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Oral history interview with Esther Wolrich

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.495.33 | RG Number: RG-50.061.0033

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    Oral history interview with Esther Wolrich
    Transcript
    My name is Fran Gutterman.
    I'm at the home of Ester Wolrich, who resides
    in Brockton, Massachusetts.
    And I'm here to conduct an oral history interview.
    Ms. Wolrich was born--
    what year were you born?
    1927.
    1927.
    And where were you born?
    Radzyn Podlaski, Poland.
    That's in Poland.
    OK.
    What was Radzyn Podlaski?
    Radzyn.
    You can say just Radzyn.
    It doesn't make any--
    What was it?
    Was it a city?
    It was a city it.
    Wasn't a big city like Warsaw or something, but it was a city.
    It was a city.
    It was plenty Jews there.
    It wasn't then rural?
    It wasn't like a farm?
    No.
    No.
    It wasn't a village.
    It wasn't a village.
    It was a city.
    What city was it near?
    Near Lublin, Lublin, near Majdanek.
    It wasn't far.
    Near Miedzyrzec, which was a big city of a lot a, lot a Jews.
    We only-- in fact, from Radzyn, when the Germans
    came in, when they occupied Poland, a few months later they
    shipped us all out, all the Jews from Radzyn
    to Miedzyrzec, which was a city, a bigger city with more Jews.
    And that's where we were in the ghetto, in Miedzyrzec.
    OK.
    You had your mother and your father.
    What were their names?
    Malka and Jacob Bober.
    Bober, that's B-O-B--
    --O-B-E-R.
    OK.
    And what did your father do for a living?
    We had like-- my father before the war,
    he was like a salesman, really.
    He used to go to bigger cities, buy stuff for small merchants,
    and then ship it.
    And we had a store.
    What kind of store?
    We sold everything, like papers and--
    What, wallpaper?
    Wallpaper--
    Like a hardware, a paint?
    It wasn't a hardware store.
    It was more like we sold, like, merchandise, like,
    for clothing, but not clothing in the way as those things
    that they work, the Poles.
    Like scarves?
    The big scarves, the heavy scarves, the thin scarves,
    the heavy underwear, and the thin under-- we
    had everything, like all these things-- stockings.
    And your mother also worked?
    We all had the same thing.
    I mean, she was with him.
    So my sisters worked there.
    Two of my sisters lived in Warsaw.
    OK.
    So you had five--
    how many sisters?
    We were six.
    Six of you all-- six sisters?
    Six sisters.
    Yeah.
    And what were their names?
    Their names was Hadassah.
    She was the oldest?
    She was the oldest.
    Then was Faigey.
    She was like two-- they were all two years apart.
    Then it was Henya.
    She was two years apart.
    And then it was Sonia.
    And then from them to me was quite a bit, maybe 10 years.
    Oh, really?
    So you were really the youngest?
    Youngest.
    And then after me, my father only wanted a son probably.
    And after me there was a two-year younger, Adele.
    Adele?
    Yeah.
    OK OK.
    So you grew up in a city?
    Yeah.
    How old were you when you started going to school?
    Probably seven.
    That's how we started.
    You were seven years old?
    And what kind of school did you go to?
    A public.
    So you were in a school with other Poles?
    All Poles, yeah.
    OK.
    So when you were going to school,
    what kind of relationship did you have
    with Polish students or Polish kids.
    I lived in a really Polish area.
    Some of them were pretty nice, and some of them
    used to call you, like, Jew or something.
    So did you feel the antisemitism?
    You could feel it, that they didn't like Jews.
    You could.
    OK.
    Well, I know that you were 12 years old when
    the war broke out in 1939.
    But in '36, or '37 and '38, as it got closer and closer
    to the war, did your parents ever
    think of leaving Poland and going elsewhere?
    Were there ever any talk of that?
    No.
    No.
    No.
    Not that I remember.
    No.
    Were you aware of any antisemitism in your city?
    Yes.
    You could see, like, for the last--
    when I remember, they used to put up signs.
    Like you had a store, that they shouldn't go in
    because it's a Jew.
    They used to give out little leaflets
    or whatever you call it.
    Leaflets?
    Leaflets.
    Who are they?
    Poles.
    Poles?
    Yeah.
    Like they used to say it in Polish, [POLISH]
    because that means don't buy, it's a Jewish place.
    This I remember.
    And they'd do it in front of your father's store?
    Well, by then--
    I really don't remember this.
    But I know they did to big stores.
    You had girlfriends?
    Yeah, in fact, I have a very close friend,
    but I'm not in touch with her.
    She lives in-- she lives in New Jersey.
    We went to school together.
    She's the only one that I went to school with the same age.
    I used to live in number 13, and she lived in number 15.
    She's Jewish?
    She's Jewish, yeah.
    Did you have any girlfriends that weren't Jewish?
    Not-- we lived, like I said, and we
    played with some of them that weren't because we was kids.
    But close friends, no.
    Were there any Poles that lived in your neighborhood?
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    We lived in an area that was more Poles than Jews, really.
    Lived in a nice street, so the nice houses and everything,
    it was really--
    it was really a lot of Poles there.
    But I went to school with them.
    I mean, they-- see, I looked like another Pole,
    like not a Jew.
    So I think something, that nobody really
    thought of me of not Jewish.
    So if people didn't know you, they
    didn't make an assumption that you--
    No.
    No.
    Not really.
    No.
    OK.
    How old were you when the war broke out?
    12.
    12.
    12.
    And do you recall--
    well did your parents ever talk about what the situation
    was like for Jews in Poland?
    Do you remember them ever talking about it?
    They used to talk, like, World War One, how it was.
    But nothing-- I don't think anybody
    dreamed that something is going to be like this.
    The only time they started thinking about
    was when it was very, very bad.
    Like '39, everybody was afraid because they
    heard that in Germany the Jews had shipped out
    and things like this.
    But if it doesn't happen right away to you,
    and you don't see it really--
    I remember when they bombed Poland.
    OK?
    And we had next door a German cantor,
    that he went away from Germany.
    And the bombs were falling.
    And I was little.
    It was on a Saturday.
    And I said, Hazan, why don't you hide?
    And he said to me, Meine kinder, this is [NON-ENGLISH]..
    In other words, this is nothing.
    The bombs, you'll beg sometimes that you want bombs.
    And this always stuck with me because I said--
    I could see.
    I said, why don't you go lie down under the tree.
    And he just picked up his head, and he said to me,
    [NON-ENGLISH].
    Which means, my--
    My child, don't be a-- this is nothing comparing,
    in other words, what's coming.
    Right.
    See, because he was somebody that went away from Germany,
    and he was in Poland.
    And he lived not too far from us.
    This I'll never forget.
    And you were about 12 years old at the time.
    I was 12.
    Because in August was my birthday, in September the--
    yeah.
    So I was 12 years old.
    How did the first word of the war reach you?
    How did that Poland had been invaded?
    We didn't know we were invaded.
    The war broke out at first, and we
    were right away, the next day, bombed.
    And in a few days later, the Germans
    were in our-- it didn't take long to occupy Poland.
    The only thing, when they fought was near Warsaw.
    The Germans came into your city?
    We had everybody.
    We had Russians.
    We had this.
    Like when they were fighting, a few hours we had Russians.
    Then a few then a few hours later, the Russians were gone
    and the Germans came in.
    So both the Russians and the Germans were fighting.
    Fighting.
    And who at last occupied the city?
    Germany.
    Germany.
    Germany at last occupied.
    I see.
    When the bombing started, you knew at that point
    that war had been declared.
    That it was war, yeah, because we had run away.
    I remember.
    We went to a little, like a farm.
    And we were hiding there.
    You could see from far away the fires,
    the bombs that's burning.
    So when the war began, your parents took you--
    Not mine-- it was just my mother because my sisters,
    two of my sisters were in Warsaw.
    They were with the biggest bombs because Warsaw
    was fighting badly.
    What were your sisters doing in Warsaw.
    They lived there.
    One of them was married, and one of them just worked.
    She lived there.
    And how old were they?
    They were much older.
    These were the oldest.
    So they were in their 20s.
    Oh, yes.
    They must have been.
    Like if I was 12, they must have been like 25.
    This was Hadassah and Faigey.
    No.
    Hadassah lived with us--
    Faigey and Henya.
    Faigey and Henya, OK.
    And your father?
    My father died.
    Why don't you tell me a little bit about that.
    Your father died before the war?
    In April, right two days after Passover.
    And how did he die.
    He was sick.
    I don't know, but he was very sick, and he died.
    You don't know what he died of?
    No.
    Do you remember how old he was at the time?
    He was in the 50s.
    So there was just your mother and your sisters.
    And the sisters-- we were only three sisters.
    At the time.
    At the time.
    Because the other two sisters were living in Warsaw.
    Yeah.
    And my other sister was married.
    She lived in our city, but she--
    we see-- I mean close, but she wasn't living with us.
    During the war, when her husband--
    she lived with us already because they shipped us all out
    to a ghetto.
    This was very late in the fall.
    Of 19--
    1939 to '40, they shipped us out to Miedzyrzec, which was--
    they congregated a lot of Jews from different parts,
    and they kept them there, from there.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    So the first thing that your mother and you did
    was that you went to a farm.
    We went away.
    They said on a farm they won't bomb, so you can hide better.
    So we used to lay in between the potato--
    or in the weeds, where it's high.
    In the fields.
    You could see the planes touching them.
    And it was funny.
    In one little house that we stayed, they threw in a bomb.
    I don't know how-- miracles that we went out and we survived.
    But it just only took a few days,
    and then they occupied it.
    So it wasn't-- it was a few days of agony,
    staying with the Poles.
    We knew a lot of them because they
    used to come and trade with us.
    So we used to-- we stayed with them,
    used to stay outside with where they
    kept the cows and everything.
    So it was you, your mother, Adele, and Sonia--
    Yeah.
    --and Hadassah?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    So you were there for a few days.
    A few days-- and then we came back.
    They said that the bombing stopped.
    We came back to the house.
    And then when the Germans came, in a few months-- took
    a few months later, they started to picking nice houses.
    They took away the things.
    That came in, they just-- whatever they saw,
    they took if they liked it.
    What did you do during that time?
    You didn't go to-- did you go to school?
    No more school for us.
    And so did your mother continue to run her business?
    No more business either, nothing.
    So you just-- so you stayed home.
    Stayed home.
    And what did people do during that time?
    Like, if you were a shoemaker or something,
    you probably did something.
    But whoever had something else to do--
    and by that time, my sisters came back from Warsaw
    because Warsaw was very bad.
    They were bombed.
    They had no place.
    That was Faigey and Henya.
    Yeah.
    And they came back, and they stayed with us
    because we didn't even know if they were alive.
    Did they come with their husbands?
    My oldest-- my other sister, I think the husband
    didn't come with her.
    She stayed a while with us, and then she went back to Warsaw.
    But my other sister, the unmarried one, she
    stayed with us.
    OK.
    So what happened after that?
    After that, we stayed till the winter.
    The Germans took everything away.
    And then they shipped us to Miedzyrzec, to the ghetto.
    Would you say that word again?
    Miedzyrzec.
    Do you think you could spell it?
    Let me see.
    I can't spell it.
    I can write it on the--
    Yeah.
    Sure.
    It's a very--
    Miedzyrzec?
    Yeah.
    That's how it's spelled in Polish, but--
    M-I-E-N-D-Z-Y-R-Z-E-C, Miedzyrzec.
    Yeah.
    I mean, it's hard, but that's how it's spelled.
    And that was near Radzyn?
    Near Radzyn, only 27 miles--
    27 kilometers.
    How did you go there, to Miedzyrzec?
    How did they take you there?
    Oh, with buggies and things.
    There were people that had buggies,
    and that's how we went.
    So all the Jews were sent there?
    Not all of them.
    Some of them, they kept them for working or things.
    But we had a uncle.
    My mother's brother lived there.
    And we figured that we'll be better off there.
    But my sister and I stayed behind.
    We wanted to stay in the other.
    So we used to walk there.
    You know, we used to walk six--
    Walk to where?
    To Miedzyrzec.
    Every day?
    No, not every day.
    Like to bring things.
    Oh, I see.
    To who?
    To my mother.
    I see.
    So you and your sister stayed in Radzyn.
    Yeah, for a while.
    And then they made everybody really go.
    It was cold, and we had no place to stay.
    We stayed with a lot of people in one house.
    And we figured we're going to go.
    Do you remember if there was a Judenrat in Radzyn?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    So during-- right after Germany invaded--
    Yeah.
    A few months later, they made a Judenrat.
    And did the Judenrat decide who would go to Miedzyrzec?
    I really don't remember.
    They probably did, but I don't know.
    I don't know.
    But we really figured we were going
    to be better off than hanging around, staying
    with my mother's brother.
    So you did stay in Radzyn.
    I stayed in Radzyn.
    I used to go forth and back.
    See, for a while we didn't have nothing
    that we should-- like work or something.
    So I used to go buy stuff for cheap and bring it there.
    And they didn't recognize me.
    You know, I went like a Pole, all dressed up.
    I was young-- Pole.
    Yeah.
    So I was dressed up.
    I used to go with the German buses.
    So you weren't really allowed to do this legally.
    No, no.
    Oh, no.
    Did you have any papers to prove--
    Nothing.
    I was young, so I had no papers.
    But it was scary what I did.
    But I used to do it plenty of times.
    What did your mother do in Miedzyrzec?
    Really, nothing.
    Nothing.
    Where did she live there?
    Did she--
    We lived with my uncle.
    You lived in Radzyn there?
    No.
    No.
    I lived in-- after a while, we all went back.
    Right away we stayed behind.
    We figured we had things.
    We figured we were going to sell it and have a little money.
    Because we had, from the store, a lot of things.
    So that's how we survived.
    Did you hide anything?
    Did you, like any-- any things?
    We probably did, but I don't--
    I don't-- things like this I wouldn't--
    I wouldn't even know.
    But I used to go forth and back.
    I used to bring the things.
    I used to go to on the farms to sell it and get some bread
    for it, things like this.
    And that's how we survived, from the things-- or our clothing.
    We used to sell everything, as long
    as we should get a piece of bread or something.
    But with my uncle it was a little better because he
    had still a little--
    they used to make cotton.
    I don't know what do you even call it.
    Like from lamb, the wool, they had a thing that all the--
    A mill?
    It's like a little mill.
    It wasn't a factory.
    But he had a room, and they used to come.
    They used to make it.
    Weave?
    Weave, like.
    And they used to bring food for it.
    So that's how we really survived, living with my uncle.
    So when you were in Miedzyrzec--
    In the beginning, you still could go out.
    But then after maybe a few months, they just closed it up.
    But I used to--
    They didn't form a ghetto right away?
    Right away wasn't a ghetto.
    But you knew, the Jews lived in one place.
    It wasn't closed.
    You didn't live in the nice area because it was a big city.
    This city really had--
    it had a lot of Jews.
    And they-- we stayed in one area.
    But that area was still a little open.
    Then after a while, they closed it.
    They made wires.
    And you couldn't go out.
    But I sneaked out.
    Do you remember when this was?
    It was, most of the time, in the wintertime.
    So this was in 1940?
    '40, '41.
    And then really the bad things started after a while.
    They really got-- they used to-- they shipped in a lot of Jews,
    not just from our city but from all around.
    They shipped in Jews from other small, small places?
    Small places to Miedzyrzec-- and they just crowded them up.
    It was hell there.
    Everybody lived together.
    We had nothing.
    Sicknesses-- typhus was the worst.
    We were always sick that nobody thought
    that's going to survive because we had nothing, no medicine.
    If you got a little, they used to--
    I don't know.
    People, doctors that still had it gave you,
    but it was really-- everybody was sick then.
    Then was the worst, worst thing.
    And where did you live?
    At first you lived with your uncle.
    When the--
    We still-- yeah, we lived in the same house.
    So your--
    That house, he lived in a Jewish area
    that that house didn't ship out.
    The wires were just in the front.
    So the house was part of the ghetto.
    Part of the ghetto.
    And it wasn't just us already.
    There was more people.
    You had to share the house with other people.
    Oh, there were so many that came in, cousins and things.
    We all stayed already together.
    It wasn't already living, it was just--
    OK.
    Do you remember very much about how
    the whole ghetto was formed, like if they had administrators
    there?
    Who ran the ghetto?
    Well, they had-- they made like Jewish police,
    and they made like Jewish things.
    But the orders were from them.
    Was there a Judenrat in the ghetto?
    In most of all the places they had a Judenrat.
    They had like-- if they wanted to do something,
    they came first.
    They didn't do it anyways.
    But it was like Jews some of them knew what--
    I don't think they knew what they're going to do,
    but we had some Jewish people that
    were a little higher than just the ordinary, plain like me.
    But I really don't remember that much who--
    if they-- they didn't do really nothing.
    Did you have-- how did you get food?
    Like I said, we used to bring it in.
    I mean, the food, they baked, like for the black markets,
    where people prepared.
    They had a little extra something they used to bake.
    Did they have rations though?
    Did you get, supposedly, get any--
    I don't remember if we had rations there.
    I really don't.
    I don't know.
    But I just know that a lot of people used to go out.
    Those that worked, they used to take them
    out and work outside for the Germans for something.
    They used to bring in little things--
    like organized or something.
    How about schooling?
    Did you--
    No school.
    The war broke out, I haven't seen--
    I didn't see school anymore.
    I was supposed to go in the sixth grade, and that was it.
    Never went back.
    How long were you in the ghetto?
    We were there till '42.
    So you were there two years?
    Two years.
    When in '42?
    I think-- I think we were--
    when in '42?
    Like Passover time.
    So you were there about two years?
    Yeah.
    And during those two years, that was your 13th and 14th years.
    What did you do every day?
    See, what happened to me-- that's how I survived.
    The Germans needed people to work for them.
    I used to organize.
    I used to go out, out of the ghetto.
    I used to go to my other city, walk and do things.
    So I brought in stuff to eat.
    And you could do this why or how?
    I tried.
    I mean, I wasn't scared.
    I didn't even think that they'll catch me
    they're going to shoot you or something.
    I used to go on German buses, Poles buses, like travel,
    and have a little bundle with me.
    It used to be barley or something else.
    No one ever questioned you?
    Once, they-- somebody stopped me walking.
    And it was probably--
    I just meant that I should survive.
    And he said, where are you going?
    It was a German patrol.
    I said, I'm going home.
    And he just let me go.
    If he would open and see that, would have
    take it or put me in a jail.
    I don't know.
    I did a lot of things.
    They never asked for you to have-- to see your papers?
    No, I was small.
    I mean--
    So children never had papers.
    I didn't.
    I didn't.
    I used to-- with the buggies in the beginning,
    when we could still go, I used to go all the time
    from one city to another to bring in stuff.
    And you would do this on your own?
    Well, my mother knew that I-- because see,
    I figured that they're not going to touch me
    because I was young.
    One time they took the whole buggy,
    and they brought it into the--
    [? to hide, ?] like to the Gestapo.
    And they beat everybody.
    They took everything off.
    We had oil and things to cook with.
    We brought it in from another little city,
    from Poles that they sold, if you gave them
    away a watch or something.
    They didn't do nothing to me.
    They-- everybody, they used to beat up everybody
    because they knew what we did.
    They let me go.
    Why do you think they let you go?
    I think because I was young, very young.
    And they thought you were-- did they--
    I don't know.
    They never asked me what I was then.
    But I was scared.
    After this I didn't really go because this I figured
    that's going to be the end.
    You would go to other-- you would go to other towns.
    From this city to my city.
    How did you get there to these other towns?
    In the beginning, we used to go with buggies.
    Then we used to walk, to walk six--
    How would you get the buggies?
    There used to be a few Poles' buggies.
    You used to go out and figure they're going in this time.
    Would you take me?
    They didn't even know that you snuck up
    or something like this.
    I used to do a lot of things with this.
    Where did you get the money to buy these things?
    I didn't.
    It wasn't for money.
    It's for exchanges really.
    So you had merchandise?
    Yeah.
    Some things that we had, or for clothing you
    knew that they're going to want because they didn't have it,
    but they had the food.
    And you would bring this back to the ghetto?
    Back to us.
    And you would use it to feed your family.
    To feed the family.
    But I didn't do it for--
    then after a few times they got us, and I really was scared.
    I figured, like one time, after 7 kilometers, I was in a bus.
    And they said everybody out.
    And they looked for papers.
    And I was scared.
    I mean, I don't know what I did then.
    I don't even remember.
    And after this, I never went back because my mother thought
    that's going to be-- you know, some day they're going to--
    Did children not have papers?
    I don't even remember.
    I just don't even remember.
    I know I didn't.
    Did any of your sisters do this also?
    Sonia did in the beginning, but then she didn't.
    I did it more because, like I say, I didn't look Jewish.
    How often did you go out?
    I used to go like every week and stop in farms
    and do a little work for them.
    So they gave you some stuff for it, like a bread or something.
    Some of them knew that you were Jewish.
    Those that knew that you were Jewish--
    They did-- some of them were pretty-- you know,
    the farmers in the beginning, they didn't-- if you worked
    for them, you brought them some stuff,
    they really didn't-- in fact, there was one--
    this is a little further, that they wanted
    to take me to stay with them.
    But I wouldn't.
    They knew I was Jewish.
    That was later on, before they took everybody out,
    that they grabbed me for work.
    See, that's how-- and then, in the following year in the fall,
    they looked for work, for people to work, and they grabbed me.
    Who grabbed you?
    The Germans.
    Like in the fall, work in a big farm that was like hundreds
    and hundreds of acres that wasn't belong--
    it didn't belong to a small--
    that they occupied.
    And they needed people to work in it.
    So this was in '41?
    '41, '42.
    And it was hell there.
    They used to come out with the horses
    and ride on you if you didn't go fast,
    or when you picked the potatoes.
    And it was very, very bad, and I was there with maybe
    20 other girls.
    Before then, after you stopped going out to other towns
    because it was too dangerous, and so you just
    spent your time in the ghetto, what did you do every day?
    I don't even remember what we did.
    Nothing-- just sitting and waiting probably for dead.
    When I think about it now, because there was nothing
    that you could do.
    Did you have any idea, did you ever question your mother
    or anyone as to-- did you have any idea what was going on,
    as a 12-year-old or 13-year-old?
    We knew it was bad, but we didn't
    know that they're going to take us out and kill us,
    or they're going to ship out to Treblinka and kill us.
    You knew that Germany had invaded Poland
    and was conquering Poland.
    And then you began to realize that Jews
    were going to be treated differently from Poles.
    Different-- Poles, yeah.
    But what they're going to do with us,
    kill us, or treat us like this, never came to my mind.
    Did you have any idea why Jews were being singled out?
    I know that they just didn't like Jews
    because I could see that some of the Poles didn't like Jews.
    I figured the Germans, for sure, didn't like Jews because people
    were talking about it.
    But that's the most that I knew about.
    During this time in the ghetto, like
    what did your mother do every day?
    She used to sew or help, you know, just sit around,
    go visit somebody.
    Like we had relatives-- go out, because you could go out.
    But then after a while, you couldn't go out so you just--
    Go out where, of your house?
    The house, to a neighbor or somebody.
    She wasn't alone or she'd sit and fix or do things
    because we had no-- you couldn't get new clothes.
    Whatever you had, it had to be just fixed and do.
    But it wasn't anyplace that you go.
    She always was worried what's going to happen to my sister,
    or it's going to happen to somebody because they used
    to say that in Warsaw was bad.
    So she always used to worry what's going to happen
    or why my sister didn't go when her husband is.
    She couldn't go already.
    Were your-- before the war, what level of religious observance?
    Orthodox.
    You were Orthodox?
    Very, very.
    My father was a Hasidic Jew, very Orthodox.
    But he wasn't very, very strict.
    Of course, my brother-in-laws or something,
    they didn't walk around with always with the things.
    Payos.
    No.
    No.
    They came in in our house, they used to wear a hat.
    But probably when they went out, they didn't.
    When the war broke out, and you went into the ghetto,
    were you able to keep any sort of religious observance?
    Oh, they used to--
    we used to-- they had little shuls.
    They used to go pray.
    This was the whole thing.
    That's where they used to go.
    But--
    People spent a lot of time praying?
    Praying.
    Some of the shuls, you couldn't go.
    So they made it like in a house.
    Some of the houses had the Torahs and everything.
    So people still continued some religious observance.
    Yes.
    Those that believed.
    Not everybody believed really.
    I mean, not everybody was Orthodox, that they prayed.
    OK.
    And how about the other part of your life?
    I realize the war was going on and things were very bad,
    but did you-- was there social life or--
    There was no social life.
    No educational?
    No education, nothing.
    No cultural?
    Nothing.
    Political activity of any kind?
    No.
    No.
    We tried to read the papers to see what happens.
    If you got a paper, so you only could find out
    that the Germans occupied this country
    or they occupied-- it was never something that was good.
    People talked a lot about what was going to happen.
    Going to happen, yeah.
    And what were people's feelings?
    We didn't know.
    The only thing we used to hear, that from this--
    like from other cities, they shipped them out.
    Where they shipped them, what they shipped them, we didn't--
    Shipped Jews out.
    Yeah.
    No one knew where to.
    Nobody.
    No.
    No.
    Smuggling went on.
    Smuggling did.
    That's how you survived.
    If they caught you, you were dead.
    But if you wanted to eat or something, it went out.
    Because that's what I did myself.
    But then I was really scared, and I didn't want to do it.
    But I did it for a long time.
    I used to bring in stuff to feed my family, my sisters
    and my mother.
    Were you aware of any sort of resistance.
    I mean, in fact, smuggling was a form of resistance.
    Resistance-- a form to survive.
    If you wanted to eat a piece of bread,
    you tried to get out of the ghetto
    or do some work for somebody or sell something or give away
    something.
    And in return, they gave you something to eat.
    But then after a while, this became very, very hard too,
    that you couldn't do it because the patrols and the SS,
    they used to come in and they used
    to just walk around with guns like this,
    that you're really very scared.
    I used to do things that--
    OK.
    So you were saying?
    Yeah.
    And I saw them, and I ran away.
    You saw SS?
    The SS with dogs.
    And everybody knew that he was bad, really.
    He just had a satisfaction if he could hit you.
    An SS person?
    Yes, person.
    Gendarmerie, they called him.
    It was like the police from the Gestapo.
    And he went after me.
    Was this in the ghetto?
    In the ghetto.
    I mean, it wasn't--
    it was-- yeah, it was in the ghetto.
    And he said to the dog, he says, [GERMAN]..
    See, these things I remember.
    He said to the dog-- he was like a person, I was the dog.
    And he bit me.
    The dog bit you.
    Yes.
    I had a very, very bad thing on my--
    but it wasn't infectioned or something,
    and I didn't get sick.
    So I had a lot-- because I was always out,
    trying to see what's going on or trying to get things.
    If you could see something that somebody sells something
    or this, I was always out.
    I wasn't afraid.
    Were you hungry?
    So there wasn't enough food?
    No.
    We became-- like we had sores all over the body, itchy.
    That was from not eating.
    I used to scratch myself to death,
    like between the-- that was very, very like, very
    catchy too.
    Contagious.
    Contagious.
    If somebody got it, the next person got it.
    Used to become on the stomach, in between, was a--
    Scabs, a certain--
    Scabs, yeah.
    Maybe a vitamin deficiency?
    Probably.
    Everybody said it was from not eating.
    Were you allowed to bathe?
    Could you--
    I mean, we-- like, we didn't grow up
    like with houses with bathtubs.
    We used to bring in the water and wash.
    Was there enough water to wash?
    We had to go for the water.
    And if it was in the wintertime, you
    couldn't even get it because you had to pump the water.
    We had no inside water.
    So we had to go for the water.
    So people weren't-- really, you tried as much to wash the face
    or wash the hands or try to wash when it rained for the hair.
    But for cooking, for something, we had to go places
    to go for water.
    So it wasn't like here, that you give a touch
    and you have water.
    When people-- you said people came in from--
    they started sending--
    Germans started bringing other Jews in from other towns.
    They congregate them for a long time, for a few months.
    And that's when they started-- from that city,
    they shipped them out.
    They shipped them out from Miedzyrzec?
    Yeah.
    That's where they went to--
    most of them-- the first transport went to Treblinka.
    Oh, this is a little later because I wasn't there.
    When they did this, I wasn't with my parents.
    That's how I survived.
    OK.
    I see.
    So at some point--
    But they congregate them from a lot of cities.
    They brought them in with nothing.
    They used to push them in in the temples, in the shuls.
    Or if people-- a lot of people had bigger houses,
    they used to bring them.
    Like, we used to--
    in my uncle's house, were probably maybe 20 people
    or more.
    There were two little rooms.
    It was the gathering, the center for--
    For-- yeah, the big cities.
    We used to be the center for--
    and then they just distribute them every place else,
    wherever they wanted, where they figure they're going to go.
    That's when-- in the beginning, when
    there weren't too many people, it was a little better.
    But as it became more and more crowded--
    More people, it was very bad-- sicknesses.
    People died.
    Children, they became swollen.
    Like you watch the Cambodian kids--
    Cambodians?
    That's how the Jewish little kids used to look.
    So what happened with you then?
    Then-- so when they--
    they grabbed me to work.
    And how did that happen?
    I was outside.
    I was always outside.
    I was never afraid unless it was dark.
    I was always outside.
    And they just grabbed me because I looked good,
    had nice blonde hair, pink cheeks.
    I don't think I was shorter than now,
    but about the same height when I was this--
    I was 13.
    And they sent me away in that place,
    and it was just plain horrible.
    They knew you were Jewish, obviously.
    Yes.
    Sure.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And they sent us away there.
    To a farm?
    To a farm.
    How far away?
    It must have been about 15 kilometers.
    Did your mother know?
    My mother, then they found out.
    So when they took you, no one-- they just grabbed you?
    They didn't--
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And they just pushed us on big--
    wasn't-- big buggies, like with horses.
    And they just shipped us out.
    How did your mother find out where you were?
    They probably-- this, it was still in the beginning.
    So people knew.
    And it was bad.
    I cried there.
    The work was terrible.
    This was in 1942?
    '41.
    '41.
    '41.
    That's how I came-- then 1942, when they started shipping,
    that I tried to go myself to work.
    From there I ran away.
    When you went to that farm for work--
    I knew it was slave, slavery because they just-- even
    it was raining, you had to dig the potatoes.
    And if you couldn't--
    It was to dig potatoes?
    Did potatoes-- so everything that was from the harvest,
    to put away.
    And where did you-- what did you do at night?
    They brought us in in a big thing where
    they kept horses or something.
    A big, like, barn?
    Barn-- and stayed there.
    They used to cook a little food to give you.
    It was bad.
    I ran away from there.
    You ran away from there?
    So how long did you work there before you ran away?
    I must have been maybe two months there.
    Then one night, a girl and I, when everybody-- we
    were outside on the fields where they put away the potatoes.
    And it was very, very dark.
    I said to this girl, you know something?
    We're not going to go back.
    We'll just stay behind.
    We will hide in the big things where they hide the potatoes.
    Then when it's going to get quiet,
    maybe we'll start walking.
    Because we know the farms pretty much.
    We knew where it is.
    She said, OK.
    This was, I think, a Friday night.
    And we figured it was very quiet.
    Maybe two hours later we didn't hear nothing.
    Everybody went home.
    I said, let's start walking.
    So we walk.
    We go into a Pole.
    And this Pole says to us, you are those that went away.
    We went out so fast.
    I don't know where we went, but we found some trees.
    And we had very little clothes, but it was dark,
    and we stayed there.
    So we didn't know what to do.
    So I said, we have to walk.
    So we started walking.
    We saw wires.
    I said, those wires are no good because this brings us
    in in a big place where there's a lot of Germans.
    I knew that.
    We walked the opposite way.
    We walked.
    We finally came to a main road.
    And every time we heard somebody running,
    we figured they're after us.
    But we made it.
    They looked for us, but somehow we made it.
    I came home.
    My mother wouldn't keep me in the house
    because she was afraid people--
    they're going to come and look for us.
    So maybe for two weeks I stayed in somebody's house.
    And this was already winter.
    And then the spring came.
    I said-- we had a lot of people that my uncle knew,
    Poles that had farms.
    I said, why don't I go work for them?
    It was like in June, July.
    Of '41?
    This was '42.
    '42?
    This is before they took my parents away.
    And I said, OK.
    And I used to come home every Sunday.
    I used to work for them.
    They loved me.
    They used to teach me how to ride a horse.
    And I was with them.
    I had a lot of food to eat.
    You worked at some farms nearby.
    On farms-- I did everything that the Poles did.
    And they really-- they liked me because I
    was a very good worker.
    And I was just like one of them.
    I wasn't afraid for nothing.
    And then there was a big, big farm
    that the Germans came to look it over, and I wasn't afraid.
    I used to go with them on the fields
    to do everything what they did.
    And every Sunday I came home.
    One Sunday I come home, I hear the city was very boiling.
    They said something's going to happen.
    They're going to ship out.
    People knew because they shipped out another place.
    My mother said to me, please go back.
    If they'll ship us out, you're going to come.
    Nobody thought they're going to ship them to kill.
    You can bring us things, bring us clothes.
    And I didn't want to go.
    She says, go.
    You stay there.
    And then everything, when it's going to be all over,
    you'll come back.
    You'll help us.
    And I listened to her.
    This was-- I went back Sunday.
    Monday I went to work.
    Tuesday morning, we hear something.
    Some of the Poles that came in the city,
    they said they cleaned out Miedzyrzec.
    They shipped everybody out.
    I became hysterical.
    And that Pole, he liked me.
    He said, please don't cry.
    You're going to be all right.
    Maybe they're going to be all right.
    He didn't know what happened.
    This was already probably August,
    just before the High Holidays.
    I felt terrible.
    Then people were talking.
    The Poles were talking that something very bad happened.
    They said, you don't go back.
    I said, I'm going back.
    He wouldn't let me.
    I went out.
    I came back to the city where my uncle lived.
    He just thought the--
    So you went back to the city to see--
    Yeah, after four days.
    Just blocked-- nobody was there.
    One of my cousins, he went away probably.
    And one of my aunt there was hiding.
    Because if they knew something's going to happen,
    everybody had little places that you stuck in.
    And my mother and my sister, they didn't, and they just
    took them away.
    And from then on, I didn't want to go back already to the farm.
    I went back to the farm.
    I went back, and I stayed for a while.
    And then they said again, they're
    going to make judenrein.
    They're going to clean everybody out.
    I says, I'm not staying in farm because they
    used to come already, the Germans, to those farms.
    They knew there were Jews, and they used to take them out.
    I said, no, they're not going to take me out.
    I'm going to go myself.
    I went back to the city, didn't find nothing.
    So I found a uncle, a second cousin, a third cousin.
    And I stayed with them.
    And then the High Holidays came, and it was very, very bad.
    I was all alone already.
    Was this still in the ghetto?
    The ghetto.
    I came back to the ghetto because some of the people
    survived.
    They didn't clean-- those that hid came out.
    I met people from my--
    no, from no place.
    And I said, no, I'm not going back to the farm.
    I want to be.
    So that Pole said, you want to stay with us?
    We'll hide you.
    I said, no.
    I said, I'm going to go with everybody.
    He says, please stay.
    They didn't have children.
    He said, we'll keep you.
    So I was always--
    I decided maybe I would do it.
    But then I said, the others know me.
    How can you stay always hidden?
    I says, no.
    I'm going to go back with my people.
    I came back, was nothing.
    Was quiet because the big shipping was out already,
    and there's just the few.
    And then they started to congregate again,
    bringing in remnants from all other cities again.
    I found out-- and they said in a few weeks,
    it's going to be again.
    They're going to make-- clean it out.
    So I found a cousin.
    And I knew that he had made something, you know,
    where you can hide.
    I came back.
    He says, it's too many people.
    He can't put in so many.
    So I had another.
    He was the first cousin of mine.
    Bot of us stayed behind.
    Everybody went in and hide.
    I said, well, that's going to be it.
    My cousin came out.
    He says, come.
    And he grabbed my other cousin too, and we went in there--
    underneath toilets, with furniture
    on the top and things.
    We stayed there.
    And we knew the next day that they're going to come and look.
    We could hear voices looking.
    And here is children, you could choke him.
    And we heard that the next one they found him.
    They took him out.
    They found the hiding place.
    The hiding place-- and ours was just maybe two feet away.
    We survived.
    So my cousin used to say, I think because of you,
    that I took you in-- because he saw I had no place to go.
    He took us in, and we survived.
    Came out again--
    There was two hiding places in your house?
    It wasn't in a house.
    It was outside, under mud, under toilets,
    under-- it was terrible.
    But everybody want-- I don't know why you wanted to live,
    but somehow everybody wanted to go.
    And for a while he used to go out because he worked
    for the Germans, was a cousin.
    And I stayed in the house a whole day, black with mice--
    you name it, everything was there.
    And I stayed there.
    And then they said, over the winter they're not
    going to do nothing.
    This was already very late in the fall--
    came out again.
    This was in '42?
    '42.
    We stayed there.
    And it was bad.
    They used to come in and just like this,
    and this cousin, I watched him, I
    could see the way they shoot them.
    Germans used to come in and shoot.
    They shoot.
    They go crazy, went crazy, was-- wasn't too many.
    Was still Jews, but not a lot.
    So I stayed with my cousin.
    And one day, from one house I went to the other.
    And they say-- that German, that particular three Germans,
    and he always had the gun in the hand.
    So my cousin-- we stayed put.
    My cousin knew that he's coming.
    He ran.
    And the German saw him.
    And I could see him when they shoot him.
    That's the cousin that hid me.
    And a few minutes later, I saw him took away.
    So I had nobody again.
    Just with people--
    But you couldn't really stay out in the open then?
    Anytime Germans came in, they--
    Came in, they shoot.
    If they didn't feel like, they didn't shoot you.
    So you never really knew.
    We didn't know.
    Like this particular time, I watched him.
    If he would stay with us, if he wouldn't run,
    he wouldn't be shot.
    I don't know if he would be living now,
    but he wouldn't shot him.
    He was maybe 30 years old.
    I could never forget that picture.
    I said, don't run.
    His name was Shlome.
    I said, [NON-ENGLISH].
    Stay here.
    Yeah, stay here.
    And he said-- he was afraid.
    He figured he'll come in and we'll be dead.
    So it was the other way around.
    But they wouldn't necessarily come in
    the house then to shoot you.
    If they felt like looking around, doing for things.
    Any time you saw Germans, you knew to be careful.
    Careful.
    You just felt that could be they're going to do something.
    You knew that your mother and your sisters were gone.
    Gone.
    Did you have any idea where they went?
    We knew already, Treblinka.
    Did you know what Treblinka was?
    They said everybody died there.
    What it was, really, what did they do, no.
    I didn't find out what they did till they took us,
    they took me.
    Did you know-- was--
    We just knew that everybody didn't come back from there.
    That wasn't a working place.
    Had you ever heard of concentration camps
    at that point?
    You'd heard of labor camps at that point?
    Yeah, but we were with labor.
    They used to-- if they came in, they
    needed work, or do dirty work things,
    they used to grab the Jews and do it.
    So you knew that they-- already they had been sent to Treblinka
    and that they were somehow killed there?
    Killed, yeah.
    Did you understand what was happening?
    No, really, no.
    You know something?
    When I think about it sometimes, I say, gee.
    You know, a person is just like, I don't know,
    not human even to not realize that.
    Oh, when I came back, I was terrible.
    I didn't care if I lived or died.
    I didn't eat.
    Came back from where?
    From that place, when I found that my parents, that mine--
    I could see the blood on the steps.
    And I knew they were shot, or some of them.
    Maybe they weren't-- that some of them that went away were
    shot.
    You could see blood all over.
    That's when I really--
    and then I don't think I cared already,
    what's going to happen to me.
    But somehow a person--
    I don't know why you wanted to hide.
    Maybe because you really wanted to live.
    I-- I-- I-- I don't.
    I really don't understand that, what a human being can
    go through and do certain things when you know already that all
    your loved ones are gone.
    You had nobody.
    And you still want to do things that you want to survive.
    It's very hard to understand.
    I don't understand it myself.
    Perhaps as a child--
    Maybe.
    Maybe.
    I was young.
    But I knew that you could see they went around.
    Then they knew that they really hated--
    I knew already that any chance that they have,
    they're just going to kill you.
    It just was a matter of time when they'll get around to you.
    I didn't hear nothing from my sister in Warsaw.
    Because you had no contact really.
    You believed, then, that your mother was dead
    and that your sister [CROSS TALK]..
    Yes.
    I knew already.
    Yeah, because I figured maybe they shot him then and there
    because I saw blood.
    But there were people that had lived.
    Nobody came from there.
    Just people knew that-- my cousin knew that they took them
    all out because he ran away.
    Maybe he was hidden very high that they couldn't find him.
    Because when they came, they said Juden, out.
    Everybody went out by themselves.
    Did your cousin know whether your mother and sisters
    had at least not been shot before they were sent?
    I don't know.
    I really don't know.
    I don't think he knew because he felt
    he's going to stay there, up there, up the roof, the attic
    and not just go out.
    And that's what it-- he stayed behind.
    And that's how-- but I never--
    after a while, I didn't even know what happened to him.
    What was-- do you know how they were shipped to the camps,
    in what transportation?
    They probably took them-- they congregate them
    in a big place or cars.
    Were they trains?
    They had-- you had to go by trains
    because it wasn't around there.
    So there was a train that ran through?
    Probably.
    Yeah.
    The train wasn't close.
    I'll come to it, the way I went to the train.
    And then this--
    I came back to the ghetto, and I didn't want to go no place.
    And then it came, I think, April or March.
    They said now they're going to make it judenrein.
    And there wasn't too many-- clean it really out.
    This was in '43?
    Yeah, the beginning.
    And I said I still want to hide.
    There was, like, a house, a little pantry.
    There was a wall here and a wall here.
    And there were a few boys, I didn't even know them.
    They made like a wall.
    We went in there, was maybe 20 people,
    people in this side and people in this side.
    We stayed there for two days.
    One day, you could see they had little--
    it was like you could see through.
    When they walked in with those big guns,
    with like knives and this--
    I don't know-- they walked in from a different part.
    And they just cut through here.
    The pantry?
    The pantry.
    And nobody said nothing.
    And they just went out.
    See, everybody just like died.
    And they went out.
    They knew that people were hiding.
    After I saw this, two days we still stayed there.
    They took out people, a lot of different people
    that they found.
    And they congregate them.
    And they shipped them out.
    We didn't know where either.
    Did you have any food while you were there in the--
    I don't even remember.
    I don't-- we probably had something,
    a little because you couldn't survive just days and days like
    this.
    Then two weeks later, they did the same thing.
    And I said, no, I'm not hiding no more.
    When I saw, I said, I don't want a knife go
    through my body or something.
    When they said, judenrein, I just went out.
    Everybody went on the big place outside.
    They had a big marketplace.
    They congregate us.
    They shipped us.
    We walked to-- the train was maybe a few miles out
    of the city.
    They kept us all there.
    You had to take off your-- just wear
    certain things that it's white.
    If you ran away, they could see you.
    Then I didn't realize why they made you take off things
    that they shouldn't be dark.
    You had to wear something, just a shirt or something what
    it was under.
    You had to wear light clothes.
    Light clothes.
    I don't think-- I think they said to take off the shoes.
    I don't even know.
    But then I had somebody again that came to me.
    He said, would you like to come with me to make papers
    because everybody figured I don't look Jewish,
    and maybe they can just run away.
    So another Jew came to you?
    Yeah.
    And I said no.
    I just don't want to go no more.
    He begged me.
    He said, come.
    We'll run away.
    Maybe we'll survive.
    He didn't know where we were going to go.
    And finally they ship--
    came nighttime.
    They put us on the train.
    There was a lot of people.
    I could hear men.
    Men knew.
    They said, if we go in one way, we go to Treblinka.
    We go the other way, we go to Majdanek--
    didn't know.
    Finally, when we were in the train,
    the train was moving a certain way in a certain road.
    I could hear.
    The boys were talking.
    We're not going to Treblinka.
    We're going to Majdanek.
    And that's where we went.
    So they knew that meant that they were not going to die.
    To die.
    We didn't know.
    We probably-- Treblinka, plenty died.
    I mean in Majdanek, plenty died.
    But it wasn't in Treblinka that-- we
    knew that the Majdanek people work too.
    Treblinka was just a death camp.
    A death camp.
    And they took us to Majdanek.
    And they took us out.
    They assorted us because there were elderly people.
    Because I have a very close friend
    that lives in Florida now, she was with me in the five.
    We were set up to five--
    her sister, her brother, and her, and me.
    The mother and the little brother, they took away.
    Her sister and me, they pushed in another side.
    When you got off at Majdanek--
    They separated us.
    OK.
    You went in trains?
    Yeah.
    We came--
    Closed cars?
    Cattle cars.
    You could die.
    You beg-- you couldn't drink anything because we went--
    people died in the train.
    It was just impossible.
    Did you remember how long you were on the train?
    I don't know.
    I don't remember.
    And it shouldn't have been that far because it's not far.
    It's only maybe 100 kilometers from where I was.
    And there they separated us.
    How did they separate you.
    Well, there were Germans.
    They said-- they saw you were young,
    probably they pushed you in one side.
    And the older, like my girlfriend's mother
    and the brother, the young little boy,
    they pushed in the other side.
    And we, her sister and I, and we--
    they brought us into the camp.
    They put us in blocks.
    But this was-- it was bad there.
    It was so bad that you wished you were dead.
    So bad where?
    In Majdanek?
    Majdanek.
    They didn't feed us.
    They gave us a little water in the morning or a little tea,
    and at night a piece of bread.
    And they used to wake us up, maybe, 3 o'clock in the morning
    to stay in Appells, shivering.
    I don't know why it was so cold there.
    But you could have died there.
    Why did they wake you up?
    Oh, just to punish you.
    I mean, they didn't wake you up for some-- just to punish you,
    to wake you up.
    And you stayed and shivered till maybe 7 o'clock.
    And 7 o'clock, you went, probably, to work.
    They counted you.
    They-- just to punish you.
    So one night, they gave me a piece of bread, and I hid it.
    This I'll never forget.
    And I figured, in the morning you're more hungry.
    At night you go to sleep, you don't-- you don't feel that
    much hunger.
    You-- I drink that water or whatever that thing
    was that they gave you.
    I wake up, that piece of bread was gone from under my head.
    And I started crying.
    So the one that took care of us, she came over.
    She said, why you cry?
    The one that did-- that took care--
    That was the whole thing from-- she
    must have been a German, that took care of the whole block.
    There must have been a few hundred girls in one block.
    She didn't ask no questions.
    And she just hit me.
    I was going to tell her that somebody stole my bread.
    And for this I was supposed to get 25.
    25 what?
    Lashes?
    Lashes.
    And she did.
    But she only gave me three.
    OK?
    And then I had blown up the veins with blood.
    Probably from the 25 I would have been dead.
    So in other words, she hit you three times and then stopped
    and it swelled.
    I don't know.
    I don't know why she stopped.
    Maybe-- I don't know.
    Maybe-- but they give you more than that.
    And this was because I cried that they
    took my piece of bread away, which I didn't
    want to eat the night before.
    I figured I'll save it for the morning.
    Who do you think took your bread away?
    I don't know.
    I just-- I cried.
    I got hysterical.
    I cried.
    And then somebody ran away from there, and they got him,
    and they hung her.
    They used to take us, middle of the night, everybody
    watching the way they hang her.
    Majdanek was mean, bad, very bad.
    What did you do during the day?
    They used to take us to work on fields.
    What kind of work?
    I don't know.
    When they grew things or just some work
    I don't think they needed, just to punish you.
    Die you walk to the fields?
    Oh, yes.
    Yeah.
    Walk and walk back.
    Majdanek was a labor camp.
    It was, like, partly.
    They had crematoriums there too.
    They really-- it was mostly--
    I think it was like Auschwitz.
    When you got there, were the crematoriums there?
    There must have been.
    I haven't seen him, but I knew that the people
    that they took and they didn't survive,
    they burned them there because there was a lot of people
    that came with us.
    Did you have-- when you first got there
    and they picked people and they selected
    people to go in this side or that side,
    did you understand what that meant?
    I think I did.
    By then maybe I did.
    I don't-- you know something?
    When I think about it, I really don't know if I understood.
    But I just knew that the others weren't-- you didn't see them
    already, so they were gone.
    Because we used to come meet with them.
    Like on the fields, that we saw men
    that came with us that you didn't recognize already what
    they looked like after a while.
    But we were there only, I think, three months,
    which it was too long.
    And when they said they're going to ship us from there,
    I was happy.
    I didn't even know where they're going to send us,
    but this was really--
    death was better than being there,
    especially when you worked and you could
    see Poles walking and talking.
    And they were free.
    And they used to--
    for any little pickup they had, you get over the head.
    Poles were there?
    Pole.
    Because we worked.
    It was Majdanek, Poland.
    It wasn't too far from the city that I was born.
    It was Lublin.
    So when you worked, you could see
    free Poles walking or riding.
    Did they ever ask you what you were doing there?
    No, they didn't.
    No.
    No.
    No.
    We were always with Germans with things.
    I mean, you couldn't talk to nobody.
    I mean, you couldn't run away.
    You couldn't talk to nobody.
    The only way-- you couldn't even talk to your next--
    to the girl that was here because you
    got, right away, over the head.
    Poles never said anything they saw you?
    No.
    No.
    No.
    When you were in the camps, did there
    continue to be selections on a daily basis or on a weekly?
    In Majdanek, when they shipped us out,
    they selected who's going to go and who's not going to go.
    And they shipped, not everybody, to Auschwitz.
    Some of them they shipped in different places.
    But with the first transport that they shipped,
    I didn't go because they undressed you,
    and I had like a little rash here.
    They didn't send me.
    A little rash rash?
    Rash.
    On your chest?
    On the chest.
    And I said, oh, boy.
    And I cried because all my friends were going.
    For two weeks later, they did the same thing.
    And they took me already.
    And that's when they shipped me to Majdanek-- to--
    this was in the beginning of '43.
    This was in the beginning of '43.
    They shipped you to where?
    To Auschwitz.
    To Auschwitz.
    Auschwitz-Birkenau.
    So when you say-- you had already been at Majdanek
    about three months.
    Majdanek-- three months.
    And did you first come to Majdanek in '43?
    I think so.
    You know, the dates get mixed.
    I'm sure.
    It's OK.
    I really don't remember dates.
    That's fine.
    It was the beginning because we came, I think, by the time--
    When you went to Majdanek, what season was it?
    Was it winter, or do you remember
    whether it was cold or hot?
    It must have been very, very cold
    because it was very cold there.
    We had no clothes, and that's why I say
    that it was just like death.
    OK.
    You were there three months.
    Three months or 10 weeks.
    I don't--
    Whatever.
    Yeah.
    Then you were sent to Auschwitz.
    Auschwitz.
    And was it-- what was the season like then?
    That was already-- that was, like, May,
    right after Passover.
    OK.
    So it was around May.
    May-- must have been May.
    In '43.
    Yeah.
    That you were sent to Auschwitz.
    And would you describe that to me?
    You were picked to go there.
    I picked-- we were picked to go there.
    And they packed us in, and we didn't
    know where we were going.
    We didn't know is was Auschwitz.
    I mean, they just packed us in in trains,
    with coals and things.
    And I get very sick on a train when they packed us in.
    And I got white right away.
    I thought I'm going to die.
    So there was these Germans that watched us inside.
    You could see that I'm just blacking out.
    I couldn't take the train or the coals from there.
    And they pushed me in the other door to get a little fresh air.
    It meant for me that maybe I should live.
    You know, everything that happened a little good to me,
    I said, gee, somehow I'm going to--
    I'm going to come out.
    Was this when the train was already--
    Going.
    --going.
    Going.
    But everything was closed because they lock you in
    just like you were cattle.
    But Germans were there with you, in the front of the things.
    But they walked back, forth, and back,
    just like-- they used to step on you.
    And finally I made it.
    And they brought us to Auschwitz.
    And they brought us into Auschwitz.
    They took us off from the trains.
    We saw trucks from far away, naked people.
    Didn't know-- all naked.
    They were Greek Jews.
    Greek Jews?
    Yeah.
    Then we found out.
    And they made place for us, so they burned them--
    all naked.
    What do you mean they burned them?
    I mean, they put them in the crematoriums
    to make room for us.
    Did you see them?
    No, but we-- there were trucks.
    When they brought us in, they were going out.
    And they brought us into the big places
    where they washed you and they took off your clothes.
    And they-- so there, you went through the same thing.
    Took off your clothes--
    they sprayed you.
    They-- the men did all the shaving.
    Took off--
    OK.
    So when you were in Auschwitz, and the--
    They brought us into those--
    we called them saunas.
    They were the places that they just made the selections.
    And they shaved--
    Shaved.
    They had already shaved your hair.
    They shaved the hair.
    They took off-- they took all the clothes away, whatever
    we had, which wasn't good.
    They gave us the wooden shoes.
    And the suits were like from Russian, I don't know,
    [CROSS TALK].
    Burlap, or--
    Burlaps or something like this, and little kerchiefs.
    And then they made the numbers.
    And your-- I see your number now.
    It's 47668.
    --668.
    And how did they-- they made the number with a--
    With needles.
    And mine, see, like, this thing is very light.
    It somehow, it didn't grip.
    And this means, like, the [INAUDIBLE] Star of David.
    And they tried to make it over.
    And they just didn't grip, because they were afraid
    that I, God forbid, shouldn't say that I wasn't Jewish.
    Do you--
    So but somehow it didn't grip.
    They did it so many times, and it just didn't grip.
    And was the number in order?
    Like, the number before you was 47667?
    Yes, I have-- oh, yeah, we have--
    I have friends that we were very close.
    It came like the ABC, something by names.
    But then you didn't have a name.
    That was the number.
    But we have people that came the same time with me,
    that in New York.
    And this, that they have the-- almost--
    the 47s, and they have 48 or 60, these--
    very close, because we stayed one behind the other.
    And then they put us in blocks.
    They made selections.
    Then some of them--
    I didn't see this.
    Us that they brought, the girls, that we came together,
    the men that weren't with us, just the girls,
    they put us in a block.
    It was Block 2.
    And we stayed there for a while.
    But there they took us to work the next day, outside.
    Punishment.
    Just carrying the biggest stones that we have had now.
    I don't know.
    Building roads, and building things.
    You name it.
    Just I think it was all--
    And those that took care of us, they were civilian Germans.
    Meanies.
    If you didn't do right, they used to kill you.
    I worked in a Kommando.
    There was 100-- it's called 103.
    It was the worst.
    Who was the commander?
    Well, the commander from the whole--
    from the concentration camp, from Birkenau, was Hoessler.
    Were you in Birkenau then?
    Birkenau.
    They shipped us right--
    I mean, it's called Auschwitz, but really we were the part
    of Birkenau, because Auschwitz was a different--
    the whole area there, there was a lot of--
    The city was Auschwitz.
    Auschwitz, yeah.
    We were-- I--
    Birkenau was a labor camp?
    Well, it wasn't a labor camp.
    All the crematoriums were in Birkenau.
    My block--
    So the camp was called Birkenau.
    Birkenau, yeah.
    And we went to--
    rains, shines, we went to work.
    I mean--
    Did everyone work?
    Most of them.
    I mean, they select you.
    You're going to go--
    some of them were a little luckier.
    They had a little better Kommando to go to.
    I wasn't.
    I went to-- this was the worst.
    And every morning, 6 o'clock or 5 o'clock, they woke you up.
    You had to get up fast, go to Appell.
    And then you got a little water.
    And they shipped you out to work.
    You didn't eat anything.
    They didn't give you any bread in the morning?
    The bread was at night.
    They gave you, when you came from--
    at night, they gave you the little soup
    and they gave you a little bread.
    And doing-- where you worked, they used to bring some soups,
    and they give you.
    It was like water.
    I don't know.
    But it was better than nothing.
    The men were in a different place?
    We used to see the men, but we didn't talk to them.
    They worked too.
    But we didn't-- I mean, we didn't talk to them.
    Just maybe a word.
    You were afraid to say something.
    And--
    You were with other women.
    Oh, yes.
    What was the age?
    Were they mostly--
    A friend of mine--
    I have two friends here that--
    one of them is in Florida now.
    One lives in Brookline.
    She's from [PLACE NAME].
    But she worked in the beginning with me.
    Then she got out and she worked in a different place.
    What's her name?
    Rose Mueller.
    Oh, I know her.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    We come from the same city from Poland.
    Mm-hmm.
    Really?
    Yeah.
    We were in Majdanek together.
    We were in Birkenau together.
    We were liberated together.
    And from there, every few months,
    they used to take you in, see who was already done.
    You mean who should be sent to the gas chamber.
    Gas chamber.
    Who couldn't work already, because it didn't take too long
    not to be able to do that, because you just
    fell like flies.
    How old were you at the time?
    That time, I must have been already 15.
    And then we came on the block, and they
    said they need different people for work.
    They-- to the Weberei.
    And they picked me.
    And that was the best thing ever happened to me.
    I was inside already.
    To work where?
    It was like in blocks.
    It wasn't outside.
    We used to make things like for the planes.
    I don't know what it was called.
    In Germany you used to call the Weberei.
    And they picked me, and I went already in a different block,
    and I wasn't outside.
    I was already covered.
    I wasn't with the rain.
    And then there was this German.
    She was an SS.
    And she looked at me.
    She like, somehow, I reminded her probably of somebody,
    because my hair by then started growing in.
    And she took me out from that place,
    that it was good too, to a little different room that they
    used to-- had just papers.
    And there they were all Poles.
    But they for different reasons.
    Like--
    Political prisoners?
    Political, whatever.
    They didn't like it.
    They didn't like the fact that a Jew was there?
    I don't know.
    They didn't like me.
    But I, for me, it was the best thing that ever--
    I mean, I was inside.
    And when they gave the soup, I got from the bottom already.
    I had the thick stuff.
    And I said, gee, that's already, like, a good night in paradise.
    And she didn't say nothing, that SS.
    But she just brought me in there.
    Maybe somebody's good to me.
    And when one sees already that you were a little different,
    the other one that used to take care of us,
    she was a little different here too.
    She didn't hit you already.
    You were different.
    And I was in a different block.
    And I worked there.
    And that--
    What did you do there?
    We used to cut little paper, things.
    This was like probably for them, for--
    Pads of paper.
    Not papers.
    They made things there for planes or things.
    We used to cut little--
    it was--
    Patterns?
    Cottons, patterns.
    I don't even know what.
    I just knew-- I didn't care what it was-- that I wasn't outside,
    that the rain didn't come on me that I was always soaking wet.
    After-- but then, a few--
    I worked there a few weeks, they take me out,
    and they pushed me back out inside where
    with all the people.
    It wasn't bad either.
    I didn't care.
    As long I was, like I said, I was covered,
    I wasn't outside that the rain came on me or--
    and I was hit every two minutes.
    If you didn't put in a lot of dirt in your thing
    that you carried, you, right away,
    you got a few over your head.
    A few-- you were hit.
    Hit.
    But that German came in, and she said where I was.
    So they told her they ship me out.
    She brought me back in there.
    And I worked there.
    And it was just like somebody wants me really to live,
    because I had a little more thick.
    I didn't have the water from the soup.
    I had the thick stuff already from the back.
    And I was inside.
    Did she ever come and talk to you during the day?
    No, no, no.
    She didn't.
    But you could feel that she probably
    cared for me, that maybe she picked me
    because I was different.
    I don't know why.
    But for me, it was like somebody came and said--
    gave you something that you feel like you--
    you're going to survive.
    You're not going to die right away.
    And on the block, and it was everything.
    Then, a few months later, they call out our names.
    I was registered, much older there.
    I wasn't 15.
    But I don't remember.
    Every time I went in the different block,
    I said something else.
    Why did you register for being older?
    Because we knew that the children, they take away.
    They don't want you.
    That if you couldn't-- you could see, if you couldn't work,
    they didn't need you.
    They said, all the children--
    I mean, the young-- the numbers.
    And I knew there were few behind.
    And then everybody walked away to work.
    I said, now we're ready.
    I think my aunt came.
    They let-- they told everyone who was under the--
    It seemed to be, because they didn't tell you.
    But whoever stayed behind was young.
    I knew.
    And you stayed behind.
    And I stayed behind.
    Said now, I figured the end is coming because they
    don't want you already.
    Everybody went to work, even that German,
    that she was a private German.
    And she was for different kinds.
    She wasn't-- she must have been a good person.
    I don't know what she was.
    But she felt for me.
    She says, [SPEAKING GERMAN].
    I shouldn't be afraid.
    I'll come back to work.
    I'll be coming back tomorrow.
    But if she meant it or not, I don't
    know, because I started crying right away.
    I knew something bad is going to happen.
    And then everybody went to work, and they brought us
    into that place where they select you.
    And it wasn't just from our block.
    It was from a lot of them.
    And that Hoessler and another one.
    You saw Hoessler.
    Yeah, he looked at us.
    And he comes over to me, and he looked at me.
    He says, [SPEAKING GERMAN],, that I look like a doll.
    I have very kinky hair, and when they started growing in.
    And then he says to me, [SPEAKING GERMAN]..
    Like in English, what are you?
    And I said-- this is something--
    I knew that what I was going to say.
    And I said, [SPEAKING GERMAN].
    Too bad I'm Jewish.
    That's exactly what I said.
    And he walked away.
    But the girls, they could see.
    And they don't have to tell you nothing.
    They just take your number and that's it, OK?
    And I said, it was--
    I don't know.
    I said, gee, now I'm going to go already.
    They sent us back to the blocks.
    And then again, the same thing happened,
    and he was there a few times.
    I don't know why they did it.
    A couple of days later.
    No, a few weeks later.
    I'm mixing this up a little, because I don't--
    I understand, but let me just say something.
    But did they take any of the children?
    They took plenty.
    Ooh, they took--
    But they didn't take you.
    No, I was out.
    My girlfriend's sister, they took.
    Then a few weeks later, they do the same thing.
    And I recognize him.
    And I knew that maybe he--
    and he says, [SPEAKING GERMAN].
    I said, [SPEAKING GERMAN] in the Weberei.
    He asked me.
    Yeah, because when they take you in, he just,
    because he wanted to see what I'm
    doing, if I'm good enough for work, or not just to me,
    to everybody.
    Must have been a hundred or more.
    And I said to him in German--
    I spoke very fluently German then--
    I said, [SPEAKING GERMAN].
    Just like I want to be there.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    I don't want to go no place else.
    So you told him that you worked in the Weberei.
    In the Weberei, and I don't want to go no place else.
    And he says to me, [SPEAKING GERMAN]..
    He throw me out, like, go out.
    And I went out.
    I said, [INAUDIBLE].
    I felt-- he told me to get dressed and out.
    And another girl said the same thing.
    I don't know what she did, because I didn't wait already
    to--
    as long he told me to go out.
    What did that mean when he told you to go out?
    To go out.
    He didn't take me.
    I felt like he--
    either he recognized me or this.
    I don't know.
    Because from the last time, it's like he felt bad for me
    that I'm a Jew or something.
    And I felt like he would recognize me
    because my girlfriends, those that
    were older, they didn't go, they said,
    if he's going to be there, tell him you want to come back.
    Tell him you don't want to go, but they send you.
    Just like this and cry.
    And I did it, exactly what the7--
    And he said, I should go out.
    They didn't send me.
    I don't know what happened to the others, but I didn't.
    They sent me back to the block.
    How many did-- how many--
    There were quite a-- a lot there.
    And they only sent a few back?
    On my block, I was the only one, I think,
    because there weren't too many already.
    And since then, already, nobody touched me.
    And I was there.
    And so the girls used to tell me,
    said, if you wanted to do something
    that you don't have to work hard, or get some clothes,
    or get something, you should go to him.
    Maybe he'll help you.
    I says, I'm helped already.
    I'm working under with a roof.
    I don't work outside.
    I don't want to go no place.
    I just want to stay with you.
    And that's what happened.
    And I stayed there till they shipped us out.
    But I was already in Auschwitz, in Birkenau,
    and I worked in the same place.
    In the Weberei.
    Weberei, till the end, till the Russians started to go.
    You could hear bombs and things like this.
    That's when they started shipping us out.
    This was already for the following year.
    But I-- the whole--
    '44.
    '44.
    But in '44, in the '43, '43 I was in the 103 Kommando,
    which was bad.
    Dead was better.
    Then, when I went to the Weberei I stayed there till almost
    to the end, that it was bad already too with them,
    but we didn't know.
    It was bad with the Germans because the Germans
    were losing the war, you mean.
    Probably, but we didn't know that much.
    We had that-- when the Sonderkommando blew everything
    up.
    And I thought for sure that's when they're going to be-- we
    saw it.
    And they made us all come out.
    So you were in Auschwitz about a year?
    More.
    In--
    No, in-- I was two years in Auschwitz,
    from '43 till '45 at the beginning.
    I was two years.
    I see.
    I was two years.
    But--
    Was that unusual, that someone survived in Auschwitz
    for two years?
    Well, a few of my friends.
    Must have been because I was strong.
    And I was young.
    And also because you were selected
    to work in the Weberei.
    In the Weberei.
    It could be.
    All right.
    So I wanted to ask you a couple of questions
    about being in camps, OK?
    Yeah.
    Could you tell me a little bit about the guards
    they had there?
    They were German guards?
    German guards.
    Were there any kapos?
    Kapos, yeah, we had kapos.
    And who were they?
    Most of our kapos with--
    they were Jews, probably.
    But they were Czechoslovakians.
    Male?
    Female?
    Ours were female.
    Female.
    And did they live with you in the-- they had different--
    like, they had a little-- we lived on those--
    maybe you saw those in Birkenau, the 1, 2, 3,
    and you maybe check.
    Bunk beds.
    Bunk beds.
    And they had little, when you walked in,
    they had little rooms.
    They looked like they lived better.
    They didn't sleep with us and they didn't eat with us.
    They just took, made sure that if they had 200,
    that the 200 got up, the 200 went to sleep,
    and the 200 came back from work, and the--
    whatever.
    How was someone picked to become a kapo?
    I don't know.
    This I don't know.
    Because they weren't-- our girls weren't.
    They were all from different countries,
    and mostly we were Czech.
    And what were your-- you had clothes that you wore to work,
    and you wore those clothes all the time.
    Did you ever change those clothes?
    You know something?
    Like, the girls that used to work in the--
    the Kleidungskamme where they took out from dead, those that,
    from--
    those that went to the crematoriums.
    There was a lot of girl that worked there.
    And if they found something that they could get dressed in,
    and then bring it back, and I gave them mine,
    maybe it was a little better.
    But that's how you got the clothes.
    Now how about--
    I'm asking you questions because I'm just--
    the very little things about life that one doesn't think of,
    one takes for granted these days--
    I don't see.
    That's--
    How about bathing?
    Was there any way to--
    We used to go in-- they had the toilets where you washed.
    You washed your little-- your face.
    The only time you didn't want to go bathing
    is when they took you, when they selected you.
    That's when we had showers.
    You didn't want to go then, believe me.
    Did you know then about the gas chambers?
    Yeah, we knew that if they take you out, you're sick already,
    you're going to go, because the crematoriums,
    you could see them burn.
    They-- I was on the block.
    My block was the end, and then there were the wires,
    and you could see the crematoriums.
    And you knew what was going on there?
    Yes, then we knew already.
    When we used to walk to work from--
    in the morning from Birkenau to the Weberei,
    we used to cross the tracks that brought in all these--
    the trains.
    And we used to see, get off, people.
    And we used to think, if they only knew where they going.
    We knew, but they didn't know.
    Sometimes people went straight to the gas chambers?
    Right.
    They didn't even make a selections.
    No, these transports, all of them towards the end, in 1944,
    they didn't go to Birkenau.
    Most of it went right--
    right in.
    The trains were right in.
    And then the crematoriums burned day and night.
    And you could smell the bones.
    You could get sick.
    Because you just like, you fry fat or something.
    And at night, the sky was red, day and night.
    Most of them, then they didn't take in.
    In the beginning, if they brought in people
    from different parts.
    But then most of them that they used
    to bring in with all the people already and children.
    And we used to see them, because we used to cross the--
    in order to go to the place that we worked,
    we used to cross the trains.
    Sometimes they used to keep them, not let us go by,
    and then take him off.
    We used to see everything.
    I remember when-- that was towards the end
    already, when they felt probably that they're
    losing or something.
    We used to walk.
    We didn't work in the Weberei already then.
    It was all different.
    It was, like, mixed up.
    So we worked outside.
    We used trains, something.
    I don't know.
    It wasn't too far from the crematoriums.
    And all of a sudden, we used to hear alarms.
    They used to tell us to lie down.
    And I said, gee, this was good.
    We figured somebody doing something.
    What, when, we didn't now.
    So like air raids.
    Air raids.
    And then, after the air raid was gone,
    we used to get up again to go to work.
    And we used to--
    it was right near the crematoriums.
    Did you ever see any planes bomb--
    No.
    I mean, not German planes, but, let's say, United States--
    No, no, no.
    We just knew that if some air raid is on,
    something is going on.
    You saw planes flying overhead?
    No, we didn't hear.
    They probably flew very, very high, that you didn't hear.
    Sometimes you could hear just noise, like from a plane,
    but not to see.
    When they go over, they probably go very, very high.
    But we knew that for us, it was something like we're resting.
    We said, we should be going on a whole day.
    And so we wouldn't have to get up and go
    to do the same things.
    But by then, it was already--
    that was like fall in 1944.
    It was the-- like maybe October, November.
    And by then I know that's--
    they didn't bring in any more people.
    They started already to break up some of them.
    You could feel that something is going on.
    Because we went in.
    I walked into the crematorium.
    We saw everything what's going on there.
    But they didn't burn then already.
    It was almost the end of '44.
    You could walk into the crematorium?
    We worked there.
    Like I said, our path, this.
    So you walked around.
    I went in.
    At the end, you started working in the crematorium?
    You would clean it up afterwards?
    They were breaking.
    Like some of them, we took the stones, or whatever.
    Not really, but we were around there.
    I saw it.
    Do you have any idea how big the camp was?
    Like, how many blocks were there?
    We had a lot of--
    I was on-- when I first came on the Camp 1.
    Then we were Camp 2.
    And this was all Birkenau.
    Was in Block 2.
    Then I was in Block 13.
    Then I was in Block 27, which was the end of the camp.
    That's where were the crematorium.
    How many people were in each block?
    Oh, I don't even--
    Hundreds?
    Oh, it must have been a few hundred.
    A few hundred.
    A few hundred.
    Because the block was big.
    And in each place, you slept maybe five, six people or more,
    or maybe 10.
    And there were, like, three layers.
    They weren't like the two beds, bunk beds.
    These were the big ones, like when you saw--
    when they showed the Holocaust, and they show those--
    that's exactly what they looked like.
    OK.
    Were there any-- so were there any non-Jews in the camps too?
    There were, but not with us.
    They were in different blocks.
    They were, like, for political or for crimes,
    whatever they did.
    There were a few Poles.
    Because I know there were Russians because one time--
    this was in Birkenau--
    at night they gave you a piece of bread,
    or sometimes they gave you something with it.
    And I didn't want the piece of salami,
    whatever it was, or liverwurst.
    I don't know what this.
    Then said, we're going to go to another block and exchange it
    and I'll get more bread.
    I only wanted bread.
    I walk there with the bread, and all of a sudden
    comes this-- she must have been Polish or Russian.
    I don't know.
    And she grabbed my bread.
    And I didn't want to give it to her.
    So she had those things that the Germans eat in, or any--
    I don't know what you call them, the things
    that you eat when you're in the army.
    Like mess kits, or like a little bowl.
    It's not a bowl.
    It's like a little thing with a handle.
    It's made of iron or something.
    And she hit me.
    And I still have a mark her.
    And the blood was coming out terrible.
    And I was-- and I thought I have no eye already.
    And I was afraid to go to the place
    where they can do something.
    Finally, I came into the block, and that--
    the one that took care of us, she said, you've
    got to go to that hospital.
    They have to do something because the--
    the blood they couldn't stop.
    So I came in there, and they just-- they didn't do stitches,
    but they did something for me.
    I was afraid if I go in, they'll take me,
    because I'm probably no good already.
    See, you always thought if something
    is going to happen to you, they're going to take you away.
    And they fixed me up.
    But she-- they said if I could recognize her?
    See, they didn't want you, somebody else should hit you.
    If they hit you, that's all right.
    But I wouldn't recognize her.
    Was in the dark.
    And I know she was a Pole.
    They had a hospital there.
    Yeah.
    But if you went in there, you weren't sure
    that you're going to come out at once.
    Because there they used to go through almost every day,
    find if you are sick already or something, out.
    They didn't want to keep you.
    They didn't care to make you well.
    Right.
    That's what I was afraid to go with this,
    because I figured they're going to keep me there
    and I won't come out.
    From there, I knew exactly that if I go in there--
    somehow you figured, if you're healthy, maybe--
    I don't know if we knew that we're going to survive,
    or we're going to be free someday.
    This I don't think--
    We just wanted to live.
    This I know.
    But what's going to happen later,
    if we're going to survive or there's going to be a bullet
    or something, I don't think--
    I never thought about it.
    But I knew that I wanted to live, that I tried hard.
    Whenever something would happen, I figured this is good.
    This is good.
    Something good happened to me, that maybe I'm
    going to survive.
    And then, after this already, this was the end,
    they started shipping out from Auschwitz already.
    Shipping out from Auschwitz?
    Yeah.
    Because Auschwitz was really part of Poland,
    Poland's border.
    So I didn't go with the first shipment, again.
    I always was towards the end.
    And a lot of my friends, they would--
    I mean, you had no-- this was no choice.
    Why were they shipping out of Auschwitz?
    They shipped them in deeper to Germany.
    See, Auschwitz then, as we found out later,
    the Russians occupied it at the end of '44.
    And we still, we were in different blocks already.
    They were pushing us from one place to the other.
    Other shipments came in from different places.
    They didn't know what to do already.
    So they shipped-- they brought us in to wash someplace,
    to change.
    They give us different clothes, that they're
    going to-- thought they're going to ship us.
    They have the central heating system.
    There were pipes.
    And I go over to a pipe, and I burn myself.
    And the whole skin comes off of my breast.
    Why did you do that?
    I don't know.
    Just by pushing.
    It was very, very hot, and I just touched it.
    And I said, that's going to be my end, because it was--
    the whole, like, everything came off.
    I don't remember who took me someplace, because I probably,
    like, passed out, because I was scared.
    They gave me medicine, and this and it healed.
    That was a good heal.
    And it healed.
    This was in Auschwitz?
    In Auschwitz.
    That was towards the end.
    I said, why did this have to happen to me?
    I don't know what the reason was, but they took us there.
    But the pipes, they had heating.
    But the water came down, or the pipes were very, very hot.
    It must have been, because when I--
    I just touched it, and just said,
    this is going to be probably my end, again.
    But thank God, everything, with the thing that they put on,
    I don't even remember where I went, because I was scared.
    I didn't want to go no place because I was afraid they're
    going to take me away.
    But they put the stuff on, and I changed with gauze,
    and it healed.
    This was already maybe November--
    December.
    The reason I know that it was December,
    it was like Christmas, because I heard one guard said Weihnacht.
    And I know Weihnacht means--
    it means Christmas.
    They came into the blocks, and they said, again, out.
    So I had another girl.
    She came from my city.
    She's in Israel, I think, now.
    She said, why don't you stay behind?
    Let's not go.
    I says, no, I'm going.
    Somehow I wanted to go.
    Where they shipped me, I figured,
    I did so well till now, maybe this is going
    to do something for me too.
    And they shipped us on trains, pushed us in.
    Then you could hear bombs, OK, because during the day,
    really, that we didn't travel very little.
    Just at night.
    Because during the day, they bombed.
    I don't know.
    The trains didn't go.
    It took us days.
    And they brought us into Bergen-Belsen.
    Where is Bergen-Belsen?
    That's Germany.
    I mean, that's real--
    not a border.
    That's Germany.
    Bergen. I don't know.
    I think that part of Germany is occupied by the Russians.
    It's the east side.
    Did you know at that point that Germany was losing the war?
    Yeah, then, by then, we probably knew, because we heard bombs.
    And we knew they were scared.
    That's why they shipped us out.
    Because somebody-- you could hear-- like the men maybe
    knew more-- something, talking that the Russians are
    very close.
    And they shipped us into Bergen-Belsen.
    That was, I think, the end of December.
    And here we come in.
    We come--
    When you ship-- were shipped-- are you shipped with men?
    No.
    It was all women in there?
    Women.
    Most of them, we were all women.
    I mean, from the camps, all women.
    When we shipped out from the cities, we were together.
    But then they just separated--
    These were in closed cars again?
    In closed cars, bad.
    Did people die during these transports?
    Probably.
    And we come to the train station.
    Who do we see?
    The Lagerführer from Birkenau is there.
    He took us off.
    It was a bad--
    I forgot.
    His name was Kramer.
    It wasn't Hoessler.
    And then, one of the kapos that was in Birkenau,
    I recognized her.
    She was with him.
    And they brought us to blocks there.
    And they put us in.
    And then, at night, we looked to different blocks.
    And there were other girls.
    I found my friends, one of--
    Mrs. Mura, I found one is in New York.
    They were there.
    And she says to me, why did you come here?
    I said, what do you mean why I came here?
    Why did you come here?
    She thought maybe I should have gone someplace else.
    I says, no, I'm here.
    There was another punishment.
    By then--
    Another what?
    Punishment.
    It was bad, because they couldn't bring you in no food,
    because they were enclosed already.
    This must have been January and February.
    The war was really going on that--
    by then, as it looks now, they were losing.
    So you spent your days inside the barracks?
    Inside.
    Then, in the summer time, we went out.
    You didn't work during the day?
    I really don't remember what we did there.
    There where we just kept just for Appell.
    If we did something bad, we had nothing to eat.
    They punished us.
    Were they killing Jews at the time?
    Hurting them.
    I mean, this.
    But burning them, no.
    Was there a crematorium in Bergen-Belsen?
    No, not that I know.
    No.
    And there where we just--
    The men and women were separate there too?
    Separate, yeah.
    But we knew that there was another place,
    maybe across with wires that there were men from the out,
    outside.
    They used to bring us outside walking.
    I don't even remember what we did in Bergen-Belsen,
    but it was very, very bad because we
    had nothing to eat there.
    They used-- it was really that they gave you very, very just
    water.
    And it was-- and there was a lot of international people there
    too in one block.
    They were from different countries and different--
    I don't know if they were Jews, but there
    was a lot of different people.
    --terrible.
    We know that--
    This was in January and February.
    No, this was in February, February and March.
    And at night, you could see the red skies,
    because they were probably very, very close.
    And by then, we had nothing to eat.
    We used to go out and work--
    You stayed inside all day.
    We were outside too, probably.
    We went out, went in different blocks.
    But if we worked there-- because they had no place
    to take us because they couldn't get out either,
    because the lines, like the British and the Americans,
    whoever was fighting around at that particular part of Europe.
    And every day used to get worse.
    And people, we were dying there, just like--
    every time you turned around, there was somebody dead.
    You stepped on dead-- actually dead people.
    We slept with dead people because we had-- there
    we had nothing to eat already.
    Anything to drink?
    I don't-- it was like the end is coming.
    Everybody looked like this.
    [SIGHS] And eventually we were liberated.
    But it-- so one day we go out.
    We see like-- everything, it looked like they're deserted.
    Said, it couldn't be deserted.
    And you hear shots, like echoes from far away.
    And then I go out.
    And I look from far away.
    And I run back.
    And I said, you know something?
    I see, like, a white sheet or something hanging.
    So my girlfriend, one of them says, this looks like they--
    if somebody surrenders.
    And we don't see.
    They running, the Germans.
    And they-- I didn't think that they knew
    what they were doing already.
    Maybe they wanted to be good, show that they--
    All of a sudden, we hear trucks coming in.
    And we look out, and we see the British, Canadians.
    I think everybody that had a little thing probably died.
    That time, so many people died.
    It was bad.
    When they were liberated, they died from--
    Yeah, right, yeah.
    I ran after the truck, and I wanted to throw something.
    I didn't know what it was, what I was doing.
    And--
    You wanted to throw something, like a piece of flower
    or something, a little grass to see, I, like grabbing--
    Show your appreciation.
    Yeah.
    We didn't know.
    And they stopped and there was a chaplain.
    They were Canadians, I think.
    They came out, and they grabbed us--
    not too many, because everybody fell down on the floor.
    Who fell down?
    The--
    Us, (SOBBING) because we couldn't believe it.
    Something happened, and we want to be free.
    And then we stood.
    We looked around and saw what happened to us.
    They found 100,000 corpse in Bergen-Belsen.
    They found 100,000 corpse?
    Yeah, because you couldn't burn them there.
    So everybody, whoever died, they just piled them up.
    And--
    So you were liberated by Canadians?
    I think British, Canadians.
    I don't know.
    The British and the Canadian.
    What was their reaction when they saw you?
    I don't know.
    But like, I think the chaplain touched me.
    He said, don't worry.
    Don't worry.
    (SOBBING) Everything is going to be good.
    And they went in the blocks.
    Most of the people were dead.
    When they went into the blocks, most of the people were dead.
    Yeah, most of them, the people in there.
    Right away, they started to bring in food,
    because the Germans had food for us.
    But we found out it was poisoned bread.
    If they would have give us, everybody would die.
    How come they didn't give it to you?
    I don't know.
    They didn't have a chance, I think,
    because this happened already right away.
    So you think they wanted to really, at that point,
    to destroy whatever evidence--
    To destroy, yeah, yeah.
    But they didn't have a chance.
    They didn't feed us.
    Because I think some of them ran away at night.
    They knew already that they were very close.
    Because when we walked out in the morning, I said,
    something happened.
    It was quiet.
    You could see or hear just echoes.
    And then, when I saw that little thing,
    I didn't even know what it meant.
    But then elderly people--
    When you saw the white flag.
    The white flag.
    And then it didn't take half an hour.
    And you could see tanks coming.
    They weren't Jeeps.
    They were tanks.
    And this was, I think--
    I don't remember what.
    It was April 15, '45.
    And I think I got sick right away,
    because they brought in food.
    They brought in bread right away.
    Because we had nothing.
    And they brought in whatever they had-- probably
    condensed milk and things.
    And I started drinking that milk.
    And I had the diarrhea.
    And I said, gee, I didn't [CROSS TALK]----
    You had diarrhea.
    For two weeks I couldn't eat.
    Couldn't touch.
    But I had so many breads.
    I wouldn't let it go.
    I slept on breads maybe or [LAUGHS]..
    You slept on bread?
    Like cushions.
    I said, gee.
    Because we used to--
    I used to say to myself, before I
    die, I want to have a piece of bread that I can cut and say,
    I have a little piece more later.
    But you had enough to eat.
    I had enough, but I couldn't eat, because I was very, very
    sick, diarrhea.
    But I got better.
    A lot of people died.
    Ah, a lot.
    But like I say, I was young.
    I was 16 years old.
    Did they realize that they--
    I guess I'm confused as to why they would feed them food that
    would just make them so sick.
    No, no, they--
    I mean--
    Wasn't it the--
    It was war.
    They tried to bring in whatever they had.
    Clothes.
    They weren't aware that the people were so malnourished.
    Malnourished.
    So whatever-- they probably figured
    we're going to put it in in coffee or whatever.
    I don't know what they thought.
    But if it tasted so good, I drank it.
    And your stomach had nothing.
    And that make-- but I make--
    You drank the condensed milk.
    Condensed milk.
    This I'll never forget.
    And that's what made me sick.
    And I was sick for maybe two weeks.
    But I wasn't deadly sick.
    I mean, I didn't have to go to a hospital.
    I started to get--
    I said, look, I'm so far away.
    And I as long I had my bread as a cushion--
    So you stayed in the camps.
    Then they took us out right from these places.
    We're broken with lice, with typhuses, with--
    they, I mean, the floor sank in.
    You couldn't even walk.
    Right away, they took us into different places.
    They took us in.
    It was like a paradise.
    I think the German officers used to live there.
    They gave us different clothes in different room.
    We stayed different.
    And then, from there, they started working on us.
    They had, right away, set up a hospital,
    I think, because all the sick people,
    there were so many sick people.
    And then it took so long to take away the corpse from there.
    That part of camp we didn't see already.
    When they took us out, they brought us also
    in Bergen-Belsen.
    But it was a different pile.
    It was like a resort place.
    All these big, huge homes that officers or soldiers lived.
    That's where we stayed for a while.
    And from there, oh, I mean, the UNRRA.
    UNRRA?
    Yeah, that was like a place, for this place.
    They used to--
    Displaced person?
    Person, something.
    That's how we knew it.
    And they wrote down your names, and where you came from,
    and they put it in papers that you could find somebody.
    And we stayed there for a while.
    This is in Bergen-Belsen.
    Bergen-Belsen.
    We stayed from April, I think.
    I was there till the fall.
    And then everybody went different-- we were in blocks.
    But we were with girls.
    We lived together.
    And they used to bring us, to give us to eat.
    And from there, we were separated.
    I mean we--
    I wanted to go to the American zone, I knew.
    So we tried to go over there.
    And that's how-- from there we went there.
    I came here.
    When you were in the camps--
    Yeah.
    --were there ever any attempts at resistance on a--
    No, not in the camps.
    You didn't even dare.
    Whatever they did to you, you just took it,
    and just turned around.
    If you survived that, you were right.
    If you were dead.
    Did religious life continue at all?
    No, we didn't no nothing.
    I didn't even know when it was a holiday or what was going on.
    No, they [? see them. ?]
    Did you, after you worked during the day in the fields
    or wherever you worked, you came back at night,
    did you talk with people?
    I mean, the girls, yeah, first, when we came back,
    we had to stay maybe outside maybe an hour and a half
    till they made sure that everybody that went out
    came in.
    God forbid they overcounted one.
    You stayed for hours till they made sure
    that everybody came back.
    So sometimes they used to take half an hour
    and sometimes they used to take hours.
    And then they gave you the little soup
    with a piece of bread.
    So then we used to walk around the camps, go to different.
    If I knew I had a friend in a different block,
    we went in a different block.
    So you were free to go to different blocks.
    Yeah, just in the blocks.
    And what did you talk about?
    About eating, about food, how hard
    we work, what's going to happen to-- really,
    what's going to happen.
    I don't think we ever discussed what's going to happen to us.
    Because we knew, if you'll be strong, you'll live longer.
    If you'll be weak, you'll just go before.
    Did you have any understanding of what
    the Germans were trying to do?
    We knew that they hated Jews, and they tried to kill us.
    That's all.
    And just the Jews.
    This we knew.
    This we knew.
    I mean, we saw it.
    Didn't have to-- nobody had to tell us.
    When you were liberated, you spent a few weeks
    after that in Bergen-Belsen.
    I was in Bergen-Belsen from April till maybe November.
    So you were there six months.
    Six months, yeah.
    What were you feeling then?
    I mean--
    We knew we were alone.
    We have nobody.
    Did you know at that point that everyone--
    Oh, yes.
    Were you sure that your sisters in Warsaw had died?
    We figured if somebody is going to be alive,
    and our names are going to be all over the world and papers,
    if somebody is going to be there, my cousin,
    they just passed away in Israel, he was in Russia,
    and then he came back, and he saw my name,
    and he came to see me.
    Then he went to Israel.
    So we knew after a while, if somebody is going to--
    But I knew that my parents went to Treblinka,
    and they said nobody survived from there.
    So I knew they were gone.
    Did you have any desire to go-- want
    to go back to your village?
    My friends did.
    I didn't.
    I really didn't want to go back.
    I didn't want to go back.
    They went.
    My friend, Mrs. Mura, she went.
    We lived together, but she went.
    To what for?
    I don't know.
    She figured maybe she'll find somebody.
    And you?
    I don't know.
    I just didn't want to go.
    You were how old when the war ended?
    16.
    And you were suffering from-- you got sick.
    I did, just from probably-- look, we didn't eat for days.
    If we had stayed there another few days,
    everybody would die, because we had nothing.
    They couldn't--
    You were starving.
    Just plain starving.
    And how long were you sick?
    A few weeks, till the day we went away.
    And then I was OK.
    So when you were in Bergen-Belsen,
    was that in a displacement camp, a DP camp there?
    That's probably what they called it.
    It was a camp.
    We were in Block 7, L7.
    I mean, I know it was blocks.
    How did you feel about being in a block camp?
    It was a room.
    We felt good.
    We were with six girls.
    We weren't alone.
    Nobody had nobody-- just each other.
    What did you do during the day.
    We used to go out, meet other ones, try to--
    like, then the boys used to come.
    So they used to come and take us,
    if they had grabbed a car from Germans or something, take us,
    that they knew there were factories
    to get some clothing for us.
    We had nothing.
    So somebody-- like, we had from blankets.
    There was a girl that she could sew.
    She made skirts for us.
    From a sheet she made a blouse, something.
    We had nothing.
    These camps were run by British?
    We were liberated by the British, really,
    so they were run by British.
    Did they ask you anything about you?
    Did they ever talk to you about--
    No, they-- the soldiers weren't.
    I mean, the soldiers, that they liberated us, they knew.
    I mean, they came and they walked in the camps.
    These were probably high ranks.
    But the individual plain soldier--
    You couldn't communicate with them anyway.
    No, we couldn't speak English.
    Sometimes if they had candy or something,
    they wanted to give us.
    Or whoever smoked cigarettes or something.
    But I mean, somebody to come and to talk.
    What happened is no.
    They knew what happened.
    So you didn't really search for family members.
    I knew that they-- this they told me right away,
    when they took the-- that my parents went to Treblinka.
    Nobody survived there.
    And that's where they went.
    So I had no, really, feeling that somebody
    is going to be living.
    How about your two sisters in Warsaw?
    And she was in the Warsaw ghetto.
    No, I had just one sister, and my other sister
    lived with us, my other sister.
    She was in the Warsaw Ghetto.
    She just--
    You never heard from her.
    Never heard from her.
    The only one that I heard was my brother-in-law.
    No.
    And I really, no--
    I have a cousin that lives in Sweden, that he survived too.
    He was in the Russian army, in different armies,
    in the Polish army.
    Came to see me two years ago.
    And I didn't even remember him too much because he went away.
    He came, when the war broke out, he grabbed a bike and he ran.
    And I was 12 years old.
    And so many years passed, really.
    But he survived, and he lived in Poland for a while.
    And then he could see in Poland wasn't good.
    So try and-- he was living in Sweden.
    And that's really-- and I have a few cousins in Israel.
    That's the only relatives that I have.
    From my mother's side, I have nobody.
    Nobody.
    All the relatives I have is my father's.
    You were in Bergen-Belsen for six months
    after you were liberated.
    Yeah.
    Must have been, because we were liberated in April,
    and I didn't go to Frankfurt till the fall.
    Frankfurt.
    You went to Frankfurt, Germany?
    Germany.
    Frankfurt am Main.
    During that six months, I imagine
    you were thinking about what you were going to do with your life
    now.
    I don't really know.
    Nothing came up.
    We thought that's living.
    You used to a pattern.
    You didn't even know that you have to have
    a house, that you need--
    You were so used to being told what to do, that you--
    To do, and somebody giving you something
    to eat, that we didn't know that you need money,
    that you need to work, that you need homes.
    That was the pattern.
    So what happened in November that caused
    you to leave Bergen-Belsen?
    Well, my friends, some of them went there,
    and they said, would you like--
    I'll make some hotter coffee.
    No, this is fine.
    And I--
    Some--
    And they-- a few of my friends went there.
    And they said it's better there.
    It's more like not a camp.
    It's more a city living, and this.
    So I tried to go there.
    So she went first.
    She had a boyfriend by then already.
    She met somebody.
    And I said, mm, I'll go too.
    What's the difference where I'm living?
    I'll go there.
    So then I couldn't go there because they
    wanted-- it was also like a displaced camp
    for displaced persons.
    So they told me, if I'm going to say if I'm her sister,
    I can go.
    So I said, I'm her sister, and I gave her name.
    And then I felt terrible that I--
    Why couldn't you go there?
    I don't know.
    They said they couldn't take in any more people.
    Who was it run by?
    Americans already.
    See, that part of Germany was occupied by the Americans.
    By the Americans?
    That was the American zone?
    Yeah, must have been.
    So there was a Russian zone.
    Yeah, the Russians, I don't know who was there.
    There was an American zone.
    There was a British zone.
    British zone.
    To go from one zone to the next, did
    you need a passport of any kind?
    How did you get to the American zone?
    Oh, don't ask.
    I don't know.
    Somebody made some paper up from a bicycle or something.
    The boys did-- they were already a little--
    they knew-- they were older-- that you have to do something.
    Do you feel uncomfortable talking about it?
    No, no, no.
    And they packed us into the train, and I came there,
    and I stayed there.
    And from there--
    So you somehow got smuggled into the American zone?
    Not smuggled in, really.
    Just it wasn't that hard.
    Maybe it was, especially, I think, made for the Germans,
    not so much for the displaced persons.
    I see.
    Could be.
    But I mean, I had no trouble.
    You had to get false papers?
    I didn't have the papers.
    I don't know what I showed them.
    Somebody gave me a paper and said my name,
    and I went they looked over, because you
    had to change trains because they had a stop in this part,
    and go out, and then go to another train
    to the other place.
    Who was running Germany then?
    I don't know who was running Germany.
    I think the Americans were, and the British.
    I really don't know.
    They didn't have then a government yet, did they?
    I don't know.
    I was never really that interested.
    I mean, we didn't care.
    As long as we knew that we are free,
    that nobody stays with a gun, and that we not afraid.
    Do you remember what your mental, emotional--
    I used to cry.
    Yeah, I used to cry.
    You cried all the time.
    I used to cry.
    And when we're just talking about things, I mean,
    the tears used to just come.
    I imagine you had to keep in a lot.
    We did.
    So that when the war finally ended,
    you were finally able to cry And not get punished for it.
    For it.
    Even now, anything, something that's
    sad on television, something, I just--
    the tears just come.
    I think we have so much tears that I
    don't know where it's coming from,
    because the crying that we did in our life--
    So you spent most of your days, let's say, during that six
    months at Bergen-Belsen.
    I mean, we're talking.
    We were free.
    We knew that we can go out.
    And I mean there was nothing particular that you can do.
    I mean, there were--
    we just, I think we were "bilitating" or something.
    Rehabilitating.
    "Bilitating," yeah.
    Because some of us looked really bad.
    Bad.
    And then--
    Did people talk about their experiences with each other?
    The girl that I was with, we had the same experience.
    We didn't have to talk about it.
    We went through the same thing because we were girls,
    that we survived.
    We were in the same concentration camps.
    And somehow we survived together.
    And then, when they assigned some rooms,
    we said we want to be together.
    And that's how we stayed six together.
    OK, so then you went to Frankfurt.
    Yeah.
    And you were in a DP camp there.
    It must have been something, because they took away homes
    from the Germans, and they gave us, it was more private homes.
    So why don't you tell me what happened
    once you got to Frankfurt?
    They-- I lived in a house that I think--
    I don't know who push--
    told the Germans to go out from that part of Zeilsheim.
    And we used to get--
    I mean, the food used to come from the-- we had to go
    to the place, from the displaced--
    I don't know what you call that.
    But we got our supplies from there.
    And we just lived.
    Some of them tried to go away from there, go to America,
    go to Israel.
    We knew that eventually we're not going to stay there.
    How long were you in Frankfurt?
    I must have been there seven months or more.
    I came there in November, and I left there--
    I came to America in September the following year.
    But I knew already for a long time that I was going to go.
    You made a decision to go to America.
    I don't know.
    They said we can register.
    I mean, it wasn't any decision to make.
    They said there was a registration going on
    if somebody wants to register to go to America.
    So I went.
    My friends went, and I went.
    But they pulled me out from the first one
    because I was a teenager.
    Who pulled you out?
    I mean, probably those people that interviewed you.
    They pulled names, that they figured she's young.
    Maybe she can go to school or something.
    So they separated everybody.
    They took-- they looked over the list.
    People register.
    Let's say I come to a place and I register.
    I'm so old and--
    that's all.
    And then somebody else comes and somebody else comes.
    Hundreds of people register.
    But those that registered with me didn't go.
    I was the only one that went.
    To America.
    To America.
    Then.
    You think being young, that was in your favor?
    Yes, they told us.
    They told me.
    Because before I reach a certain age.
    So I was considered a teenager.
    But then they came later, two years later, three years later.
    But they came too.
    Why did you decide to go to the States?
    You could have gone to Israel.
    You could have gone anywhere.
    I don't know.
    I really just don't know.
    So you came to the States in September of--
    '46.
    And what did you do when you first
    came to the United States?
    Well, when I came here, my husband had relatives here.
    And he knew he was going to go here.
    He had affidavits.
    Wait, you weren't married at the time.
    No, no.
    But I knew him.
    He wanted me to come here.
    You had a boyfriend then?
    I don't know.
    He's just a friend.
    But he said, he's going there.
    I should go too.
    Your husband was also.
    Yeah, but he had relatives here.
    He had a lot of relatives.
    So he was living in Frankfurt.
    In Frankfurt.
    You met him in Frankfurt?
    Yeah, yeah.
    I think I met him in Bergen-Belsen.
    Then we all came to Frankfurt.
    I really don't remember how.
    And he says, why don't you go to America too?
    Said, I'm going to write my uncle.
    He's going to send you affidavit so you can come with me.
    His uncle didn't hear.
    But he had affidavit for him.
    Your--
    My husband had it.
    At the time--
    At the time, yeah.
    And he had an affidavit because he was liberated by Americans?
    Yes.
    And his uncle knew that he survived,
    and he send him papers to come.
    But it took them a long time to come here.
    And--
    He came after you?
    Yes, a lot longer.
    And then he said [INAUDIBLE].
    And that's how I came, I think.
    Did you have any plans to marry him at the time?
    Yeah, we figured someday.
    Anybody that was close to us was considered a very good friend
    because we had nobody, no relatives.
    I don't think there was any uncles or sisters, very few
    that sisters or brothers survived that were together.
    So anybody that was close that you
    knew that you survived, you called them-- you
    were a relative.
    I mean, whatever they did.
    I didn't want to go to America.
    I wanted to stay with the girls.
    You didn't want to go to America.
    I see.
    I didn't want to go no place.
    I wanted to stay with them.
    You just wanted to be with people who you cared about.
    Cared about and that I knew, because I knew I have nobody.
    So you came here in September of '48--
    I mean, sorry, September '46.
    '46.
    And what did you do when you got here?
    Oh, my husband's uncle took me.
    He came for me.
    He really wasn't--
    I mean, I didn't come to him, but he found out that I came.
    So he took me.
    He took me to his house.
    And then he had a factory.
    I started working, which now that I think
    was the wrong thing.
    And I worked.
    Then my husband came.
    Why was it the wrong thing?
    Because I could have go to school if he wouldn't take me.
    See, I could have go to the organization, to the Jewish--
    If he hadn't have taken you, the organization would have--
    Yeah, they had me, because they used to check
    on me to see if I'm all right.
    And then--
    What kind of factory did you work in?
    Clothing.
    Didn't know nothing about--
    Where was this at?
    In New York?
    No, Boston.
    I came by to Boston.
    I came to New York.
    I arrived to New York, but I--
    and then he came to pick me up with a picture
    that my husband sent him to recognize me.
    And he brought me here.
    And since then I've been--
    How much later did your husband come, or did
    your husband-- [? Sidney? ?]
    Yeah, 15 months.
    15.
    A year and a half later.
    And you got married soon afterwards?
    Yeah.
    When you came here, did you have any contact
    with other survivors?
    No.
    Did his uncle-- what was his uncle's name?
    Wolrich.
    What kind of relationship did you have with that family?
    I mean--
    To me, they were very-- look, they were nothing to me,
    really, strangers.
    But they were nice.
    It was very hard.
    You couldn't speak the language.
    But then I started going to high school--
    I mean, to school at night.
    That's when I met some survivors.
    And that's when already it started, our difference.
    I met a boy that he knew that he knows a girl that
    has the same number as me.
    She came in May.
    And I called her.
    And she was the girl that lives in Florida,
    that we were together.
    So I had some place to go already all the weekends.
    It was a little easier because the beginning,
    I only wished they would take me and ship me back to Germany
    to stay with my friends, because I--
    When you came here you were very homesick then.
    Terrible.
    For them, for the girls that I stayed with.
    Did you cry a lot when you came here to the States?
    Terrible.
    The nights, my pillows used to be wet every morning.
    So you were extremely depressed.
    Very, very, very, very.
    You can't speak.
    You have nobody.
    You don't see nobody.
    But you survive it.
    But then, finally, when I started going to night school,
    that's when I met a lot of people,
    and that's when I felt a little bit better.
    Did they ever ask-- were you able to talk with his uncle
    at all?
    Yeah, they wanted to.
    Everybody knew what happened.
    I mean, nobody wanted to hurt you, to talk about it, really,
    because once they started talking about it
    I started crying, and they felt bad.
    Maybe it was hard for them to hear.
    To hear too.
    Was his uncle religious?
    Not really.
    Did you have any kind of religion after the war?
    I knew I was--
    What were your feelings about God?
    Oh, I always talk to God.
    I felt maybe sometimes he didn't listen what happened to us,
    but I always felt that maybe they just wanted--
    because they used to say, I remember, they say,
    there's always going to be one left or somebody, one Jew is.
    Somebody going to survive.
    And they used to say from each family,
    maybe one is going to survive, and I figured maybe
    I was the chosen one, that I survived.
    I don't know.
    I believe.
    I do.
    I don't know why it happened to us, what it did.
    Maybe just overlooked us or something.
    But when you always say, you say God help me.
    And I think he tries.
    I don't know.
    So you didn't really talk about your experiences.
    No, not too much.
    Not really.
    I mean, everybody knew, and everybody started--
    we used to start talking, and we used to cry, and this, and--
    With other survivors.
    With the other survivors.
    We, like I say, we always talk about it.
    It's always hard.
    We can go to any party, to anything.
    We always come out.
    We finish up, what happened to us.
    Always a camp or always something.
    So we never forget it.
    How were you treated by other people in the States,
    by non-Jews, by Jews?
    Oh, they were very--
    first of all, there wasn't too many in Dorchester.
    I was, I think, the only one.
    So I was like something.
    Oh, she survived.
    How did you survive?
    And like some people had--
    I didn't like the way sometimes they said something.
    Like I looked really-- look I was young.
    And I started eating then.
    So I looked good, and I was kind of chubby.
    He says, how come you survived, or something--
    things like this.
    How come the others.
    As though you did something wrong to survive?
    I don't know what it meant.
    They made you feel guilty?
    How did you get out?
    Something like this.
    Implying what did you do?
    Yeah, and they figured, how come you look so good, or something,
    that I said, I'm out already a year and a half,
    and I'm eating.
    So I tried to look--
    I didn't look like this.
    You had to explain.
    Why you look so good.
    Because they expected you to look
    like something that you have dead already.
    Like a skeleton.
    Skeleton.
    So I really didn't like to explain and choked,
    and because I could see that some of them
    didn't understand nothing, and they
    didn't know what was going on.
    Did you apply for reparations?
    What's that?
    That Germany to pay you money--
    Yes, yeah, yeah.
    --for having been in camps.
    Are you continuing to get reparations?
    When your husband came-- well, at that time your boyfriend,
    let's say.
    He came in '47 or '48.
    The end of '47.
    And then you got married.
    And you lived in--
    Dorchester.
    --in Dorchester.
    Did you have children soon afterwards?
    Marlene was born--
    How many children do you have?
    I just have--
    You have Marlene.
    Marlene.
    And about a year and a half later.
    So she was born in '50?
    No, '49.
    What was your feeling about having children?
    I think, the feelings, I don't know.
    Sometimes, you get in a point you don't know what you feel.
    You feel different.
    Sometimes you feel you want a lot of children.
    Then you-- I don't know.
    Things happen to you that--
    We had a hard time here.
    My husband was sick when we came, stomach trouble and this.
    And we really struggled.
    Lived in one room on Norfolk Street.
    What does your husband do?
    He's a cutter, but he doesn't work already for five years.
    He's a cutter?
    He was a cutter.
    You mean like for patterns and material?
    Patterns, yeah, yeah.
    And then, as soon as we moved here,
    he had a heart attack a year later.
    He recently had a heart attack.
    How old is he?
    He's now 55.
    And how old are you now?
    53.
    No, he's older.
    He's going to be-- he's 56, going to be 57.
    And I'm 53.
    What languages did you speak when--
    When I came here?
    Polish.
    And how about--
    Jewish.
    Most of them, I mean--
    Yiddish.
    Oh, yeah, Yiddish, yeah.
    This we spoke.
    That's all we knew.
    Yeah.
    Does Marlene know Yiddish?
    Yeah.
    She can, when she needs it, she speaks it good.
    But she-- I still talk to her in Yiddish.
    Do you think--
    I want to thank you for allowing me to interview you today,
    and I just wanted to end this interview
    by asking you if you think another Holocaust is possible.
    I hope not, and I don't think-- no.
    We have Israel.
    So you don't think it will ever happen.
    Couldn't.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Esther Wolrich
    Date
    interview:  1981 May 24

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Wolrich, Esther.

    Administrative Notes

    Holder of Originals
    One Generation After
    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The interview with Esther Wolrich was conducted on May 24, 1981 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.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:10:07
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn510169

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    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Netty Schwarz Vanderpol

    Oral history interview with Netty Schwarz Vanderpol

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Kip Winston

    Oral history interview with Kip Winston

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sidney Wolrich

    Oral history interview with Sidney Wolrich

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Denise Schorr

    Oral history interview with Denise Schorr

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Simkovich

    Oral history interview with Beatrice Simkovich

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Samuel Stern

    Oral history interview with Samuel Stern

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Franya Russak

    Oral history interview with Franya Russak

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Carl [Karl] Schlesinger

    Oral history interview with Carl [Karl] Schlesinger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva Schlesinger

    Oral history interview with Eva Schlesinger

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Clara Rev

    Oral history interview with Clara Rev

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anna Riemer

    Oral history interview with Anna Riemer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marie Rosenberg

    Oral history interview with Marie Rosenberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Cecelia Perera

    Oral history interview with Cecelia Perera

    Oral History

    Cecilia Perera, born in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (now in Bosnia and Herzegovina), discusses the relations between Jews and non-Jews in Sarajevo before the war; being one of seven children of a religious family; the Italian occupation; living with her husband and 14-year-old son at the time of the occupation; her husband’s olive oil factory; the fate of her family members during the war; going with her family to Italy (November 1943 until 1947); living in Bari and then Torino; immigrating to the United States after her son received a scholarship to Massachusetts Institute of Technology; working as a seamstress; her sister who survived Bergen-Belsen; and two of her siblings who live in Israel.

    Oral history interview with Hugo Princz

    Oral history interview with Hugo Princz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Szlomo Reff

    Oral history interview with Szlomo Reff

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Zezette Larson

    Oral history interview with Zezette Larson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Natanson

    Oral history interview with Sam Natanson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Stella Penzer

    Oral history interview with Stella Penzer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Berko Kolodner

    Oral history interview with Berko Kolodner

    Oral History

    Berko Kolodner, born in 1893 in Krynki, Poland, discusses his five brothers and three sisters; his father who had a leather factory; his religious upbringing; being sent to Bialystok, Poland for high school; his desire to attend university, but not being allowed to because he was Jewish; serving in the Russian army during WWI; his family being poor after the war; moving to Switzerland, where he earned his medical degree at the University of Bern in 1925; working as a physician in Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania); the Germans bombing and invading Vilna; being sent to the Vilna ghetto; the terrible conditions in the ghetto; his medical practice in the ghetto; his wife, who was also in Vilna; his family in Krynki being deported to Treblinka; Jacob Gens, a ghetto leader, who tried to hold the people together in the ghetto but was eventually killed; the liquidation of the ghetto; his wife being sent to Auschwitz and killed; being sent to several camps in Estonia, including Vaivara, Kuremäe, Lagedi, and Goldfields; the conditions in those camps; being taken by boat to Germany and then Stutthof, where he worked on roofs; being in Buchenwald for two weeks, where he felt like he was dying but people gave him a little more food; the overwhelming hunger at that time; being sent to Colditz in Saxony, Germany; being sent on a starvation march to Theresienstadt; working as a doctor in Theresienstadt, but having no medications to treat people; being liberated by the Russians; one friend from Vilna, Dr. Brijetski who wrote a book about their experiences and eventually moved to Israel; believing he survived by a miracle; being very sick at liberation and spending several months in the hospital in Prague, Czech Republic with a serious staph infection; recovering; working in a monastery, St. Ottilien Archabbey, near Munich for three years; working as a physician the monastery, which was partially transformed into a hospital; meeting his wife there; his positive interactions with the Americans; going to the Netherlands in 1950; immigrating to the United States; the difficulty he has experienced adjusting to life in the US; and not receiving reparations from Germany.

    Oral history interview with Ralph Kornberg

    Oral history interview with Ralph Kornberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Esther Krakowski

    Oral history interview with Esther Krakowski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ben Jacobs

    Oral history interview with Ben Jacobs

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rita Kesselman

    Oral history interview with Rita Kesselman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Judith Kochavi

    Oral history interview with Judith Kochavi

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mania Kohn

    Oral history interview with Mania Kohn

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Frieda Grayzel

    Oral history interview with Frieda Grayzel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rachel Helfgot

    Oral history interview with Rachel Helfgot

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ed Herman

    Oral history interview with Ed Herman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Fischer

    Oral history interview with Joseph Fischer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hala Goldstein

    Oral history interview with Hala Goldstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mayer Goldstein

    Oral history interview with Mayer Goldstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Steve Collins

    Oral history interview with Steve Collins

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Yael Danieli

    Oral history interview with Yael Danieli

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Barbara Farkas

    Oral history interview with Barbara Farkas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elsie Baumann and Henry Baumann

    Oral history interview with Elsie Baumann and Henry Baumann

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jacob Birnbaum

    Oral history interview with Jacob Birnbaum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Boroff

    Oral history interview with Eugenia Boroff

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lonia Albeck

    Oral history interview with Lonia Albeck

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mira Birnbaum

    Oral History

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