted to ask you--
    you're being a child of a survivor, perhaps
    the next generation, your children, if they knew more,
    do you think that it would decrease
    in the amount of hate crimes?
    And help with racism?
    I certainly hope so.
    Because this is an example of the end product of hate.
    When one instance is allowed to go on--
    many people who are just as guilty as the Nazis
    were the people who stood by and did nothing.
    They knew about it, and they did nothing to help someone.
    Children, we hope, will get a lesson--
    this video documentary also is a lesson on values.
    What do you do if you're on the playground
    and a bully starts pushing someone around?
    Do you turn your back?
    Do you help them?
    What do you do?
    That is a way to bring this down to a value judgment,
    for people to see the consequences of their choices
    in life on a grand scale, what can happen, what can hatred do.
    Thanks for being here.
    Thank you so much for having me.
    Coming up on Georgia Journal, Melissa Hampton
    travels to Moscow with the Friendship Force,
    and shares with us some memories of her trip to this struggling
    city.
    [MUSIC PLAYING]
    University of Georgia Professor Richard Westmacott
    is breaking new ground in the research
    of African-American culture.
    Earlier this year, he published an unprecedented book
    that traces the development of gardening among Black families
    since slavery.
    The book, African-American Gardens and Yards
    in the Rural South is the first of its kind in the US.
    It's an exploration of the history
    and traditions of African-American families,
    as well as their spiritual beliefs and family values,
    as seen through gardening.
    Peach State's Rob Hilton spoke with Westmacott
    about his new book, and met with several gardeners.
    He has this report.
    [ENGINE SOUNDS]
    At a small farmhouse just east of Athens,
    69-year-old Buddy Burgess cranks the engine of his 1945 tractor.
    He says, it's time to plow his 10-acre farm for spring
    planting, but the ground is too wet.
    Until there's a break in the rainy weather,
    he'll have to wait.
    Buddy stands beside a tiny shed and looks out over his land--
    a rich expanse of Georgia soil framed by long rows of trees.
    For nearly 20 years, he's farmed the property entirely
    by himself.
    A sky hangs overhead, as Buddy points to the empty fields
    and--

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Note- this recording includes other audio not related to the Joseph Korn oral history.
    Interviewee
    Joseph Korn
    Date
    interview:  1993 June

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    2 sound cassettes (60 min.).

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Geographic Name
    Augusta (Ga.)

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The interview with Joseph Korn was produced by Peach State Public Radio. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the tapes of the interview on August 5, 1994.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:08:41
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn509273

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