Oral history interview with Anton Berkovits
Transcript
- Today is January 2, 1990.
- I'm here to interview Mr. Anton Berkovits who's
- a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust.
- I'm doing this under the auspices
- of the Holocaust Documentation and Education
- Center, Incorporated.
- The purpose of this interview is to add
- to the oral history of the Holocaust,
- so that through this living memorial
- future generations will know what happened.
- With this knowledge we hope to prevent any such occurrence
- in the future.
- All right, Mr. Berkovitz, I'd like
- to ask you where you were born and the date of your birth.
- I was born in Maramures Sighet 1913, September 24.
- You said Maramures Sighet.
- Can you spell that, please?
- I'll write it down for you, easier than spelling it.
- Well, would you spell it out while you write it?
- M-A-R-A-M-U-R-E-S Sighet, S-I-G-H-E-T. Sighet.
- OK.
- And that Maramures is the province actually?
- Yeah, Maramures is the province.
- Sighet is the capital of Maramures.
- About how big was the population of Sighet?
- Sighet was about 24,000, 28,000.
- 28,000.
- 28,000?
- Yeah.
- What was the percentage of Jews that lived in Sighet?
- I would say it was about 40% Jewish.
- And what was the percentage of Jews?
- It was about 40%.
- 40%.
- Yeah.
- It was mostly Orthodox Jewish community?
- Yeah.
- OK, how did-- and this was in Romania?
- Yeah, it was Romania then.
- At that time.
- Well, when you were born it was Romania.
- When I was born in Romania.
- In 1940 it when--
- Hitler gave it to Hungary.
- In 1940 it was Hungary until after the war.
- So it was originally Austro-Hungarian empire?
- Austro-Hungarian.
- Yeah.
- OK.
- Was there any industry in the town,
- or how did most people earn their living?
- It was a fairly small, I mean light industry,
- like men's clothings.
- And there is cabinet makers.
- And it's a very light.
- Artisans.
- Yeah.
- And it was most of them was business.
- Small business.
- Small business.
- This was the way the Jews made their living?
- Yeah.
- Well, was there any other, aside from the way
- Jewish people made their living, was there
- any other industry in the town that where
- Jews were not involved?
- I don't think so.
- There was a big cardboard factory.
- It was owned by Jews.
- It was under little small factories.
- Most of them it was Jewish owned.
- Mostly small Jewish owned?
- Yeah.
- OK.
- I'd like to ask you about your family.
- How many children were there in your family?
- Three.
- Two sisters and me.
- Were you oldest, youngest, in the middle?
- I was the youngest.
- Youngest?
- Yeah.
- OK.
- And how your father make his living?
- He was a butcher.
- He had a butcher shop.
- A kosher butcher shop.
- He died when I was young.
- My father passed away, I was 16 or 17 years old.
- How did your mother survive that?
- I supported the family.
- He died when you were how old?
- 16.
- 16.
- So this brings you--
- you were able to work then?
- Yeah.
- And what kind of work did you do then?
- I did.
- I went to school.
- And worked part time in a grocery store.
- From there I knew Elie Wiesel.
- I used to go from the front stores to the others.
- They had a grocery store.
- Sometimes they need something borrowed from one store
- to the other.
- I mean they didn't buy it, until they got their shipments in.
- And from there I know, I used to come to their house.
- He was a lot younger than you.
- Oh, he was a little kid.
- He was a little kid.
- He was a little kid.
- I mean he was--
- I don't know.
- He was about four or five, or six years old.
- But his father was a grocer?
- Yeah, his father was a grocer, and his uncle
- was there working in the store with his mother.
- How far did you go in school, since you
- had to start work early?
- Well, I went I made seven classes.
- Seven years.
- Seven years.
- And then after I went to [NON-ENGLISH],,
- like a night school, working, traveling.
- I go twice a week.
- Was that any for any specialized education, or just continued--
- For most of them for continuation of the education,
- I mean.
- I liked very mathematics.
- Was this in a Jewish school or was that in a Romanian school?
- I went in a Romanian school.
- Besides this, I went to cheder until I was 16 years old.
- I mean I started when I was three years old.
- I went to cheder.
- But it was seven years in the Romanian school.
- Yeah.
- And that was how you spoke Romanian, of course.
- Yeah.
- We went in the morning from 6 o'clock in the morning
- till 8 o'clock, we went to cheder.
- 8 o'clock till 2 o'clock we went to school.
- And from 2 o'clock till 8 o'clock in the evening,
- we went to cheder again.
- Pretty busy young kids, then?
- Yeah.
- Then I went to the yeshiva.
- And the fact that I learned together
- with now Moshe Teitelbaum.
- He is now the Satmar rabbi in New York.
- He was in Sighet.
- I learned with him together by example.
- You were both young [NON-ENGLISH] together.
- Yeah.
- Let me ask you something.
- In the town grew up in, Sighet, what
- was the attitude towards Jews?
- How did Jews fare in that town?
- It was a mixed feelings.
- It was some of them very anti-Semitic,
- very anti-Semitic.
- It he was some of them, they was working with the Jews together,
- and he was not showing it.
- It was anti-Semitic, in general.
- Well, were there any incidents of open antisemitism
- that you remember?
- Oh, yeah.
- Can you tell me about it?
- Sure, it was.
- I mean it was in New Year's Eve, we went to the river
- with the rabbi.
- We had a rabbi who lived right in our street called
- [NON-ENGLISH] rabbi.
- And we went there to Tashlich.
- And when we come back, they stoned us.
- Was this every year or just--
- So coincidental, I mean it was one time.
- The second time I mean we had already
- protection, young Jewish guys, well equipped,
- and they was going with a group and protecting everyone.
- And it's and you heard it all the time.
- I mean Jewish and Hungarians, they called him stinking Jew.
- We heard it all the time.
- And all the time it was the Jews to Palestine.
- It was an everyday occurrence.
- You said Hungarian.
- Now part of the population was Hungarian?
- It was Hungarian, Romanian, and it was Ukrainian too.
- Was there any protection that you
- could get from the government, whoever,
- the Romanian government in terms of incidents like that?
- Incidents--
- I mean did the police protect you?
- They did if you go before and tell them,
- did they give you some.
- It was in the years, it all depends
- who was the chief of police.
- He had one time a chief of police.
- He was very protective.
- And one time it was just like a part of them.
- There was a lot of programs in the years.
- I remember this.
- I was afraid to go out on the street.
- They was shooting people on the street.
- I mean it was--
- they called them the Eisen Guard.
- The Iron Guard.
- Iron Guard.
- That was Antonescu was the--
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- At that time it was in the late years.
- It was horrible.
- They was throwing out Jews from the trains.
- You say late years, what?
- In 1939.
- '39, when the war started.
- I want to go back for a few years.
- Now in 1933, Hitler came into power in Germany.
- You were a young man of 20.
- You were 20 years old.
- Did you know much about--
- did you know much news about Germany then?
- Did you get--
- Not much.
- We didn't.
- I mean we heard only sporadic incidents.
- It wasn't too much popular.
- Did it affect local conditions at all
- in terms of antisemitism or anything?
- Not in the beginning, not in the beginning.
- It then really affected bad, it was already when--
- and then '38, '39, '40.
- Then that was the worst.
- In other words, towards, as the war came closer,
- and as Hitler came into Germany and came
- into Austria, Czechoslovakia, you
- began to feel the effects of it?
- Oh, yeah.
- Sure, then you feel the pressure.
- Did anyone that you knew or any members of your family
- or anyone that you knew attempt to emigrate, or try to get out,
- or leave, feel that?
- No.
- The impression was that it cannot happen here.
- This was the Jewish impression.
- It cannot happen here.
- Even with close as they got.
- And in 1938, I was traveling around.
- I was in Austria, the day when the Anschluss was.
- You were in Vienna?
- In Vienna, I left at the last train.
- And come home, and start talking about it.
- Ah, it's not going to come this far.
- How did you feel personally?
- I feel bad-- I feel bad.
- I just, if I wouldn't have to support the family
- and have my mother and my two sisters,
- I would have left a long time ago.
- In other words, you--
- you yourself saw some of this.
- Because I saw a lot of things happening.
- I saw in 1939, I was coming home from Czernowitz,
- from Bukovina and Czernowitz to Sighet.
- Right next to me they took a Jewish man by payos
- and threw him out through the window.
- That was '39.
- Yeah.
- Who did that, the local Iron Guard?
- The Iron Guard, yeah.
- The Iron Guard.
- At that time it was terrible.
- I could get away with it because I was young,
- I was looking like a Romanian, reading their paper,
- sitting on the trains.
- They didn't bother me.
- They thought, I'm one of theirs.
- I could get away with it.
- Well, I was dressed as a traveling salesman.
- Is that what you were doing then, traveling salesman?
- No, I was in export-import.
- Oh, you were doing export-import work.
- So you traveled around all of Europe.
- The whole of Europe, I traveled around the whole Europe.
- When I was 20 years old, I was already out half of Europe.
- But these people, the actions where they just come
- into a train, grab somebody--
- Yeah, I mean because it was heavy traveled with Jewish.
- I mean it was a lot of Jews at that time
- with foreign currencies.
- They were still in the black market.
- Valuta.
- Valuta, yeah.
- And traveling back and forth to Czechoslovakia,
- and Bukovina, to Austria, then to Vienna.
- The came and it started off, and they
- start when the Polish army started to run,
- it was around then it started getting--
- Well, that was after the invasion.
- The invasion, yeah.
- Invasion of Poland.
- All right.
- I'd like to ask you about that.
- You were in Sighet when the war broke out,
- when they started invading, the Nazis
- started invading Poland then?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I was home.
- If I was in Sighet, yeah, I think so.
- As a was matter of fact, when the Polish army
- started coming running from Poland through Romania.
- You mean they retreated right into Romania?
- The retreated, yeah, across.
- Because it's right at the border.
- I mean it's the same railroad.
- And when you have to go from Sighet to Bukovina,
- you have to cross through Poland.
- And if you have to go through Romania from Sighet
- to Satu Mare, you have to go through Czechoslovakia.
- I see.
- But the army actually came across border.
- Yeah, with the trains.
- I mean the train loads, one after another, running.
- You saw that?
- Oh, yeah.
- I saw.
- I saw.
- I saw that the Czech are running.
- And I saw the Polish running.
- How did that make you feel to see that?
- It was a very bad feeling.
- I mean it's a very frightening feeling that.
- It was a very frightening feeling.
- And then after Czechoslovakia fell,
- because we had the border right across, this side was Romanian,
- this side was Czechoslovakia, the Carpathians.
- We just crossed a bridge.
- You could cross back and forth.
- Well, when they came into Romania,
- the Romanians had sovereignty.
- Did they stop?
- Did they have to stop and we'll just let them come through?
- No, they let them go through.
- They let them go through.
- Yeah.
- They let them go through.
- I see.
- What did you do when this happened?
- I mean this must have been a frightening experience for you.
- It was a frightening experience.
- It was we talked.
- I mean we sit down I mean in the cafe house
- with all these business people.
- I mean all you see, all the Hasidic Jews,
- it was all business people.
- Ah, it's not happening here.
- It's not going to come that far.
- And we are protected.
- And this was the attitude.
- And this was a very wrong attitude.
- Even 1940, when I run away, then I run away.
- I had to run away.
- My mother, she rest in peace, she said, you go.
- Save your life.
- I'm staying here.
- I was born here and I want to live here.
- She encouraged you to leave?
- Yeah.
- She didn't stop me, because I had to leave.
- It was in 1940, and the Hungarians come in.
- So they cut off Maramures from the mainland.
- They didn't let nobody out to travel to the mainland.
- And I couldn't sit still.
- I mean I had connections in business.
- I mean with Budapest before I used
- to ship in eggs for fruit, what they didn't have.
- And I had connections.
- They asked me, I said, no.
- It's one.
- He called me up on the telephone.
- One was the commissioner.
- In fact, he was a retired general, a Jew,
- from World War I.
- This was in Romania?
- In Budapest.
- In the Hungarian army?
- Yeah.
- And he asked me.
- He said, if you can now, it's easier to ship.
- You don't have to pay duty and everything.
- I mean it's you don't have to have export license anymore.
- I say, I got one problem.
- I cannot travel.
- I mean you couldn't travel in Hungary.
- They would not let Jews travel in Hungary?
- To the mainland, to the mainland.
- First, everybody--
- When you say mainland, you mean like to Budapest?
- To Budapest, yeah, across the--
- I mean the old borders.
- Across the old border.
- The old borders.
- So it was governed by the army.
- And it was they mayor was a general.
- And some [NON-ENGLISH],, some people I know I got a travel
- permit.
- I was the only one from the city who was traveling out there.
- And this was when?
- In 1940?
- 1940, yeah.
- 1940, in September.
- In September of 1940?
- Yeah.
- That was a year-- in other words a year
- after the Germans invaded Poland?
- Poland, then it's Poland-- then they--
- They had given this section to--
- Given this section to Hungary, Yeah.
- And I was going out.
- Then it got me.
- Then got it got me.
- When I first, I traveled, I went to it was big farms, cities.
- And I went out on that market, weekly market.
- It was a weekly market.
- They come together from all the raions, from all the little--
- This was within Hungary?
- Then in Hungary.
- That was the occupied territory.
- I mean they called it the liberated territory.
- And I had a travel permit from the generals in the army
- command.
- And I come towards city, they called then Somcuta.
- It's called today too.
- And I bought some, went to the market,
- and bought all day what was available, and packed
- and I shipped them.
- The following week I come back.
- I'm staying in the market.
- And I feel somebody taps me on the back.
- I turned around.
- It was this gendarme, the Hungarian gendarme.
- They was like what should I tell you?
- Like Romania, they call the Securitatii.
- Everybody was afraid for him.
- This way it was the gendarmes.
- If you see one gendarme, they had the big feathers.
- You run.
- You hide.
- They tapped my back.
- I said, what?
- Where are you from?
- From Sighet.
- What are you doing here?
- I said, I'm buying eggs and shipping it to Budapest.
- Do you have a permit?
- I take out this.
- He looks on me.
- and said, things like that we don't give for Jewish people.
- For a Jew.
- You speak Hungarian too?
- Yeah, yeah.
- I speak seven languages.
- And he looked on me.
- He said, this is a forged document.
- It's impossible that an army man from the Hungarian army
- should issue one for Jews something like that.
- I said, why don't you call up and find out?
- He took me in interrogation.
- They hold me there for two hours.
- One of them come in.
- He said, we send you right away in a labor camp, threatened me.
- So finally, they find out that it's legit.
- That they give me two hours to leave the city.
- And they told me if you come back,
- you never see the light again.
- So I went to another city, next city there.
- I made my quota what I had.
- And I went up to Budapest.
- And I talked to this guy.
- He said, yeah.
- It's problems, my commissioner.
- It's a problem.
- And nothing I can do.
- I'll try.
- The second time I bought a car load of apples
- in [NON-ENGLISH].
- That's another town, one of the biggest cities.
- And I went to the railroad manager
- to give me a a car to transport.
- Not for Jew, not for a Jew.
- I'm staying three days, staying the apples there
- on the ramp packed in boxes.
- I couldn't get a cart.
- So I called Budapest.
- The guy intervened there, and so we got it.
- This was my last--
- I went to Budapest.
- They come--
- You mean they were looking for a bribe or somebody was bribed,
- it must have been?
- No.
- It just was hard for a Jew, I mean a matter of fact,
- they revoked all the licenses end of 1940,
- they revoked all the licenses from the cities whoever
- just had a doubt that is not red blooded Hungarian born,
- some of them come from Poland.
- And they got their citizenships and they
- revoked all their licenses.
- I went to Budapest.
- And this was in November already.
- 1940 November.
- And I didn't have what to do.
- So I went, always we went to see the change in the guards
- by the palace there.
- There was already SS, [NON-ENGLISH],, SS officers.
- Matter of fact, I'm 100% sure that Eichmann was there too.
- But later on--
- This was in 1942.
- No, 1940.
- 1940.
- 1940.
- That early?
- That right, away when.
- When you say there were SS, were they in uniform?
- Yes SS uniform.
- SS uniform.
- Then I said, OK, this is the end of it.
- If they are already here, we are Hungarian what can we wait?
- I come home and talk to my mother then.
- Then she told me, do what you think is best for you.
- I still have to go back to Budapest a couple of times
- to collect the money.
- And I have a friend, he lives in Winnipeg, Shimon,
- And I told him, Moshe, it's no good.
- Something have to be done, or where can we do?
- Meanwhile, the second time I come back,
- I find already a recruiting paper to the labor camps.
- Because from the occupied territories
- to the liberated territories, what you called it,
- they didn't take anybody into the labor camps yet.
- They took them come from the Carpathian,
- and all the also from inside Hungary already.
- They brought down young Jews to work on the roads,
- making the roads, and trenches, and everything.
- They was--
- These were labor battalions?
- Labor battalions.
- When I saw I got mine, I got mine for January the 15th
- to go.
- I said, I'm not going to go.
- Or I'll die or I'm not going to go.
- I went back again to Budapest, collected all the money,
- come back and talk to my friend.
- I said, Morris, we have to leave.
- So where?
- I said, we got big mountains.
- If we make it through Russia, we go to Bukovina,
- from there back to other side to Romania.
- Fine, otherwise what happened, happened.
- At least I can't take this.
- And he agreed with me.
- That I'll go.
- I start looking for a guide.
- Because the Carpathian Mountains,
- they are very dangerous, especially in December already,
- snow already.
- So I find a--
- what do you call them?
- The mountaineers.
- I find one from [NON-ENGLISH],, If he'll take us to the Russian
- border.
- We thought we'd come into Poland.
- This was already occupied Poland.
- Eastern Poland was Russian occupied?
- Yeah.
- I thought we'll come there.
- And maybe we'll sneak by.
- We'll go and to Bukovina Czernowitz.
- That mean also Russia then was already.
- And from there we can go over by Belz to Romania.
- Maybe, at least--
- That portion is east near the Black Sea?
- Yeah.
- No, it's not by the Black Sea.
- It's over by the Carpathians.
- Oh, by the--
- Yeah.
- By the Carpathians.
- I'd like to interrupt you for a moment.
- What were conditions like by this time in your hometown,
- in Sighet?
- Your family was there in terms of food or anything,
- was there a change already?
- It was no change.
- It was no big changes.
- It was no big changes.
- I mean in food, it's still in 1940
- at least we didn't feel it.
- We didn't feel it.
- There was no much of a difference.
- But you felt the personal safety.
- Personal safety, the pressure, the pressure, the fear,
- the fear.
- It was a very dark cloud over our head.
- And I find this guy, that guide, and paid him.
- And I went back to Budapest, and collected
- the rest of the money, left it for mother.
- Give it.
- I say, here you got.
- What will be will be.
- And I have already older sister got married.
- Husband this wasn't, still I mean he didn't want to leave.
- I mean he didn't want to go nowhere.
- So I come back.
- I have arranged.
- I come back the 4th of December.
- I'll be back, 12 o'clock from Budapest.
- In the evening, we'll take another train.
- I'm not going to waste time.
- In the meanwhile, already groups,
- young Jewish kids coming from Bucharest.
- I mean in Bucharest they considered them Hungarians.
- They shipped them out back home to Sighet and in the provinces.
- And all of them start to go.
- Where you going?
- To Russia.
- Groups.
- I had a friend of mine.
- He was in Bucharest.
- He'd come back about a week before.
- And he asked me.
- He said, I got shoes that is very light shoes
- to go to the mountains.
- I went back in the back of the cafe house.
- Took off my-- I had some ski boots, and took them off.
- I said, give me yours.
- Here you got them.
- A week later, I had to go.
- I got another friend who lives in Montreal.
- I told him, Eugene, I need a pair of boots.
- I haven't got time.
- He gave me his boots.
- With this I left.
- They are alive.
- They are safe.
- She was in Auschwitz.
- It's a long story from them too.
- It's not-- and we come back.
- We took the train.
- We went to [NON-ENGLISH].
- Next morning, was December the 4th.
- We start off.
- It starts snowing.
- And the two of us, we go.
- It was ready about 1:00, 1:30 in the daytime.
- The guide, he was on a peak, 3,000 feet.
- He says, from there down, you go down with the valley.
- And there you are by the border.
- I cannot go farther.
- And he left us.
- This was the border with Poland?
- With Russia.
- With the Russian?
- Yeah.
- Before it was Poland.
- Yeah.
- But now it's Russian occupied?
- Yeah, Russian occupied.
- Did you know anything about the system in the Soviet Union
- at that time?
- Oh, we know the system.
- But you felt it was the lesser of two evils?
- Right.
- This is the lesser of two evils.
- And I had already some knowledge from Dachau from before.
- A friend from Vienna, he was deported to Dachau,
- and then he ran away, come to Romania.
- He went to Galati, and left to Cyprus.
- You mean he told you.
- He gave you accounts.
- He told you what went on.
- Yeah, I mean we had already.
- I mean, we didn't know that the gas chambers then,
- nor the camps already.
- Did people believe this man?
- I believed him.
- You believed him.
- I believed him because I know the guy.
- I mean I used to live in his house when he lived in Vienna.
- And he left us in the mountains, snow and snow,
- and we start to go, and it start to getting dark,
- and we got lost.
- We got lost on the mountain.
- We were sitting around the same place.
- We didn't have no choice.
- Finally we spotted on top of the mountain,
- we spotted a little house, a little summer
- house for the hunters.
- So we went in there.
- It was cold.
- It was about three feet of snow, in some places even more.
- And we went in.
- We brought in some branches from trees, and light a fire.
- We were so tired.
- We fall asleep.
- All of a sudden, I just feel the smoke.
- I woke up.
- My friend, my pants already was caught on fire, it was burning.
- So we come up.
- Just tied up my pants, and we got out.
- Where we go?
- We have to try to go.
- We come on the mountain, top of the mountain,
- start to get a little bit light.
- We saw in the valley, I'll never forget this.
- I heard the wolves.
- He start crying.
- What's that?
- I said, Morris, don't worry.
- We'll get out.
- We start to go.
- And it was already 1 o'clock, and we
- didn't have no food either.
- I mean, we just took for one day.
- I mean we said in the evening we'll be there.
- I told him, Morris, one thing I remember.
- My mother used to tell me.
- In the the mountains, if you get lost,
- look for a little river for a valley, what goes down.
- And that valley you'll go.
- You'll find our big river.
- When you got a big river, you're somewhere already.
- And that's what.
- We started going.
- Snow was.
- He fell in the snow I pulled him out.
- I fell.
- He pulled me out.
- He was-- we wish already somebody would come and catch
- us, even the Hungarians.
- Were you dressed for that cold, for that kind of?
- Yeah, he was.
- I mean because it was--
- Sighet was cold too.
- And we started going with that valley down.
- And got wet, the ice was on our feet like that.
- We walked and walked and walked and walked.
- Finally, we come on down to the river.
- The river was frozen.
- I was afraid to cross it.
- It break the ice.
- We have no choice.
- We broke up from a branch a big stick,
- and we start opened the ice before first,
- and we crossed the river.
- When we crossed the river.
- It was already start to get a little bit dark.
- Then I saw already tracks, horses.
- I said, Morris, we got civilization.
- We are saved, whatever happen.
- It took about 10 minutes.
- We walked on that road.
- All of a sudden, two Russian soldiers went [NON-ENGLISH]..
- Right away, they got everything what we had.
- I mean we had a flashlight.
- He was afraid to touch it.
- He thought it's a bomb.
- He took our watch, everything.
- We had money.
- You took money too?
- Whatever we had they cleaned us out.
- And set us down.
- We was frozen there.
- And they sit us down on the floor, on a rock.
- He got two shots in the air.
- He asked for help.
- And they start right away.
- [NON-ENGLISH] as I say, it's the spy.
- I say, no, we are Jewish.
- As much as we could, we are Jewish.
- We run away from Hitler.
- So arrived two officers, lieutenants
- in that rank on horseback.
- And they took us, just ask us whatever you could to ask them.
- And they couldn't understand us.
- And I couldn't understand them.
- And they just put it in front.
- It was they tried to put it in front walk, and they behind us.
- We was walking in front of the horses.
- We almost fell apart on our feet.
- So it was pitch dark already, around 8 o'clock
- they got us up to a little house,
- where there's a guard post.
- They brought us in there.
- Then they brought up [ROMANIAN].
- You know Rumanisch?
- Oh, you mean an interpreter.
- Yeah, for what is in Russian interpreter.
- OK.
- And he was from Bessarabia, also from the occupied territories.
- And he knew Romanian.
- And he started talking to us.
- We told him.
- So they didn't do much.
- So they give us some hot soup.
- And I have to put my feet in water, it took two of the guys
- to be able to take the shoes off.
- And they give us a couple of their belts,
- that big Russian coats, with the lamb.
- Fur coats.
- Fur coats.
- And the covered us up to go to sleep.
- In the morning they start us in interrogation again and again.
- Army installations and that, I don't know nothing.
- I'm not-- we just tried to save our lives.
- They kept us there for 24 hours.
- And they put us on a truck.
- And send us over to Nadvorna.
- There were that the counter-espionage headquarters.
- And that is they took us first upstairs,
- asked us a few questions.
- And then they took us down in the basement.
- Opened up a door and throw us in.
- Young people with beards, I didn't recognize.
- The guy who I give him my shoes was there.
- I didn't recognize him.
- Why didn't you-- I mean it was so long--
- I mean those beards, all they didn't shave, dirty.
- And dark, just a little lamp was.
- You hardly could see.
- And finally we cooled off.
- I mean and started who are you?
- Who are you?
- They recognized me.
- Because you were still healthy.
- Yeah.
- Anton, what are you doing here?
- When you come, with who?
- They know us good.
- And some of them we didn't know.
- They was from the Carpathians, and we didn't know that.
- They was running from all over.
- And there was no place to sleep.
- It was a room like this.
- There was about 60 people in it, rats
- like that jumping on your heads.
- They give you a piece of bread, and that's it
- for the first day.
- The second day, they start in the night.
- They woke you up.
- Interrogation.
- First me, and then my friend, then me again, then him again.
- It was going on for three days.
- What were you looking for?
- To see whether you--
- Yeah, if I know something.
- So they didn't-- after three days they closed
- the interrogation.
- And I asked, how long was there?
- A few days, and then they let you free.
- And we was there--
- we was lucky.
- We was six days only there in that basement.
- The rest was some of them, four weeks, five weeks.
- Dirty, no sanitation, same clothes you sleep and go
- work in.
- Next morning, they come.
- Who wants to go to work?
- Come and work, just to get out in fresh air my friend with me.
- We're cutting wood, sawing wood for fire.
- And then they gave us an extra bread for doing the work.
- We was lucky.
- And six days later, they start bringing
- army trucks, covered trucks.
- And we wasn't only the only room there.
- There was about 400 people in that basement.
- And we ask, where are we going?
- Nobody knows.
- They took us to Stanislav.
- By truck?
- By truck.
- How long was that trip?
- The trip, about 12 hours, 10, 12 hours.
- Who got a watch?
- Who knows the time.
- You just know it was already in the evening,
- early in the morning till the evening.
- We arrived at Stanislav Prison.
- Stanislav Prison.
- They took us in the prison.
- And they processed us.
- They start throwing us in there.
- In that prison was already Polish former officers,
- government employees.
- It was full.
- They threw us in a room.
- You didn't have no breathing room.
- Nothing, just a bare floor.
- There you sleep.
- I mean we went to sleep.
- We have to lay down one with not face to face, just
- like herring.
- Head to foot.
- Head to foot, and not head to foot.
- I mean your backs, that you're able to make room
- for everybody.
- In the night, you have to go to the bathroom,
- they had a bathroom I mean a facility inside.
- If you want to get up, everybody have to get up
- to make room to cross.
- If not, you have to walk on each other.
- In the morning they brought in a soup.
- It was fish, boiled fish with the bones, with everything.
- No spoons, nothing just a little can, one to ten
- eat, like worse for animals.
- They treated us worse like animals.
- We was there until the beginning--
- of June or May.
- I don't know exactly.
- I think it was May.
- I think it was in May.
- In May, they took us from there on the evening.
- They got us out from there, lined us up on this stretch.
- Every five people had a soldier by that with a dog.
- And they marched us out almost a half a night.
- We walked until we got to the station, the train station.
- Then they loaded us in cattle cars, like animals.
- Also, they just pushed in as much as they could.
- And they shipped us out to Ukraine, a camp.
- It was Starobel'sk.
- In the Ukraine?
- In Ukraine.
- It was Starobel'sk.
- There was already thousands of people in that concentration
- camp, it was thousands of people.
- They had to push the tenants to separate, the women who.
- There was women.
- My wife was there too at the same time.
- I didn't know it then.
- That was girls, they recruit him in to the Red Cross,
- by the labor battalions.
- And they was afraid.
- They start running.
- Just word got out.
- Russia's the haven.
- The safe place.
- And we was in that barracks four weeks.
- A lot of people sold everything off of their shirt, hungry.
- Food was a minimal.
- And the guards who was watching us, they was buying it,
- was buying the clothes off the guys.
- But there was nothing you had, because they stole everything
- when they arrested you.
- Yeah, just the clothes off you.
- That's what they sold.
- That's what they sold.
- Some people, after that, when they shipped that out from
- there just had a plain blanket, wrapped around self,
- and underwear.
- That's all they had left.
- This was mostly intellectuals.
- It was more intellectuals.
- They couldn't stand the hunger.
- And they sold everything off of them.
- It was a very ugly scene.
- This is end of side a, tape one, Paul Kaufmann
- interviewing Mr. Anton Berkovitz.
- Paul Kaufmann interviewing Mr. Anton Berkovitz.
- So they lined you up into freight cars?
- Into freight cars, yeah.
- Cattle cars.
- Freight cars, and shipped us out to Starobel'sk And there we was
- in Starobel'sk.
- About a month.
- About a month, yeah.
- And after that they feel already the German invasion
- I mean getting close in 1941.
- It was in June, or the beginning of June.
- Yeah.
- And this was the end of May.
- This was already they had already concentration army.
- So they want to take us--
- Far away.
- Far away.
- You say you think that they knew that the Germans were
- going to invade.
- Was there any evidence of that that you heard?
- Or it was just rumors?
- This was rumors was.
- I mean it's-- we didn't have much contact with nobody.
- I mean if there were anything really knowledge.
- And then they took us from Starobel'sk again in freight
- cars.
- And there was about 3,000 people in that transport.
- And we just was going day and night.
- Days after days, days after days, we didn't know where.
- Finally, they gathered in the outskirts of Moscow.
- And on the railroads, parked there.
- And here was coming others trains.
- This was coming from Lithuania already, also
- prisoners, what they had from Estonia, Lithuania,
- from other camps.
- And we met-- and through the little windows,
- they just told us that Germany invaded Russia.
- Russian soldiers?
- That was Lithuanian then.
- Oh, they told you?
- Yeah.
- They told us.
- I mean screaming over and saying, they was prisoners
- and he was prisoners.
- I mean it was trains, and trains, and trains.
- I mean you could see out the window, see another lane.
- You see this way--
- You were just packed into these cars.
- Cars, yeah.
- How many days was that you were traveling?
- 14 days.
- 14 days.
- Until he got to the North Pole.
- And food, was a little pumpernickel for four people.
- And salted little herring.
- You called in Russian [NON-ENGLISH]..
- It's like that big they are, that's all, no water.
- It was the third day.
- It was dying for water.
- After we left already Moscow, from the station out,
- we didn't know where we are.
- They told us that we are in Moscow station.
- Nobody said anything.
- And you couldn't ask a guard.
- He tells you in Russian, go fly a kite.
- They didn't talk.
- And we were so guarded that it was on top of the roof.
- The guards were on top of the roof?
- On top of the roof, yeah.
- Most of it was traveling in the nights then already.
- In the days you didn't travel?
- Most of the time already after Moscow,
- we traveled only at night.
- The days--
- They just stopped the train.
- They stopped the train and--
- and water.
- We couldn't have any.
- Everybody was fall asleep.
- I couldn't fall asleep.
- In the middle of the night, I heard the guard.
- He takes-- there two little buckets, that big for 60 people
- water.
- He opened the door and pulled the two buckets out.
- So all right.
- We'll have water.
- I was sitting right by the door.
- I'll be the first one.
- And I heard him.
- I thought it's water right there.
- Meanwhile it was I call it dirty water.
- I mean it's with sand and mud.
- He pushed in the two buckets of water.
- I grabbed have the first.
- How do you think?
- It's dark.
- You put in head.
- You drink like an animal.
- And somebody hurt the noise from the waters.
- Everybody starts waking up and start almost killed each other.
- Nobody drinked it, because everybody was dragging it.
- And it was just pouring out.
- So next morning, finally, they brought some cold tea in
- and they give up a big tea.
- Everybody got a sip, and wash that salt off of it.
- We traveled.
- We traveled.
- We didn't know where we're going.
- Finally, we arrived to a station.
- It's called Kotlas.
- It's right past Kirov, Gorky, it's all the way
- to the North Pole already.
- That's already the first.
- You knew you were going north though.
- We didn't know.
- You didn't even know you were going north?
- We didn't know where we're going.
- We didn't have no idea where we go.
- We go north or we go [? east. ?] We arrived to Kotlas.
- It was end of June.
- It was already 1st of July, I think so, the 2nd.
- And with got in Kotlas.
- They disembarked us, and put us in a small
- like they bring the logs down from the mountains,
- in little open trains.
- And sit us down in them open trains,
- with not so many guards already, just three on one end,
- and three on the other end.
- We go.
- We feel that it's again cool.
- It's July, but it's cool.
- It's July.
- It was already.
- We traveled all day long.
- We arrived to [NON-ENGLISH].
- This already--
- Was this forest, or were there towns, or anything, or mostly
- through forests?
- Through forests.
- Through forests.
- No towns.
- No towns.
- There is already through forest.
- And we arrived to a place, a port, called [NON-ENGLISH]..
- This already right on the [NON-ENGLISH],,
- this already on the North Pole, the beginning of the North
- Pole, the edge, in the Arctics.
- And they took the women off, dropped them off there
- in [NON-ENGLISH].
- And they went with us further.
- We arrived.
- I think it was [NON-ENGLISH].
- We arrived there.
- There they disembarked us, by the river.
- We didn't eat all day.
- That day they didn't give us nothing.
- We arrived there and we start asking the guards.
- Some of them know.
- I mean they was from the Carpathians.
- They know Ukraine.
- They talk.
- And they could understand, because already we
- was all together, one bunch.
- In our group was about 1,200, 1,400 people.
- And they said we'll cook a meal here,
- and we'll get water meals.
- It took all day long.
- They boiled wheat, whole wheat, boiled it.
- And they had little buckets.
- Six people a little bucket hot wheat,
- and the hand out some wooden spoons.
- I got sick.
- I eat that hot--
- and I start throwing up.
- I got sick.
- So it didn't do any good.
- There was no doctor, nothing, live or die.
- Don't make a difference.
- And there is already the day, it's already
- 24-hour daylight in the summer.
- We didn't know.
- A day was so long.
- And the sun don't go down.
- Midnight, when you see the sun going down, going down
- and going down.
- In a half an hour later, it started coming up again.
- But it was past midnight already.
- Finally, they pulled up a couple of barges, things, open freight
- barges, and they start loading us in that barges.
- We traveled all night.
- I mean it's already in the morning till they
- got us loaded in and start off, all day, the following day.
- And mosquitoes was eating you up alive.
- I got bitten by a mosquito, my foot
- swell up like this, my right foot.
- Nothing to do.
- There's nobody to complain nobody or ask for something.
- So next day, around 3 o'clock or 4 o'clock we arrived.
- It was already-- it's already snow on the mountains there.
- You see the big snow.
- I mean we was there already on the North Pole.
- And from there they took us with little--
- they didn't have no trains, with trucks.
- They had a little train, they could put 100 people on it.
- And the rest of them walked.
- We walked, went by train, by truck.
- We got into the city.
- The city at that time, it wasn't today it's a big city already.
- Vorkuta.
- Vorkuta.
- You heard about it?
- Yeah.
- Tell me along this train, now this is you've been on the road
- a month or more.
- Yeah.
- One thing or another.
- Sanitation?
- Well, sanitation must have been horrendous.
- Lice.
- Did many people give up in this?
- Did people die?
- Were there are many people--
- No, I don't think so on the road there was any.
- It was only one person died in the car.
- It was an elderly person.
- They had a heart attack.
- At that time, we didn't know what is.
- I mean it was elderly people too.
- I mean it's not only youngsters.
- It was families with small children.
- They took the children away from him.
- They separated children.
- They never saw the children again.
- They separated husband and wife.
- If they know you married, you didn't go even
- in the same transport.
- How did people treat each other?
- I'm talking about the people, the prisoners.
- People was fine.
- I mean people.
- Well I mean, was there any attempt at cooperation
- of people together and any--
- Yeah, I mean we was sitting, I mean
- we made chess, from the bread.
- I didn't eat for three days bread.
- I made a chess from it.
- Chess set?
- Chess set, yeah.
- And my friend took up his socks, took out the thread.
- And he was a tailor.
- And he designed a board on a handkerchief.
- And we know somewhere we'll get will get better.
- And we didn't have no choice already.
- Running away you can't.
- Well, what you're saying then is you weren't discouraged.
- You felt that--
- No.
- --it could only get better from that point.
- Right.
- I myself never was discouraged in the worst of times.
- I always said I'll live it through
- and I'll fight it through.
- And this helped a lot.
- We arrived to Vorkuta.
- They had some tents, barracks.
- I mean it was in July.
- And the night was cold.
- I mean it was--
- they had a coal mine there, one of the biggest coal
- mines in Russia.
- And we had enough coal to heat.
- And they put in the barracks, and there we
- had already a warm soup.
- And it was already, they took us next day
- for the disinfection, baths, showers.
- The clothes was disinfected.
- I mean it feels already half human.
- How did the guards-- how did the guards
- behave, the Russian guards?
- I mean were they--
- They was rough.
- They was.
- [NON-ENGLISH]
- I mean if you know this Russian word.
- Gimme, gimme, gimme--
- Go, go, go, go, go.
- Just go, go, go.
- I mean it's like a dog.
- I mean we didn't have much contact with them
- because we went in a group.
- If you it's the same thing if you couldn't walk.
- That with this rifle, we butt you.
- I mean it was a lot of older people.
- I mean we had to help them.
- I mean we take them under the arm and drag them,
- I mean the few miles.
- But we had to walk wasn't that far.
- So we arrived to Vorkuta.
- They put us in barracks.
- The barracks was heated.
- And it was summer.
- I mean their summer, there, July, August.
- August, we went out to work.
- Put us out to work, whatever work, just to work.
- What kind of work did you do?
- I did at the beginning, I worked outside to load trucks.
- Because the coal mines, and they had a lot of coal burned up,
- I mean, they didn't have no transportation
- to get the coals out.
- And they burned up for themselves,
- millions of tons of coals.
- So we have to load that burned up coal,
- because we got a shell from it.
- It was like cement left from that coal.
- We loaded that on trucks, and they
- start to build roads from that.
- The ash?
- This ash.
- I mean it was hard, because that coal is different
- than coal is like here we have, or somewhere else.
- That's a different coal.
- It was like a rock.
- Like glass.
- Like a rock.
- That's got a lot of oil in them.
- And it burned until the oil burned out.
- And the rest was a piece of rock.
- Clinker, we call that.
- And I worked that.
- I worked the night shift.
- I didn't work long.
- I worked only about a few days, because my foot was swollen.
- There we had already an infirmary.
- And went to doctor, they had a couple Jewish doctors, Russian,
- from Leningrad to this.
- That was before it was a political camp, all Stalin's
- foes, he sent him out there.
- Who he didn't kill, he sent him out there.
- It was generals, his own friends was in that camp there.
- So they were mixed together with--
- you were all mixed together then?
- Yeah, yeah.
- We mixed together.
- Political prisoners, Jews, foreigners, Romanians.
- Everything, hooligans, all--
- Criminals also.
- Also it was.
- It was a mixed camp.
- And so my foot swelled up, and I tried to keep it swollen.
- I saw it keeps me out from work.
- I tried to keep it on.
- What I did, I went up in the morning.
- They had the beds that--
- I don't know how to call it?
- In--
- Bunks.
- Bunks.
- I mean it's just one, really long--
- Big platform.
- --platform.
- Two platforms on the top, one on bottom.
- I slept on top.
- And in the morning, I got up early
- and everybody just sit down on the bunk
- and got my foot hanging down.
- It swelled up here like that.
- And they come in to get you to work
- I showed them for the foreman.
- They said, you go to the infirmary.
- This was every day for almost a year.
- What I did in the daytime, I run to the kitchen.
- I help out in the kitchen.
- I got some extra food.
- And my friends, we got a few friends from the home together.
- And I bring in a couple buckets of soups
- with whatever it was extra food, and it worked out well.
- After that, they send me out to work.
- They find out that he can help it.
- They send me away for four weeks in a hospital
- where I couldn't do that.
- Then it went down.
- So I come back.
- They said, I'm able to work.
- So if I have to work, I'll work.
- And I worked outside and then down come the winter.
- It was terrible.
- The winter, they have to pull the ropes from the barracks
- to the mess hall.
- So if you go with without holding on to the rope,
- the wind blows your away in the snow, and it was snow like--
- like if you see the expeditions.
- If you saw that.
- That's the weather we had there.
- 60, 70 below zero weather, winds 120, 140 miles an hour.
- Hurricane all the time.
- All the time, most of the time.
- They heated in the barracks.
- I mean I had a guy from our city, a young guy,
- he slept right by the end on the platform.
- He froze to death with the heater.
- It was warm inside.
- From outside he was living right by the tent.
- It was a tent around then.
- And then later on, they start to build
- a wooden barracks, better ones.
- And we worked.
- I say, if I have to work, I'll work.
- I mean I'll live it through.
- It was then people start to fall like flies, intellectuals.
- The work, some of them didn't want to go to work.
- If you didn't work, they put you in isolation.
- They don't feed you, just once a day a can of soup it was.
- And they was going eating all the garbage what
- they find, I it was terrible.
- I mean lawyers, doctors, they was the first to go.
- And in 1940, this was already '42, when
- the big push was by Stalingrad.
- They brought in all the Volga Germans, brought out
- some of them about, 400 or 500 Volga Germans.
- And put them in a separate camp.
- In the camp, they made another camp, like an isolation.
- They took all the Jews out and threw them in with the Germans.
- Threw this and all, that they was
- intellectuals. they was very, very fine people,
- was most intellectuals.
- And we went to work with them.
- What kind of work did you do then at that time?
- What were you doing?
- It's the same thing.
- Loading trucks.
- Loading trucks.
- Labor.
- Labor, labor, and trying to make a trench or something.
- You have to dig with a chisel.
- Because of the ice.
- Yeah, it was frozen I mean the earth was there
- frozen year round.
- Nothing grows there.
- It's all the tundras, the tundras.
- As soon as you take off the tundra, it's got that thick--
- Frozen soil.
- Not the soil it, had like like a--
- oh, we got it here too when you take off the first soil.
- Oh.
- The subsoil.
- Yeah.
- You take this off, it's a piece of ice.
- And they have to make some-- they want to build something.
- You just chisel it.
- We chiseled in such pieces.
- Like you were chiseling stone out.
- Right, such pieces like that with in eight hours, probably
- you make a hole, like a quarter of a table, in eight hours.
- That was free labor.
- Then in 1940-- end of 1942, they went.
- They took all the Germans.
- All that was who was between them.
- And they want to send them away to further north.
- They had a mine where they made paint of it.
- I mean white--
- Titanium?
- Yeah, that rock, white rock.
- Probably titanium.
- It's a white rock.
- I mean it used to be in Europe used to be.
- Here I never saw it.
- You just put it in water, and it boils.
- It boils off from himself and it gets like a white paint.
- And that is, from there whoever goes there, just never comes
- home with a healthy lungs.
- Their lungs are all eaten up.
- So they put us, already they called us out, roll call.
- You guys go all there.
- I don't know.
- Was it my luck or was--
- a courier come, and called out two names from the whole group.
- It was a friend of mine who lives in New York,
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- He's a lawyer, and me.
- The commandant from the camp want to see you.
- He took us in there.
- The whole group left.
- The commandant was a lady.
- She was a captain rank, NKVD, captain rank.
- She called us in.
- She said, you guys was excellent workers all the time,
- didn't have no complaints.
- You always have a good report.
- I don't want you to go there.
- I want you to stay here.
- If you want to go down work in the coal mine,
- I would appreciate it.
- We need people in the coal mine.
- I say, yeah.
- Better I'm working--
- I didn't know what's waiting there.
- And there I come down.
- They send me to coal mine.
- I met an engineer from Leningrad.
- He was a Komsomol.
- I start to go on the front.
- He volunteered to work in the coal mine.
- But that coal mine, nobody wanted to work there.
- I mean who had a choice that they needed
- some professionals, coal miners, or the prisoner they couldn't
- do much.
- He could do the hard labor or the special thing
- what they had to do.
- So finally, he went down working in the coal mine.
- And I wind up working shoulder to shoulder with him.
- I worked with him a few days, he called me on the side.
- He said, Antosha, they called me Antosha, Anton,
- they called me there Antosha.
- That I never see a Jewish guy to work so from hearts.
- But that you will stay with me, that you
- will work with me all the time.
- He started to bring him in cigarettes from outside.
- But he lived outside to me.
- He was--
- Free.
- He was free.
- He was a volunteer in the Komsomols.
- And he started bringing me bread.
- He said, I'll teach you something
- that you don't have to work with a shovel all day.
- I'll teach you how to shot coals,
- I mine, to mine the coals.
- I said, you do it and you three four hours free.
- You can sit and sleep.
- And he taught me.
- He learned me this.
- And I start to drill holes, put dynamite in.
- And he took him out.
- He becomes engineer of the coal mine, main engineer.
- He was this Komsomol.
- Yeah.
- He there.
- But a week later, I got in an accident.
- I went in too soon after exploded.
- I went too soon in, and it's covered me.
- I was lucky.
- I was covered up like sitting under the table.
- Covered up with coal and rocks.
- Oh, yeah.
- They couldn't find me.
- They couldn't find me, the rocks.
- Filler up, two rocks fell down right next to me,
- and one of them on top I was sitting right under the table.
- And the small stuff covered me up.
- Now the gas was too [INAUDIBLE].
- They called down from the--
- what do you call it?
- [NON-ENGLISH],, how to call and say.
- If an accident, like--
- You mean like the medics?
- Medics that they are trained--
- Rescue, rescue.
- Rescue, yeah, the rescue squad.
- They come down.
- I can hear them talking.
- But they didn't see me.
- I was laying under a pile of ton of coal.
- And one of them sat down.
- And they said, we don't have no choice.
- It's too big rocks.
- And so let's put it in a dynamite,
- and we'll be able to clear it out.
- Then they said no.
- Let's try to find him.
- They know I'm there.
- And they start shoveling up the small coal, and one of them
- hit my foot with the shovel.
- And I screamed.
- He said, I got him.
- I was already, hardly the gas, was I was already gassed.
- They dragged me out, took me down.
- They took me down in the hospital.
- I was about four weeks in the hospital.
- And they did give me a good treatment.
- They washed my stomach with milk or whatever it was.
- And that Komsomol engineer come to see me.
- He said, you're not going to go down in the coal mine anymore.
- He said, I'll get you something.
- There was a canteen on the premises for the free miners.
- I mean rationed, they got food.
- He asked me if I knew anything about business.
- I say, well, this was my beginning, my childhood.
- I worked in a grocery store for years.
- He told me, so listen, I know you are foreigner.
- I can trust you.
- So you know how we live here, and live and let live.
- You got that job.
- I was a prisoner, I was.
- And he say, and I'll make arrangement that you're not
- going to go into the camp.
- You sleep here in the [INAUDIBLE]..
- There was another Jewish guy, from Kyiv.
- He was a political prisoner.
- He was a very religious guy, Shama.
- And he was already about eight years in that camp.
- And he worked himself up to it.
- He became from the magazine, from the warehouse where
- they have the clothes for the miners,
- for the free miners, the heavy fur coats
- and it's like the Russian army.
- He was in control of that.
- And we got together.
- And we built a little cabin.
- And there he let us do it.
- And we lived there.
- I never went back.
- This Komsomol was not Jewish though?
- No.
- No.
- He was Russian.
- But he was a-- he was an active communist as a Komsomol.
- Yeah.
- Sure.
- What was his attitude towards the political prisoners?
- He didn't care about that, as long as long as you were--
- As long as you leave me alone, I don't have nothing with you.
- And a lot of the political prisoners,
- I mean the intellectuals, the bigger
- ones, they all got out from the camps, got jobs in the city.
- And I mean they all was working with a propusk, lived
- outside already.
- And he said, I'll arrange you stay here.
- You don't have to go anywhere.
- And I was--
- I worked there.
- I had to do.
- I have to steal and do anything to support him and support
- other ones too.
- Everyone was coming with open hands, give.
- You can do it.
- So I did it.
- It was no-- and then I lived already good.
- I got dressed good.
- I'll show you afterward pictures.
- And then I was walking one day.
- I was walking down on the corridor there.
- There was a Jewish lady, Zoia Mikhailovna.
- Her husband was a general.
- And she don't know.
- They took him away one day, and sent her one camp,
- him somewhere.
- She don't know if he was alive or not.
- She was there when they took off the women.
- She was in that camp with my wife.
- And one day, I was walking the corridor.
- I heard, Antosha, Antosha.
- I said, what's the matter, Zoia Mikhailovna?
- Come.
- I'll show you.
- There's a girl from [NON-ENGLISH],, my friend.
- She come in.
- That's my wife.
- I mean I saw her.
- When the first, when they transported us, because it
- was on a barge.
- It was divided with like a wire.
- It was--
- Barbed wire, you mean?
- No, it's just like-- just like--
- Like a fence.
- A fence, like a little fence was there.
- And we was on this side, and they was on the other side.
- Did you know her back in the town?
- No, no, no.
- I just saw her because a couple girls from our town
- was there too.
- And they got all this, Antosha, you
- want a piece of bread, all this, in the few days
- we was traveling together.
- And she was the one who sticked a piece of bread.
- I looked down, and I asked her.
- I said, did you come in that and that barge with this and this.
- She say, yeah.
- I said, I think I remember you.
- I looked on her.
- I mean she was already free then.
- This was already in 1945.
- She was already then.
- And this was two years I was in that position there.
- But I didn't have no contact with the camp.
- Just if once in a while, I want to go and just
- to say hi to the friends or take something to them, I went in.
- I got the guards used to take me,
- I used to give them a glass of vodka or something.
- He used to take me in the camp, wait for me and bring me back.
- So you were actually at this job in the canteen
- for several years?
- Yes.
- And about a year and a half I was there.
- And I looked on a few things.
- She had to boots frozen.
- And so I one thing, I went to this friend of mine, to Shama.
- I say, Shama I need some good, warm clothes.
- And give me a white fur coat, brand new one, with new pants.
- And I dressed her up.
- I say you go, you come every day or every second day after work.
- I'll give you some food.
- Because what she was making then wasn't enough to pay her--
- a month was enough to pay her rent what she was making.
- I know they were starving.
- I had another couple of girls, and I had some couriers there
- who used to send them a little milk, a loaf of bread.
- I do whatever I could steal.
- I didn't need it.
- I had enough to eat.
- But after that at end of '45, they
- opened up a big magazine, like a supermarket in town already.
- In Vorkuta?
- In Vorkuta.
- And he arranged they put me in to manage that.
- I was a prisoner.
- I was a prisoner.
- I couldn't go nowhere without a guard.
- And I went there, I mean the magazine.
- I could do anything I want.
- I mean it's such a big--
- I mean I had 20,000 ration cards to serve.
- There was a big clientele.
- Yes, so there was a lot of supplies there.
- Oh, yes, I mean I had everything.
- I had a white flour.
- It was impossible to get there.
- Milk used to come in burlap bags, frozen.
- Nothing could arrive there fresh.
- There was nothing.
- Everything was conserved or dry.
- Potatoes was dry.
- And I got, one day I got a sack of white flour
- they send me in for the NKVD, he says.
- And I had there a friend, Shalinsky from Germany,
- from Berlin.
- He was already free.
- How they freed him?
- I mean they were freed, but they had to stay in the North?
- They didn't let you go out.
- You couldn't go nowhere.
- You could be a free person though.
- They didn't give you papers, just to stay in there.
- And that's it was like an island,
- just an island around with the [NON-ENGLISH],,
- the waters and the tundras.
- 1,000 kilometers of tundras.
- And then find their own way to shelter and buy food.
- And they were on their own.
- Yeah.
- They're on their own.
- I mean they give them jobs.
- I mean they give them a job.
- But their job was not enough to support themselves.
- So that Shalinsky used to go on the black market,
- on the market.
- So I give him some flour to go sell it, make a few bucks.
- I'll take half of it, and you take half of it.
- And then [NON-ENGLISH] militia went on the side,
- and caught him.
- Asked him where you got it.
- Antosha.
- By that time, I was a popular name already
- in the little town.
- Antosha, everybody knows Antosha,
- from the NKVD to the [NON-ENGLISH],,
- to the guy who runs.
- And he comes into me and says, Antosha,
- did you give him flour.
- I say, yeah.
- He was selling it on the black market.
- So where is the flour?
- I got it.
- Come on.
- I went to the back room give him a big chunk of butter,
- and say go home and give your wife to bake cookies.
- Bring me some.
- This was the--
- The end of the--
- The end of this.
- I mean I wasn't afraid for nothing.
- I was doing well.
- One day, I figured, I'll go out.
- She lived with a girlfriend in an apartment.
- I said, I'll go to spend there an evening, a day,
- Sunday, with them together.
- And I had once by the guard, I was dressed good,
- like any free miner.
- When they went out there in there, I walked out.
- He saw me.
- He didn't-- I walked over there.
- In town, nobody bothered me.
- The next day, I had to come back.
- I called up the guard to see if he is there.
- And it was misleading.
- One of them answered the phone and said, yes.
- Come in.
- He knows I'm outside.
- When I got there, he put me [NON-ENGLISH]..
- And they had the former commandant was a lieutenant.
- He used to take me into towns, dropped me off
- and come back two three hours later and pick me up.
- Because spirits there, 100% proof vodka was there diamonds.
- Nobody had it.
- I had it.
- I used to give him a half a liter once a month.
- He would do anything I wanted to do.
- So they took me into the Kommandatura.
- And there was a new commandant, Ukrainian.
- He just come back from the front.
- He was wounded, and they sent him there.
- He start to raising hell.
- I'll send you to that mine there.
- I didn't say much.
- I asked him, I say, to smoke and I got better cigarettes
- than he had.
- Then the other one, that lieutenant,
- pulled him aside and said you better make peace with him.
- You need him.
- It didn't take long.
- I mean he cussed me out and this.
- And he sent me back to my quarters.
- And I was there in that magazine.
- And then they called me for to liberate me from the camp.
- That they want me to take the Russian citizenship.
- I refused it.
- They threaten me.
- They'll take away my job.
- They'll send me back to camp.
- I had one guy, it was the nachal'nik from the commerce
- department, he was a colonel, an anti-Semite.
- God, he must be a Ukrainian.
- He was an anti-Semite.
- With him was working a Jewish guy, Vasil'ev from Leningrad,
- also a prisoner, a former prisoner from Stalin.
- That they freed him, but they didn't
- let him get out of there.
- And the main accountant was from Estonia, also a prisoner.
- He was a good accountant.
- They let me know all the time if something,
- an inventory or something, they let me know in advance.
- He won't catch-- he told me once,
- if I catch you [INAUDIBLE],, I take another 10 years from you.
- So finally they called me out and gave me my free passport.
- This was the end of the war, in '45.
- Well, that was already in the end of 45.
- It was already the beginning of '46.
- It was already beginning of '46.
- Then already I had got together with my wife.
- We got married.
- I'll show you.
- I'll show our wedding, how it looks.
- Not ours, friends of ours in Montreal, they live.
- I brought them out.
- And I was there.
- And then I had a very good acquaintance.
- He was prokuror, this is the attorney general
- from the whole raion.
- He asked me, he said, Antosha, do me a favor.
- Do yourself a favor.
- Get away from the job.
- Go in the coal mine back.
- But from here, nobody walked away from these jobs
- without going to prison.
- From the warehouse to the prison,
- not even home, because I don't want to see you there.
- I like you too much.
- So he told you to go back to the coal mines.
- Better--
- From that you could get liberated from.
- No.
- That I'm not going to fall in the prisons from there because.
- Everybody had to steal there.
- And he know what I'm doing.
- One of these days he'll crack, and I'll have to prosecute you.
- And I don't want it.
- In other words, but where could you go?
- Work on the coal mine, go get another job.
- Get another job, so that you could--
- Get out from there, not to get to prison.
- So I was free already then.
- I said, don't worry about it.
- I can take care of myself.
- And meanwhile, my wife got pregnant.
- And I said, uh-uh, my child is not going to be born in Russia
- or I'll die.
- Not on my life.
- It was right in 1946 in June, July.
- I start to plan on something to do.
- I want to make it short.
- I want to plan it, to do something, to get away.
- Run away, you cannot from there.
- No way.
- Because as soon as you get it, they
- had already a train from there.
- As soon as you get on the train, the train takes off.
- You got in each compartment you got four soldiers checking
- everybody's--
- if you don't have any official papers, you're in trouble.
- I said, how can I do that?
- So first, I cannot leave my job and run away.
- Finally, it dragged away until it
- was in December, December '46.
- I decided I'll take a risk.
- I went out to the station, and through a friend of mine,
- talked to the engineer, to the train engineer.
- I said, I'll buy tickets.
- I want to go to Moscow.
- I'll buy tickets.
- I have to get through this inspection, that verification.
- He have to hide me somewhere on the train.
- Two half liters vodka I took my pocket,
- and took a girl with me.
- We have to say I'm not going for myself, I want if I go,
- I want all of my friends.
- There was 19 there.
- We took pictures from everybody, their date of birth.
- Where they was born, it didn't make a difference.
- I can make them born wherever I need them.
- If I get something by the Romanian embassy,
- I'll make them Romanish.
- With the Hungarian, I'll make them Hungarian.
- Went out to the train station and give them engineer,
- I have a little vodka, took four tickets all the way to Moscow.
- This is for 20 people?
- No, just two of us.
- Oh, just the two of you.
- Yes, two of us.
- Oh, God.
- Well you said--
- No, I had-- I took the pictures
- Oh, you took--
- We took pictures and their dates,
- if I get some success to make them some papers,
- I'll bring them back.
- Oh, you bring them back.
- I had to come back.
- Well, I left my wife there.
- So he took me and a girl, she was carrying the pictures.
- And--
- Tape two, side A, Paul Kaufmann continuing my interview
- with Mr. Anton Berkovitz.
- Now, at the end of the last tape you
- mentioned that you're on your way
- to Moscow with photographs of about 20 other people
- to see if you could get them papers,
- and that you got on the train by bribing
- the engineer and the stationmaster with vodka.
- He hide us on top of the electrician,
- electrical engineer, I had to give him a half a liter too.
- He hide us on top.
- It's like a loft.
- In the electrical compartment where the electricity got
- the train, because they take the electricity in the trains,
- they got a compartment there, where all the machines
- are for the electricity.
- There are batteries and everything,
- and he hired us right there until we got over
- to the inspection.
- Then we come down.
- We sit down on the train.
- We arrived to Moscow.
- It took us almost four days to get to Moscow.
- And we arrived to Moscow, I had a family there,
- a Jewish family with their son.
- He was a Russian pilot in the army.
- He was shot down by the Germans and put in a camp,
- and he ran away.
- And he comes back to the Russian lines.
- They told him he is a spy, and they send him away
- for 10 years.
- To Vorkuta.
- To Vorkuta.
- And I met him there.
- And I told him what I want to do.
- So he gave me the address from his mother.
- His father was in a camp too.
- And I arrived to Moscow.
- We went to that family.
- And she give us a place to stay there until--
- in the morning, I started off.
- I went first to the Romanian embassy, the Rumanisch embassy.
- I speak with Rumanisch then.
- And I had my brother-in-law.
- He was at that time in the Rumanisch army.
- He was a major, a Communist already.
- The man who married your sister?
- Yeah.
- They live in Israel now.
- And I thought, I'll have somewhere to mention somebody,
- maybe I'll have some.
- It didn't do any good.
- They told me they can take--
- I should fill out papers.
- They'll send them to Bucharest.
- And when they come back they'll send me a passport.
- It's impossible.
- I never would get it because there is intercepted
- [NON-ENGLISH] over there.
- And it never would arrive.
- If I don't get it personally, it's not worth it definitely.
- So I said I'll fill out the papers
- because I was there already.
- And so let's go to the Polish embassy.
- I'll be a Polack.
- I didn't succeed there either.
- I went away to the Hungarian embassy.
- I walked in, in the Hungarian embassy.
- And you know what they did.
- They filled.
- And it was a little walk to there.
- I come in.
- He said, yeah, fine.
- Sit down.
- Here is the form.
- He said, how many?
- I told him we are 19 there, and nobody can get out from there.
- He said, let's wait until the ambassador comes in,
- and we'll see what we can do.
- We'll try to help you.
- And sitting there and talking to one of the secretaries
- walked by a guy my age.
- He stands up and looks and looks and looks at me.
- I didn't know who is this.
- He was a courier in the Yugoslavian embassy
- in 1938, '39, and '40.
- And one night I met him in Budapest
- in a hotel we played rummy all night.
- I didn't recognize him.
- He recognized me.
- He said, where are you from?
- I said in Sighet.
- He said, did you live in Budapest?
- I say, yeah.
- Where you have been in 1938 during the European fair?
- I said I was in Budapest.
- I stayed in this and this hotel.
- He said, you play rummy?
- I say, yeah.
- He said, you remember we played the room all night long?
- Then I-- after the years I went through,
- this is the last thing I thought.
- That's like, eight, nine years before.
- Yeah, so it's the last thing I thought.
- He said, you set down.
- You're not going to go out from here without a passport.
- At 1 o'clock, the ambassador come in.
- He walked in.
- We'll make him some passports.
- It took 15 minutes after the ambassador come in.
- I got a passport for me, for my wife,
- and the other woman got a passport
- for her and for her husband.
- He took all the papers.
- He said, yes.
- Make them all passports.
- Here you got, meanwhile you got papers
- that they are Hungarian citizens.
- And let somebody come up not one time, just in two groups.
- And we'll give them 9, 10 passports at a time.
- He said, when you walk out from the embassy,
- don't dare go nowhere to a private house.
- You'll be followed step by step by the NKVD.
- Go from here.
- Travel around for two or three hours,
- and then go to the train station.
- Sit down there.
- There they'll come and ask you for your papers.
- It was.
- We got out from the embassy.
- They start following us.
- All the way, where we went.
- We stopped at an ice cream stand.
- In winter, their ice cream is a big--
- They walked up and bought ice cream.
- You knew who they were?
- If I know somebody follow me, if I see him
- long enough around me, I know they follow me.
- We come to this, we went for the metro.
- It was there.
- We went out from the metro they changed hand us over
- for two ladies.
- And about six hours, we was going around, back and forth,
- going out, walking on the streets, looking.
- You were with this girl who had smuggled
- the photographs in her clothes.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah.
- And she had the papers too what they gave me, for all 19.
- If they catch us, this is the end of us.
- So we walked around, walked around, finally, we
- got out to the station.
- As soon as we sit down, we don't took two minutes,
- two big come in there in uniform, and come up.
- [NON-ENGLISH], your papers.
- I take out the passport.
- She took out her passport.
- Where you live?
- [NON-ENGLISH] They says, you leave right away the city.
- They say, I give you 24 hours.
- I said, don't give me 24 hours.
- Give me a ticket.
- It's impossible to get a ticket in Moscow, a train ticket.
- Even to Vorkuta?
- Nowhere.
- At that time, it was so much army still going and coming.
- The stations was jammed.
- They said, I cannot give you nothing.
- You find a way to get out from Moscow.
- If we catch you, we'll put you in jail.
- You have no right to be in Moscow.
- Fine.
- So from there already, we was free.
- We know nobody will follow us.
- We went back to this lady.
- We slept over the night.
- The next day, we have to get a train ticket.
- I go back to the embassy.
- I say I cannot get no ticket.
- They said, we cannot do nothing.
- The Rumanisch embassy, they got connection
- to Intourist, the travel agency.
- They'll be able to get you tickets.
- Even in 1946, they had those connections?
- Yeah.
- So they will be able to give you tickets.
- I went back to the Romanian embassy.
- I said, listen, you took my documents, my papers.
- I want a ticket.
- I can't get no ticket.
- I need help.
- They said, no problem.
- Now you have to wait three days.
- They give us a letter to the Intourist.
- The Intourist give us a sleeping car all the way to Vorkuta.
- Only NKVD, what does it say?
- I'm a foreigner.
- I had a Hungarian passport.
- So you see, they didn't know.
- The Romanian embassy didn't know that I
- have a Hungarian passport.
- When I got to the Intourist they made us a ticket.
- We had to wait three days, and give us a sleeping car.
- Now we're going back.
- We have to get an exit visa.
- From Moscow?
- From Vorkuta, from Komi ASSR.
- You see this is Komi ASSR, Eskimo raion there.
- Well, you mean, once you got back to Vorkuta,
- you had to get an exit visa to get out of Vorkuta.
- Not from Vorkuta, to get out from the country.
- And I cannot get it, only there where I live.
- Moscow didn't have nothing to do with it.
- I talked to one of the militia.
- I said, yes, I said give us the passport.
- We'll send it away to Syktyvkar.
- This is the capital of Komi ASSR, Eskimo country.
- All Eskimos.
- And they'll send it to Moscow.
- And there.
- I said, uh-uh.
- This don't sound too good.
- I'll never received that passport.
- I don't do that.
- I talked to that Vasiliev, to my inspector
- from the commerce department.
- Here I got a job.
- I cannot leave the job too.
- I have to be transferred somewhere
- where they don't know about me.
- So I got with him they transferred me over
- to a little town, by a steel factory.
- Also in our little canteen, there
- was the canteen was a friend of mine
- from near Sighet, from a little village, Davydovich.
- He was the manager there.
- So they sent him to help.
- They send him.
- I hope this way I can get away.
- Nobody knows me there.
- Nobody look for me.
- And I got a paper from the employment office,
- a fake paper.
- I give two chunk of butter to the girl,
- and she made my paper.
- I'm transferred to Syktyvkar, from Vorkuta to Syktyvkar.
- Is that nearby?
- It's 1,000 kilometers.
- But up north?
- It's still up north?
- Yeah.
- And your wife too?
- Yeah.
- All four of us, they transferred,
- so this other couple too.
- We come home together.
- Well I said, I'm not going to let you here.
- You will come with me.
- Because he didn't have no money.
- I had rubles.
- I didn't have what to do with him.
- So I told him, you will come with us.
- Where we'll sleep, you'll sleep.
- Where we'll stay, you'll stay.
- And we got out, we come out to Kotlas back
- 600 miles south, and then back on the water,
- back north, there another direction.
- It's no train there.
- It's just water.
- And--
- A river?
- A river, yeah, a big river.
- In the wintertime, the truckers go through the ice.
- This is their road.
- And in the summertime is about two months.
- That's all it is.
- And finally, God helped us.
- We got to Syktyvkar.
- We got into Syktyvkar.
- Where you go?
- I don't know.
- Nobody went in.
- It was a little like a motel.
- We went in there.
- We sit down.
- In the morning, I went into militsiya.
- I come in, sits a lady with a rank,
- I don't know if it was lieutenant or what, an Eskimo.
- She hardly speaks good Russian.
- And I showed her the passport.
- She don't know what this is.
- She never saw it.
- This is a passport.
- I'm a foreigner.
- I need an exit visa.
- She went over to the inner ministerium,
- they got all this--
- and she took the passport.
- Yeah, you have to order an exit visa stamp from Moscow.
- You don't have this.
- I ask her, how long does it take?
- I don't know.
- So we give her the two passports.
- She give us a receipt on them.
- And we stayed in the restaurant there--
- I mean the motel, it was a restaurant,
- whatever they had we ate.
- Where was this?
- Near the border with Finland then?
- No, it's not.
- It's right in the tundras.
- Still deep within Russia?
- Oh it's deep in the North Pole.
- It's still the North Pole there.
- It's still the North Pole there with the Eskimos.
- And I start going every day.
- I had [NON-ENGLISH] I have no stamp this.
- It was already 14 15 days, and our visa is only--
- if they give you a visa, they give you for 30 days.
- And to get to the border, it's another thing.
- So they give-- you start to go in one day, another day.
- Finally, I told my wife I said you
- got a little bottle already.
- Why don't you--
- I'll go with you and to the inner ministerium.
- We will ask to see the inner ministers.
- She comes there.
- Right away, they took her under--
- With a gun.
- With the gun with the bayonet on it.
- Like a criminal.
- And they got you, and she got you-- and she got--
- and she come in.
- And he was very nice.
- And he said nothing can do until we get the stamp, Moscow.
- We get the stamp, I'll sign it, and you go.
- It was already 19 days, still nothing.
- I come into the office, to the Eskimo.
- I told her, listen.
- I run out of money.
- I'll sleep here, all four of us and you'll have to feed us.
- I didn't need it.
- I just wanted to see if you can do anything.
- The poor thing, she cannot do nothing.
- She started crying.
- She said, look, I got one ruble in my pocket.
- What can I do?
- I cannot help you.
- And I cannot let you sleep here either.
- I didn't mean that.
- So past 21, the 21st day.
- I walked in on the door.
- She jumped up with the stamp.
- She was happier than I was to get rid of us.
- To get rid of you.
- So they put out the stamp.
- Stamped, signed it.
- We got an exit visa.
- We got a visa for 21 days.
- If we're not out from the country from 21 days,
- we have to come back.
- How you get back the train station, to Kotlas?
- There's no buses, no nothing, no transportation,
- except army trucks.
- I walked up to an army truck.
- There was the driver.
- Said, I want to go to Kotlas.
- And I'll pay you 100 ruble.
- Take us, the four of us.
- Look, I'm not going.
- The next truck is going to Kotlas.
- Talk to him.
- So we paid him 200 ruble.
- He said only you can sit-in the back on the barrels.
- They had empty barrels, kerosene barrels, the steel barrels.
- On top of them you can sit.
- Do I have a choice?
- We sit on the barrels.
- We started to drive on that river on that ice.
- You know, it's already the beginning--
- so the ice started getting--
- What month was this?
- This was already in March.
- In March of '47?
- Yeah, March or April.
- March.
- Yeah, this was end of March already.
- 1947?
- '47, and my wife sit down on a barrel.
- I sit down on a barrel.
- And we start to go.
- And when start already, worn now that ice is started getting--
- Cracking?
- Not cracking.
- Start to get mushy.
- Mushy.
- And it starts to get holes, truck holes.
- Come in the middle of the night.
- My wife said, I'm losing the baby.
- I said, I cannot.
- I said you're not going to lose it.
- I sit down.
- And took it on my shoulders, grabbed her arm.
- And--
- We arrived in the morning to Kotlas.
- We have a train already.
- We bought tickets to Moscow.
- We arrived to Kirov.
- We arrived to Kirov.
- We have to change trains.
- You go down.
- You can't even go in the station.
- The military laying on the floor.
- It's unbelievable.
- You can't go in.
- It's no train.
- I walk up to the [NON-ENGLISH] from the station.
- And he was drunk like a pig.
- Yes.
- Give me a Russian [NON-ENGLISH] and walked away.
- I said, what are we doing?
- Standing outside in Kirov, still snow there.
- But it was good dressed.
- Staying with the baggage outside.
- It's no train.
- I told my friend, I said, you know what,
- I had a lot of dealings with the [NON-ENGLISH],,
- with the attorney generals.
- If we find the attorney general, he'll get us out from here.
- We're legitimate.
- We got a visa.
- We have to go.
- We start asking where is the attorney general's offices?
- The two girls were staying and watching the luggage.
- And the other the guy with me, we
- went away to attorney general.
- He come out there.
- It was an old man, probably 80 years old, high
- ranked public, a five-star general.
- He smoked a pipe.
- The secretary told him.
- He said, let him come in.
- So I come in.
- And said, look.
- I got a passport.
- I got a pregnant wife.
- I have to leave because my visa will expire.
- Until we get to the border, my visa will expire.
- I have to come back.
- He said, go back and tell that I told
- you to tell the manager the first train to put you out.
- Ah, the drunk, he said the same thing.
- So we went back to him, went back to attorney general
- and I told him what he said.
- He got angry and made him--
- in the Russian you say [NON-ENGLISH],, an order.
- He give him a written order.
- I want these people out with the first train.
- If not, you'll be responsible for it, and signed it.
- And it's no train.
- Here is our train come from Vladivostok.
- It's late, 14 hours it's late.
- You're talking about luck.
- And when I come back, that train already in the station leaving.
- So also an army train, not civilians.
- When I showed them this paper, he
- stopped the train outside the station by the first stop.
- They stopped the train.
- And he ask a soldiers, officers, helped us to take the luggage
- and put us on that train.
- In the train, there was no room to sit down even.
- It was a nice Russian officer got up and gave for my wife
- the seat.
- And we got to Moscow.
- We got to Moscow.
- Where we go?
- We're going to the Hungarian embassy.
- We went to the Hungarian embassy.
- Yes, fine.
- Except they took my arms.
- They said, you sleep here until we
- get you a train to the border, to the Hungarian border
- or to Budapest.
- We'll give you-- here, you'll sleep here.
- You'll eat here.
- Don't worry.
- And we'll give you tickets.
- We'll pay for the tickets.
- I didn't have much money left already,
- because I know they'll take care of it.
- All right.
- Much money, I didn't thought we'll need much money.
- Whatever I had, I had 100 rubles left when we arrived to Moscow,
- or 200 rubles.
- They give us-- they treated us like human beings there.
- Then three days later, we had a train, an army train.
- We went direct from Moscow to Budapest.
- They got a ticket on that train, and we
- arrived to Mukacevo the first night the first Seder, Pesach.
- My wife was ready at eight months there.
- And come to Munkacs.
- There the train stays four hours.
- So we went down from the train, went into Munkacs.
- We looked up a family there.
- But they were still in Vorkuta.
- This couple is in Montreal.
- He was waiting for their passport.
- All of them got out.
- All of them got their passports.
- And we went to visit them.
- When we come back to the train, we arrived to the border
- in Chop.
- There everybody have to go down.
- That's what you think, to stay in the train,
- they'll come control the train, check you and you go.
- Everybody have to go down.
- This is in Munkacs?
- Not in Munkacs.
- This is Chop.
- Chop, oh another town.
- Chop, this is already the border, the border town.
- One half is Hungary and half is Russian.
- We arrived there.
- As soon as we get down the train, I go show for the guard
- the passports.
- He took us again, sit us down in a corner,
- took the passport from us.
- No, we have to have listen, that you
- don't take our passports away.
- Because this is a Russian soldier?
- Sure, but it was happen a lot of them come to the border.
- And they took their passports, and they never made it out.
- They send them back to the other camp.
- So they hold us about 45 minutes under bayonets.
- Don't move.
- Finally, they come out and give us the passports back.
- So, you're free.
- You can go on that train.
- We go up on the train.
- Here comes the customs.
- He comes up, asked and said, do you have any money?
- I said, yeah, I got 100 ruble.
- You cannot take it out.
- I said you got it.
- Take it.
- No, you have to go spend it.
- You go down in Chop, you couldn't spend it
- if you want to spend it.
- You wouldn't have nothing to buy,
- not a pack of cigarettes in the whole station.
- I walk around and look.
- My wife is on the train with the luggage.
- They start blowing the whistle.
- The train is leaving.
- I want to go up on the train.
- They don't let me go up on the train.
- Right with a bayonet to your stomach.
- You're not going to go up.
- And the train is--
- she don't have no passport.
- I have the passport.
- And I start running, almost crying.
- Finally, I find one of the officers
- from the passport office.
- I showed him.
- When he got me to the train, the train was already rolling.
- I jumped up on the train and we arrived to Budapest.
- It was the second day of Pesach 1947.
- So we went to the Joint Distribution Committee.
- They right away give us shelter and different clothes.
- I mean I had-- my wife had only heavy clothes.
- And a month later, our daughter was born.
- Thank God.
- And from there, I stayed.
- I want to go back to Romania to see
- my sister was already home with her husband from the camps.
- They was living in Romania then.
- How did you know that?
- How did you know that?
- From Budapest, I know already because my brother-in-law
- had a sister.
- I find her.
- I mean I know Budapest from before.
- So I know where to go for information.
- I know my sister is home already.
- She's alive, and my brother-in-law.
- And I wrote a letter.
- She said, come home.
- I said, uh-uh.
- No such a thing.
- I'm not going.
- Come visit with your wife.
- I said, no.
- I know my wife, soft-hearted she is.
- She'll talk her over and I'll be stuck there.
- So I want to go further.
- I don't want to stay here.
- I have enough with the Russians.
- From 10,000 miles away, I don't want to see.
- How did you feel about getting to Budapest?
- That was also under--
- No, this was one of the best-- it was was nothing.
- I mean it's-- we didn't know that.
- I didn't know that what happened to Budapest that much.
- I know already something had happened in Germany.
- I know my mother and my both sisters
- was somewhere in Germany.
- I didn't know.
- I didn't know my mother don't live, until I got to Budapest.
- You didn't know about Auschwitz or the extermination camps
- or anything?
- No.
- No, no.
- You knew nothing until you got to Budapest.
- No, nothing.
- Nothing until I got to Budapest.
- And then there was still a remnant.
- Half of the Budapest community was already killed.
- They were taken.
- Yeah, sure.
- I mean it was gone.
- I mean we didn't know.
- So I come to Budapest.
- And I went to an ambassador, to the Rumanisch ambassador.
- I said, I want to go to Romania.
- He told me, so I say if you want to go,
- don't go with Rumanisch people.
- Because I know he was an attorney from Sighet.
- He was the ambassador, Tito.
- It was the whole story is like everywhere I went,
- I find somebody to help me.
- So I went back in Budapest to the Hungarians.
- I want to renew my passport.
- Because that passport was good only Moscow Budapest, one way.
- I want out.
- I'm a Hungarian citizen.
- If I got a passport, I'm a Hungarian citizen.
- I want a passport to go to Romania.
- They didn't make much-- so they give me a passport.
- I went to Romania.
- I stayed five days, visit my sister.
- I ask her you want to come out?
- I'll rent something.
- You come to Budapest.
- We'll go together.
- No we cannot go.
- She was at that time managing a hospital,
- and the people needed.
- It was--
- The other sister was not there, just the one sister?
- One sister had left.
- And she survived in Bergen-Belsen, [NON-ENGLISH]..
- And she was already outside on the pile with the dead ones.
- The next day it was liberated.
- And the girls told her that some people
- still alive on that pile.
- And they took her out.
- And thank God, she's alive.
- She's the only one left.
- And then we stayed in Austria.
- I start--
- Then you left Budapest, then went to Austria?
- Yeah.
- From Budapest, I didn't want to stay in Budapest.
- I was waiting till the child to be at least six months,
- I give him six months to be able.
- We have to go back the border, walking through the fields.
- With a child?
- With a child, it have to be at least six months
- to be able to take that journey.
- And we were in Budapest.
- I always find my way, made a few bucks here, a few bucks there.
- And we left.
- And right after Yom Kippur, we went to the border.
- And there we got a group.
- And we walked.
- We went over the border.
- We're walking all night.
- I had two suitcases on my shoulders
- and my wife had a baby.
- And halfway she said, Anton, I cannot carry the baby.
- My back is killing me.
- I cannot.
- I'll sit down.
- I said, you're not going to sit down.
- I'll throw the suitcases away, and I'll take the baby.
- So the next morning we arrived to Vienna to Rothschildspital.
- There was the Joint Distribution Committee's camp.
- I mean all the refugees first they come.
- And from there whoever stayed there first until warms up,
- and then we arrived to Budapest in the morning.
- Vienna?
- I mean to Vienna.
- We arrived to Vienna.
- We didn't have a diaper to change the child.
- There was nothing.
- You couldn't get nothing in Vienna a that time.
- A pair of shoelaces you couldn't get in 1947.
- I had $10 to my name.
- Well, in Hungary, $10 was a lot of money in Hungarian money.
- You come over to Austria, it was $10 was not much.
- I managed.
- So I told my wife.
- I said, listen no way I can do anything.
- I'll find out what's going on.
- I heard they told me in Bratislava,
- it's plenty food and plenty anything you want.
- You just have to go there and get it.
- So how you go?
- It's a border.
- I find another Berkovitz, not a relative,
- just another Berkovitz who was also coming from Russia.
- I said, do you want to go to Bratislava?
- He said, yeah.
- So we'll bring something from there.
- So we come.
- We went to the border.
- I had at that time, I had still a Russian--
- a leather coat, a long one with a Russian cap, with boots.
- We all got dressed in.
- We come to the borders singing a Russian song.
- For the bridge, and we give him good wishes.
- [RUSSIAN]
- Go.
- Without papers?
- Without papers or nothing.
- I had a piece of Russian paper from the--
- it was nothing just a piece of paper in Russian.
- It was a fiasco.
- Look, I'm transferred from Russia.
- And we got into Bratislava.
- I went into the temple.
- There I find somebody to change me the $10.
- I bought two suitcases.
- I filled up with the $10 diapers, salami, sardines,
- whatever I could find I packed in the two suitcases.
- And two days later, the Bricha was coming back.
- It's a transport to Vienna from Czechoslovakia.
- They took us back to Vienna.
- I come back to Vienna.
- Then I start--
- No trouble getting across the border with the Russians there?
- No.
- We was coming with the Russian officers.
- I mean we paid them off.
- And they stayed on the truck outside to go to the border.
- And I come to Vienna back.
- I mean, I sold some of the stuff I had already I made about $100
- together.
- So I'm already a rich man.
- I got $100.
- I start to do some business.
- I start off a business.
- Six months later, I had to build up a business, thousands
- of dollars--
- coffee, sugar, and chocolate, Cadbury chocolate.
- They used to come in from the American zone.
- And in Vienna, there was nothing.
- And so we moved out from the Rothschild.
- I got my wife with the child over to Linz
- in the American zone.
- We had an apartment there.
- And I figured, until I get somewhere to go,
- at least I'll make some money.
- I have a chance.
- And I build up a pretty good business in Austria then.
- You dealt with the Austrian Viennese population then?
- Yeah.
- With the Austrian people, I mean the German I know.
- I mean I know Vienna from before, from before the war.
- How did you find them?
- Was there any reaction to you or--
- No.
- They didn't know me.
- I mean it's not the people who know me, just business people.
- I went in a deli stores or candy stores.
- And say you want to buy chocolate?
- I got chocolate for sale.
- Yeah.
- cocoa or anything, coffee.
- This was diamonds.
- You couldn't get it in Austria.
- Because they didn't have the foreign currencies.
- And then I took my Hungarian passport.
- It was expired.
- And we put a French visa on it, a bogus.
- I got a transit visa to Switzerland.
- And so I was traveling.
- So you went across the border.
- No.
- What I mean is the war was over.
- There must have been many Nazis left in Austria.
- Did they--
- Yeah, at that time everybody was fine.
- Just give him that he can make a living.
- Just it was no mention anything had
- happened, like never happened.
- It never happened.
- Like never happened.
- Then we moved from Vienna--
- from Linz we moved to Wels.
- In Wels, I find out that a lot of people
- when there was the dead march, in Austria when they walked in,
- some of them they couldn't walk.
- They just shot him on the road and buried them
- right there by the road.
- We find that out and we created a committee.
- It was 12 of us going from village to village to find--
- We come to Gunskirchen, they have the mass graves, not far
- from Mauthausen.
- I find a farmer.
- He told me, there outside the cemetery by the wall,
- lays somebody.
- He's buried in a box.
- We went, and I'll show you a picture of it.
- We went in with authorities, with a doctor.
- I mean we got for examination.
- And we took that body out it was [PERSONAL NAME] from Bleier.
- I was with him.
- He was older and I. And I know him like I know the son.
- We brought him into Wels.
- We buried him in a Jewish cemetery.
- Then we start looking for more.
- We find in one grave, they told us
- it's three people there buried.
- We opened up that grave.
- We find six people and one child.
- We brought them into the Wels.
- And then we got to Mauthausen, the group,
- and brought the ashes from the crematorium,
- and brought it to Linz, and there they
- put it in containers.
- Wiesenthal was there.
- And I made a burial.
- And I sent it to Israel.
- I got pictures of it too.
- And after that, we lived in Wels until 19--
- Wels?
- Wels, Austria.
- W-E-L-S?
- Wels, it's between Salzburg and Linz.
- And there my son was born in Wels.
- And I started looking for a way to get out--
- Australia.
- This was what?
- 1948, '59?
- That was already in '50.
- '50?
- '50.
- This was already in 1950.
- I start to get in contact with Australia, Brazil.
- Well, this friend who is in New York now,
- that [NON-ENGLISH] who was saved from with the Germans from
- the camp, he was in Brazil already.
- So I got in contact with him.
- And he said he'll send me papers.
- Matter of fact, he sent me already for a visa,
- if I had the passport.
- And then my wife said, I got family in New York.
- My mother's two sisters.
- I got mother's brothers.
- I said, let's write a letter.
- I said, who you know?
- Where you write a letter?
- You have no address, nothing.
- We sit, and we went to a restaurant in Wels.
- And we sit there and.
- We talk.
- There's sitting another three young men there.
- I heard him talk something.
- He got cousins in America.
- I walked up to him.
- I said, where in Brooklyn?
- Where in Brooklyn?
- In South 9th street.
- I didn't know where they live.
- I said, can you ask your uncle if they know the family
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- So they write him.
- Three weeks later, they got a letter.
- They know them.
- They live right in the neighborhood,
- my wife's uncle and the aunt.
- So we wrote them a letter.
- He was very happy.
- He said, come to America.
- Come to America.
- So I wasn't home.
- I left, I went I went to the Schweiz.
- And some people went to register at that time
- with the HIAS for America.
- And my wife went to register too.
- And she said she want to go to America.
- She haven't got nobody from the family, nobody left.
- We'll go with Australia to this.
- Now, she wants to meet her aunts and uncles and her cousins.
- I said, fine.
- We'll go to America.
- And I start working on it.
- And in 1951, in December the 4th,
- we arrived to the United States.
- It was in New York City then?
- Actually, I had papers a contract to Ogden, Utah.
- I had somebody send an affidavit.
- I mean, the HIAS, you see the highest had everybody--
- They try to route you somewhere.
- Yeah, somewhere.
- Because I didn't want uncle or the tante I always was family
- is fine to [NON-ENGLISH],, to eat dinner with them.
- To help me--
- You want to be independent.
- I don't want to owe him nothing.
- So they sent me papers from Ogden, Utah to come.
- When I arrived to New York.
- I said, I'm not going.
- I had already then a friend.
- He has passed away.
- He lived in Glens Falls, also a refugee.
- He was my partner.
- He come a year before me.
- And he lived in Glens Falls, New York.
- And she waited when we arrived.
- She said, don't go nowhere.
- Come to us.
- There you cannot go.
- The HIAS, you cannot just take off,
- I mean and say we are disappeared.
- You do it on the official way.
- So the HIAS start to threaten me.
- If I don't go to Utah, they send me back to Germany.
- I said, you do what you want.
- I got my two children here, and my wife.
- Nobody will send me nowhere.
- I'm not in Germany or Russia.
- They said you must go.
- I'm in the United States.
- And we come.
- We come to visit the uncle.
- We stayed there.
- One night we stayed by the aunt.
- We stayed there.
- And he was happy to see us and happy to see us go too.
- And we left for Glens Falls, a friend there,
- the Jewish community accepted us very well.
- And we stayed.
- We went right away I went to work
- in a factory to learn English.
- I went.
- I worked daytime I worked in a factory.
- In the night I went to school.
- And we lived nine months we lived in Glens Falls.
- We moved into New York.
- If I can't speak already little English,
- I went to got me a driver's license.
- I bought me a car.
- I bought me a little fruit market in Williamsburg,
- between all the Hasidim, and made a living.
- It was fine.
- From there I went, and bought a poultry farm in New Jersey.
- That didn't work too hot.
- Went broke in the poultry farm.
- Then I had some friends in Indianapolis, also
- a former partner of mine from home.
- He was already there.
- And he finds a cousin, or an uncle.
- He had 12 supermarkets in Indianapolis.
- And he gave him a job.
- He told me, he say, you want to come here?
- You'll get a job here.
- I said, fine.
- Don't make any difference.
- I want to start somewhere a new life.
- I went broke in the farm.
- So I moved down to Indianapolis.
- What year are you talking about now?
- This was in 60--
- let's see from '51 we arrived.
- We stayed a year in Glens Falls.
- Then we stayed two years on the farm.
- That's '53, so '55.
- '55.
- In '55, we moved to Indianapolis.
- In Indianapolis, I got a job.
- Meanwhile, he sold the stores, the guy who owned the stores.
- I become a supervisor.
- And I worked for eight years.
- Then I went to my own, moved to Chicago
- bought a store in Chicago.
- We went to vacation to Canada.
- On the way back, I stopped.
- I find a store.
- I bought it.
- You mean a supermarket?
- Supermarket, in Chicago.
- I struggled for a while.
- And then got I had three stores at one time in Chicago.
- And then she got sick.
- Doctor told me she had to have a warm climate.
- So I have to sell the stores.
- So
- [AUDIO OUT]
- Anton Berkovitz.
- And so you got your own supermarket in Chicago.
- And then you had three of them.
- Yeah.
- But that didn't work out.
- I sold that.
- Your wife needed a warm climate, so you came to Florida.
- I come to Florida.
- I sold there the stores.
- I come to Florida.
- And I find here in Liberty City, I find a store.
- I bought it.
- I kept it for 15 years, 14 or 15.
- 15 years.
- Grocery store also?
- A supermarket.
- Called Earl's Market.
- It's still there.
- And I had it until three years ago.
- I sold it.
- Three years ago I sold it.
- Then I went in the restaurant business, sold that too.
- Now I'm semi-retired.
- So--
- The children got married.
- I want to ask you about those.
- What are your children doing?
- My son lives here.
- He's a CPA.
- He got an office in Broward.
- He got three boys.
- There they are.
- That's my son with his wife next to him.
- There is our daughter with her family, with her husband.
- She got already daughter in third year in college.
- Her son is graduating now from high school.
- And thanks God that she should be healthy.
- Now I've got a problem.
- She's sick.
- This is the life.
- It's life.
- Well, are there any questions that I haven't
- asked you, Mr. Berkovitz?
- Any questions I haven't asked you
- that you'd like to talk about?
- Well, it's a lot of talking, some of them too emotional.
- Well suppose you were talking to a group of high school
- young people, or college people, or just a general audience.
- What would you have to tell them about this whole period
- of world history and your own life?
- I mean it's the way it is, I could tell them.
- If it's be to be alive.
- I was twice.
- One story I didn't tell you.
- I mean I almost got killed also, three of my co-workers
- got killed.
- I survived.
- In the coal mine?
- In the coal mine.
- I survived.
- And you have to be what I say determined.
- You want to go through something.
- If you get in, in a jam or somewhere,
- you have to be determined that you do it, you'll make it.
- You have to have a strong--
- A strong will.
- You have to have a will to live and to survive.
- And those who did not?
- Who did not, they didn't survive.
- They was in the beginning from the first year, until the end,
- they started just fell like flies.
- And that's it.
- I mean one thing we have to fight and see
- that it never happens again.
- Well it's one of the reasons that we
- try to get as many accounts as we can,
- so that this will be on record.
- Yes.
- I mean we went through for our children
- and grandchildren great grandchildren.
- It's enough.
- I'll show you the pictures from the examination from that.
- [AUDIO OUT]
- It's like it's everything to have pictures.
- This is my friend, between the two I went over.
- When you were up, up at Vorkuta with?
- Yeah, but away, he run away.
- He lives in Winnipeg.
- Well, I want to thank you very much for your time, Mr.
- Berkovitz, and you'll get copies of these tapes.
- It will some weeks.
- Yeah, my wife got some.
- Well, you'll get copies of these too.
- I know she had some.
- She got some too.
- And I want to thank you because it's a valuable contribution
- to the work we do.
- No, I'm making-- I'm making tapes for the children.
- Well, you'll have these too.
- Yeah, I made them already.
- And I make them, I'm writing the whole story up.
- You are writing?
- Yeah.
- Did your children-- did you discuss this with your children
- when they were young?
- Oh, yeah.
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah.
- Oh, yeah, especially my son.
- He's very interested.
- He's very--
- OK.
- I think we'll end the tape here then.
- Thank you, again.
- You're welcome.
- This has been Paul Kaufmann interviewing Mr. Anton
- Berkovitz.
- About his experiences as a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust.
- This interview will be included as a valuable contribution
- to the oral history library of the Holocaust Documentation
- and Education Center, Incorporated.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Anton Berkovits
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Anton Berkovits
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
2 sound cassettes (90 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
- Topical Term
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives.
- Personal Name
- Berkovits, Anton.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the tapes of the interview from Anton Berkovits on November 11, 1994.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:11:49
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn509290
Additional Resources
Transcripts (2)
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- See Rights and Restrictions
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- This record is digitized but cannot be downloaded online.
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