- Today is Friday, April 16, 1982.
- I'm at the home of Pinchus Orbach, who resides
- in Melbourne, Australia.
- OK.
- Could you tell me where you were born and what year?
- Well, I've been born in a small town called
- Wislica, Vayslitz in Yiddish.
- That was in Poland?
- It was in Poland, yes.
- And it was in the--
- it was near Kielce.
- The main town in that district, in that state was Kielce.
- And I been born on the 25th of November, 1907.
- It was in Hanukkah.
- November 25?
- 25, 1907.
- You were the oldest?
- You were the first-born?
- I was the oldest at home, yes.
- Your parents must have been happy to have
- a son for the first one.
- Yes, of course.
- I don't remember much what happened those first seven
- years.
- I think it wasn't any public school there.
- But it was a cheder, like in the small towns in Poland.
- And I think I went to that cheder, learning--
- Cheder?
- --cheder-- to teach me my thing, Jewish education--
- Jewish, Chumash, and Hebrew, and what that.
- So your parents were religious then?
- Very religious.
- What were their names--
- their names?
- Eziel and Ruhel Orbach.
- By 1914, when I was seven years of age,
- the First World War broke out.
- Oh, that's right.
- And the fighting was standing behind our doors, you can say.
- The German soldiers were behind the other side of the river.
- And the Russian soldiers were in town behind the houses.
- And the fighting was going on for about seven, eight months.
- We been in a cave in my grandfather's place.
- Under the house was a cave where was standing me, my parents.
- My younger brother, he was Chaim,
- he was about three and a half.
- And my youngest sister, she was a few months old, Devorah.
- And we been there about five, six months, seven months,
- and a big fighting broke out.
- And the whole town went in flames.
- And we ran away then.
- This was on a Friday night.
- We ran away to Busko, was the nearest town,
- about 15 kilometers from our town.
- It was winter.
- It was wintertime, I think.
- And we been separated though with our father.
- My mother and the children were with a wagon.
- There was a wagon train with the goods what we have gotten.
- My father stay still in Vayslitz.
- And we come.
- It was on a Friday morning.
- We come to Busko.
- After a few hours, my father come in.
- We went further, to Chmielnik, another town.
- And we stayed there till the fighting stopped
- and the Germans occupied Poland.
- It was about 1915.
- We went back to our hometown.
- And my parents started--
- start the business to run again, to open the business again.
- We got our own home in that town.
- Germans had meanwhile occupied Poland?
- Yes, it was occupied by the Austrians and the Germans.
- It was from 19--
- about '15, was occupied till about 1918.
- There still wasn't any public school
- in our town and all the small towns.
- Only was the Jewish education.
- The Jewish teachers-- called them [NON-ENGLISH]..
- And we've been learning only Jewish-- a bit of Yiddish--
- a bit of Yiddish.
- Then by 1918, a new state was born in Poland.
- It was-- the Polish government was born.
- It was about--
- I don't remember the exact date, but it was in 1918.
- Germany had lost the war.
- Germany had lost the war.
- German left-- German soldiers--
- the occupation force left Poland to Germany.
- And Germans left, a Polish government
- was form-- was established.
- OK.
- Were Jews--
- Pardon?
- Were Jews treated any worse by Germans during World War I?
- Very good.
- Jews-- I mean, though, unlike World War II,
- Jews were not singled out in World War I.
- In World War I, Jewish were--
- been feeling very well under the German occupation.
- As a matter of fact, that Jewish people
- pray to God that the Germans will stay with us--
- Really?
- --forever.
- In what, during World War I?
- During World War I, yes.
- That's so interesting.
- My mother used to pray every morning to God in--
- she said in Yiddish, [YIDDISH]--
- let the Germans stay with us forever.
- Jewish has been feeling very well in 1915-18
- under the German occupation.
- So you're saying that Jews were treated better by Germans
- than they were by the Poles?
- Than they were before by the Russians.
- Yes.
- By the Russians?
- Yes.
- Before the First World War, wasn't any Poland.
- Russian was the-- occupied by Russians for hundreds of years.
- Was under Russian control?
- I see.
- Yes.
- But 1918, Poland was established.
- Polish government was established.
- Then we opened the business again.
- And the Poles opened public schools.
- Children enrolled into the public schools.
- I was already too old to enroll in the public.
- I been feeling-- I been helping a lot my parents in business.
- And I been feeling I'm a big businessman already.
- I was 11 years of age only.
- But I took private lessons at nighttime.
- I haven't got time then to go to the public school at daytime.
- My younger brother and my sister,
- they went to the public school.
- But I have got to be with my parents in business.
- Most of the time, my father has been traveling to buy goods,
- do some business interstate.
- And I stayed with my mother in business.
- And I've been feeling very well as a businessman.
- 11-year-old, you were a busy man.
- 11-year-old, I enjoyed it.
- And all was going on.
- We have been established.
- We established our business.
- And we've been very quite well situated.
- Yes, we've been-- made a good living.
- And life has been going on like that.
- How big was Vayslitz?
- Was it a big city?
- 300 families, Jewish people, mostly Jewish people.
- It was only about 20 or 30 Polish people
- living in it, Polish families living in that town.
- So it was very small?
- Very small.
- But it was farmers around the town.
- We make a living from the farmers.
- We bought from them food, everything.
- And they bought from us whatever anybody
- has been running the business.
- It wasn't a rich town.
- It was a few families, 20-30, maybe, 50 families,
- they could make a good living.
- The other one had been struggling all their life
- till all the time.
- OK.
- Well, by 1917, my youngest brother was born.
- What was his name?
- His name was Menasha.
- And life has been going quite smoothly.
- By about 1932, I married.
- I married a beautiful girl from Sosnowiec.
- What was her name?
- Pearl.
- How did that whole thing happen?
- Was it a shidduch?
- It was-- we were introduced.
- When I meet my first--
- [NON-ENGLISH]---- wife, we meet in Sosnowiec.
- I meet her in a hotel.
- We been going out for a fortnight.
- And then we had been written some letters to each other,
- keep it down.
- After six months, we--
- and the parents of my wife made an engagement party.
- My parents come there with me, with the family.
- It was a very nice engagement.
- After a few months, it was about--
- we were engaged about July, August 1931.
- And I married in January 1932, early January '32.
- Was a big ordeal.
- In Sosnowiec?
- Pardon?
- In Sosnowiec?
- In Sosnowiec, yes, the wedding was in Sosnowiec.
- And I rented a flat and settled down in Sosnowiec.
- And after a few months, I opened my own business.
- What kind?
- Leather business.
- And my first child was born June '33, a daughter, Tziri.
- And my younger daughter was born February '36.
- Her name was Hela, Hinda.
- Life has been going-- was very reasonable, very--
- has been working out very well for us.
- I been doing good business.
- I had quite a bit of money.
- Well, we been running that.
- It's been going on very well till
- about August, September 1939.
- All right.
- Now, do you remember when you were growing up
- if you encountered or had experienced antisemitism
- from Poles or from neighbors?
- Oh, yes.
- There was very big antisemitism in Poland everywhere.
- But for me, directly, it didn't mean anything
- because I've been in the wholesale business.
- And they couldn't stop customers coming into to my store
- because it was most-- a lot of them was Jewish customers.
- They been shoemakers, all kind of work they been doing.
- They been making the shoes from that leather what
- they bought from me and selling it to the shops.
- Well, they been doing business with the German shops,
- with the Polish shops, and with the Jewish shops.
- These people, the Jewish people, that running the shops,
- they have been affected.
- They been very much affected.
- And there was a lot of--
- You're saying because you had a wholesale store
- that it was different for you?
- Different for me, yes.
- Yes.
- It was the retailers that were more affected?
- The retailers were more affected,
- especially the Jewish retailers, because they put on picketers
- at the front of the shops.
- They call it in Polish [POLISH]----
- go to my own people to buy.
- And Jewish people hasn't been mean to the--
- they are Polish, they belong to the Polish government,
- the Polish people, separate sect.
- And the way they've been treating us.
- But that was mostly since--
- my trouble was between '33 till 1939.
- Hitler was in power then?
- Hitler was in power already in Germany.
- A lot of-- they throw out some German Jews into the border,
- into the Polish border.
- They come to us.
- We have been living near the border,
- not far from the German border.
- By 1930, at the end of '30, there
- was a lot of Jewish people coming from Poland already
- from Germany, already to Poland, to us.
- And we have seen what's going on.
- But we didn't believe it.
- We didn't think of it, that could happen to us.
- That's the way it goes in life.
- Well, when you say that you didn't
- think it could happen to you, you
- mean that you didn't realize that the end would be--
- I mean Jews had experienced antisemitism
- throughout most of their lives.
- Yes.
- But we lived-- we been trying to live with it.
- Did you realize that a war was coming?
- Yes.
- It was a lot of talking about war is coming.
- But still.
- What did you think that meant for--
- did you think that meant anything special for Jews
- in Poland or as opposed to Poles in Poland?
- No, we been afraid that if war come, that will affect us more
- than the Poles.
- How so and why did you feel that way?
- Because we have seen what's going on in Germany.
- We have hear and we have seen what's going on already.
- We have seen--
- What do you mean exactly?
- Well, we have seen that they throw out
- a lot of Jewish people from Germany into Poland,
- into the border.
- We have seen over there in Germany,
- the synagogues has been burned down.
- And we hear it what's going on.
- And we been afraid that it will affect us.
- But we didn't believe it, it can come so far, what's happened.
- We still trusted.
- We still have been thinking that the Germans can't be so bad.
- We remembered the Germans from 1914-19.
- And we thought, it can't be as bad as it was.
- So as war became closer, what options did you have?
- Did you think about leaving Poland?
- Did that ever cross your mind?
- Or did you have any ideas of what you would do?
- Well, a lot of people who lived in German,
- in the border from Germany, left already Poland for Russia,
- just month, two months before the war.
- But not everybody could do it.
- With a family with two small children--
- my older daughter was then six, the younger
- was three, where could you run?
- And what could you take with you?
- But I brought my children to my parents' place.
- Was far away from the border.
- And I thought, whatever happens, we still can run away.
- When did you do this?
- Well, by the 1st of September 1930--
- by the end of August 1939, I brought my children--
- went back to Sosnowiec.
- But by the 1st of September, 1939, when the war broke out,
- I ran to my parents' place too.
- But everybody has been running.
- You ran with your wife?
- With my wife, yes.
- Only my children were there.
- They had already been there?
- They had been already there, yes.
- And why did you bring your children there?
- Because I didn't-- to be ready to be able to run
- if that's happened, if I have to.
- How old were you then?
- 1930-- 32 years.
- You were 32 years old?
- Yes.
- You thought it was safer in Vayslitz because--
- Yes we thought that too far-- it was far away
- from the German border.
- We believed that the Polish will fight back.
- And they will hold on the Germans.
- But it wasn't happens like that.
- When I come to my hometown, Vayslitz, my parents--
- my mother was only with the children.
- My two brothers and my father have been run away already
- from there.
- I been running with my sister, Devorah, with her husband.
- Of course, they have been living in Sosnowiec too.
- She married in 19--
- my sister married in 1938.
- And she settled down in Sosnowiec.
- And when we have run, she hasn't got any children then.
- We've been running.
- We've been running together.
- We come to our hometown-- nobody,
- only my mother with my children were there.
- And we left my mother and the children there.
- And we run further up to the Russian border.
- But when we come to a small town--
- it was in Galicia.
- It was quite--
- What were you running from?
- From the Germans.
- OK.
- I mean, you were just going to hide?
- Run away from the Germans.
- You weren't running from the Poles at that point?
- No, the Poles themself, they been running.
- They were running.
- Right, OK.
- OK.
- And a lot of Jews were forced to or did join the Polish Army?
- They have got to join the Polish Army.
- But the Polish Army has been running.
- From the first day, they kept running.
- So they didn't really fight very much.
- They didn't really.
- You haven't got a hope to fight.
- They've been fighting behind Warsaw.
- In Warsaw, the fighting was going on
- for about two or three weeks.
- But all over Poland, wasn't any fighting.
- There only was running.
- They been going by trucks, by cars, and moving on.
- And the Poles have been-- kept running all the time.
- OK.
- All right.
- Why don't you continue?
- But by-- it was--
- You said, you and your sister were running.
- Yes, and her husband.
- Berish.
- Berish, yes.
- My wife stayed with the children.
- We been running to Vayslitz.
- And she stayed with the children--
- with my mother in Vayslitz.
- And we running.
- We come to a small town.
- It was very light in the night time.
- And we stayed there overnight.
- In the morning, the Germans got us.
- They come in.
- It was a town called [PLACE NAME]..
- Was near quite a lot from the Russian border,
- but it was still Poland.
- Well, the first place when they come in,
- they couldn't see anything very bad.
- They been resting and this.
- But I've been told that in the nighttime when they come in,
- they catched a few people, Jewish people.
- They make them work in the water.
- There was a river there to make them work and make a bridge
- there, something like that.
- And they killed them there.
- But I haven't seen it.
- Well, after that, we stay there a day or two.
- And we start going back to home.
- We went back to two Vayslitz, took us about a couple of days.
- They let you go?
- Yes.
- Yes.
- They been going back.
- And they been going up.
- And we been going back home.
- Of course, there wasn't a way to hide or where to run anymore.
- We been in already.
- We been going back to Vayslitz.
- And when we come home to my hometown,
- my father and the wagons were already home.
- My wife and children were there.
- We stayed a day or two.
- And we hired a wagon train, a Pole-- a wagon train
- and paid him good money to bring us back to Sosnowiec.
- Who was us-- you, your wife, your two children?
- My wife, my two children, and my sister, and her husband.
- But when we come home, we still been afraid.
- And we send back-- my sister went back
- to Vayslitz with her husband.
- And my children too, she thought that it would be better
- them to stay there.
- And I been staying in Sosnowiec.
- You and your wife?
- Me and my wife been staying in my own home.
- After a few days--
- What did you do?
- Did you work?
- Yes, they took me.
- They make me work.
- I clean the streets, clean the streets.
- Who's they?
- The Germans?
- The Germans, yeah.
- What happened to your business?
- I mean, sure.
- That's what I'm going to tell you.
- OK.
- Sorry.
- The first few days when I come home, I haven't done anything.
- But after a few days, called me up.
- They have to take up some work.
- We working cleaning the streets.
- They were doing-- working for a German firm
- they called [GERMAN].
- That means making the footpaths or something like that.
- And after a few days, there was established a German--
- what to call it--
- Police?
- It's not a police.
- It was like a company.
- But they took over the Jewish businesses.
- And they come in with a truck into the driveway.
- I got my business.
- And they took everything what they have got in my store.
- They nationalized everything?
- They made everything part of the government?
- Property.
- They opened only one business, one business from all guys.
- And they took all the goods into that business.
- There was a German Treuhander, they called it.
- He was the boss.
- And he kept working for him some Jewish people in that business.
- And I have-- and my job was only to work for them.
- We've been going on with that for about 1939 till about 1942.
- For three years, you worked for the government.
- The government, for the German company,
- was not only me, a lot of Jewish people.
- Right.
- I understand that.
- But did you work in the leather business
- or whatever they wanted?
- No, no, what they wanted.
- Yes, what they wanted, what they gave me.
- Mostly, cleaning the streets, working with--
- making the footpaths, making the road, mostly in that work.
- Your wife was still in Sosnowiec?
- She was still in Sosnowiec.
- And your children?
- Children were in Vayslitz there with my parents.
- So for those three years, they remained?
- For about two and a half years, they remained with my parents,
- by my parents in Vayslitz, yes.
- But they start coming on--
- we start-- we hear it, they taking away
- some small towns in Poland, they taking away people
- into concentration camps, into Treblinka, into Auschwitz.
- Had you heard of those camps?
- We heard about that, yes.
- What did you think they were?
- Well, they say that they take them there
- to make them work for the German government.
- But we knew they taking them there, are a lot of them,
- to kill them.
- In that case, I heard what's going on, in my town,
- my parents were still there, and everything was quite all right.
- But I've been afraid for the children.
- We thought that we'd be safer to bring them back
- to have them at home.
- I hired a Polish woman, paid her money
- to go there and bring the children back to me.
- And she did that.
- OK.
- Just one second.
- So this was before the ghettos happened, right?
- Or were they still ghetto-- had ghettos come about during
- those--
- It was the ghettos already.
- That was the ghettos.
- We had been living--
- we could walk in those two streets.
- The ghetto we had been living, we
- had been living before the war was the ghetto since 1941.
- All right.
- So were you in fact-- and you didn't
- have to move because the ghetto became around where you were?
- Only a family was put into my flat,
- another Jewish family has got--
- I have got to take in a family with a child
- into my flat because there wasn't enough room.
- Some had been living in two families in one room, some--
- I've got two rooms and a kitchen.
- And we been living two families in my home.
- Where you worked, was it in the ghetto or outside
- of the ghetto?
- Outside the ghetto.
- Outside.
- Yes.
- And did you have to have passes to go in and out of the ghetto?
- No.
- They collect us, the German soldiers, German SS men
- collect us from the ghetto.
- We come to that at that point, that Punkt.
- And they took us out.
- We been working, watching us, and they brought us back
- into the ghetto.
- Was there a Judenrat in Sosnowiec ghetto?
- Yes, there was a Judenrat.
- Of course, there was a Judenrat.
- Could you tell me a little bit about that how it came about?
- Were you very familiar with that?
- Yes.
- It was like that--
- when the Germans come into Sosnowiec,
- they took all the men into a big hall.
- It was like a big storms, big store places or what
- 50,000 square meter or something like that.
- They keep them all there for a day or two.
- The next day, one of the SS man or the Gestapo come in,
- and he say, [GERMAN].
- There was a Jewish committee before the war.
- They asked the Judenalteste to come--
- the Juden--
- Jewish committee.
- --the head from the Jewish community to come out.
- But he wasn't there.
- Was only-- was there a few, but had
- been in the Jewish committee working before the war.
- It was one young man who was like a boy--
- he was a boy who has been putting--
- bringing the mail, slipping that and that.
- And he was quite--
- he said, I am the Judenalteste.
- And they make him as that.
- His name was Merit.
- And he was the Judenalteste all these years.
- How old was he?
- He was about 25, 20-- maybe 30, I don't know exactly now.
- But he wasn't married then.
- I knew very well his parents.
- And he has been running this business for all the time.
- He did what the Germans asked him to do.
- He's got the team, all those committee
- people who've been in the committee before the war.
- They have been working with him together.
- And the Germans only come-- the Gestapo only
- come to him, to his people, to tell them what they want,
- and what they have to do.
- And they did the job for them.
- OK.
- Could you tell me a little bit about what
- life was like in the ghetto?
- I mean, did religious life continue?
- Yes, religious life continued, but not in the way like before.
- In the house we have been living,
- we been going to do the prayers at a private home.
- The synagogues were closed.
- The was shtiebels what they call it was closed.
- But privately, you were--
- whoever was doing the prayers at a private home,
- from that house.
- You didn't go into another building.
- Was it forbidden?
- It wasn't forbidden.
- But we been afraid to get together, all together, a big--
- a lot of people.
- In that town, I believe it was only 20 or 30 families.
- And those 20 or 30 men from the house, whoever it may be,
- not all of us, went to the minyan every morning
- or every Saturday, yontif, and we did the prayers there.
- How did you get food?
- Well, it was cards.
- It was on--
- Ration cards?
- --ration cards, that's right.
- It was ration cards.
- And we got the ration cards.
- But you couldn't live on that.
- The ration cards were there--
- were on before-war prices, were very cheap.
- But what you get with 200 grams of meat
- for a month, one bread for a family for a week,
- something like that.
- And it was very hard.
- And it was a black market.
- Whoever's got a lot of money could--
- [AUDIO OUT]
- OK.
- So you were saying that whoever had--
- about the-- that you could-- that there
- was some smuggling going in or black market?
- Yes, yes.
- It was a black market started going.
- And people risked their lives to be
- able to give food to the children,
- to give-- to keep up with the family as long as-- much
- as they could.
- What-- did people have--
- I mean, clearly, Jews were being singled out.
- I mean, there was a Jewish ghetto.
- Did people have any ideas about what was going on or why?
- You know what I'm saying?
- Clearly, we all know what happened.
- But I was just curious along the way
- if people had any sense, still, of the Final Solution,
- of just--
- what did people think was happening?
- They didn't believe that there will
- come to us a Final Solution, like it was happening.
- Like it happened.
- Well, people knew of camps at that point.
- People knew there were concentration camps, right?
- Yes, we knew that there was concentration camp.
- We still believed it won't come.
- And we hoped that the war will end.
- We all been told, oh, the war goes to end in a week
- or in two weeks.
- We been living with the hope that the war will end
- and there won't be a Final Solution.
- Whoever died, in the meantime, it's happened.
- You couldn't help.
- But a lot of people-- we have been in our town,
- in Sosnowiec, I haven't been till then.
- But mostly, people stayed till August 1943.
- In some other towns, Lódz, Radom, people stayed--
- some people survived till August '44, even.
- In the ghetto?
- In the ghetto.
- That's unusual.
- What did your wife do in the ghetto?
- Did she have a job?
- Yeah, she got a job working for the Germans too.
- Was there a school?
- Did children go to school in the ghetto?
- No.
- There wasn't any school.
- We didn't went to-- we didn't send them to any school.
- Was there any political activity?
- Not as much as I know.
- But there was some--
- when they started with sending away the people
- into concentration camp, there were some young men
- who tried to tell us, don't go.
- They're going to kill you there.
- But they catch them straight away.
- It didn't took long to hang them and kill them.
- It was only a few young boys who did something about that.
- And we didn't believe that it could happen.
- We been too much of afraid from the Germans to do.
- Not all-- it wasn't much--
- wasn't much-- it was done a lot of--
- in Warsaw, in Treblinka, and later on, in 1943,
- was a lot of people-- was a lot of activity
- against the Germans.
- You mean resistance.
- But it wasn't-- resistance-- but it wasn't much resistance
- in our town.
- OK.
- Why don't you go on?
- By August 1942, they put on placards on the walls
- that the Germans want to stamp our identity cards.
- We have to come.
- There was a small place where you playing ball, big place--
- Stadium.
- --stadium, that, and we have to come there
- to stamp those passports, ours.
- And they said, everybody has to come with the wife
- and with the children.
- If anybody will stay home, anybody
- will be find in the town or hiding, he will be killed.
- We, I think, all of us went there.
- Well, what they did, they made three segregations.
- When they come about 2 o'clock, the Gestapo come.
- They make tables, three tables, they
- make three segregations-- number 1, number 2, and number 3.
- The number 1, they stamped the-- they stamped the cards
- and let them go home.
- Number 2, they let us stay there.
- And number 3, they start pulling them out into--
- to put them-- take em away to the trains to send them to-- it
- was a big rush and a big noise.
- And people who were in the number 1,
- they wanted to move into number 2.
- What was number 2, what happened in that one?
- Not-- it didn't happen anything.
- We been safe for the moment.
- We been-- at the moment, we been there.
- Well, they pulled out about 5,000 people.
- And sent them away to Auschwitz.
- And we been there--
- we been there until about-- it was on a Wednesday.
- And we been there in that Punkt till about Friday afternoon.
- And Friday afternoon, it was rain, and cold,
- and people had been dying, children had been dying.
- They took us Friday afternoon--
- Friday, and it was dark already.
- It was about 8:00 or 9 o'clock.
- They took us into a house, called it a camp.
- They emptied a big house.
- And they took all these people into the house.
- It wasn't only that house, it was about two or three houses.
- And at nighttime, we were afraid they're
- going to take us to Auschwitz.
- They're going to take us away again.
- My first wife, she was more conscious, more
- looking around what's going on.
- And she come to me.
- I been sitting with the children and dreaming on the floor
- and just dreaming a bit.
- And she come, you see, people are hiding upstairs in a room.
- And they're putting the board up near the door.
- Come quick, we will go up there too.
- We had to.
- We took the children.
- I took one, they took the other one.
- We went up.
- An old woman has been standing and moving the [NON-ENGLISH]
- into-- the door is here, moved the [NON-ENGLISH] over
- the door.
- And I stopped here.
- And I said, we want to go in.
- We went in.
- It was full.
- And she moved to round up.
- And after about half an hour or an hour,
- the crying was going on like hell.
- And they took away all the people to Auschwitz there
- what was in that camp, in that house.
- Where you had initially been?
- Where I had initially been, yes.
- It was Saturday morning.
- And had been left about 20 or 30 families
- with children in that room.
- It was-- when it quietened down and it was everything quiet,
- I went out and have a look what's going on.
- I went down, there was one German soldier standing,
- and from the Jewish committee was standing a few people.
- And they said, nothing to worry.
- The worst thing has been-- is over.
- They coming in in a few-- in an hour or two, about 8 o'clock.
- The Gestapo will be in there to stamp your cards.
- And you will go home.
- But it wasn't true.
- It didn't happen like that.
- After an hour or two, they brought in from another house
- a few hundred, or maybe 1,000, or 1,500 people more
- in our home.
- And still, again they been arrived with SS, with Gestapo
- all the time.
- And we been expecting the worst again.
- What's happened?
- Saturday afternoon, I been trying-- my older daughter,
- she was then-- it was '42.
- She was about nine years old.
- Told her, you go down.
- And maybe you can sneak out between the Gestapo
- into the street.
- And you know where we live.
- You know your uncle.
- You know your cousins.
- You go out and you see them.
- There you meet them, you will be there all right.
- Outside the ghetto?
- Outside-- into the ghetto.
- Into the ghetto.
- Yeah.
- OK.
- And she went down.
- And we didn't know what's happened.
- We didn't know what's happened.
- And my wife, she was a bit worried.
- She said, I will go down and have a look
- what's happened with Cesza.
- And she went down.
- When she went down, the rush started.
- They started pulling out people to put them into--
- to send them to Auschwitz.
- I was left-- I was there with the younger child.
- And I went up into the first-- in that moment,
- we been looking everybody for himself to find a hiding place,
- not--
- and I went into the same place.
- And another old woman has been standing.
- And I went into that room with my child.
- There was a lot of small children.
- They didn't even say it one word.
- Only the child said in Polish, [POLISH]..
- Means, where is Mother?
- But in the-- the noise in the [INAUDIBLE]
- was so big that you couldn't stand it.
- And the same thing-- after an hour or two, everything
- quietened down.
- And I come-- it quietened down.
- And somebody come and pulled away and said, you free.
- You can go home.
- I come down.
- And I meet my sister-in-law.
- She was providing things.
- They haven't seen us going to the--
- and she said, everything is all right.
- Your wife and Cesza are there.
- They didn't took them away.
- What's happened?
- They took away my older daughter with a transport to Auschwitz.
- But on the way from that house to the train
- was a cousin of my wife.
- He was working for the committee.
- He took her out, the older daughter.
- Cesza?
- Cesza.
- And my wife, when she has seen what's going on,
- she ran on the top--
- into the boden, they call it.
- And she went into--
- they call it a fessel.
- It was an empty box.
- And she went into that box.
- And she survived there.
- And I come down.
- And we all went home, back into our own flat.
- Well, you're saying that was, in fact, a deportation.
- The whole town was in the middle of being deported.
- It was deported-- in that month was deported about 10,000
- people from that selection.
- Firstly, it's got about 30,000 people.
- So it wasn't judenrein at that point.
- I mean, it wasn't--
- It wasn't judenrein, no.
- We stayed in the ghetto.
- We lived-- we start as, again, the same way of living
- we living under the Germans.
- And we-- everybody has been trying
- to do his best to feed his family.
- I been-- at that time, I been without any--
- say in Yiddish [YIDDISH]---- to make a living.
- I haven't got any money.
- I haven't got any goods, anything to sell, to buy,
- to have some money.
- Everything has gone.
- They robbed me.
- They stripped me of everything already.
- After that date, I haven't been doing anything.
- By that date, by that time, I said,
- I have got nothing to lose.
- I have to do something to be able to feed my family,
- to feed my wife and children.
- We been starting to doing some black market business.
- I got a friend.
- He was a competition of mine who lived in Bedzin.
- He said, let's make partner.
- He was in my camp there.
- Said, let's make partnership.
- We will buy in Bedzin, sell in Sosnowiec.
- Buy in Sosnowiec, sell in Bedzin.
- Leather goods?
- We have got to smuggle it, to put on yourself half a dozen
- of these calf--
- leather goods what you call it calf boxes.
- And we're doing like that, been going on
- like that from about the end of August
- till about the middle of February.
- And live quite comfortably.
- We got enough food.
- We got-- and we saved a bit of money.
- My parents were already in the bunker.
- The Aussiedlung in that town--
- all the government in all these small towns
- were judenrein was finished.
- All the deportations had already happened.
- All the deportation had been finished.
- Only in Sosnowiec was a few thousand Jewish people,
- in Lódz.
- We pray to God and we hope that we will survive.
- They won't do it.
- They won't have enough time to do it or they won't do it.
- Otherwise, if you--
- How did you know where your parents were?
- Well, we heard about that Poles had been coming.
- And we heard what's going on.
- We knew exactly.
- But I received a letter from my parents
- that they are in cave with a Pole.
- And they knew-- told me where they are.
- I knew the Pole where they were.
- With a Polish farmer?
- A Polish farmer, yes.
- And I received then a letter from my sister, Devorah,
- that she is-- she got put-- she is
- in jail with her little girl.
- And I knew exactly where they are and what's going on.
- I have written to them sometimes, not too many,
- might be one letter or two over those few months, from August
- '42 till about February '43.
- By February '43, they put on placards on the streets that we
- will receive--
- young men from about 16 or 17 till about 45
- will receive invitations to go to labor camps.
- Whoever will receive the invitation
- has to be ready at home.
- They will come to pick him up one night, one time.
- And if he will be ready, his wife and children
- will be stay there.
- And they will be all right, won't happen anything to them.
- They will stay till after the war till forever.
- Whoever won't come, whoever will hide and run away,
- the wife and the children--
- anybody, nearest kin will be taken away to Auschwitz
- and die the same day.
- Well, we have got a--
- me, my wife, and the nearest family, my mother-in-law,
- was there still--
- and some brother-in-laws, sister in-laws,
- we been discussing that matter.
- And we decided, we haven't got any choice.
- We haven't got where to--
- we haven't got there to do.
- I have-- I received that invitation too.
- I have to be ready.
- Whenever they come to pick me up, I have to go.
- Let's hope to God, let's pray to God that the rest of you
- will survive.
- I even say to my wife, she--
- don't worry about me.
- I will manage with hunger, with hard work, with everything.
- They won't kill me because I will
- do my best to survive, and do whatever they say,
- and do whatever they want.
- But you keep on.
- I've been happy to because I saved about $1,500 in then--
- at that time from the black market.
- I say, I'm happy they got some money.
- If you can do something by yourself, if you want,
- you feel--
- I gave her instructions what she can do,
- where she can go, where she can buy, what she can do.
- And if you feel you can't do it, just too frightened,
- just don't do anything, just buy, eat, live yourself
- for the best.
- One night, by the end of-- that was by the 1st of March,
- 1943, in the nighttime, was a knock on the door.
- And they come in, Kaufstein, and been dressed very quick,
- and got ready for me warm clothes, big boots,
- and everything what I need to go into camp, a labor camp--
- a bit of underwear and everything.
- I took a rucksack.
- And they took me away, quite a few thousand people.
- There was a camp in Sosnowiec they called Dulag.
- That means in German Durchgangslager.
- What does that mean?
- Durchgangslager, that means passing
- through-- camp passing through, only took us there for a while.
- From there, they sent us into the labor camps.
- We've been there quite a few thousand people.
- And they make selections.
- They picked out 500 into one camp, 500.
- And they picked us up out about 1,000 or 1,200
- into the labor camp.
- They call it Ottmuth.
- When we come in that camp, what we have seen there, it was--
- I couldn't understand how you can
- make one people look like that.
- What was the name of the camp?
- Ottmuth?
- Ottmuth.
- It was just a labor camp, wasn't a concentration camp.
- It was only a labor camp.
- It was people from before there.
- They were like cripples, mostly [INAUDIBLE],,
- all Jews run down like animals.
- They couldn't walk.
- They couldn't talk.
- They were dirty.
- And there was a lot of German Jews.
- They had been used to good living.
- They couldn't take it, people dying every day.
- But we kept up.
- We didn't let that speech--
- we won't let that happened to us, all those people what
- been together with me.
- We washed ourselves at nighttime.
- We tried to find something to eat a bit more.
- We keeped up.
- And we have been there only four weeks.
- After four weeks, they took us away into another camp.
- We call it Ober Lazisk.
- That was in Oberschlesien.
- In that camp, become was-- it was a new camp.
- Wait, in the first camp that you were in,
- what did you do during the day?
- Working.
- What kind of work.
- Took us out to work at--
- to clean the streets, to make the footpath, something,
- all those things.
- When we come to Auschwitz, it was really not too bad.
- In first place, we were all healthy men.
- Every kept-- everybody keep clean.
- So wait, the third place they took you was to Auschwitz?
- It wasn't.
- It was Ober Lazisk.
- Ober, OK, sorry.
- Yes.
- We stayed there.
- How did you get there?
- They took us by truck.
- By train?
- No, by truck.
- By truck, sorry.
- It was by truck.
- Was not far.
- Was about 30-40 kilometers.
- Was it open or closed vehicles?
- Open.
- And did you know where you were going?
- No, we didn't know.
- But we come there.
- We could see we are not too bad off.
- So what happened exactly when you arrived?
- When we arrived, We got--
- there already was showers and barracks,
- took us into the barracks.
- We went into one barracks with the best friends of us,
- people near each other.
- There was about 15 or 20 barracks.
- It took about-- was about 50-60 people in a barrack.
- We stayed together.
- We looked after each other.
- We going out to work.
- They took us to work in the--
- a factory where they built new--
- they built-- called--
- a Strassenbahn, a train.
- We built the track for the trains.
- They built the big factories, big-- it was a very big place.
- I have been lucky enough, the my city, the buses come,
- pick up people to work-- one picked up 20, one picked up 50,
- one 60.
- I been standing in that--
- one man come up to me, you, come on.
- I went out.
- And he said, you coming with me in German.
- I went with him.
- I've been think, oh, I'm very bad off.
- Of course, only one man, he will look after me.
- He will have me on his eyes all the day.
- But what's happened?
- I was lucky enough.
- I was lucky enough that when I come with him, he was a shirt--
- he was a smith, a blacksmith from [GERMAN]----
- from his profession.
- And he took me into a shed.
- In the first place, was in March '43.
- March '43, it was very cold and snowy winter.
- It was in the shed.
- In the first place, was warmer, was a fire burning.
- And he told me, you sitting down.
- I will come back in an hour or two.
- And I will tell you what to do.
- Don't worry.
- You don't have nothing to worry.
- You sit and just do nothing.
- He was speaking a bit of Polish, a bit of German.
- He was a Volksdeutsche.
- He was not too bad.
- He was quite a good man.
- After about two hours, he went around in all these places
- where they've been working.
- And they brought the tools had been damaged.
- And he made them--
- he repaired them.
- And he would come back.
- He showed me what to do.
- And I start there.
- I got my own table, chair, showed me what to do.
- And he left it with me.
- You do whatever you can.
- Don't hurry.
- And I have been working there quite a long time.
- He was a man.
- He was living not far from that place where my parents-in-law
- had been living.
- And I start talking with him.
- I find out where he is from.
- And I ask him, did you know my parents-in-law?
- And he said, yes, of course.
- Could you take a letter to my parents-in-law?
- Yes, I will take it.
- But nobody should know about it.
- He took from me a letter.
- He went home Saturday and Sunday, every Saturday.
- And I sent letters to my family every Saturday, Friday night,
- I received letters back Monday morning.
- Sometimes, they send me some coupons for bread some bread.
- And we been in touch.
- This was your wife's family?
- My wife's family.
- My wife.
- They've been to the-- he went to the ghetto.
- And he brought letters.
- And he brought me back letters.
- And this was-- that was been going on from the end of March
- '43 till the end of July--
- till the end of July '43.
- By the end, the last month--
- I want to ask you, this was a labor camp, right?
- This was not a concentration camp?
- No.
- It was not a death camp.
- No.
- Not one man died in that camp.
- Were there ever any selections in that camp?
- No.
- OK.
- Was the camp already set up when you got there?
- Yes.
- So you didn't have to help set up the camp.
- It was already--
- Yes.
- OK.
- And OK.
- And could you tell me a little bit
- about what your thoughts were or your reactions were
- about the camp?
- Were the guards Jewish or not Jewish?
- I mean, what was the system?
- Were there kapos in the camp?
- There was a kapo, a man who I knew very well.
- And there was some poorer by these people we know.
- And they behaved quite reasonably.
- And Gestapo didn't come into the camp or the SS man didn't.
- They've been watching us outside.
- There was a wired fence around the camp.
- And they've been on the outside.
- And they didn't come in.
- Well, it wasn't at home.
- It wasn't a picnic.
- Yes, it was a labor camp.
- What kind of food did you eat?
- Well, they you gave us 250 gram bread a day,
- some soup, sometimes a bit of bread with a piece of salami,
- you call it--
- sausage, sometimes a piece of margarine.
- But you got-- everybody helped themselves.
- We all got some connections.
- And we got-- we haven't been starving there.
- We could keep up.
- We got our own clothes, got warm clothes.
- We could survive.
- Did you have a uniform?
- No, no, our own clothes.
- We could survive there.
- I don't know what to say.
- It was not too bad.
- OK, I understand what you're saying.
- It's hard to say it was a picnic or it wasn't wonderful,
- but it was-- you felt, that you could be a lot worse off.
- Yeah, we could be-- [? but Aus let us. ?]
- Once happened, one of--
- our men, of our people went into a shop.
- And they got card from him to buy bread.
- Were you near a city?
- Yes, it was a small country town.
- It was a small country town.
- Was the camp in a small country town or near one?
- Yes, near the country.
- It was a shop opposite the camp.
- And you went there.
- And the men from the shop, the shopkeeper, went to the SS
- and tell them that are men coming from the prisoners
- and want to buy bread.
- And they find it out.
- And they punished him with 25--
- Lashes.
- Whippings?
- --whipping, whipping at night.
- It was a big shock, a big shock for us.
- We were all standing and looking it.
- They wanted everyone to watch as a lesson?
- Everybody has got to watch as a lesson.
- He was very sick after that.
- But he still lived, still survived.
- Were there any women in the camp?
- Yes, there was about three women who had
- been working in the kitchen.
- But there weren't any women that were?
- No, there been only three women working in the kitchen.
- Do you know how big the camp was?
- How many-- do you have any idea how many men,
- how many prisoners?
- It was about 1,200 people.
- 1,200 prisoners?
- Yeah, 1,200 prisoners.
- And were there SS?
- Because it wasn't run by the Gestapo.
- Was it run by the Gestapo or by the SS?
- Yeah, was a few SS in the--
- they got a office in front of the--
- it was a Lagerführer.
- It was a German officer, a private man.
- He was the boss from this.
- And was a few SS to watch us not to have a riot.
- OK.
- Were there any attempts at escape in this camp
- or resistance of any kind?
- Yes, there was one.
- There was one escape.
- That was in July, in the middle of July 1943.
- A wife of one man was in that town.
- She ran away from the ghetto.
- He was there.
- And she let him know that she is here.
- If he can run away, he can--
- she stay on there.
- And he find it out.
- And he ran away at nighttime over the fence.
- In the morning, they start looking for him.
- They find his clothes in a side street,
- but they couldn't find it.
- What's happened to them, I don't know.
- I don't think so he survived the war because I never
- heard any more about him.
- That's the only escape what's happened.
- They make it very strict after that.
- They been more SS men put around around the camp.
- I don't think so everybody could run away or we should run away.
- But as I told you, I got letters.
- And I keep in touch with my family.
- By the end of 19th July--
- end of July, 1943.
- One Monday morning, that man come back,
- and he brought me a letter my wife.
- And she said goodbye to me.
- She sent me some money back.
- She said, I don't thinks I can do anything with that money.
- I think we are-- it's the last day for us.
- And let's hope we will meet each other.
- And that's all what she's written in the letter.
- And the next-- some other people got
- Poles who brought them letters.
- They been there Sunday.
- And the Aussiedlung was coming.
- It was the 1st of August, 1943.
- They took all the people, all the women and children
- at that time from Sosnowiec to Auschwitz, to Auschwitz ghetto.
- So they liquidated the ghetto?
- They liquidated the ghetto completely.
- First two days, they took the people from the Gemeinde,
- they called it, the Judenalteste, took a while.
- And then they took all the people to Auschwitz.
- My family has gone there, all the family-- the wife,
- and the children, and the brothers, and all of them.
- They took them the same day, the 1st of August, 1943.
- We haven't got any more response, anything a word
- there at all.
- We stayed in that camp in Oberlausitz
- till the 2nd of November, 1943.
- But the 2nd of November, 1943, they come with trucks
- and took us all the way to Auschwitz.
- You knew you were going to Auschwitz?
- Yes, we knew we were going to Auschwitz.
- We haven't got any choice.
- We couldn't do anything.
- Did they tell you you were going to Auschwitz?
- I didn't try to ask anything.
- But we are--
- OK.
- That was in November 1943?
- That was the 2nd November, '43.
- They took us by trucks.
- Open trucks.
- Open trucks.
- They took us by open trucks to Auschwitz.
- And well, if you come to Auschwitz,
- there was already a few thousand people there standing.
- They called it Appellplatz, standing four or five in that.
- All the camps was around in that district.
- They are taking the same day to Auschwitz.
- All labor camps were closed down?
- All the labor camps, they liquidated, liquidated,
- closed down, and taken all the people to Auschwitz.
- Up until that point, had you ever experienced a selection?
- No.
- Selection was in that time-- the first selection what
- I have seen was in that time.
- I'm coming to that in a minute.
- Sure.
- There was about 20,000 or 30,000 people on the Appellplatz.
- And all the labor--
- On the platform, you mean?
- On the platform, yes.
- It was-- all the labor camps were liquidated on that day.
- And all the people had been there.
- But by about 12 o'clock, after 12:00, a few SS men come in.
- And Mengele was in top of them.
- He was the doctor.
- And he has got--
- he is choosing who has got to live and who has got to--
- who stays to live and who's going to die.
- You knew that already that he was doing that.
- We didn't knew exactly, but we have seen, it's very bad.
- And he took out beside--
- he started-- he asked us to run a few meters.
- Left, right, left, right, left, right-- that's
- going on about two, three hours.
- [INAUDIBLE] it was about 4,000 or 5,000
- went to the gas chamber, people from what--
- a bit older, a bit sicker, a bit not strong enough
- went to the gas chamber.
- The rest of us were staying in the queue,
- been put on those numbers.
- They put on the numbers.
- And your number is 160216.
- Yes.
- Was it in order?
- They did it in order.
- They did all this, all that.
- So you were maybe the 160,216?
- That's right.
- And to give us the numbers--
- matter of fact, just a few weeks here
- was a friend of mine who was in camp with me together.
- And he has got his number, 160208.
- So he was eight before you?
- Eight before me.
- He was here.
- I just asked him, tell me, show me your number.
- Did you know him in the camp?
- Yes, we've been together all the time.
- He was in Sosnowiec too.
- He was in the same town.
- We've been all the years in camp.
- Years and years, I know with the family.
- His brother is here.
- They put us-- gave us the numbers,
- and they send us-- put us into the barracks.
- What was your impression when you came to the camp?
- Were you-- did you have any expectations
- of what it would be like?
- Were you just--
- We been expecting the worst.
- They make us sitting on the knees for hours.
- They put us on a bridge on the five, six people together.
- They make different troubles.
- They took out one and give them 25--
- how you call it in English?
- Lashes.
- Lashes and everything what they could
- to make miserable or alive.
- They didn't took us out to work at all.
- We were going out.
- In first place, they took away our clothes.
- They put maked us going into one room, undress ourself.
- We've been shaved.
- We're going under a shower.
- We went out with other room.
- They gave us wooden shoes, gave us
- a pair of pants like pajamas, and a coat like pajamas,
- and that's all.
- It was cold winter.
- Was November 1943.
- It was snow and [INAUDIBLE],, all ice things.
- We've been going around.
- And there wasn't any food, didn't gave us for three--
- I've been there three weeks.
- They didn't gave us a bit of soup and lunch.
- They didn't give us any bread because they said,
- you're not working yet.
- When you start working, you will get bread.
- But at the moment, you're not working.
- Anyway, by the-- by about--
- I meet my brother-in-law there.
- He was there in Auschwitz.
- He come there in August, the 1st of August, '43 with my family
- together.
- And he told me everything what's happened.
- He was very, very down.
- He couldn't--
- Depressed.
- Not only depressed, he was very sick.
- He was a strong young man before the war.
- There were two--
- Auschwitz was the town, right?
- There were actually--
- Birkenau.
- Birkenau.
- Is that where you were at?
- That was Birkenau.
- He was very down.
- He told me everything what's going on.
- When I come in, I've seen him.
- I got some bread from the camp.
- I gave it to him.
- I said, you hide it.
- Maybe I need a piece of-- you eat some.
- If I need a piece, maybe tomorrow, after tomorrow,
- you gave it to me.
- After a couple of days, I meet him,
- I said, Motel, have you got a piece of bread left?
- And he started crying.
- Said, I've been too hungry.
- I couldn't save it for you.
- I have got to eat it.
- And I'm so sorry.
- But I said, don't worry.
- I can still survive.
- I'm still-- I can go on.
- Don't worry.
- You did the right thing.
- By the 20, 21st of November, 1943,
- we been told that's going a transport to Warsaw.
- And they're taking only healthy, young, strong men there.
- I went into queue.
- I want to leave.
- I said, I have got nothing to lose.
- I stay here, it means death.
- To go away, maybe I will survive, maybe not.
- I don't know.
- But I've got nothing to lose here.
- I can't gain anything by staying here.
- I went into the queue.
- And they selected me to go into the transport,
- into the transport to Warsaw.
- And they gave us some bread, gave us some soup,
- and gave us some bread.
- And they took us to the train.
- And they put us into the train like cattle, in the cattle time
- train, put about 500 into a truck.
- Closed cars?
- Closed, yeah.
- Yes, it was closed with small windows to look out.
- Even they took about 5,000 of us.
- And we been traveling in that trains about two weeks.
- I don't know exactly how long, but it was quite a long time.
- That was day and night, and day and night, and day and night.
- And they didn't give us anything to eat, nothing.
- But by the end, we come.
- This train stopped.
- And they opened the doors.
- And they started letting out us.
- SS men have been standing there already.
- And they took us into the old ghetto,
- the [NON-ENGLISH] Warsaw, was Jewish section before the war.
- Well, were these men and women that were in the train
- or just men?
- Only men.
- Did some people die?
- Was a few that people on the train, not many.
- Was no-- was about two or three.
- It was quite-- maybe 20-30 people dead.
- But all of us reasonably could keep up.
- They took us into [NON-ENGLISH].
- And it was all houses, just skeletons, just empty houses
- burned down, ruins only.
- They took us into one section.
- And it was only white guides--
- white fences around a big road.
- And they put us there.
- Wasn't anywhere to go in.
- We've been staying overnight in the street.
- We didn't know what's going to happen.
- The next morning, they come, stood us on the Appellplatz
- all together.
- And they called out, whoever wants
- to go back to Auschwitz can.
- If you don't like it here, you can go back.
- There was about 200 or 300 people,
- they decided again, oh, we have got nothing to lose here.
- We going back.
- They took them into the trains.
- At the moment, we didn't know what's
- going on-- what's happened with them.
- We didn't know anything.
- But they took them away.
- And after that, trucks has come in with ready-made barracks
- just to put them up, and beds, and the mattresses from straw.
- And we start building the--
- about two guys took us.
- And we built up barracks, and beds, everything-- kitchens.
- And we got where there was water there.
- We washed.
- We got the showers, we made.
- We been like-- we made a home for ourself.
- After everything was finished, they took us to work,
- took us out to work into the ghetto, to clean the ghetto.
- Warsaw ghetto?
- Outside ghetto, yeah.
- The Warsaw?
- The Warsaw ghetto.
- OK.
- Were you aware that there had been an uprising there?
- Yes, we knew that even in--
- we knew that even in Arbeits--
- in the camp, in the labor camp.
- You had gotten word?
- We know everything what has been going on.
- They took us out.
- And when we went to work, we have
- seen the trains standing with those people ride
- around with one SS man been standing with--
- we still could hear some people, oy, oy, like that.
- Some of them have been still living.
- And they have been standing there.
- We pass every day that train.
- It's been about three weeks they've been standing there,
- on the cold and everything.
- When they've been all dead, they took them to Auschwitz
- to burn them, those people who said, they want to go back.
- But when we go out into the ghetto, start working there,
- we start getting--
- So you're saying, that train never left?
- It stood there with people inside the car
- until they were all dead?
- Yes, yes, until they were all dead.
- And when they were all dead, they took them to Auschwitz
- to burn them there.
- That trucks have been there over three weeks.
- After three weeks, we haven't seen them anymore.
- Didn't know why.
- Did people-- did you talk about it with other people?
- Yes, we talk between us.
- They knew about it.
- We talked about it.
- Of course, of course, we talked about it.
- What is the time?
- 11:30.
- Is that OK?
- Or like when we start working in the ghetto,
- things start picking up a bit for us.
- Horses come in with wagons and the horses
- to take away the wood and everything what
- we allowed to take.
- And we could find something-- in the old, burned-out houses,
- we could find some potatoes, sometimes a pot of food,
- find some food.
- What was your job exactly?
- What did you do?
- Cleaning.
- They've been springing dynamite, the burned-out houses,
- and cleaning it up, putting bricks to bricks, wood to wood.
- Rebuilding it?
- Not rebuilding, making it clear.
- Just tearing everything down?
- Tearing it everything down, like you said.
- And we've been working there for quite a while,
- going to every day to work.
- And we organize some food there in the ghetto.
- In that way, it's been going on for a long time,
- till about July 1944.
- So you were there about a year?
- We been there about 10 months--
- 9-10 months.
- Did you feel that--
- in retrospect, did you feel it was a good decision
- that you decided to go there?
- It was the best decision what I could
- make under the circumstances.
- Everybody feel that way.
- Right.
- Obviously, you didn't have much choice.
- But given the options--
- That's right.
- --that was, you felt, helped probably to save your life?
- That's right.
- Yes, of course, it helped save us.
- As opposed to staying in Auschwitz.
- Oh, yes.
- No, no, Auschwitz was definitely to be lost.
- And there, there wasn't any selections after that.
- Selection was only in Auschwitz.
- But there wasn't any selection.
- People died.
- Quite a lot of people died, all the time.
- What's happened?
- In November-- in December 1943, people start getting sick,
- it broke out a typhus.
- Typhus?
- Typhus broke out.
- And they make one barrack at the--
- A hospital?
- Hospital, make it a hospital.
- And they send there the sick people.
- They send there sick people.
- And they took over dead people.
- But they never brought out healthy people back.
- We have seen that.
- I was sick too.
- It was in the end of December 1943.
- I was very sick.
- But I have got to go to work.
- I couldn't say, I am sick.
- Because if I would say, I am sick,
- they put me into the hospital.
- Into the hospital, that means death.
- I've been going every day to work with temperature
- about 40-42, big temperature.
- I couldn't work, really.
- But my friends who been healthy, they helped me a lot.
- And we been going up there.
- When we come Saturday morning, they've got to go all to work.
- But we worked only till 12 o'clock.
- When I come home on a Saturday morning,
- I went straight on my bed and lied down.
- And some of them brought me something.
- If they got something, some soup, or anything,
- I took my ration, brought it to me.
- And I been lying.
- About 2 o'clock or half-past 2:00, one friend of mine
- come to me.
- You see?
- There is the doctor there, the German doctor there.
- And whoever goes to him and says that he is sick,
- he gives him Schonung.
- Schonung meant that you have-- you staying in the barrack.
- You don't have to go to work.
- You are sick, you staying home.
- And you will be better, you will go to work.
- I hear that, he said, you have--
- means a big to you.
- If you go, you stay in the barrack,
- You don't have to go to work.
- Maybe you will get better.
- I went down too.
- And I went to him.
- And he gave me Schonung too.
- He gave Schonung about 300 or 400 people.
- He took the numbers and gave us Schonung.
- About 5 o'clock, one SS man come in,
- and called out all those numbers,
- and took us to hospital.
- It was a trick.
- Well, I could see, that's the end of it.
- But I haven't got any choice.
- And we stayed there in the hospital.
- They brought some food.
- But I got-- been so sick, I didn't even that
- what they gave me.
- And I've been there in that hospital till March 1943.
- So when did you go in there, in December?
- End of December.
- So you were there for three months.
- Three months there.
- OK.
- Wait one second.
- Over those three months, arrived I don't know how many.
- At least 2,000 people died in that hospital.
- But by early March 1943, a few people
- still lived, maybe 20 or 30.
- So they didn't really kill people, they just let them die.
- They didn't give them any medical attention?
- No, no medical, no doctor, nothing,
- just lie down two in a bed.
- And gave them-- brought them some food.
- And whoever eats is all right and whoever not.
- Was a toilet inside the room.
- It was dirty.
- You can't imagine the conditions there.
- The filth.
- By March '43, the typhus stopped.
- People didn't get anymore sick.
- And they liquidated that hospital.
- They took us out into the barracks,
- back where I had been.
- I was very, very--
- Weak?
- --weak.
- Did they feed you when you were in the hospital?
- They must have given you something to eat.
- I'm telling you, they brought some food.
- I don't remember if I eat or not.
- Maybe these people who brought you, they took it back.
- When I been a bit better, I eat some,
- got some water, some soup.
- I got enough what they gave me because I couldn't eat anyway.
- But I can't remember.
- How do you think you survived?
- Was there anyone there that helped you
- while you were in that hospital?
- Wasn't any help for Anybody
- I mean, like a guard, or a kapo, or something that helped.
- Was only the people, the Stubendienst,
- they called him, the people who delivered the food.
- They come in.
- They been there.
- They cook the food.
- They brought in.
- And they put it to the bed.
- Ever could eat, ever been feeling a bit better,
- I left my head and eat when I could.
- When I couldn't, I had sometimes--
- I've been in--
- I got a temperature for about day or two, I didn't do it.
- I really don't--
- You don't remember.
- --remember much about those three months.
- I remember-- what I remember, every morning, they
- come to the beds, and took out the dead people.
- Not-- those prisoners did it and throw them out
- through the window.
- Every morning, I hear those bangs with the bodies
- over the window.
- That I remember very well.
- And I've been thinking, oh, there's no hope for me either.
- Come to die.
- Didn't think about living.
- You been thinking, it's finished.
- But anyway, as I told you, I survived.
- You survived.
- I survived till March '43.
- And they liquidated the ghetto.
- Apparently, torn-- they took us out
- and burned it down completely.
- They took us into the barracks.
- In the first time and took us into the barrack,
- we stayed in the barrack, gave us food.
- We eat slowly.
- They took us out, make us working at the coals
- to bring coals into the kitchen.
- I've been with a friend of mine.
- He survived from the same district where I come.
- He was a few years older than me.
- In the middle, when he standing and working, he said to me,
- you know, I can't stand any more on my feet.
- I have to sit down.
- I said, you can't do that because here is the SS man.
- He will kill you.
- He will hit you.
- You will die.
- Said, no, I can't.
- I can't.
- I can't.
- He sit down.
- As soon as he sit down, he was dead.
- He-- just I tried to touch him, I said, come on, stand up,
- and I could see, he's already dead.
- Well, at the afternoon, I come back to the barrack.
- And people come back to work.
- There was quite a few friends of us.
- And one man was-- he was the kapo.
- And he was quite a good man.
- He was the couple from a company who went to work.
- And I told him, you seen, he was a good friend of me and of him.
- You know what's happened?
- He died there at work.
- He was very sorry.
- And after a few hours, he come to me.
- He say, you know, Pinchus, you come with me
- to work tomorrow morning.
- Don't stay at the barrack.
- When they call Appell, go tomorrow morning.
- And I take you under to my command.
- And you will be all right there.
- I said, all right.
- I went out.
- And he took me into his command.
- And they been working on the [? Gesia ?] cemetery.
- There was the Jewish cemetery there on the [NON-ENGLISH]..
- And they had been working there.
- They brought-- the Poles brought the iron bars from the houses
- there.
- And they've been unloading there, been stopping there.
- They got work to there.
- When we come there, he said to me, you see,
- you're not going to do anything.
- You go here at the office.
- You sit down.
- There's paper and a pencil.
- If you see somebody, an SS man passing by, you make you it--
- you write a car to take.
- Well, if you see-- not see anybody he has a fire,
- keep up with the fire.
- And there's potatoes.
- There's different food.
- Cook it.
- Eat as much as you can, as much as you want.
- You make sure that when we come back,
- we have got something to eat too.
- And you sit there and make hot tea.
- We come in there, tea.
- I've been sitting there for about three or four weeks.
- And I got back on my feet like anything.
- I was healthy.
- You got your strength back.
- I got my strength completely back.
- And I said to him after four weeks, put somebody else here,
- somebody else survive.
- And I can go out to work.
- I don't mind.
- And that was--
- So he really saved your life too.
- He saved my life, yes.
- And that was till about the middle of April '44.
- And I went back to the camp.
- And this was still in Warsaw?
- Warsaw, yes.
- We been going every day to work.
- We organize some food.
- And I could keep up with those things, what has been going on.
- We been there till the end of July
- in Warsaw, working till the end of July of '44.
- By the end of July '44--
- was by the 1st of August '44, the Russians
- has been moving into Poland.
- The fighting has been going on on the Polish border.
- And we could see the red--
- The flag?
- --flags on Praga.
- That was a war-torn suburb of Warsaw.
- The Russians were already was.
- They took us into Appellplatz.
- And they said, you coming with us.
- We have been left-- we have been there about 4,000 people.
- How have you been there 4,000 people?
- I'm going back.
- I'm going back to April '44.
- In April '44, they brought another 2,000 people
- from Auschwitz, Hungarian people, into Warsaw,
- and gave them the numbers what the dead people what was.
- We've been left about 2,000.
- And they put up the numbers again back to 4,000--
- Hungarian Jewish people, they brought.
- Why did they do this?
- They needed the people there to work.
- They wanted to have the people there.
- And by August '44, took us on the Appellplatz.
- And we were standing there.
- And they been going to evacuate us.
- We didn't know where we going or what we're going to do.
- We keeped standing.
- The meantime, they come out.
- And they said, anybody is sick, anybody
- is feeling he can't work, we're going to go far-- a long way.
- Anybody he can go into Revier or stay there.
- And the rest of us will--
- we have to work for-- need at least a fortnight
- till we come to a train station.
- About 300 people went outside.
- They said, they can't work.
- They took them into Revier, put them in the bed.
- And was there about 100--
- Into where?
- Into the hospital.
- And there was about 100 of--
- 150 sick people already.
- And after a few minutes, they went in and shot them all out.
- We hear the shooting.
- We hear the cries.
- We heard everything.
- And when all were dead, they took out
- about 50 people from us and asked us--
- they took-- maked them take out them and burn them.
- Burned them?
- Yes, burned them in the back of the camp.
- After that, by the afternoon, they marched us out.
- And we start walking.
- We walking.
- When it come the night, we been sitting down on the--
- Ground.
- --on the ground.
- And we been sleeping there like that.
- And next morning, he gave us some food every day,
- every morning a piece of bread, a bit of butter, a bit of soup.
- And we had to keep going.
- After three or four days walking,
- I've been working with my friends that were there.
- It was 100, 100 people with a kapo, with an SS man,
- all together.
- And we keep together.
- That friend what saved me, who put me into that office,
- and he took me on, he come to me, he said, you know, Pinchus?
- They are not going to let us live.
- What am I going to do, they got trucks behind all
- us with horses.
- Whoever says he is sick, they put on the trucks.
- And they moved on it.
- When the nightfall-- when the night will come,
- I'm going to tell them I can't work.
- And they put me on the truck.
- When the night will come, there is coming a forest.
- We will run from the truck into the forest.
- We will try to survive that's way.
- Otherwise, we haven't got a chance.
- I said to him, you know, Chaim, I don't
- care what happens with me.
- But I'm not going to run.
- I don't know where I run, and what
- will be, I haven't got any money,
- I haven't got any clothes.
- The Poles will know exactly who I am.
- And they won't help me.
- I'm not expecting any help from the Poles.
- What I have-- whatever will happen will happen.
- But I'm not going.
- He said, goodbye and good luck to you.
- And I said, good luck to you.
- And he went with a few friends into those trucks.
- When the nightfall come in, they took the trucks with the people
- into the forest and shot them all down.
- The SS?
- The SS.
- They shot.
- Was that the first time they had ever done that?
- On the way, that was the first and the last time
- when they did that.
- Because there wasn't any more sick people.
- We didn't hide anything.
- What you called one-trial learning, right?
- That's right.
- And when we were sitting down, an SS man coming to the--
- and we sitting in the hundreds, as I told you.
- And they called all the numbers.
- Whoever called-- answer-- when they called my number,
- I called, yes.
- When they called the numbers who have been killed,
- nobody answered.
- After that, they say, was from our camp, 400,
- was missing about eight or 10 people.
- And he said, those people trying to run away.
- And we killed them.
- Whoever will try it again, he will have the same--
- Same result.
- --the same result. You know where you stand.
- Well, we knew exactly where we stand.
- And we've been walking quite a while.
- That's interesting to know too.
- We come to a small town in Poland, which was very known
- in Poland, Sochaczew.
- It was a rabbi there before the war.
- It was a Jewish town.
- And we walked through the town, from one end of town,
- through the marketplace, and through all the Jewish streets,
- into the other end of this town.
- And it was-- by the other end of the town was a bridge.
- We walk over the bridge.
- It was a lawn there, a big lawn and a big water going.
- And they put us for the night there into that lawn.
- And it was-- we were thirsty like anything.
- We didn't need food, but we need water.
- And people start running.
- It was a lot of Hungarian people.
- They start running to the water.
- But whoever's got his head up, he's been waiting a minute
- to see, what's going on?
- Whoever come to the water are shot.
- And they fall into the water.
- They have been standing up there up on the bridge.
- I never come to the water.
- There was killed about 40-50 people.
- And the water was red.
- We could see, we can't do it.
- We can't run for the water.
- 40 or 50?
- Yes.
- And we sit down on the ground.
- The night start falling.
- And every prisoner has got with him a spoon, a plate, a wood--
- Utensil of some kind.
- Yes.
- And he picked always with him.
- And some people start digging with the food.
- And they dig too long, the water come out.
- And they start drinking.
- But we could-- from that only, from that hole,
- you couldn't get water for 2,000-3,000 people.
- But in the morning, there was about 500 water holes there.
- We got plenty of water.
- We drinked.
- And we washed ourselves.
- They didn't know up there what's going on.
- We been sitting around, 10-15 people.
- We dig so deep that one went in and started getting up
- this place with water.
- It was dirty.
- It was--
- Mud water.
- --mud but we standing there for half an hour,
- it was clear water.
- Behind was mud, it was clear water.
- We start drinking, everybody in the queue.
- In the morning was about, I don't know,
- 50-60 holes like that.
- And they come in, and they have seen what's happened,
- they just rounded us what we did.
- But they didn't say it anything.
- They moved us out.
- And we going, further going.
- This walking was-- took us about a fortnight.
- We come to a little--
- When you walked through that town, was it empty?
- Empty.
- We see a few Poles, maybe, but it wasn't any Jews, no.
- We could see it was a Jewish town.
- OK.
- So you knew which town you were in?
- Yes.
- They moved us from that town.
- And we been going another few days.
- We coming to a small station.
- They put us into the trucks.
- I don't know how long we've been traveling,
- maybe two, three, or four days.
- And we arrived to Dachau.
- We arrived-- oh, usually, into concentration camps.
- The trains went into the camp.
- We arrived in Dachau.
- It was about the end of August '44.
- Some of people were very sick.
- Some people were-- a lot of hitting was going on.
- The kapos, was German kapos who were gangsters, murderers.
- They were our bosses.
- They tried to kill us all way.
- But when we come there, we meet new kapos.
- And these kapos were political prisoners.
- They were very good to us.
- The sick people, they put into the hospital.
- And the healthy, they kept us into the barracks.
- And they gave us a lot of-- quite of food,
- milk, and that to help us.
- Was not too bad in Dachau.
- I've been staying in Dachau about--
- I've been in Dachau about two months.
- OK.
- So you were sent to Dachau?
- Yes.
- OK.
- So in fact, you walked to Dachau?
- Pardon?
- You walked to Dachau.
- I told you.
- We went--
- I'm sorry.
- --they took us into a small station.
- And they took us into trucks.
- And from that station in Poznan, we've
- been traveling to Dachau with the train.
- When we come to Dachau, the train went into the camp.
- And from there, they let us out.
- And we been in Dachau.
- Had you ever heard of Dachau before?
- Yes.
- We knew we going to Dachau.
- The kapos told us, you're going to Dachau now.
- We knew we were going to Dachau.
- Was that a concentration camp?
- It was a concentration camp like Auschwitz, like Treblinka.
- Was it a death camp?
- It was a death camp.
- But at the time when we come to Dachau,
- wasn't any more gas chambers going on,
- wasn't any more killing going on.
- It was just the Germans had been feeling
- that the war goes to end.
- And they haven't been doing any more gassing, or in Dachau
- anymore those things.
- I been staying in Dachau over two months.
- I been from that fully recovered, feeling very well.
- They sent me out into a labor camp from Dachau.
- OK.
- What month was this?
- It was about end of November '44.
- In the labor camps, was a bit hard work--
- bit hard work.
- and the food, what they give the rations, 250 gram of bread,
- and the soup, and all those things what has been going on.
- And I've been in two camps-- one was Allach.
- And one was Mühldorf.
- And that was going on until about--
- till about middle of March, middle of March 1944--
- 1945.
- Right.
- Why do you think they shut down the death camps, the gas
- chambers?
- Well, I don't know.
- But that's what was.
- Was that to you a sign that maybe the war was
- going to end soon?
- They been thinking the war is going to end.
- Yes.
- And they needed those people for work.
- They needed it.
- Was all younger people, till about 40s, middle 30s, middle
- 40s, not older people.
- They need the people, keep them as long as there is.
- That's why they took us there, to make us work for them.
- Dachau was in Poland?
- No.
- Where was Dachau?
- Dachau is Germany.
- OK.
- That's near Munich.
- That's a long way from Warsaw to Dachau.
- That's a very long way.
- By plane, you can go in a few hours.
- But the way we been going--
- Walking and trains.
- --took four weeks.
- Were there selections?
- So there were no more selections in Dachau then?
- No.
- There wasn't any selections.
- And those kapos, those political kapos helped us a bit.
- They tried their best to save us.
- Then we went out.
- They took us to the labor camp, Allach and Mühldorf,
- been working there.
- What did you do there?
- Carrying cement, mixing cement.
- They been building, still keep building some factories,
- transport, a lot of it--
- there was what to do.
- Did you prefer to work?
- Yes.
- As opposed not to work.
- Yes.
- I prefer to keep working.
- Why?
- I keep that will save me.
- I believed that that will-- if I keep
- working, that will save me.
- The first place, you couldn't watch over the SS men.
- He has been watching me.
- And if he-- he could see who has been working and who not.
- He could find-- he feeled it.
- And he could see it.
- And if he has seen somebody is really working,
- he wouldn't hit him.
- I prefer to work than to get hit.
- And I haven't got much hitting.
- Some people died from those--
- they preferred not to.
- Beatings.
- Beating.
- The beating killed them.
- And I prefer to work hard, as much as going-- and not--
- I haven't been thinking, he's standing there or not
- standing there.
- He's there or not.
- Even he hasn't been there, I keeped up
- doing what I been told.
- And I think that that was the right idea to do there.
- Got to do it, to keep doing it.
- By the end of March '43, they sent me to another labor camp.
- From there, there wasn't much to do.
- The war was going on there.
- In that camp, they didn't give us much food.
- OK.
- I'm going to--
- OK.
- So you're talking-- you were in the labor camps.
- I was-- by the end of 1943, they sent us another labor camp.
- '44, you mean?
- At the end of--
- by the end of March '45.
- Sorry.
- OK.
- It was near the end.
- Wasn't much to do.
- And they didn't give us much food.
- They hadn't got themself.
- The war has been going to end.
- And we been there about four or five weeks.
- About 24 the 25th of April '45, they brought us back into that
- camp, into Mühldorf, where I come--
- where I come from, from then the death camp.
- And people have been talking between us.
- They haven't been eating too.
- They haven't got any food to eat.
- We knew they hadn't got.
- We knew that the war was to end.
- They took us to the trains and put us into the trains.
- It was about 40-50 wagons, put about 300-400 people
- into a wagon.
- And the train start moving.
- But we knew, we moving up and down in one direction.
- You're going back and forth, you mean?
- Backwards and forwards, in one direction.
- By after two or three days traveling,
- we come back to the same place where they put us up.
- And the train has been standing there.
- They've been standing around and watching us.
- Few people died.
- Were you being given anything to eat?
- No, no, no food, nothing.
- Wasn't any.
- It was war.
- The war was ending.
- The French and the US soldiers were on their back already.
- By I think it was about the 29th of April '45, there was--
- the war was to end.
- The doors opened from the wagons.
- And we start running out.
- We couldn't see any SS.
- The SS ran away already.
- But we could see it's not finished.
- We couldn't see any foreign soldiers.
- But What we could see is we hear there's shooting.
- And we could see some German soldiers running like mad
- with guns in the hand.
- We been afraid that in the last minute, we could be killed.
- It's only a matter of hours or minutes.
- And we-- I was with about a dozen people,
- about 15 or 20 people.
- We running into a shed where the boys-- that was the country,
- with farmers.
- We running into a shed where they keep the--
- all those what they take from the ground, all those weeds
- and everything.
- We went up there on the straw.
- We lied down and listen, what's going on?
- Just wait up till we'll be sure that we can't be killed.
- Was it the Russian soldiers?
- No, it was-- we been expecting the US.
- The American soldiers.
- The American soldiers, we've been expecting the French
- and the American soldiers.
- We been there about a few hours.
- And a moment, a German soldier come into the gate of that
- shed.
- And they said in German.
- Come down.
- Everybody has to come down with their hands up.
- If you won't come down, I will shoot up there.
- And you will come down, nobody--
- nothing will happen to you.
- The war goes to end.
- But it must be-- you can't stay there.
- You have to come down.
- We could see, we haven't got any choice.
- We went with the hand up.
- Was-- are there two German soldiers.
- They were-- that was not SS.
- It was the army.
- And they say to us, the war goes to end.
- We lost the-- we losing the war.
- But you have to go back to the train till the US Army come in.
- And they will take it over.
- We can't let you run around.
- Well, we went back.
- Went back, was already a few hundred,
- maybe a few thousand people back there,
- put us back into the trains.
- They been standing outside.
- But there no end.
- It was the next morning, the war plans come up and start bombing
- those trains.
- Which planes?
- American war planes come up and start bombing
- those trains what we've been there.
- It was quite a lot of dead people.
- The Americans bombed the trains?
- Americans bombed the trains, yes.
- It was quite a lot of dead people.
- Blood has been flowing like water in those trains.
- What's happened?
- I don't know what's happened with me.
- I woke up.
- it was a big rush and a big, big noise.
- And I don't know, after maybe an hour or two, I woke up.
- And I didn't know I'd been unconscious or I'd been asleep.
- I could see some people still fully decide.
- They been still lived.
- And I say to myself, Pini, if you will lie down like that,
- you will die too.
- I will die too.
- I have to do something myself.
- The doors were open.
- Light is coming into the trains.
- I tried to stand up or sit up.
- I couldn't.
- I was so weak that I couldn't even sit up.
- I turned on my tummy.
- And on my fists, with the hand, I crawled to the door.
- I looked around, couldn't see anything,
- couldn't see any soldiers, not Americans, not Germans, nobody.
- Street was empty.
- But I lifted my head.
- I could see far away was a old horse or whatever was standing
- and a few of our people, in those [NON-ENGLISH],, in those--
- been standing there.
- And that German give them some--
- they call it-- they give them some potatoes.
- And I tried to myself, if I could
- come there and get a potato or two, I will be saved.
- It will be like a million.
- Well, I thought--
- Had you been wounded?
- No.
- No.
- I was weak.
- I was very weak.
- I turned with my head into the wagon with my feet
- outside and start let myself down.
- When I come down, I start walking at the fence.
- It was a wired fence, all the wires.
- I walk-- I left--
- I walked, just left, that's why like that.
- I walk till that house.
- When I come to that house, nobody is there.
- I could-- I didn't look at what's going on there.
- Nobody is there.
- But I say that--
- I still see the German's been standing there.
- And I knocked on the door.
- And a tall German come out.
- And I said to him in Germans, can I have a potato or two?
- I'm hungry.
- I haven't eaten for a few weeks.
- And he said to me, in German, you
- see, I give away everything.
- I haven't got.
- You can come in.
- You see, I haven't got.
- But what for do you need it?
- Look here.
- There are the American Army.
- Look here.
- And I turned up, it was a marketplace and quite
- a few tanks, and quite a few prisoners running around,
- and quite a--
- maybe a few hundred American soldiers are there.
- And I could already run-- not for walk, I start running.
- And I been running there, a Russian-- an American soldier
- come to me.
- He brought me pot with warm milk,
- a couple of blocks of Cadbury chocolate,
- and a carton of cigarettes.
- And I pulled in that milk in a minute.
- And I said in German, more, more.
- And he ran away.
- He brought me another pot with that milk.
- Sit down on the-- then I got time.
- I sit down on the floor.
- And I opened a block of chocolate.
- And I start eating chocolate with milk.
- And I been already healthy.
- You didn't get sick from eating?
- No, that was not much milk.
- With chocolate, you can't get sick.
- But after a few minutes, I have seen my friends.
- And I said, why didn't you took me with you?
- Why did you let me there to die?
- And he said, we didn't know.
- We thought you are dead.
- But now the Red Cross is going there.
- They taking the sick to hospital.
- They taking that away.
- This only-- he said to me, It's only half an hour that we--
- Had left.
- --were free.
- It took all where they going there for them.
- You come here, it's all right.
- And I got already my friends.
- The Red Cross hadn't come there yet when you were there?
- When I been there, wasn't anybody.
- When I been already in the marketplace,
- the Red Cross was standing there.
- And they had been moving out with soldiers
- there to take out the sick and the dead people
- from the trains.
- By a few minutes later, the American soldiers
- brought some prisoners, German prisoners already, with a big--
- how you call it, rucksack--
- well, carry it around--
- Oh, the--
- --bags.
- --back-- backpack.
- On the back.
- They brought in prisoners with the--
- they still got the rifles with them.
- They start asking them to put away the rifles there.
- And they took away those bags from them.
- And they gave it to us.
- But it was too heavy.
- We couldn't carry it.
- Well, what we did, took a dozen--
- Were these SS or just German soldiers?
- No, that was soldiers.
- SS men ran away.
- We didn't know where they are, where
- they ran away a day before.
- They ran away.
- When we ran, start running, the war was still going on.
- But they ran away.
- They changed clothes.
- And we don't know what's happened for them.
- We didn't see them anymore.
- But from there, we went into a street.
- And we went into a-- there was an empty house.
- The Germans ran away.
- We opened the doors.
- We opened the windows.
- We make ourselves a home there, put the bags away.
- OK.
- So you were, in fact, liberated from Dachau?
- I was liberated, it was a small country town,
- they called it Zasów, a small country town in Germany,
- in Bayern.
- We went to that house.
- We make ourself a home.
- We settled there.
- Was this with the permission of the American?
- We didn't ask anybody any permission.
- Was it abandoned house?
- Yeah, it was abandoned house.
- Even some people ask the Germans to go.
- And they moved in.
- And we start-- they took a big pot.
- And they was checking outside.
- It was potatoes.
- And we took out those sardines, everything from our rucksack.
- They cooked a big pot with some soup and everything to eat.
- And we start eating.
- I didn't eat much.
- I couldn't eat anymore.
- After that milk with the chocolate, I got enough.
- I eat a bit of soup and that's all.
- At night time, put some straw on the floor.
- And we lie down.
- We were very tired.
- Of course, yes, we make showers.
- We make a bath, make a showers.
- And we change into new underwear from that
- what we got from the Germans.
- Was new, completely not used.
- We changed into new trousers.
- And we put on a khaki shirt from the Germans.
- We been-- we all got those things.
- And we lie down to have a rest, sleep.
- We slept till the morning.
- I slept till about 8 o'clock in the morning.
- But will come out about four or five of us
- are dead from that food what they eat.
- They were?
- Yeah.
- How come?
- They eat too much.
- They eat too much there from that
- till they have been eating.
- Nobody is looking what he--
- other is doing.
- I told them, don't eat too much.
- It's no good.
- I didn't need any more.
- I eat a bit of soup.
- And they eat too much.
- Was, I think, four people completely dead.
- And one was taken to hospital.
- And we've been going around for a day or two.
- And the American soldiers come to us.
- They took us in the trucks into Munich.
- They put us into the Funkkaserne.
- It was a camp for the German soldiers, very clean,
- very nice, very nice beds.
- Was a kitchen there from the UNRRA, from the Joint.
- Was plenty of food, plenty of rest.
- What were-- did any Jews try to have any revenge on any
- of the German soldiers?
- Did they try to?
- We couldn't do anything.
- We couldn't do anything.
- I tell you a story what happened,
- even in that little town where had been living.
- The next morning, we've been there still in Zasów.
- I went with a two or three friends of us
- to find some food cook ourselves.
- We didn't want it from the kitchen at that time.
- We went into a farmer, we're looking for chicken.
- We couldn't find any.
- We looking for eggs.
- You couldn't find any.
- The German was there.
- We when I went out, I heard chicken voice from the war.
- And I said, have a look.
- Something-- I put my ear there.
- And we took away a wooden door.
- And there's sitting plenty of chicken there.
- We took some sacks and put in some chicken, little bit
- of chicken and start walking away.
- When we walked away, that German, he could speak English.
- And he went to the Russian--
- to the US.
- The Americans.
- And the Americans ran after us.
- And he told us to--
- he spoke with them in English.
- And he told us in German, we not allowed to take anything.
- There is the kitchen if you're hungry.
- Go there in this.
- We have to give back the chicken.
- We throw out the chicken on the street from there on the sack.
- You go get them.
- You take them.
- And we went back this.
- But after the two days, they took us from there
- into the Funkkaserne.
- And we stayed there.
- I haven't been there long.
- I been discussing with my friend, it's time to go home.
- We will go back.
- What were you feeling during that time?
- I guess during the war, you didn't
- let yourself feel very much because just to survive
- was the--
- Yes.
- We had been very happy to survive.
- But we had been discussed before we left home that we come home
- to my home, where we living.
- We have to meet each other.
- In Sosnowiec?
- In Sosnowiec, yes.
- Did you have any idea what had happened to your wife and two
- daughters at the time?
- Yes, I knew.
- I knew from Moshe.
- My brother the one who told me they had been-- they died.
- But still, I didn't--
- I keep my promise.
- I come back to that place where I left.
- After the war, we said to each other, whoever will survive,
- he has to come back here into that-- in to [NON-ENGLISH],,
- was the street where I lived, the house where I lived,
- the block of flats where I lived.
- We have to come back there and look for each other there,
- whoever will survive.
- You had heard from your brother-in-law
- that your wife and your two daughters had been killed?
- Had been killed, yes.
- Did you hear how they were killed?
- Yes.
- Did you feel--
- They were gassed and then burned to death.
- Yes.
- Not only that--
- In Auschwitz?
- Yeah, in Auschwitz.
- And my wife's sisters and their children.
- She has-- my wife has got one, two, three, four, five sisters,
- married sisters.
- And they all have got children.
- They all went together.
- They all been killed.
- From the whole family was left only
- that brother, the only man.
- His wife and her child was killed there too.
- Only he was.
- Brother-in-law, so he was--
- That brother-in-law--
- --survived.
- --Motel was his name.
- He survived.
- He didn't survived.
- But when I been in Auschwitz, he still lived.
- I left Auschwitz.
- And he didn't come back anymore.
- He died there, when I left for Warsaw.
- OK.
- So you went back to Sosnowiec.
- We went back through--
- The Americans let you go?
- No, the Americans didn't say anything.
- They said to us, you can sit here as long as you want.
- And there, you will get food.
- You will get help.
- You get everything till we can send you--
- you can make up--
- till they make a decision what to do with you.
- It could be a year.
- It could be two, could be three, we don't know.
- So they kept you in the camps?
- Yes, yes.
- We came.
- It was good.
- We was free.
- We could go anywhere we like and do whatever we want.
- But we got a room in the camp.
- We could sleep there, and wash there,
- and eat plenty of food, everything, get everything.
- Can go wherever you like.
- But we make our own decision.
- I said, I don't want to stay there and live on charity.
- I go home.
- And I will see, maybe I can start a new living there.
- Maybe anybody survive.
- We will see.
- And it's been going a train to Budapest, to Hungary.
- And I with a couple of friends went there.
- And we went, there wasn't room in the wagon.
- So we went on the roof.
- And we been traveling about two or three days,
- we come to Budapest.
- And in Budapest, the train stopped.
- We went to the town.
- Was the Jewish committee there with the Joint.
- And there, again, they gave us-- told us, go there.
- There is a room for you.
- You can sleep there.
- Get food.
- You get-- they give us some money.
- Are we going?
- And we start there a few days, a few days, a few days.
- And we went to the train again.
- It was a train again to Czechoslovakia.
- And we went to Czechoslovakia.
- In Czechoslovakia, we straightaway
- changed the train to Poland.
- We come to Katowice.
- That was in the middle of May, middle of May '45.
- Come to Katowice.
- We went to-- by train to Sosnowiec.
- I come to Sosnowiec.
- A friend of me has been living for--
- it was a suburb of Sosnowiec, old Sosnowiec they call it.
- He said, come down here.
- I been living there.
- Maybe you meet somebody.
- We will come down.
- We meet a cousin of his.
- And he said-- they told us, many Jews come back, only a few.
- Come with us.
- Since it was nighttime already, we come in his room.
- And he was sleeping on the floor.
- And there was some food.
- Next morning, I went to the [PLACE NAME],,
- where I been live with my friend.
- Was a Jewish community.
- In the street, I meet your father.
- And I meet some other people, who I knew before the war.
- I really went.
- I really went to--
- he got a room for himself.
- And he said, if you haven't got where to go, you come with me.
- But I haven't got a bed.
- I went on the market.
- I got--
- You knew my father, who was Sam Gutterman.
- You knew him before the war?
- Oh, yes, we been quite--
- we been good friends.
- And he'd been a customer of mine.
- He's been dealing with me-- he lost his first wife and child
- too.
- He had a son or a daughter?
- I really don't know.
- Yeah, right.
- I took-- I bought a bed on the market.
- And I took it into your father's place.
- And I went there to stay there overnight.
- The next morning, I went to where I had been born,
- where I lived.
- And I seen the caretaker.
- I went to his room.
- He lived in the biggest unit, in the biggest flat,
- where the best people have been living before the war.
- Before the war has been living in the basement.
- I went in and I asked him, haven't you meet--
- He was a Pole?
- He was a Pole, yes.
- Haven't you heard anybody of my family?
- You know them.
- And anybody of my cousins, anybody of my brothers-in-law?
- No, nobody was there.
- Nobody has been asking for you.
- I went to the kitchen into my flat, where I've been living.
- I went outside.
- I've seen the blinds.
- And the garden is still there.
- The kitchen furniture, my kitchen is still there.
- I knocked on the door.
- And I opened the door myself.
- A woman come to me and asked me in Polish, what do you want?
- I looked around and I said, oh, no, I thought a friend of mine
- is living here.
- I don't want anything.
- I went-- and I never went there anymore.
- I never went back there.
- Were you afraid to?
- No, I haven't been afraid.
- But I just was not-- there's been no sense
- to discuss with her, to ask her when.
- She wouldn't give me anything.
- And I didn't wanted anything from her.
- Was no sense.
- I couldn't ask her to leave.
- I couldn't throw her out.
- I haven't got much right there.
- But the next day, that woman, from that where I lived,
- the caretaker's wife, meet her on the street.
- And I thought, oh, I will ask her again.
- And I meet-- seen her.
- And I asked her, have you seen anybody again?
- I called her by name.
- I have forgotten her name.
- Have you seen anybody from my family, anybody?
- Yes, she said, a small woman here was in January.
- She was asking of you.
- I said, was that my sister?
- She said, yes, she--
- it looked like your sister.
- And it was your mother.
- She was there in January.
- That was already in the end of May.
- She was there in January.
- She was freed in January '45.
- And she went straight away to find out
- what's happened with us.
- And I didn't know.
- I went up to the Jewish committee.
- And I meet some people.
- I said, haven't you heard anybody about those people
- from Vayslitz, where they are, if anybody survive,
- where I can find them?
- And somebody told me, there is some in Kraków.
- I think you should go if you want to find somebody.
- I know.
- I said, I know my sister is alive.
- And I don't know where she is.
- I can't find her.
- I don't know where to look for her.
- Wasn't-- couldn't-- wasn't there a committee where you could
- write down?
- Yes, but she-- when your mother was there,
- the committee wasn't then.
- Oh, I see.
- Wasn't formed yet.
- Later on was formed the committee.
- I asked them, look in that book.
- They says, nobody has written down here.
- Nobody was here, nobody has asked.
- But I went to Kraków.
- And I been going to Kraków to find out if anybody
- from our town, from Vayslitz.
- But when I come with the train, when I went with the tram
- from the station, to the town, on the train, a man come to me.
- And he started kissing me.
- Oh, baby, yeah.
- So you were on a train and you met this man
- who you didn't recognize?
- This was when you were--
- where were you headed to?
- Well, I went-- when I come to Sosnowiec
- and I find out that some people in Kraków from my town,
- I went by train to Kraków and took the tram from the station
- to the central city.
- I got in mind to go to the Jewish committee, find out--
- to find any people who I knew from my born town.
- But on the train, I meet a-- a man come to me and start--
- took me around and start kissing me.
- Said, Pini, I'm so happy that you are back.
- And I asked him, who are you?
- And he told me, my name is Bom.
- I'm from Wiślica.
- I'm from your town.
- And I remember, there was a small boy when
- I married and left Wiślica.
- But after the war, he was a man of 25 or 26.
- And of course, I couldn't recognize him.
- And I ask him, do you know about my sister anything?
- Yes, I know, he said.
- She lives and she is with a child.
- But I don't know where she is.
- But go there over there in that and that house,
- lives my brother-in-law.
- Well, that's [PERSONAL NAME].
- He was my friend.
- I was with him in school.
- They lived there.
- Go there.
- And they knew exactly where she is.
- And so was.
- I went there.
- I went back the train to the stop at that.
- I knew Kraków very well.
- This was in Kraków.
- So your sister was living in Kraków?
- No.
- No.
- OK, sorry.
- I went to Kraków, to that man, to that friend of mine,
- [PERSONAL NAME].
- And when I come there, he was very happy to see me.
- And we stayed there a few hours.
- And I ask him straight away, where's my sister?
- She lives in Radom.
- So your cousin is in Radom, too.
- And he had the address where the cousin lives.
- And you will find out there where she is.
- And you will meet her there.
- And that's what I did.
- I took the next train to Radom.
- It was a long way, about 15-16 hours to come there, come there
- in one morning.
- And I knocked on the door of my cousin.
- She wasn't there.
- She wasn't there.
- And he told me, she's traveling around,
- doing some business with leather because she needs to make
- some money to make a living.
- But she's coming back in a day or two.
- You stay with us here.
- When she comes back, I will--
- she's got her own room with a Polish family.
- And she will.
- And that what's happened.
- Up until that point, that was the first member of your family
- that you had found out was alive?
- That's the first and the last.
- I didn't saw it anymore.
- And the last.
- But at that time, did you know that your parents were not
- alive anymore at that time?
- Well, I heard from those people from--
- I lived in Kraków.
- They said to me, your parents, your brother, everybody
- is not back.
- They told me, even, that my sister come to Warsaw.
- He went with her back to that cave where they been.
- And this way, they left.
- And they don't know anything.
- And nobody knows what's happened, where they going,
- when they've been killed.
- Nobody knows anything.
- But one thing is sure, they're not alive.
- The farmers-- so they went to the farmers
- where your parents had been in hiding?
- Yes.
- Well, when I met my sister in Radom--
- OK, I'm sorry.
- Let's finish this story first.
- OK.
- --when she come back from her trip where she were--
- traveling around, she come up right away to my cousin.
- And he was very happy, crying a lot and kissing a lot.
- And she told me that she has got her child still in the--
- she couldn't manage to keep it by here.
- She hasn't got anybody to look after the child.
- And the parents vanished.
- She went to the bunker to that Pole, where--
- with a man, with that friend of mine what there.
- And still, the coat of my mother was in the room hanging.
- They were not there.
- He said, they left.
- And he don't know where they are, where they went,
- and what's happened.
- He just said, he doesn't know anything.
- But they left in the--
- he didn't-- I didn't know when they left.
- I think there was connections between my sister
- and my parents till about the end of July,
- till early August 1944.
- And then everything stopped.
- And she hadn't heard from them.
- We haven't found out anything anymore.
- Well, then my sister went to Kielce.
- She brought her child back with her.
- We've been living, staying a few weeks in Kielce.
- And I said to my sister, it's no good.
- I don't want to live here.
- I'm going back to Sosnowiec.
- You come with me.
- We went to Sosnowiec together.
- And we rented a room.
- We went together for quite a while.
- We do some business.
- Can I just ask you one other thing?
- Do you think that your parents left that hiding place?
- Or do you think that they were killed there?
- Do you have any idea?
- I think they were killed there.
- By the farmer?
- By the farmer, yes, by that Pole what
- was there because the coat of my mother
- and the coat of my father were still in that place
- where they've been in the cave.
- There was a storeroom for that, they call it, for the wheat.
- What they call it?
- A silo.
- That's right.
- How you call it?
- I think it's called a silo.
- Well, the place where they keep wheat?
- Keep feet, that's right.
- I don't know what you call it.
- I think.
- The coats were there.
- And where would they went in winter--
- Without a coat.
- --without a coat or anything?
- At that time in Poland, it's my understanding that Jews were
- still in danger from-- that even after the war was over--
- Yes, of course.
- --Jews could-- that there were some pogroms?
- Yes.
- Well--
- If not pogroms, that--
- When I went back, a lot of people already
- who survived in January of '45, I meet them in Budapest.
- And they asked me, where are they going?
- I said, I'm going home.
- And they said to me, don't be silly.
- You have got no home in Poland.
- We coming from Poland.
- The Poles still keep killing Jewish people.
- [INAUDIBLE],, I said, no, I can't look-- can't do that.
- I have to go there.
- I have to find out with my own eyes.
- I have to find out by myself what's
- happened with everybody of us.
- And then I will see what I have to do.
- I've stayed in Sosnowiec with my sister
- and her child for a few months.
- And we'd been doing some business
- and made a few dollars.
- What kind of business?
- Leather business.
- Leather business.
- We were doing leather-- same business before the war.
- And this was like-- this was in 1945 still?
- That was in 1945, '46.
- We been there till about the middle,
- I think, till about the end of '46.
- I can't remember exactly.
- And then about another year.
- You stayed there a year.
- About a year we stayed there.
- And you had an apartment?
- We got-- not apartment, a room with another family.
- And there were my sister meet your father.
- And after-- by the end of 1946, we all went.
- They married in Sosnowiec?
- No.
- Oh, they just met there.
- Just met there and doing business together.
- And we left Poland in 1946, all of us,
- my sister and me, and the child, your father,
- and a cousin of your father with his wife and child.
- He come back from Russia.
- Forgotten his name, they've been in the shoe business too.
- Anyway, we better than before the war--
- was a cousin.
- They're there in New York, I think.
- I know who it is.
- Yes?
- I've met them before.
- Yes.
- He's got a little child there and a girl, a little girl,
- I think.
- He had a girl named Sheila.
- That's right.
- They had a little girl.
- I met them when I was in--
- Well, we went all together to Germany.
- Well, me, the cousin, and his wife, and their child.
- And your father went with another transport.
- He's been looking for cheaper fares.
- It was the transport going for men without any pay.
- We payed to get through the border
- and get through to be together.
- But your father didn't want to spend--
- it cost about $50 or $60.
- He said, I'm going that way.
- We will meet in Germany.
- What zone were you in at the time?
- Beg your pardon?
- Were you in the Russian zone at that time?
- That was the Russian.
- Poland was under Russian occupation already.
- But we went from the Polish border,
- through the black border, to the Russian border--
- to the Russian section, to Berlin, the Russian section.
- And then we went from the Russian section
- to the English section.
- On the English section was your aunties,
- your father's sisters and a niece--
- Shmulik, his name, too, he lives--
- I think he lives in New York.
- And I come first to Germany.
- Before that, I went with your father
- to Germany to make some money.
- We took German marks, put them in a double deck,
- and we went by ourself.
- And we left the money at your auntie's places.
- And they been living in--
- I don't know where it was.
- It was near Bergen-Belsen.
- And they been there.
- And we left dollar, which I changed it
- into American dollars.
- And we left the money there.
- And we went home to take--
- I went there to take my sister and the child.
- And he went there.
- We got some more money left there to clear up
- everything what we have got.
- And then we went-- the second time, we went back.
- When we come back, I come first with my sister
- and that cousin of yours.
- And your father wasn't there still.
- I went to Regensburg.
- They was in Regensburg there.
- Regensburg?
- Regensburg, yes.
- I went to Regensburg.
- And I asked your auntie for the money what I left.
- She gave it to me.
- This is my father's--
- His sister, I think.
- --stepsister?
- Stepsister, yes-- stepsister.
- And I think it was Shmulik.
- I can't remember exactly.
- And then when I been there, I got my money already with me.
- And the same afternoon, your father arrived from Poland too.
- He was very shocked.
- He was very frightened because they've been looking very--
- they--
- Because what?
- They been looking if he hasn't got money.
- Something went wrong on the border with him.
- He was very shocked.
- But we stayed another day too.
- And he said to me, well, where are you?
- I said, I am in Kassel in a camp.
- And I think I'm going there back.
- You got your sisters.
- You should stay here.
- He said, no, I prefer to go with you there.
- Well, if you want, I said, you can.
- You can come with me.
- Anybody can come to that--
- into that camp.
- That was a DP camp.
- What was the name of the camp?
- It was near Kassel.
- It was a DP.
- Kassel in Germany?
- Pardon?
- Kassel, Germany, yes.
- OK.
- It was behind Kassel, Germany.
- And when we come there, he enrolled himself into the camp
- too.
- And I said, well, I don't think so I like to stay here.
- I would like to go.
- I went by myself to Regensburg, to Munich, to look for friends.
- And I find out that in Stuttgart, there
- is some people who I knew very well and very good
- friends of mine.
- I went to Stuttgart.
- And I-- was hard to get a unit, a flat, apartment.
- But I paid some money for it.
- And I got the apartment, two rooms, and use of the kitchen
- with a German.
- But in the peak-- there was the peak that you couldn't get in.
- It was full.
- So I went to the apartment with a German not far from the camp.
- And I enrolled there me, and my sister, and my child.
- And I went back.
- You mean her child?
- Mean her child, yes.
- That's right.
- And I went back to the camp.
- And I said, well, I got the cards, the coupons for--
- you got to get coupons after the war.
- Ration cards.
- Ration cards.
- I got the ration cards for all three of us.
- And I went back.
- Your father was still there.
- And I told him what happened, what's going on.
- And he said, I'm going with you.
- And I will find--
- anyway, when we come back, it was still
- hard to get for him to get into the camp again.
- When he come to me, I said, well, if you wouldn't mind,
- I would enroll into your apartment.
- Say, that's all right with me.
- If you can, you can do it.
- And he enrolled himself into the apartment.
- And we starting do it.
- I even got one bedroom for myself and your father,
- and one bedroom for my sister and the child,
- and the use of the kitchen.
- And we been doing some business together, partnership.
- And we made quite a bit of money.
- It was a black market.
- We managed to do something.
- And was-- we stayed with him there the end of the '46.
- We stayed there till about the end of '48.
- So you were there two years?
- Yes.
- And during that period of time, my mom--
- your sister and-- got married?
- My sister got married.
- And I think it was in--
- I can't remember exactly.
- But I think it was about the end of '48 or might be early '49.
- They got married.
- And I got married too.
- How did you meet your wife?
- Well, a friend of mine introduced us.
- She wasn't in the DP camp.
- She was in Radom.
- My friend who I've been doing business with him, he said--
- What was her name?
- Chava.
- Her name was Chava?
- Yes.
- What was her last name, what?
- What do you mean last name?
- She was Silverberg from home.
- I beg your pardon--
- Silverberg.
- Silverberg from home.
- I met her.
- And my sister was already married then with your father.
- And they was going on.
- It's a lot of people had been going to Israel.
- A lot of people going to USA, to America, a lot to Australia.
- And everybody wants to run away from Germany.
- Well, your father and my sister, they
- been going-- we going to go to Israel.
- My wife, she's got a-- she's going to get a permit
- to go to Australia.
- How did she get that permit?
- She got a lot of people from me at home.
- She was from Radom, was people here.
- And they sent letters.
- They can buy permits for--
- So she had connections--
- She had connections--
- --in Australia.
- --here and Australia, yes.
- But I couldn't get a permit for my sister
- and my brother-in-law to Australia then.
- But we been discussing.
- If they go to Israel, we didn't wanted them to stay in Germany.
- And everybody wants to run away from Germany.
- Even we could stay till today.
- But we didn't like it this idea.
- If you go to Israel and I will settle down in Australia,
- maybe I send a permit to Israel for you.
- But in the meantime, the father got some papers.
- And he could find out that he can go to the USA.
- And they got papers from the Joint to go to USA.
- And they went-- one child was born, what was born in Germany.
- Was a little baby at that time.
- She was born, I think, in '49, at the end of '49.
- And they decided to go to America.
- I haven't got my papers still.
- I stayed in Germany still.
- They left for America.
- A few months before, I got--
- I stayed still.
- They left for America.
- I don't know where they come to--
- New York.
- They settled in Norfolk.
- After a few months, I got my papers,
- my permit to come to Australia.
- And we come to Australia.
- Did you-- was it a very--
- I mean initially, my mother, your sister,
- was supposed to go to Israel.
- On the first place, not to stay in Germany,
- was in mind to go to Israel.
- And we have been discussing that from Israel, I
- can take them all to Australia.
- But when your father got the permit,
- he got the papers to go to America,
- it was decided that they go better to American
- than to Israel.
- My mother told me that you were opposed
- to her going to Israel because it was so hard there,
- the way of life at the time.
- Yes.
- I had been a bit opposed.
- But there wasn't any choice.
- Instead, let them then stay in Germany,
- I preferred them to go to Israel.
- But when the papers come to America,
- I've been very happy that they go to America.
- Was it a difficult decision to separate?
- Well, it wasn't any other choice.
- We have got-- we've been looking just like anybody--
- we looked-- they say in Yiddish, [YIDDISH]..
- Not show a key to--
- we been afraid-- still been afraid from the Germans.
- And we hated them like hell.
- And everybody-- if anybody left, like he won of the lottery.
- He's going out from Germany.
- And they got papers--
- oh, I'm sorry.
- No, that's OK.
- If they got papers, they go to America, I couldn't say, no.
- Go as soon as you can.
- I'm staying here.
- The idea was just to get out.
- And you still felt in danger.
- Yes.
- And just that happened that they got the papers.
- And they left first.
- And my wife and I, we didn't want to go to America.
- We've been feeling that we'll be better in Australia here.
- We still been thinking, maybe, there--
- if they can't make a good living in America,
- they can come to Australia.
- But they start in business.
- And they been making some money there.
- And when they been making money, I
- haven't been making any money here.
- I've been working on a job.
- I thought they're doing better--
- quite all right there.
- Your mother didn't written to me,
- didn't let me know what's going on there.
- She kept all everything to herself.
- Well, I think, economically, they were doing OK.
- Well, were doing OK.
- That's right.
- And I find out what has been going
- on when I come to America.
- By 1963, I got my house already.
- I been remarried.
- My wife died in--
- Why don't we get back to that OK?
- You were still in Germany.
- And you got papers to come to Australia.
- And this was what, in 1950 or 1949?
- No, 1949.
- We arrived to this-- in Melbourne in December 1949.
- It was a bit hard.
- I've been doing--
- You were resettled by who?
- I've been-- it was rented a room at a Jewish family in Acland
- Street, not far from here.
- And we lived in that room.
- The Jewish Family Service resettle you?
- But what agency were you resettled by?
- By friends, by friends of my wife.
- Oh, I see.
- OK.
- They rented a room for me.
- They knew I got some money.
- I don't want to go into a camp or anywhere else.
- Paid two pounds a week rent and settled at that room
- with a Jewish family.
- And I've been doing.
- We arrived in December 1949.
- I couldn't do anything because [INAUDIBLE] I applied,
- nobody will give you a job.
- I stayed there till January '50.
- January '50, I took a job at General Motors-Holden.
- I start working, start learning the language,
- start looking around what's going on.
- What did you think of Australia?
- I been very happy.
- I been even working very hard, even not making money,
- but I've been happy that I've been away from Europe.
- I accepted the way life is.
- And I like it.
- And working on a job-- and at '50,
- I start a job with General Motors-Holden.
- And I'm working on that job maybe five or six months.
- But in the meantime, I'm looking around,
- doing something to buy a business or to get off.
- My own business could--
- was very hard.
- I took a job.
- I opened a business in the market.
- I've been traveling around on the market.
- But I haven't got a car--
- somebody else.
- It was very hard.
- I keep two jobs for about three years, market business by.
- And I've been doing on the job shift work.
- I did 7:00 till 3:00 in the morning,
- from 3:00 till 11:00 at night, and from 11:00
- till 7:00 in the morning every week, different times.
- You worked 24 hours a day?
- No.
- I don't understand.
- You had-- there were different shifts.
- Different shifts.
- OK.
- Shift work, I tell you.
- I see.
- OK.
- There was one week I've been working morning shift,
- one was afternoon shift.
- In the meantime, when I got time in the daytime,
- I've been doing some buying, and going on the market,
- and doing--
- making some extra money.
- And that has been going on for quite a few years.
- Meanwhile, you had a daughter who was born.
- Yeah.
- My daughter was born in December '51.
- My wife hasn't been doing any work.
- I didn't let her go to work.
- She was staying home.
- She got pregnant in 1950, end of '50, '51.
- And my daughter was born in December '51.
- I've been good doing on about two or three years
- like that work doing, and saved quite a bit of money--
- not much, but a bit of money saved.
- Arrived I think it was in April '54.
- And I opened-- just opened up the factory with my partner.
- It was hard work, a lot of work, but good money.
- Start making some money.
- But I've been a bit trouble, been by myself
- with a little baby.
- I haven't got where to-- what--
- I couldn't do anything.
- I haven't got any friends, any family to help me with a child.
- I couldn't take it.
- And I got--
- I bought a house in 19--
- when my daughter has been going to be born,
- I bought a house here in Brighton, not far from here
- for 4,600 pounds.
- So we moved in there.
- OK.
- Well, we moved into the house in--
- it was in March, in March '51.
- And my daughter was born in December '51.
- And we've been living in the house.
- My wife died in April '54.
- I've been living a few months longer in that house,
- and sold the house, and moved into apartment.
- I couldn't keep my daughter with me because I went myself.
- She was staying in a home for a few months.
- It wasn't very pleasant.
- But I've got to do it.
- And then I gave her to a Australian woman.
- She was very pleased, very happy there.
- She's looked after her very well.
- They pay-- of course, they paid for it, for everything.
- And then I bought an apartment in Chapel Street.
- And I took in a domestic help, an old woman.
- She's been looking after the child
- and brought her to school.
- And been staying there-- she'd been staying with us till about
- the end--
- till about July 1957.
- I don't remember this was '57 or '58.
- I married.
- I married in '58.
- I remarried in '58.
- And I got my child with me home.
- And everything was quite all right.
- We've been working very, very hard.
- But we make a good living and managed to save some money.
- But then I bought a house here on [PLACE NAME] Road.
- We moved into the house.
- My wife has got a child of her own.
- And everything is up till today nice and fine.
- OK.
- I have some questions to ask you about after the war in terms
- of, for example, what kinds of feelings
- did you have about being Jewish after the war?
- In light of--
- In Poland, we been feeling very low, very depressed.
- We been discriminated, still been
- discriminated after the war.
- And a lot of people have been--
- Jewish people have been killed in Poland.
- That's why we left straight away.
- We been a few months only there.
- And we left because it wasn't any future for us in Poland
- anymore.
- And where we could go?
- Where we could go?
- Is only Germany on the black border.
- And we stayed there in Germany till we could get further--
- to America, to Australia, to Israel, anywhere.
- Everybody has been looking just to leave that rotten country.
- Even we could live till to die in peace,
- but just couldn't stand them, just couldn't go on with them.
- In light of everything that happened to you during the war,
- you knew that your first wife and your two children had died.
- What kept you going, do you think?
- What kept you-- what kept that will to keep going on?
- In a situation like that, after all what's happened,
- we been thinking, everybody of us,
- has been trying to establish a new--
- to form a new life for himself.
- And life is going on.
- We been looking to make money, to get married, to have family,
- and to live a normal life, to live again a normal life.
- It wouldn't be any good.
- I didn't believe that we ever will--
- after the war, that we ever will be
- able to live a normal life again.
- But everybody's been trying.
- And things were worked out quite all right.
- People have different philosophies in life
- about what people are like, what humankind is like.
- How do you think the war influenced
- those sort of feelings about people,
- or about that the world could come so low,
- and that people could be so--
- support such a system that happened?
- Did that-- how do you think that affected your outlook
- about people in general?
- Do you think, for example, you're
- more mistrustful of people?
- Well, I think, in my own opinion,
- I think the world is a jungle.
- And people are just like animals.
- They could eat up each other, they would.
- But it-- I'm not sure if things like that won't happen anymore.
- I don't think so.
- Do you think another Holocaust is possible?
- Different story, different wars.
- It will come.
- They creating atom bombs and that, and that.
- Well, war is one thing/ war is one thing.
- But annihilation and genocide is something else.
- Yes, I understand that.
- Do you think it's possible for the Jews
- ever to get into that kind of situation again?
- Or for the world to let that happen?
- Not in that kind because Jews will be more stronger.
- And they will be able to look after themself.
- They understand-- know how to protect themselves.
- And especially, we got Israel.
- And Israel has got an army.
- And they got a country.
- Whatever happens, we can always--
- we have got always to whom to turn and to whom to--
- somebody to help us, wherever and whatever happens.
- If anything goes wrong in Israel,
- the Jewish people in America, and Australia,
- and all over the world will do everything
- they can to help them.
- The same thing if something goes wrong in Australia,
- or something goes wrong, we have got a Israel with an army.
- And they are ready there.
- So we need each other.
- And that's the only way to go on living.
- We can't risk to have all the people, all the Jewish people
- in Israel because we don't know what can happened in 10, 20,
- in 50 years.
- Never know.
- It's 100 million Arabs around Israel.
- We can't be sure what can go on, what can happen.
- That's why we need some people all over the world
- and that will help each other.
- Whenever anything goes wrong, we will be able to protect
- or will be able at least to protect it ourself.
- The last war was where we were just--
- we've been just to call it in Yiddish hefker.
- Could do anything.
- Could do anything with us.
- Nobody would even raise a voice.
- Nobody-- they didn't even say a word for us.
- We got-- anybody to talk for us, to say anything for us.
- OK.
- So you said that you felt like that Jews didn't have anyone
- to really speak up for them.
- Of course not.
- Do you think people in Poland, Poles,
- knew what was happening to Jews?
- Of course.
- Now, today, many Poles claim that they didn't know.
- Oh, they knew exactly.
- They've been talking about it every day.
- They knew exactly what's going on.
- They knew there that.
- They've been talking on the times that they're burning,
- they're killing.
- They knew everything.
- They killed themselves.
- They killed a lot of them.
- They killed my brothers.
- Poles killed my brother, my two brothers.
- My youngest brother was 10 years younger than me.
- And he went to the town one night.
- And he was killed.
- How could my parents live?
- They knew their son went to town and he already
- died, killed by his friends went to school together
- and been living together.
- Did you apply for reparations after the war?
- Yes.
- Reparations.
- And did you get?
- Yes, yes.
- Reparations for having been in a camp?
- Well, they payed reparation for losing--
- for health reasons.
- Why did you apply?
- Well, I didn't want to leave the money with the Germans.
- I prefer to keep them for myself.
- If I don't need them, better to give it to Israel
- or give it to poor people then leave them.
- You see, that in Hebrew is a saying,
- you murder and inherit the money from the people
- that you murdered.
- They murdered us and inherit the money too.
- They got the property.
- Whatever you could, we can take that back, we taking.
- In money, raising, money--
- but can get out money if they were taking, whatever we can.
- When you came to Australia, since you've
- been living in Australia, did you ever join
- any survivor organizations?
- Yes.
- There's [NON-ENGLISH].
- I'm registered as a [NON-ENGLISH]..
- Yeah.
- Is there a group here like a New Australians?
- I mean, a group that came.
- No, there is a called [NON-ENGLISH]..
- They're doing what they can.
- They're making protest.
- They're making the camps there.
- Comes in April [NON-ENGLISH] and everything.
- Why did you join it?
- Why not?
- I been in the camps.
- And I been in the concentration camps.
- And people organized it.
- I joined it.
- Did you feel this need to keep some sort of connection
- with people?
- Oh, yes.
- Yes.
- We have the connections.
- We have to make sure that the next generations know about it
- and know--
- that they will knew how to protect themselves
- if anything comes wrong, if anything goes wrong in life.
- I feel that has to go from generation to generation.
- It has to stay in mind of the Jewish people forever.
- As we remember forever the home, Jerusalem,
- we have to remember the home.
- It was a Jewish life was in Europe.
- You mean the destruction of the temple.
- Yes.
- That's right.
- So you have to remember the Holocaust.
- You have to remember the Holocaust--
- was a terrific Jewish life, Jewish built whole of Europe.
- And then they come, and they killed us all,
- and took away everything.
- And that has to remember.
- And they have to be ready for generation
- after generations not to let it happen anymore.
- When you came to Australia did you talk
- very much about what happened, about your war experiences
- to people?
- Yes.
- Were people interested in listening
- to what you had to say?
- Yes, yes, we were always talking it.
- Amongst survivors you talked.
- How about people that--
- Australians, people that weren't survivors?
- Were they interested in hearing what you had to say?
- I don't think so they are much interested.
- Do you think they believed you what you had to say?
- Maybe some did.
- I don't think so they can believe it.
- It's just a thing what is impossible to happen--
- that's happened, what is just impossible.
- And I don't blame Australians if they don't believe 100% then
- if listen.
- And when they go away, they forgotten.
- They don't think about it.
- What kind of reception did you get from Australians
- when you came here?
- Very good.
- Very good.
- Very helpful.
- Were they sympathetic?
- Oh, yes, very helpful in every way, at work and everything.
- But you tended not to talk about your experiences
- with people that were not survivors, with Australians,
- let's say?
- I really-- I know we have to talk about it.
- And I really don't like too much to talk about it.
- I understand that.
- I'm sure it must be very painful for you.
- What did you communicate to your children about the Holocaust?
- Did you ever talk about the Holocaust to your children?
- Not much.
- Not much.
- Did they ever ask you?
- Not much.
- I don't think they like to know--
- they liked to know too much.
- They just don't feel it at all talk about it.
- In Australia, the children are not very much connected, not
- much interested.
- Well, I talked to other children, sons and daughters,
- whose parents went through the Holocaust.
- And I think in some situations, children-- sometimes,
- children didn't want to know because I
- guess it was too painful.
- It was too painful to hear the pain
- that the parents experienced.
- That's right.
- But sometimes, children didn't talk about it
- because they sort of sensed that it was painful for the parent
- to talk about it, but that they, in fact, wanted to know.
- That's right.
- But they sort of got messages from parents,
- not obvious, but subtle messages that they shouldn't ask.
- Do you think that your children really
- just were afraid to ask because they just-- for themselves
- or that they thought it might be too painful for you?
- Yes, I think so.
- They think that will be too painful for us.
- And they wouldn't like to make us feel bad again, make us--
- keep us remembering about what's been happening.
- Why did you agree to do this interview?
- I just like to talk with you.
- Any opportunity to.
- Well, I enjoy talking with you too.
- Thank you very much.
- But do you understand why I asked you to do this interview?
- Why do you think I asked you to do this interview?
- I understand you're working yet.
- And you're interested.
- And you're working now with organization
- that's called Generation After.
- And I think that's a good thing to do it.
- You think it's important to document?
- It's important.
- I think they should do that.
- You're doing a good job.
- So you're just saying-- you're saying that you feel it is
- important to--
- Yes, I think so, yes.
- --document--
- Yes, of course.
- --people's experiences.
- Yes very, very, very much important.
- It's important for the next generations
- to know what has been going on and to know
- how to be ready if anything goes wrong, anything.
- OK.
- Well, thank you very much.
- Thank you, darling.
- Was a pleasure.
- Pleasure was mine.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Pinchus Orbach
- Date
-
interview:
1982 April 16
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
3 sound cassettes (60 min.).
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives. Holocaust survivors--United States.
- Personal Name
- Orbach, Pinchus.
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
One Generation After
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The interview with Pinchus Orbach was conducted on April 16, 1982 by One Generation After, a Boston based group of children of Holocaust survivors, for the One Generation After oral history project. The tapes of the interview were received by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on January 7, 1990.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:10:03
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn510158
Additional Resources
Transcripts (3)
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- This record is digitized but cannot be downloaded online.
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