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Oral history interview with Leon Greenman

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1995.A.1285.52 | RG Number: RG-50.149.0052

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    Oral history interview with Leon Greenman
    Transcript
    Greenman, reel 1.
    Mr. Greenman, if we could start with a bit of your family
    background, which I think is important to the story.
    I believe your grandfather was a Dutchman.
    Yes, he was.
    He was born in Amsterdam and his name
    was Joseph Groenteman, which, translated,
    means "greengrocer."
    But at the time of him living in London and registering,
    they couldn't find a translation.
    And the name Groen is green, so he became Joseph Greenman.
    What was he doing in London?
    He was doing several trades.
    I think he was from, what father used to mention it,
    making wooden cases for transporting things for a firm,
    and so on.
    He's probably been in various trades.
    Of course, he also traveled to America and back to Holland,
    and from Holland to England and England
    to America, all over the place like that.
    So I've got a family in America and I've got a family
    in England and in Holland.
    I understand, though, you were actually born in England,
    as were your parents.
    You went to Holland at a very young age.
    Yes.
    I was born in 1910, and probably two months later it
    would have been 1911.
    We went to Holland.
    Grandfather went to Holland and grandmother.
    And at that time, the children followed their parents,
    and so I came to live in Rotterdam.
    What was your father doing in Rotterdam?
    For trade, he was in a cigar-making trade
    and a diamond-polishing trade.
    Later on, as I can remember, he was
    someone who went to the ships and got the sailors into shops
    for new clothing.
    So he was really a salesman on the ships,
    out of the shops, if I can remember that.
    The reason that you went to the camps, as you did later on,
    was because you and your family were Jewish.
    Can you tell me a bit about the nature of your family Judaism?
    Well, I can remember that, as a youngster,
    I went to Hebrew school, right up to my 13th birthday.
    And I remember, on the doorpost in our room,
    there was hanging a little bag with the so-called holy straps
    and a little box attached to it, which
    contained part of the holy Scripture, which,
    according to my father, was property of my grandfather.
    My grandfather was a very Orthodox Jew.
    I also remember that my father used
    to say the Hebrew prayers before food and after food,
    and we children were not allowed to leave the table
    until the prayer was finished.
    And to us, it seemed a long prayer.
    Father also mentioned once to me that it
    was no good to light any fire on the Sabbath,
    and mother was cold.
    Well, grandmother was cold and he lit a fire for her.
    And when grandfather came home, he
    got a little bit of a good hiding
    because he had done that.
    So grandfather stood very near to God.
    So was I later on, but unfortunately, I've
    forgotten my Hebrew.
    I'm still, of course, very much a Jew.
    I've stood near death and I know God was always with me.
    But I don't feel to be an Orthodox Jew.
    I fear Him.
    I love Him.
    I argue with Him.
    And I thank Him, whatever God may be.
    You returned to London from Holland
    as a young man in the trade of hairdresser, I believe,
    when you were 18 or so.
    Can you tell me what life was like in the East End of London
    for you--
    not as a hairdresser, but as a Jew,
    what you saw of antisemitism?
    Well, I remember, before I was 18,
    I also had visited London once or twice
    on a holiday with my brother.
    They used to come over from England, for a holiday,
    to Holland, and they used to take me back once or twice.
    Of course, I felt terribly patriotic about the King
    and anything to do with England.
    So when I got into London and I was courting my wife,
    I went into the hairdressing and I did not
    experience any antisemitism, because as I'm just
    thinking now, most of those shops
    were run by Jewish owners.
    No, I don't think I met then antisemitism.
    There was, of course, a large Jewish community
    in the East End at that point.
    Yes, there was.
    Now, we're talking about, I remember
    later on in 1932 or '34, something
    like that, I remember the marching of the fascists down
    to East London.
    But I was not in London.
    I was living in Brighton.
    Although I'd heard Mosley talk in Goldson Street
    outside Brooks Tea Factory, but I was too
    young to understand politics.
    What can you remember about that Mosley's session?
    We were shouting and talking and he had a large crowd
    of people around him.
    I don't remember much what he said.
    I didn't stay long, I think.
    They were hustling and arguing.
    That's what I remember of Mosley, although I
    have now in my possession--
    some time ago I found a '78 record of Mosley,
    in which he talks about our empire
    and how greater he would make England.
    What did you think of that?
    Well, when I bought it, this was after the war,
    and I've listened to it once or twice.
    Miscalculated.
    Miscalculated entirely because I don't think we've
    got an empire anymore, not in that sense.
    No, quite.
    But of course, I've met antisemitism since then
    when I got back from the camps, without a penny in my pocket.
    And I lost my dear brother, who had been a market salesman,
    and he left a wife and four children.
    And no one was there to help us.
    People promised a lot of things to do for us, but no one did.
    And I started off on the market.
    And I remember one of the first pitches I got, given to me
    by the inspector of the market.
    I think it was in Finsbury Square, somewhere there.
    And I put my little suitcase down
    and it happened to be next to a store who
    sold greens and fruit.
    And the old gentleman behind it said to me, boy,
    what are you doing there?
    I said, well, I got a trade here.
    He said-- well, in different words,
    he said, get back to Palestine.
    So I felt rather funny about it.
    I've just come from hell and now they're
    starting on me again here.
    That's what I thought.
    Although in the camps, one day I saw in the distance
    a British prisoner of war, and I somehow told my kapo,
    can I get to the toilets?
    He said, go and hurry up.
    So I got inside the toilet, where
    the soldier found himself.
    And as he was coming out, I stopped him.
    I said, hello, soldier.
    I said, I'm from London.
    I said, I'm a prisoner here, et cetera, et cetera.
    Perhaps you can spare a cigarette or two, which would
    buy me some soup in the camps.
    So he listened a little bit to my story.
    And then he said, you and I are a prisoner here,
    and way back in England, the Jews are black marketeering.
    I said, but I got two brothers in the war.
    And he walked out.
    That hurt me as well, coming from a British soldier.
    Well, antisemitism, my dear, in 1983--
    that's very recently, isn't it?
    I've got it on paper--
    I found myself in Romford Market,
    buying some greens and fruits, and to hurry back home
    because I had an appointment in the afternoon.
    Between all those thousands of stores over there,
    I had to pass between two stores, one with fruit.
    And as I pass by, a tall fellow--
    about 17 or 18 maybe, he was two heads taller than me.
    And he leaned over and he did as if he
    was sickening over my head.
    I stopped my trolley and I turned around
    and I said, what's the matter?
    You're not well?
    He said, you're a Jew, aren't you?
    I said, yes.
    And with that, from behind the stall, I dare say his mate,
    he said, the Jews are always circumcised, aren't they?
    I said, yes.
    So what about it?
    Then all of a sudden, it struck me.
    They must have been members of the National Front.
    I said, I've got no time here, but I'll come back one day
    and I'll tell you things.
    And I walked away.
    That took me a couple of days to forget that.
    That was as recently as 1983.
    Yes.
    Talking about the late '20s and early '30s,
    are there examples of antisemitism in Britain?
    From what you've told me a few minutes ago,
    it sounds as if there generally were not.
    I didn't experience a lot then.
    No, I can't think of incidents.
    Well, maybe I heard my little cousin, my little niece
    come home from school.
    She was crying.
    And then she told her mother they called
    her a little Jew in school.
    I comforted her.
    And I guess at that time, I had no knowledge
    at all about politics.
    I was trying to get on in the world.
    And one thing I know, I was proud of England
    and I always wanted to get to England.
    What sort of political persuasion
    would you and your family have held at this time?
    I know father always told me about labor, voting labor.
    And I daresay I did vote labor most of the time when
    I was old enough to vote labor.
    But I had no idea that I had right to a Dutch nationality
    until I was nearly taken away to the camp.
    I had to have papers to prove that I was British.
    Yes.
    Still going back, before the war,
    you were living in Britain then at the time
    of Hitler's rise in Germany.
    What did you know about that?
    Well, Hitler, I didn't give it a lot of thought
    while I was in England, I don't think.
    I don't think so.
    I was still in Holland.
    I must have still been in Holland sometime
    when Hitler came to be head of Germany, I think.
    He was elected in 1933.
    1933.
    1933.
    Before that, I didn't listen a lot.
    I didn't hear a lot.
    I didn't take a lot of notice.
    I do remember that shortly after that--
    and this must have been, of course,
    in 1940 and '39, when I was in Holland--
    we listened to the radio.
    And I heard him shout and he was applauded and all that.
    And now it's come into my mind, in 1934,
    my sister and myself found myself at my parents'.
    And see, we were talking about the war
    and arguing about the war.
    And she said, Hitler's going to lose it.
    He's going to lose it.
    I said, of course he's going to lose it,
    but what's going to happen in between liberation and now?
    We both were right.
    A lot of things happened.
    That's how I saw it.
    Then I was handed--
    on the street, they were collecting signatures
    of Jewish and non-Jewish people to let the German-Jews
    into Holland, because they were being done wrong to in Germany.
    This is before the war, you mean?
    Yes, just before the war.
    1934, '33.
    '34 it must have been.
    And I refused to sign that list.
    I said, it's not the Jews that should come out of Germany.
    It's the man Hitler and his lot.
    They should come out of Germany.
    Then the Jews can live there, the Germans,
    and the German people will have peace.
    That's how I thought.
    Again, it proves right after the war, my way of thinking.
    Hitler started his anti-Jewish laws, and so on, fairly early
    on, well before the war.
    Did you travel in Germany at all?
    No.
    No, I didn't travel to Germany.
    I said no--
    I must have been about maybe eight or 10 years old.
    Mother had gone to Germany.
    I dare say there was a kind of a row or something between father
    and mother, stepmother.
    I thought your mother had died.
    My second mother, stepmother, who he married,
    the housekeeper, she was non-Jewish.
    And somehow, we had a bit of strict life.
    And I dare say a quarrel started and she left home
    for Germany, where her parents were living in Oberhausen.
    And father went after her, and he took me along,
    but I must have been very young and very ignorant to remember
    anything about those things.
    Well, she came back again and life went on as before.
    That's the only time I went to Germany.
    After the war and I came back from the camps,
    I did once go to Germany.
    I was working in show business as a singer and the cabaret was
    taking place near Enschede in [NON-ENGLISH]..
    I believe you married in 1935.
    Could you tell me about your wife?
    Yes.
    Before we got married?
    There was a need for a Jewish youth club in Rotterdam,
    and so I became a member of the eight or 12 ladies
    and gentlemen.
    And we made a club, which grew very quick to over 100 members.
    And once a month, we used to give a program of music,
    singing, and acting sketches, and dancing.
    One of the ladies in the committee, she said,
    I've got a friend coming over from Holland, a nice girl.
    I would like her to meet you, knowing
    you were so proud of England.
    So I said, yes, all right.
    That evening, or some evening later on, there
    was a program of singing and music,
    and it was my turn to do my singing.
    And while I was on my second song,
    I think the door opened near the stage
    and in walked a charming young lady.
    I went on singing, and when I finished,
    later on in the evening, I was introduced
    to the lady who walked through the doors,
    not knowing that's going to be my wife.
    Well, she was on holiday in Holland
    for a month or two months, staying with her grandmother.
    And it was our duty, members of the committee,
    to see that the girls got home safely in the evening.
    So the men took eight or 10 or more girls to hand
    and walked them to the homes.
    And in my case, I saw all the girls home.
    And the last one happened to be my young lady.
    And I took her to her home, saw that she got inside, locked
    the door, and said, good night.
    After our marriage, she told me that she
    told her grandma, Ma, Grandma, this is
    the first time that a boy takes me home and doesn't
    demand a kiss.
    Later on she said, when I heard you singing,
    I knew you were going to be my husband.
    [CHUCKLES]
    Well, that's part of my pre-marriage life.
    Then, of course, I went to England.
    She was living in England and I went to England.
    I was a hairdresser.
    And I lived a little while in the home of my wife-to-be.
    Later on I went into lodgings nearby.
    This is in East London?
    In East London.
    We were living down in Golders Green,
    but I was working in East London.
    Then my father-in-law said, I'm going to put up some money,
    he says, and we're going to see to it
    that you get your own saloon.
    Of course, you must make a living before you get married.
    I said, I don't want any money printing up
    our work until I got sufficient, and then we'll get married.
    And that's what happened.
    So you were married to Elsie Van Dam in 1935.
    Yes.
    Then continue the story.
    It was back to Holland at that point.
    Yes.
    We got married on the 7th and we went for our honeymoon
    to Holland, to her grandmother.
    And we stayed at her grandmother's.
    She was her grandmother's angel.
    I went backwards and forwards through London,
    doing my antiquarian book business,
    and my business was growing.
    We had, where we lived, a large attic
    above the rooms where we were living,
    and I start making room there for the stock of books.
    Later on, we moved away from there
    to a bigger house, bigger rooms, and I
    start buying and selling first-class books,
    if I may say.
    And that's how the business grew.
    Why did you and your wife decide to settle
    in Holland instead of England?
    Well, it was, more or less, a want
    and a need of the grandmother.
    She and I became under her influence.
    I didn't like it very much, but I agreed and we stayed on.
    She was a woman nearing 80 years, over 80 years.
    A bit of a cook, kind, and all that,
    but we had to be home in time, not too late.
    Even when you were married?
    Yes.
    She didn't mean any harm, but that's
    how the lady was brought up.
    And remember, my wife, as a child, lost--
    not lost her father, but her father and mother
    were divorced.
    So the mother and the grandmother
    took jolly good care of the child
    since she was about a couple of years old.
    So that grew and grew until she was old enough.
    Anyhow, then came the signs of war.
    I found myself in London.
    What were these signs of war?
    Well, whispers and probably little pieces in paper that war
    was coming.
    I didn't believe it.
    I didn't know what war was.
    And this seemed like I've been asleep.
    I remember reading of two men, British men,
    who were caught in Germany.
    And I think one of the man's name was Best or something.
    This only slightly-- I was interested
    because they were English.
    I think they were spying or they landed somewhere in Germany
    and they were caught.
    I didn't take any further notice.
    So life went on and I went to London, to and fro.
    But that particular time, I found myself in London
    and I saw people digging already dugouts in the streets.
    I didn't quite understand.
    Then I saw them queuing up for gas masks,
    and I just joined a queue and I got my gas mask.
    This would have been 1938?
    Yes.
    So I became panicky.
    And the same evening, I went back to Holland
    with the idea of getting my wife out of Holland, and probably
    the old lady.
    Well, when I got in, the radio was on
    and the news, and there I heard Chamberlain announcing
    that he had seen Hitler and there
    wouldn't be any war between England and Germany.
    So I must have fallen asleep again because I said,
    all right.
    We won't go tomorrow, or whatever it is.
    We're going six months' time.
    So life went on again.
    My wife told me that I promised that we would have a child.
    I said, we better not have a child
    because I still think we're going to have a war.
    I don't know why, but I feel it.
    Well, she said, you promised a child.
    I said, OK then, we'll have a child.
    Just like that and nine months later the child
    was born, a boy.
    But that was already during the wartime when he was born, 1940.
    1940, but nine months earlier was still '39, wasn't it?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Well, there you are.
    He was born on the 17th March, 17th of March.
    There was still no invasion.
    But before we get to 1940, of course, Chamberlain's Peace,
    or whatever you may call it, didn't last.
    What happened to you when war was declared in September 1939?
    Oh.
    Well, I was still in Holland, thinking what should we do?
    We can't leave the old lady.
    And I didn't know where to turn or what to do.
    I went to the British Consul, I remember, in Rotterdam.
    And I said, what's going on?
    What rumors are there?
    Well, we can't tell you that.
    They said to me, you can leave now on the A
    or you can leave on the B, which means in a few weeks' time,
    or on the C when we leave, when the staff of the Consul leaves.
    I said, all right, I'll leave when the staff leaves.
    Because the way I was thinking, I've
    got rooms full of books stuck, there's an old lady,
    and my wife is pregnant.
    So I put my trust in the British Consul.
    Then when the child was born in 1940, 17th of March,
    I went to the Consul.
    I had registered there.
    No one still told me about the danger.
    So the child was born.
    March, April, May.
    On the 10th of May, the first bombs fell on Rotterdam.
    We were living near a hospital.
    I remember, I think it was on a Sunday morning.
    I was standing, looking out through the curtains
    outside, looking out.
    Mr. Greenman, reel 2.
    So on the 10th of May--
    I think it was a Sunday morning--
    the first bombs were dropping near our home.
    In our neighborhood, there was a hospital, St. Francis Hospital.
    The first bombs landed on that.
    Although, later on, I heard that there
    was a Red Cross painted on the roofs,
    it didn't make any difference.
    I looked out through the window, lifted the curtain.
    And I saw about four or five airplanes
    circling around in a circle and letting the bombs drop.
    Could you identify the planes?
    I mean, did you know they were German?
    Oh.
    I didn't know, but I expected.
    I expected they were German, because rumors
    had that they were dropping parachutes, and so on,
    near the river in Rotterdam.
    And already rumors that you couldn't trust anybody,
    so I took it for granted that it was German.
    Who else could it be to bomb Rotterdam?
    Yes, I remember that I heard something fall behind me
    and I turned around.
    My wife had been just busy bathing the child,
    and it slipped out of her soapy fingers on to the floor.
    I didn't say a word.
    I picked it up and handed it back into her hands.
    And I looked at her.
    We both couldn't say nothing.
    Then we said, well, it's real.
    It's real.
    What can we do?
    So that was at the beginning of the war.
    Can you tell me about the scene in Rotterdam after the bombing?
    The big bombings took place on the 14th of May,
    on the 14th of May.
    Of course, days before-- they say the 10th, 11th, 12th,
    and the 13th--
    we heard of parachute chutes being dropped
    and Germans occupying the bridges in Rotterdam
    and what was going on, but we were too far away
    to go anywhere.
    And I wasn't really--
    why should I leave my wife and child and the old lady
    alone just to be inquisitive?
    And anything could have happened,
    so I didn't go far to wonder.
    Although on the morning of the 14th, I went shopping.
    I had to do some shopping for the wife.
    And I found myself then in the house of a friend of mine,
    a bookbinder in [NON-ENGLISH].
    And I was watching him binding some books.
    I was learning a little bit by watching.
    And we were talking about the war
    and we didn't know what was going to happen,
    and this and that.
    Then it must have been about half past 1:00.
    All of a sudden we heard a tremendous crash.
    The bombs were falling.
    We rushed into his shop, because his shop
    was built to his house.
    And we looked through the window and we saw smoke
    coming from behind the houses.
    And then we said to one another, it
    must have been the paper factory,
    which was in that street.
    The bombing went on for a little while, and when it stopped,
    planes were circling and shooting in the streets.
    I said, I've got to get home.
    So I rushed out of the shop and took cover,
    walking from side to side.
    And where I walked, the airplanes
    were flying and shooting people down.
    I saw people laying in the streets.
    And halfway, I met a friend of mine
    who came towards me, crying and shouting out, my wife.
    My child.
    My child.
    I said, go home.
    Go home.
    I said, I'm going home as well.
    I hope they're all right.
    Anyhow, I got through that and I got home,
    and I found my wife and child and grandmother in the center
    rooms of the house.
    They were crying, of course, and afraid.
    I comforted them.
    And then life went on again.
    I went out to my father's, and I saw Dutch soldiers
    walking the street, not knowing what to do without guns.
    I found my father's place.
    No one at home.
    Part of the streets were burning.
    And I rushed back to our house, looking all over the place,
    if I could find my father or mother.
    People were rushing to and fro, laying
    in the grass, because we had a little, small park near where
    we lived.
    And after searching for hours there,
    I found my mother and father--
    without a coat on, just a waistcoat,
    his head between his hands, in his hands, laying in the grass,
    sitting in the grass.
    And I talked to them and I took them home to my place.
    And he had no time to get anything out of the home,
    so I rushed out again and I found
    a kind of a car, a trolley or something, a burrow.
    And I went with that to the house, trying to save things.
    And I found some portraits of grandfather and grandmother
    and a few odds and ends.
    I don't remember why or what, things probably of no value.
    What condition was the house in?
    It had been shaken not directly by a bomb,
    but it was kind of crumbling.
    But nearby houses were burning.
    So I went out again and I found also in the house
    a kind of paraffin jug, in which this contained paraffin,
    which you could pour out.
    I took that along with me.
    Anyhow, when I got home, I did fetch many things.
    We all were upset.
    We couldn't understand, really.
    The shock was too big for most of us.
    We passed the night.
    There was no water, no electricity, no gas.
    And a lot of things happened then.
    We didn't know what to do exactly.
    I remember we boiled some water on a candle.
    We fixed up a candle, standing with something over it,
    a little bucket of water.
    Silly things, really, but we couldn't do different.
    Well, the next morning, I went out.
    And where I walked yesterday, the day before, there
    was nothing but hot ashes.
    I was walking on hot ashes.
    The houses were no more, like hot pillars, gray ash,
    hot pillars.
    They were standing, smoking from street to street.
    The main street, the high street,
    was about a kilometer in length, from beginning
    to end and all around, which is finished.
    I couldn't understand.
    I remember going right to the very end, which
    had a windmill, an old windmill from the 1700s or something.
    That's the only thing that stood there,
    and I saw an SS soldier taking a picture of it.
    I walked back and I found myself in a spot
    where I could see the street where I had
    been living when I was a child.
    I could see right across.
    There was no more streets.
    The house where my sister had been staying was no more.
    It was all ashes.
    I could see a long, long way across Rotterdam.
    Well, I went back home.
    My sister hadn't turned up yet.
    I went out again to find my sister.
    She turned up the next day.
    She had went with people to The Hague to find cover.
    That was the bombing of Rotterdam.
    Yes.
    What were you and your family or friends
    saying about the Dutch government
    and Dutch armed forces at this time?
    The government was gone.
    Why did she go?
    Later on, we couldn't sing different,
    but probably it was a good thing that they went.
    Rumors that the Dutch soldiers, they had been fighting
    and it caused a lot of casualties of the Germans
    in one part of Holland.
    In Grebbelinie-- a lot of Germans
    must have been killed there.
    The Grebbelinie-- G-R-E-E-B-B--
    no, G-R-E-B-B-E-L-I-N-I-E.
    Thank you.
    I went out again and Rotterdam was burning.
    And the street, the station near,
    three minutes' walk from our house, was a light.
    And the flames were coming towards the street behind us,
    and that street would have gone.
    Our street would have gone.
    So some men running through the street called out to volunteers
    and we had to get all the curtains off the houses.
    The windows were all smashed and the curtains were burning.
    We had to pull them down as best as we could,
    put wooden boards up against the windows.
    Stopped the flames coming into it.
    Luckily, the wind turned and that street was saved
    and our street was saved and the rest.
    I turned the other way, and the center of Rotterdam finished,
    all burned.
    I remember seeing people laying in the road bleeding.
    I couldn't do nothing.
    I couldn't do nothing.
    My sister turned up the next day.
    With the fairly easy capitulation
    of the Dutch government and Dutch Army,
    was this level of bombing necessary?
    Well, they said it was a mistake.
    What we heard was the order not to bomb,
    because Holland is capitulated, came too long.
    The pilots didn't get that message,
    so they dropped their bombs.
    That's what they said.
    But I think it was just like when they had bombed Warsaw.
    They went ahead and just frightened us.
    So we had to capitulate.
    Now, could you talk about life in Rotterdam,
    in that early period after the bombing?
    After the bombing?
    Life at my home wasn't actually at peace
    'cause mother and father wanted to live on their own again.
    It's no good families living one another,
    so they went out trying.
    And they did find a way giving out a house to live.
    So peace returned to our home.
    We still went up and visited my father several times a week,
    of course.
    We understood the situation.
    Then I remember walking the street.
    And there must have been, probably right
    after the bombing, the next day or so, a column
    of German motorized soldiers coming in.
    Right near where I was walking, they stopped,
    and I remember looking in.
    A big fellow, man about 35, 40 maybe.
    Very strongly dressed in his uniform, everything.
    Strong and heavy, that's what I imagined.
    It must have been so.
    And I walked away.
    Already I began to feel a hate for ruining our city.
    Well, I could not trade in my antiquarian books anymore.
    Shops where we used to go and sell and buy,
    they were bombed away.
    The German regulations came in force.
    And there we were.
    We were not allowed to leave the town.
    We were not allowed to go into a cafe.
    You mean because you were Jewish or because you were Dutch?
    Yes, Jewish.
    Anti-Jewish laws came in.
    Now, only because we were Jews, we
    had to register at the town hall.
    And I had a lot of Jewish friends,
    because of probably a Jewish club we had made.
    So I felt, as a Jew, to be with my Jewish friends.
    And I had been waiting for the Consul.
    This all comes down to my mind.
    I've been waiting for the Consul.
    I didn't get any reply from the Consul at all to get away.
    This was just before the bombing of Rotterdam.
    The British Consul?
    British Consul I went there and I
    found the house closed and nothing, nobody there.
    So we were trapped.
    I still don't understand why they
    didn't let us know that they were going to go.
    What do you think about that?
    Do you think they forgot because of the panic?
    Or do you think they couldn't be bothered?
    Well, it's one of those three things,
    which, when I come to think of it, I didn't think of--
    well, directly I thought, what could have happened?
    The house was there.
    It wasn't bombed, but nobody inside.
    I thought, well, the world is not fair.
    Later on, I thought to myself, well,
    they must have not wanted to have done it or forgotten it,
    or what it was.
    There must have been time.
    I don't know why they didn't do it.
    I don't know.
    Anyhow, as it was, so the Germans
    made their anti-Jewish laws.
    You told me about registering you and your Jewish friends.
    Yes.
    Was there a possibility that you and your friends
    may have discussed of not registering?
    If you didn't turn up, how would they know?
    Well, it's like this, which we don't have in England,
    but everybody, Jew or non-Jew, everybody who lives in Holland,
    comes to live there, has got to register.
    When he moves to the door next door, the house next door,
    he's got a register where he's going to.
    So you can always find those people.
    In England, it's not so.
    It would have been a good thing if they were.
    So comes the registration.
    The Jews have got to register and get their identity card.
    So I goes to the town hall.
    They look in the card index and they
    find that I got a sign a form.
    I got four Jewish grandparents, two on my mother's side,
    two on my father's side.
    Ah, you're a full Jew then.
    Registered.
    You get an identity card with a J on it.
    So in the street, anybody asked for your identity card,
    you take it.
    Show it that you're a Jew, otherwise you won't have it.
    If you had two parents or if you had three non-Jewish parents,
    you there were 3/4, but you were still having
    a J on your identity card.
    If you had two Jewish grandparents,
    there was a possibility that you were exempt from various things
    or being deported.
    But in my case I had four, so we had to register
    and we had to have our yellow David Star.
    We have to buy these.
    They are about five pence or six pence at a time.
    And we have to sew these on our coats and our jackets
    and pullovers so that outside people could
    see you were a Jew.
    Did they know themselves that you
    had four Jewish grandparents or did they only know
    that because you told them?
    It could have been that I filled in a form and told them.
    On the other hand, they could have
    looked it up and found out.
    Some of us, later on after the war,
    heard some of the Jewish people didn't register and went
    into hiding and they couldn't find him,
    unless they did find people who went underground.
    They are no more.
    But some of them who did went to hiding didn't register.
    But I was banking on my British nationality,
    so I was fighting the Germans in my own way.
    I was in contact with the Swiss Consul in Amsterdam,
    who was then taking aware of the business
    for the British subjects in Holland,
    because I had got a call-up to go and work for the Germans,
    to a work camp for the Germans.
    I didn't want to.
    When would this have been?
    1941, around about that.
    Quite early.
    Had you previously had a call-up for the British or Dutch Army?
    No.
    I didn't have a call-up with the British Army.
    I was always thinking I wish that the English would
    land in Holland and then I could go back to them and join them.
    It never happened.
    But I didn't join a Dutch Army because--
    I got a paper in my pocket.
    But I had a paper which said, "owing to Leon Greenman's
    British nationality, he's not to join the Dutch Army."
    I don't think I would have joined the Dutch Army because I
    have a brother who went from Holland to escape
    from joining the Dutch Army.
    He joined the army.
    My other brother was, as I told you, in the first war.
    With the British Army.
    The British Army.
    Why didn't you and your brother wish to join the Dutch Army?
    We felt patriotic, English.
    Yeah.
    It's really silly.
    Not silly, but I always had a feeling as a child.
    I was always talking about England.
    And I wasn't going to join the Dutch Army.
    Now, you told me about the registration.
    Oh, yes.
    And the yellow stars, which you had.
    And your wife and son also had them, and the baby?
    Yes.
    Had to be sewn on their clothes.
    How did that feel wearing that?
    Well, it was a kind of insult. What shall I say?
    Why should we have to show the outside world that we're
    Jewish by wearing a star?
    A question, why?
    And then you thought, well, I'm a Jew, so what do you want?
    What do you want to do about it?
    I wasn't the only one.
    And I was really proud to do it because I
    had a large Jewish circle of friends with me.
    I could have not worn that star, for an incident
    jumps into my mind now.
    I made a lot of trouble by not wanting to work for the Germans
    in the camp.
    I wrote to the Swiss Consul in 1942--
    I still have the letters--
    asking for their protection and to give me passports
    so that I could be interned, et cetera, et cetera.
    And then I had to have permission
    from the German and Dutch officials to leave Rotterdam
    and to go to Amsterdam.
    I went to Amsterdam, got into the Consul.
    I was waiting there.
    It was very busy.
    I went into a room.
    In that room was a Ms. Jansen.
    And she looked at me.
    I said, I'm Leon Greenman.
    Jansen is spelled J-A-N-S-E-N, Jansen.
    and I said, I'm Leon Greenman and I've been writing so often
    and I can't get no proper papers or passports from you.
    And she said, you need not wear the star.
    You can take that off.
    I said, I know I don't need it because
    of my British nationality, but things might happen.
    I want to be true to my Jewish friends.
    At the same time, I feel safe because my British nationality.
    But why don't I get proper papers from you?
    She said, you can leave that off if you like, but inside
    is a Consul and you'll be let in in a moment.
    And when I got inside in front of the Consul, Mr. Prodilier--
    you want to put his name down?
    Yes.
    P-R-O-D-I-L-I-E-R. Prodilier, the Swiss consulate at that
    time.
    I stood before him with my father.
    Father had also sent forms for passports.
    And he had a bundle like that on his desk.
    A big pile.
    Everyone was the same, photographs and forms.
    And there was my form of photographs
    I'd sent eight days before.
    I said, look, sir.
    I sent this eight days before and I've been writing to you
    and now they're still on your desk.
    It's very urgent.
    It'll be all right.
    He smacked, closed the lot, and I could go.
    No help.
    I've got to go right back for a moment in Rotterdam
    again because the Jews were rushing to and fro an office
    where they could make photocopies of papers.
    We Jews were fighting for our lives.
    We had to have proof the Germans and the Dutch
    were cooperating with the Germans.
    Had to have proof.
    Papers.
    Papers.
    Also I had to have papers.
    I had a friend who used to play the piano for us when
    we were rehearsing our songs.
    And he was working for a firm who
    had the right to go into the town hall
    and seek up cards of people, business,
    or whatever it may be.
    I said to him, could you do me a favor?
    I said, there is somewhere in our cards
    something which my father had told British Consul.
    I said, if you can do that favor,
    get that card out, let me see it.
    Said, I'll do that.
    So he went into the town hall and I waited at the side.
    And he came to the desk and said, yeah.
    And on there was my father's name.
    And on there in pencil, on the edges,
    "Barnard Greenman declares, in front of the British Consul
    that all his children are British subjects, 1923."
    He had to put it back.
    They were asked-- one of the people there in the town hall,
    Mr. de Groot--
    G-R-O-O-T. Mr. de Groot.
    D-E in front of it, small d.
    Groot.
    He was one of the people in that department in the town hall.
    I could never get hold of him again.
    I asked him, I said, get that card and read on there
    we are English, and I want you to give me papers.
    To the effect, I was fighting for my wife and my child
    and my own life.
    Is this an example of collaboration with the Germans
    or is it just an example of incompetence?
    I'll give you another example.
    Whenever we came from England to Holland,
    we had to register alien police.
    My father did so.
    I did so.
    My wife did so.
    We have to show our passports, and then the thing
    went entrance, right?
    We did this every time.
    One evening, we were having dinner at home--
    my wife, grandmother, child, and myself--
    when there was a ring at the door.
    We opened.
    Mr. Greenman, reel three.
    Please continue with that incident.
    So there was a ring at the door, and a man in civilian clothes
    called upstairs, Mr. Greenman.
    I said yes.
    Sir, can I have a word with you?
    I said, yes, please come upstairs.
    So he came upstairs into our room.
    He says, tell me how does it come to be that you are--
    first of all, tell me.
    He said, what are you, British or Dutch?
    I said, I'm British.
    He said, well, how are you to walk as a free Englishman?
    I said, I'm waiting for papers from the Swiss consul
    so that we get--
    we get interned as a British subject.
    So would you mind coming to the police--
    alien police department?
    I said yes.
    I jumped up and put my coat.
    And he said, not now-- tomorrow morning at half past 9:00.
    I said, I'll be there.
    Oh, you can imagine the night, what kind of a night we passed.
    Because at that time, people were taken out of their homes
    and never came back again.
    Anyhow, I presented myself before half past 9:00
    in the main office of the alien police--
    police station in Rotterdam.
    I sat down there waiting, and in and out came
    German soldiers, SSers.
    And then at last I saw a man who I
    had seen before when I was registering before the war.
    His name is Inspector Roos, the chief inspector of the alien
    police, R-O-O-S.
    He took me into a room, my back towards the door.
    And he sat there, and I was here.
    And he said, tell me, how do you come to be walking about here?
    I said, what do you mean?
    He says, what nationality are you?
    I said, I'm British.
    I said, you know, I've been registering.
    He said, let me tell you something.
    I know you're British, but I'm not
    going up to the wall for you.
    I can only stamp you now as a Dutchman, a Dutch Jew.
    He said, tell me, what did your father do during
    the '14-'18 war?
    My father was in the intelligence service
    in '14-'18 war when I was a nipper.
    I didn't know much about it.
    Slightly remember something, but '14-'18 war.
    I said, I don't know.
    He said, you Jews always crawl around the questions
    when we ask you.
    Then I knew I had the wrong man in front of me.
    So he said, now you can go home.
    I came home at half past 12:00.
    Wife, child, old lady there crying and waiting.
    All right.
    A few months after that, we were taken away.
    A ring at the door in the evening, round about 20
    past 10:00, half past 10:00.
    Child was asleep.
    We were whispering.
    Before you come to that, can you talk some more
    about your life in Rotterdam under the Germans?
    Yes.
    You wearing your yellow star were obvious, of course.
    How were you treated then by fellow Dutch people?
    I don't mean, these people in the high positions who appear
    to have been collaborators.
    I mean ordinary Dutch people.
    How was their attitude?
    I got several examples of them.
    Let me think of one.
    I had friends who I used to see very often, very often.
    As a matter of fact, there's some
    was in the same singing class as myself.
    Of course, I went to the Academy of Singing to study singing.
    So did he.
    I used to be home at their place often.
    One day, we visit, myself, my wife, and the child.
    We brought our cash to those people, all our cash to save.
    Why?
    Well, we were sensing we got no help from anybody, so our turn
    would come to be taken away.
    And while I was there talking to them, the lady said,
    Mr. Greenman, if you should happen to go away,
    you bring your child to us.
    We will look after your child until you get back.
    I said, well, that's very nice.
    When we got back home, we talked about it.
    We never would have done it.
    We never would have done it.
    We loved that child too much.
    And as fate would have it, Some time later I went to the house,
    and I said you remember you asked,
    you told me you would look after our child.
    Oh, she said, we talked it over with my husband,
    and we'd rather not do that.
    OK.
    Another occasion where I was living,
    I was living on the first floor.
    On the second floor, there were a husband and wife.
    He worked for the Spanish consul.
    She was a funny kind of woman.
    And on the king's birthday, I used to hang out
    the Union Jack in our street.
    That's the way I felt.
    During the occupation, it was the king's birthday that day,
    Sunday.
    And I didn't put a Union Jack out.
    I was getting scared now.
    I didn't know which way to turn or what to turn.
    I was thinking of my wife and child,
    and I didn't trust the Germans whatsoever,
    if I even couldn't trust the police and all that.
    So when I came down the stairs or up the stairs,
    the lady was just coming down.
    She said, oh, Mr. Greenman, no flag out today?
    It's the king's birthday.
    Oh, you're against us all right.
    I said, I'm sorry, but the flag was dirty,
    and it's in the washing.
    I got out of it that way.
    I never trusted her again.
    Luckily, she moved away.
    I had better neighbor's coming in then, better neighbors who
    let me, listen to the radio BBC broadcast,
    the news, which I later brought around to my Jewish friends,
    and he was very kind to us.
    Well, we didn't trust--
    I didn't trust my people anymore, my friends.
    I had to be very careful with whom I went around.
    I remember there was a young man behind the bookstall
    on the market.
    And I used to go to him and tell the news of the BBC.
    Before the war I knew him, and we used to do business.
    And then one day said, you've got to be careful.
    He is on the wrong side.
    So I didn't go to him no more.
    Who said that?
    Some other people who I knew, friends.
    Later on, I got to know that he was courting a fascist girl,
    and he was on her side.
    He's no more.
    Other incidents, we were not allowed to get into the trams.
    So I walked miles to other little places
    around Rotterdam, see if I could earn something.
    My book trade was gone.
    I went from door to door, trying to sell remnants of silk,
    but only at Jewish doors.
    We were not to mix with non-Jews anymore.
    Couldn't get into a tram.
    I said, no pictures, no parks, nothing.
    We were on our own.
    How about food and shopping?
    Food went-- right, we had coupons to buy food.
    There wasn't enough for this and not enough of that.
    So we only could get--
    and we could only shop between certain hours that day.
    If you found yourself in a shop after a time and somebody gave
    you away, you went to a camp.
    So I always tried to do the right things,
    in the background always my wife and child.
    Did you have the same rationing coupons
    as non-Jewish Dutch people?
    Yes, we did, the same ration.
    How did you find that people whom you didn't know,
    such as shopkeepers, treated you?
    I didn't take a lot of notice of that.
    We didn't-- there was no--
    I don't think I came across shopkeepers
    who refused or said anything.
    No, I think-- it could have happened in other towns that
    weren't bombed, but the Rotterdam people
    were full of hate at what Germans
    have done to their town.
    Of course, only the fascist-minded people, and you
    never knew who they were.
    But on the whole, we didn't trust anybody anymore.
    To what extent were you and your family still able
    to follow Jewish religious practices?
    The synagogues were bombed.
    So we had our services in one another's homes.
    Already I didn't participate in services.
    I probably was in a quarrel with God
    to have those things done to us.
    Others did attend services at rabbis' homes
    or whatever it was.
    I had some very Orthodox friends, Jewish friends.
    And one particular very Orthodox Jewish friend
    of mine living near us, who we used to visit every Sabbath,
    just have a chat, the wife and child,
    and I remember him coming to me one day on the street,
    walking to me.
    He said, I've just come from the rabbi,
    and he was informed by the German authority
    that the Jews wouldn't come to any harm.
    I said, well, I hope you're right,
    but I can't think different.
    Well, this man was taken away with his wife
    and two of the three daughters.
    Never came back.
    His third daughter wasn't home at the time.
    Third daughter went underground when she
    heard her family taken away.
    I found her after the war.
    She's still alive but is a very, very nervous person.
    Other Jewish friends, one at a time, two at a time they went.
    I used to visit them during the day.
    Then I went around the next morning,
    and neighbors said they'd been taken away until the day came
    that we were taken away.
    Before you tell me about that, were there
    occasions on which you would have been required
    to use the Heil Hitler greeting when meeting officials
    or seeing someone in the street?
    No.
    I don't think we had to hail our hands.
    We didn't do that.
    But whenever we were out with our child in the pram
    or walking with the child and an SS
    used to put his hand on the little blonde baby
    as he passed by, I used to spit on the street
    in my way out of hate.
    Did they respond?
    No, we did it when they passed by, you see.
    Otherwise, we'd have been taken away or something like that.
    Yeah.
    But in the meantime, a lot of things were going on.
    People were rounded up from the streets and so on.
    We kept as much--
    I kept as much as possible out of the hands of the Germans.
    What did you know about what was happening to those people who
    were rounded up?
    Well, come to think of it, they were taken to Westerbork.
    We heard they were taken to Westerbork.
    Or Vught or Amersfoort.
    There were three camps.
    Amersfoort and Vught were concentration camps,
    but Westerbork was a camp where people passed through.
    We heard that people were sent away,
    but we never knew or thought that bad things were
    being done to them.
    The only thing is we hated to work for the Germans
    or to be sent away.
    The least thing that in papers was said,
    listen you're not allowed to do or you
    will be sent to Mauthausen.
    And the word Mauthausen filled us with fear.
    Why?
    Well, we heard rumors, it were hard work and so on.
    And now I come to think in my mind,
    I came home one afternoon from my walking
    around the town or visiting people.
    And my wife had a funny look on her face.
    And I said, what's the matter?
    What's up?
    She said, I've been talking to friends,
    and I heard that they were going to gas the people.
    We Jews are going to be gassed in the camps.
    I said, don't be silly.
    Gassed?
    And I only thought that of a gas where
    you boil a kettle of water.
    I said, don't be silly.
    Why should they do that to us?
    We're healthy.
    We're young.
    We work.
    Anyhow, she agreed somehow.
    She wasn't far from the truth, because we didn't know.
    No, we know that now.
    But how had she heard that then?
    She heard it from some people she used to visit.
    I don't know who.
    Probably something leaked out, but we didn't want to know.
    We didn't want to hear.
    I remember listening before the war, before the invasion.
    On the radio, I heard somebody talk.
    He had been in a concentration camp,
    and he was willfully filled by tube in his stomach
    with water because he had stolen some food.
    I remember hearing that, and I said, did you hear that?
    I don't believe him.
    It's a terrible thing.
    I don't think people would do that.
    You see, we didn't believe the bad things.
    When one speaks to Germans who were in Germany at that time,
    as you know, they frequently say they knew nothing
    about the camps.
    So I'm very interested to know what
    it was you knew, what it was people could know.
    Well, we did not know--
    well, I did not know, and there's
    a lot of people, what was really going on in the camps.
    We absolutely thought we were going there to work.
    What could it be?
    Work in factories, on the fields?
    What could it be?
    We had to go to work.
    The thought never came into our mind,
    where are those thousands of us going to?
    What kind of work?
    It never came into our minds.
    To what extent did you know anything
    about resistance or underground movements?
    None whatsoever.
    Was this because you didn't really wish to,
    or you weren't able to find out?
    I didn't know about underground.
    It come to my mind, someone said, can't you get away?
    How could I get away with a wife and child and an old lady?
    So it never came into my mind to resist in that way.
    And still I was backing, in the back of my mind,
    my British nationality papers.
    I thought I had this.
    That was an ace for me against the Germans.
    The only thing I did was listen to the BBC news every evening.
    This presumably was banned.
    Yes, we had no radio.
    The Jews had to give up their radios.
    I remember staying in the queue with my radio,
    and the radios had to be playing.
    You couldn't give an old broken down one.
    I put mine down.
    I had to stand back, and I saw the hand
    pointing towards the BBC from the evening before.
    I'd forgotten to switch over.
    And as the man, the policeman switched on,
    I took a step forward, and got hold of the thing,
    and turned it the other way.
    God knows what would it said "here's the BBC" or something
    like that.
    It saved me.
    That's what happened.
    You had mentioned your upstairs neighbors listened to the BBC
    and let you listen.
    Were they allowed to listen to the BBC?
    At that time, no.
    Well, you were not allowed to listen to the BBC in any case.
    But later on, the non-Jews also had to give up their radios.
    So they were without news.
    The only news they got then from the underground,
    I daresay, or buy papers and all that.
    That's the only thing I did because this alien policeman,
    this inspector Roos, he told me, who are you
    mixing with with your friends?
    What do you do I says, I don't know anything.
    So--
    And then the door opened behind me.
    And he looked up, and then the door closed again.
    And he talked again with me.
    It was the wrong man.
    After the war, if I can mention it now,
    I came to Holland for a holiday, and I
    stayed with my nephew, who also was in the Westerbork camp,
    but his life was saved because of the Canadians
    had cut the railways.
    They couldn't go out anymore.
    And he told me during a meal, he said,
    uncle, a very good friend of yours has died.
    I said, who is it?
    He said Inspector Roos.
    I said, God love a duck.
    I says, that's the man who sent us away,
    who didn't want to cooperate with us.
    I would like to have told him what I thought of him.
    And it was early evening, this was.
    I'm going.
    I'm going to the police station.
    I want to make sure.
    I took my passport.
    I went to the police station.
    I came in the department of alien police.
    There's a man sitting there, a detective, I daresay.
    I showed him my passport.
    The pass has got a lot of gold on it, you know.
    I says, am I too late?
    It's gone 5:00.
    He said, no, come in.
    I said, this is the first time I come
    into this place with a smile.
    He looked at me like I'm mad.
    He said, what do you mean?
    I said I've just heard about half an hour
    ago that one of your officers had died,
    and I would like to have told him what I thought of him.
    He said, what's this then?
    Who is it?
    The way they talk, the police.
    I said, it's Inspector Roos.
    He said, he went home half an hour ago.
    He's not dead.
    I said, is he?
    I said, oh, well, then the day will come when I see him.
    He said, well, you tell me what it's all about.
    So I said to him that and that, and he told me
    he wasn't going up against the wall for me.
    And he was one of the causes killing my wife and child.
    So I said, I'd like to see him.
    He said, well, he lives down there in Rotterdam.
    I said, I'll go and see him.
    I said, and there's another one I'm looking for.
    He said, who's that?
    I said Kurt Schlesinger from Westerbork camp.
    Yes, you'll be telling me more about him later.
    I did see Inspector Roos the next day.
    I went to his house.
    I rang the bell, and the woman next door, neighbor, she said,
    they're not in.
    They're on holiday.
    When are they coming back?
    The next day.
    I went back again the next day.
    I knocked at the door, and a lady opened the door, big lady.
    Yes?
    I says, can I see Inspector Roos?
    Who are you?
    I said, I'm Mr. Greenman.
    Well, then a man came behind, from behind her
    through the passage, and he looked.
    She says, a Mr. Greenman to you.
    He said, Greenman?
    Greenman?
    I said, yes, inspector.
    There's only one Greenman in Rotterdam, and it is so.
    Oh, oh.
    Come in.
    She took me in, into his room.
    A lot of brass, his collection of brass.
    So what can I do for you?
    I said, I come here to shoot you.
    Eh?
    What do you mean?
    I said, if I had a gun, I would shoot you.
    I said, because I'm in a temper.
    Hey, what's it all about?
    He said, you can't take the law in your own hands.
    I says, you remember?
    I was called to your office, and we talked.
    And you said you wasn't going to put me up
    against the wall-- you weren't going
    to go up to the wall for me.
    You knew I was British, but you let me go away.
    My wife and child, because of you they died.
    I couldn't help you, he said.
    I couldn't help you, he said.
    I helped other Jews, but I couldn't help you.
    He said, I myself, I went into prison because I helped Jews.
    I said, your fault one of the people--
    the cause of my wife's death.
    I talked to him for over an hour.
    I said, sir, if I had a gun, I would shoot you
    because that's the way I feel.
    Well, you mustn't do that.
    You mustn't do that.
    Then I got up.
    He helped me put my coat on.
    He said, don't take the law in your own hands.
    Forget about us.
    I says, I'll never forget, and I walked out.
    I'm not a murderer.
    And if I would have shot, I wouldn't
    have been sorry about it.
    And it's always been me.
    So also with [? Proullet, ?] consul of Switzerland.
    He didn't help me.
    The man in the town hall in Rotterdam, he wasn't with me.
    When you went back to the Dutch alien police
    on this post-war visit and you told them about Inspector Roos,
    what was their response?
    Nothing, nothing.
    Nothing.
    Didn't say nothing.
    I only had his address, and I went to him.
    Is he still alive?
    I dare say I didn't hear that he died.
    You see, it hurts me very much to see those people.
    I'm so afraid that I will lose my temper
    and start using camp methods, kicking and hitting.
    I would like to do it.
    I'd probably feel better for it.
    I would like to revenge my wife and child.
    I mustn't.
    So also with Kurt Schlesinger.
    Before you tell me about your own deportation,
    still on the life under German occupation in Holland,
    to what extent did the Jewish community
    try to advise or help or organize
    Jewish people in Rotterdam?
    Well, we had what we called the Joodse Raad.
    It was a council of Jews who were told by the Germans
    to form a committee and see that the Jews are registered
    so that we can send them to Westerbork and to Auschwitz.
    Often I thought that they were wrong,
    that they were not helping.
    But come to think of it, each one of them,
    like myself and many others, were
    holding on to a piece of straw for life.
    They must have thought, we've got to do that job.
    We got to raise and send them away.
    The war might not last so long.
    And while I'm doing it, I'm alive.
    I'm here.
    Of course, in turn, they had to go as well.
    Some of them said they were not doing
    what they ought to have done.
    They could have said, well, we don't do that.
    We're not cooperating.
    Then they would have been grabbed and sent sooner away,
    I dare say, by the Germans.
    You see, to me, they were frightened,
    like we all were frightened, and that's why they did that job.
    You could say, well, why didn't they say no?
    I don't know.
    I probably would have had other people doing it.
    But then again, my answer is, that's
    the beginning of the rope.
    But at the end of the rope, why didn't the Allies
    bomb the railways so that the trains couldn't
    go from Holland, from Belgium, from France?
    Leon Greenman, reel four.
    You had a few more things to tell us about this period.
    Can you tell me about the airplane that was shot down?
    Well, for one afternoon, the airplane-- a couple--
    some airplanes came very low in across Rotterdam, and--
    German planes.
    German planes.
    No, no, English planes they were.
    English planes very low, they were.
    I didn't think they dropped bombs.
    I didn't.
    They were taking pictures or something.
    And we were surprised because we heard the sound, and whoosh,
    very low.
    And then I rushed out on the street.
    I said to my wife, I'm going to have a look.
    They must have landed somewhere there.
    So I walked down the turning and another turning,
    and yeah, then I heard it had come down in the Noordsingel.
    That's a small brook in Rotterdam
    just outside the main prison in Rotterdam.
    It had been shot down or it had landed?
    It was shot down.
    It landed.
    The pilot was dead, I heard.
    And I couldn't get very near to it
    because as I was trying to get near to it,
    a lot of people, a truck come along filled with SS soldiers.
    And I thought best not to push my way through
    but to get back home.
    But now there's a memorial stone in front of the place.
    It got stuck in the mud, plane and all that.
    The pilot was wounded, as I said, killed.
    And there's only a stone memorial outside the spot
    where it came down.
    But other incidents in Rotterdam, there were several,
    you see.
    What can I think of?
    You couldn't talk to anybody.
    You didn't trust them.
    You only went to visiting your Jewish people.
    I spent some hours with them, or they came to your home.
    For instance, I had Jewish friends not living far from me.
    They came to my home, and we played table billiards.
    And then I went to their home.
    We played cards.
    They were taken away before me.
    We heard from time to time, nearly every day,
    acquaintances were taken away.
    We didn't see them anymore.
    And this lack of trust and your relationship
    with the various Dutch people you've mentioned--
    Yes.
    Were you surprised by their behavior
    under German occupation?
    Or was it what you would expect?
    Well their town, our town was wounded very much,
    and we were hurt.
    And I would say 9 out of 10 Dutchmen hated the
    Germans for it.
    The one must have been a co-operative
    or a fascist-minded.
    But though you did explain they hated the Germans,
    they seem to have been hostile--
    To the Jews.
    Towards you.
    Or would the fact that you were an Englishman make it worse?
    No, no.
    Not everybody knew about me.
    That was only the close friends in my circle
    knew that I was English, and I didn't
    notice any trouble in that way.
    Well, I mixed as long as possible
    with the non-Jewish people as well.
    We went visiting them until we were not allowed to mix anymore
    with non-Jewish people.
    And in the meantime, I was waiting for the actual papers
    from the British-- from the Swiss consul,
    which didn't arrive.
    When would this have been that the British reconnaissance
    plane was shot down?
    Well, I should say it was 19--
    it wasn't a summer day.
    1942, beginning '42, somewhere around April, May,
    I should say.
    Somewhere around that.
    Tell me about the Allied bombing of Rotterdam.
    Oh, the Allied bombing.
    That was a good thing, we thought.
    Because I remember I heard it on the--
    we still had the radio then.
    Well, we heard it from other people, the bridge was bombed.
    So I went out.
    It's a long way from where I lived.
    And then I imagined part of the bridge was slanted.
    It wasn't so.
    But it was medicine to me, you know.
    Oh, a little more in the middle, and the lot
    would have been gone.
    That's how we thought.
    You mean it was bombed, but they hadn't succeeded.
    No, the bomb-- the bomb must have just gone off it.
    Other incidents was the Allies were
    bombing Rotterdam, the part in Rotterdam where a school--
    the school where the German SS were, the SS were living.
    And it was somewhere near a square,
    in another square friends were living of mine there.
    Well, they started bombing about 8 o'clock.
    And I know we, myself, my wife, the old lady and child,
    we went downstairs and stood at the bottom near the stairs.
    So if the house would have been bombed,
    then we would have been in the street or something.
    And we waited there, and it took hours
    before the bombing stopped.
    And we thought, well, I'll go out.
    I went outside the steps of the house,
    and people come and rushing through.
    I said, where's the bombing?
    And they said there and there and there.
    I said, oh, well.
    I said to my wife, I must go and have a look.
    All my friends are living there.
    Something happened.
    I must help.
    So I went.
    You're not allowed in the street at that time,
    but anyhow I went.
    It was around 12:00, and there he was.
    The son and father was nailing wooden planks
    up against the window.
    The glass was all smashed to pieces.
    They had missed.
    They had missed the school.
    School is still there.
    I went by every time.
    I went by last week.
    And I said, oh, give us the hammer and give us the nails.
    I'll help you.
    And I got along the wood, and I was knocking.
    And a bit of glass that high fell into my--
    see the scar here?
    Look.
    A glass about a foot long.
    Yes, stuck into it.
    Stuck into it.
    I pulled it out.
    I'm bleeding.
    And I went.
    I left him, and I went to the hospital.
    That hospital was partly bombed, partly was still there.
    And there's still a piece of the hospital standing there,
    the arch where I used to walk through.
    And about half past 2:00 I could go after they
    cleaned it and bandaged it up.
    I like that because the Royal Air Force did this.
    I'm proud of it.
    I'm silly, but I'm thinking like that.
    And that was that.
    What else was there?
    Oh, yes, laying in bed, and then the time
    when a thousand aeroplanes went out to Cologne.
    We were-- and we were listening, and it went on and on [BUZZING]
    all the time.
    Our blessings were with them, really.
    Every time we thought, well, they must give in now,
    it's over, it's over.
    But it wasn't.
    And sometimes--
    You had told me when you were in England in 1938,
    people were digging shelters in their gardens.
    Yes.
    What shelters did the Dutch people have?
    From what you've said, you didn't go to a shelter.
    You stayed in your house.
    I stayed in my house, yes.
    What about other people?
    I don't think there were any, come to think of it now.
    Let's see.
    There must have been, but I didn't make use of it.
    When I came back from the camp, I
    was told that an American, some group of American planes
    had tried to bomb Rotterdam near a harbor,
    and the bombs came on the other side of it
    and killed about 300 people.
    Whether they were in a dugout or--
    I don't know.
    I don't think so.
    Never came into my thought to go into hiding.
    No.
    No.
    What did the authorities do about the bombing?
    Well, clean up.
    We had to clean up the dead people,
    cleaning up the rubble of the big bombardment of Rotterdam
    by the Jerrys.
    And when the Allies came, there was only a few houses
    broken down or here and there bombed.
    I don't think it was really severe.
    Often I heard they bombed next to it
    or they didn't do enough and so on.
    Big things never happened.
    As long as I remember from '40 to '42,
    that's two years, about two years
    when I was still a free man.
    I didn't-- I didn't hear of a lot of really that things came
    down.
    No.
    No, I can't think of big things.
    The harbors were bombed now and then, but not much.
    With what sort of frequency was Rotterdam bombed?
    What, by the Allies or--
    Yes.
    By the Allies?
    I asked you that to know whether you
    were living every day thinking there were bombs
    or whether it was--
    No.
    Now--
    To you.
    Now and then, now and then they were bombed.
    Say, two or three times a week when they flew over,
    there was the anti-aircraft, the Germans shooting up at them.
    And we expected the next morning to find a lot of damage done,
    but I couldn't find a lot of damage.
    I didn't go far from home.
    Once or twice, but I didn't find a lot of damage.
    I remember going a little away from home,
    and I found an unexploded bomb as big as this table
    and half as high.
    About five feet long and--
    Yes, a tremendous big thing it was.
    It was laying there in the grass.
    It was supposed to have been dropped.
    It didn't go off.
    It's a very big thing.
    I don't know if it was real or not, but I stood next to it.
    I touched it.
    Gosh, I mean, it can go off.
    Maybe it-- maybe it didn't go off.
    I didn't hear more about it.
    Now, you have said that every day, practically every day you
    heard of friends or people you knew who were taken away.
    Yes.
    Jewish friends had been taken away.
    How had this come to happen?
    Were the Germans following a systematic pattern?
    Well, the registration, first of all, they knew where you lived.
    So the Dutch cooperating with the Germans,
    they went from house to house, going to the address.
    Knocked at the door, took out whoever was there, their names
    and even it must have been if that a non-Jew was found there,
    if they were found there, a non-Jewish neighbor
    or something, they were taken away as well.
    I remember when it happened to me.
    The upstairs neighbor, after I was talking loud to the people,
    we don't need to go, we don't want to go,
    we don't need to go because here's
    the papers of the consul.
    The two policemen there in black jackets,
    they said, you come along with us,
    and you can tell it all and show your papers
    to where we've taken you.
    Then the neighbor downstairs must have heard and came down
    and looked in the doorway, and as he stood in the room,
    and they didn't say nothing.
    And I remember one of the coppers,
    he looked over my books, stack of books.
    He must have taken a few out.
    And in the passage was a nice water painting of Rotterdam,
    1912, painted 1912.
    And he said, oh, I'll have that.
    I said, well, you'd better leave it because I'm coming back.
    It's my stock.
    It's my business.
    He said, well, when you come back.
    He said, if you come back, I'll give it back to you.
    I never saw it again.
    And I don't know the policeman.
    So those things were going on.
    Were these Dutch police?
    Dutch cooperating ones.
    Yes.
    Go back, then, to tell the story about your deportation.
    This was in October 1942.
    Because people were disappearing all the time,
    you must have known it might happen to you.
    Did you and your wife make preparations?
    Yes.
    We got a list from the Jewish Joodse Raad.
    Everybody got a list, and on the list
    was so much you've got to take along,
    all types of medicines, bandages, pills, tablets,
    blanket, and anything you can use for a cold country.
    You have to take it along.
    The Germans were clever in this, because those thousands of Jews
    took that along with them.
    Can you imagine thousands of articles in medicine?
    When they arrived in Birkenau, they were killed,
    but the medicine went onto the table, and the people
    in the camp that were wounded by the work, prisoners,
    they had to be seen to buy the medicine.
    So they used that medicine and things
    until there was no medicine anymore.
    So they very clever, that.
    So we were ready for it.
    We were ready because we felt it was hopeless.
    Nobody was helping us, even the British--
    the Swiss consul was waiting for it.
    So I got a last call-up, and we had to go.
    Yes, so this is how it happens.
    I get dressed.
    The baby was standing up in his cot.
    Didn't know what was going on.
    After all, half past 10:00.
    This was at night.
    At night.
    The 8th of October, 1942.
    We usually went to bed early.
    There was nothing else to do.
    We're still in bed, child together asleep.
    And then we fell asleep and wait for the next day.
    So that evening, we weren't quite asleep.
    We were still talking, and the bell rang.
    I jumped out of bed, got onto the landing,
    pulled open the door.
    And two men stood there in the doorway, shining a torch.
    Greenman?
    Yes.
    And he stormed up the stairs.
    He said, get dressed.
    Come along with us.
    And within seconds, they were in the room.
    I said, what for?
    Why?
    How?
    I surmised, of course, because I've heard it.
    I've seen it.
    So I said, I don't need to go.
    Look, there's all the letters from the consul,
    and I'm waiting for my passports.
    They didn't want to hear.
    How did they identify themselves?
    Well, they didn't.
    I guess they knew that we had already known.
    I had not seen a policeman go into a Jewish home
    and take the people out because they
    would have taken me as well.
    I have seen Jewish families who had only a paper.
    You got to present yourself there,
    and they had to walk there to assemble.
    Yes, they came up and saw that we
    were dressed and taking our bundle and get into a coach.
    The coach went from street to street.
    It was getting off at half past 1:00, if I remember.
    The coach was full, about 40, 50 people in there.
    Pillowcases with stuff in it or whatever, blankets
    and all that.
    And there was a young SS fellow, about 17, 18, big fellow.
    And when we arrived at the assembly part
    on the other side of the river in Rotterdam,
    a big, very big hut filled with many, many Jews.
    So the coach stopped.
    Door opened, and we had to get out.
    German-- raus!
    So we got up, the old ones, the young ones, all had to get out.
    And he got hold of the luggage, threw it out.
    And my wife's standing with the baby,
    and I was standing there, and the old lady.
    And I told him myself, if you dare to touch my child,
    you're not finished yet, boy.
    Luckily, he didn't touch us.
    We got out, and he threw our luggage out after us.
    How much luggage did you have with you?
    Well, we had each a blanket and a pillowcase with the medicines
    and whatever we had to take along--
    bandages, so on.
    Clothes?
    Clothes, we had our best clothes on.
    We're going to a cold country, so we had our best clothes on.
    And it was October.
    We only were allowed to take so much, so much.
    No more.
    And it meant only carrying--
    well we got with it--
    Nappies and food for the baby?
    Well, maybe a little food for the baby, and probably
    a nappy--
    well, he's 2 and 1/2.
    I don't think he had nappies at 2 and 1/2.
    I don't think so.
    Because I remember we gave a load of nappies
    to friends of ours who was expecting a child.
    Yes.
    So we got in there, in a big shed, and we waited.
    And there were a row of [? SSers ?]
    behind desks standing.
    So I went up, and I showed them papers,
    I'm British, my birth certificate and papers
    from the consul.
    And they said, stand over there.
    Wait, wait, wait.
    What can I do?
    Thousands of us, there were people I knew,
    people I didn't know.
    And then on the 10th, just the second day we were there,
    we were loaded into trains on way to Westerbork.
    Well, we arrived at Hooghalen.
    Hooghalen is a little way, about a mile or so away
    from Westerbork camp.
    Before you tell me about that, you were then two days
    at that reception center.
    Yes.
    As we call it.
    Yes, reception.
    Yes.
    What was going on then?
    Well, not much.
    You had whatever you had with you,
    and people were sitting there with their head in their hands
    and all this sad-looking faces, children, families,
    and running about and then sitting down and trying to get
    some sleep or whatever it was.
    We didn't know what to do.
    Did they have facilities for preparing meals?
    No, no, no, no, not there.
    Without beds?
    No, you were not meant to be there a long time.
    Two or three days, and then you were sent on.
    Then you were sent on.
    Those who probably stayed on, like a nephew of mine who
    was a barber who stayed on, and he tried to cling on to life
    by shaving people, probably they brought something in to eat
    or something.
    But I wasn't there then.
    I wasn't there.
    What sort of emotional atmosphere
    would there have been?
    Terrible, terrible, to see the faces, sad.
    We couldn't help one another.
    I was just thinking about my British nationality.
    We couldn't do nothing about it.
    We couldn't get out.
    We couldn't escape.
    How could I escape?
    I had a wife and child and an old lady with me.
    No, it was just a hopeless lot, a forsaken folk.
    Did people try to escape?
    Some of them did get out somehow.
    I daresay one or two.
    I didn't-- I didn't often hear it.
    When I got back, probably I heard one or two,
    but I don't know.
    I don't think so.
    They must have been very clear in the head and all
    that to chance it so that the SS didn't you or something.
    But I didn't try those things.
    Who were guarding you?
    SS and Dutch police.
    Yeah.
    Did they speak to you?
    No, they didn't speak at this point.
    No, we were a forsaken lot.
    Forsaken.
    There's no one to help, no one to turn to.
    Just wait.
    Sit or lay and wait.
    Well, the second day, we were pushed into trains.
    There were still trains then.
    And on our way to Westerbork, as I said.
    Were you told where you were going?
    No.
    We surmised.
    We thought.
    And we got at Hooghalen.
    Hooghalen has no rails for Hooghalen to Westerbork camp.
    About a mile long.
    There was no rails.
    The rails were made while I was there.
    I see the men still fixing the rails.
    So later on, you could get with the train right near the camp.
    But when we come there, we had to walk through the mud,
    and it's pouring rain, pouring rain.
    Imagine about 1,000 people there walking all by, old and young.
    Some couldn't even properly walk.
    Well, myself, my wife, and child--
    my wife had the child.
    So I took her blanket and her things,
    and we walked until we got into the camp, into a shed.
    And you wait.
    And then you registered there again.
    Your name goes on a card, and birth, religion.
    Well, they know your religion.
    And then you wait again.
    And then you're sorted out and get into a barrack.
    And did you at this point bring up
    the subject of your British nationality?
    Every time, every time.
    Born in London.
    So there were others--
    British-Dutch, American-Dutch.
    And we were put at the beginning in a barrack
    for those double nationalities.
    So the English and Dutch went into one barrack.
    Can you describe the Westerbork camp, please?
    Well, at that time, it's a big piece
    of ground with wooden huts.
    Were they made specially for the camp or were they already
    there, school or something?
    Yes.
    Way back in 1934 or '33, when I told you
    I refused to sign the paper for the German Jews
    to come into Holland, the German Jews did come into Holland.
    And this camp was made for about 1,000 German Jews.
    So they fixed and built the barracks.
    Later on, they were the boss of us,
    and the Dutch Jews were into the barracks.
    What had happened to the German Jews?
    They were still there.
    They had very, very good positions,
    cooks in the kitchen, in the administration work, and so on.
    And already there was a hate because they were very bossy.
    And as I read lately, lately why they were bad
    for us is because they thought when they came
    into Holland in 1934, '33, that they would have
    had a better life and organization and a better way
    than to live in barracks.
    So this time they turned the roles around.
    I remember there was fighting going on
    and cursing and bad words.
    And--
    Could you describe the layout of the camp?
    Rows of-- rows of barracks.
    That's all I know.
    In between the barracks you could walk.
    There was a washing where a lot of the washing could be done.
    There was a small locomotive with train
    going through the camp for carrying things,
    baskets or whatever it was.
    There was a kitchen, of course, where cooking
    was done for the prisoners.
    And we all had barracks, and we had one, two layers
    on top of one another.
    Those were iron bunks.
    Later on in the concentration camp were wooden bunks,
    but these were iron with a mattress
    and a cushion and a blanket.
    Were they segregated by sex?
    Yes, women and men were separated.
    My wife went with the women in the barrack,
    and then a little way you had the barrack for the men.
    After 9:00, half past 9:00, the men had to leave the barracks
    and leave the wives alone and get into their own barracks.
    In the morning, you couldn't get in till about 10:00,
    half past 10:00 when the women had finished washing.
    Then you could mix.
    You mixed outside or inside a barrack.
    I remained in my barrack, at the beginning.
    So we all sorted out then, and everybody's got to work,
    especially the men have got to work.
    Mr. Greenman, reel 5.
    You said they wanted you to work.
    What was the work?
    Well, I found out what work.
    Any work I didn't want to do it.
    I didn't want no work at all.
    But they sent me the first day with a group
    of Dutch Jews, men, to outside Westerbork camp.
    And when we arrived there, we had
    to unload trucks of stones, bricks.
    What was happening, they were building a barrack for the SS.
    And I did this a few hours in my way.
    I thought to myself, I made up my mind.
    I'm not going to do this tomorrow.
    So when that day was over, we marched back to the camp.
    And there was a kind of labor exchange,
    a bureau where you could ask about work and all that.
    And I spoke to the chief.
    I said, I'm not going to--
    I'm not going out to camp tomorrow.
    I'm not going to work for the Germans.
    I'm British and I don't want to work.
    He said, well, you got to work.
    Everybody works here.
    So I thought, well, if I don't work,
    what are my own mates next to me going to say?
    You're not working.
    We got to work.
    Whether it's inside the camp or outside the camp,
    you've got to work.
    I said, all right.
    They're going to make me [NON-ENGLISH],,
    which means one who gets food for the--
    I said [NON-ENGLISH] for the British barrack.
    I think it was barrack 69 or 68, 67.
    That's all, right you do that.
    That meant that I got up in the morning, or someone woke me up.
    I usually go on myself, say about 4:00 to 5:00
    to be in the kitchen to get milk for the children.
    So you went to the kitchen, and a metal container
    filled with milk, and you took it to the barrack.
    And you gave it there and they sorted it out for the kids.
    Then about 8 o'clock, you went again
    and you came back with some tea or coffee and bread.
    Bread, it was very scarce.
    Bread must have been something else to eat.
    Then at midday, half past 12:00, you
    went again, and in the evening.
    The soup-- usually it was soup or goulash, or something
    like that, or cabbage.
    Food wasn't too bad.
    But there were too many people, so there
    was one or two occasions where there was not enough food.
    On the whole, we could eat more.
    There wasn't enough.
    For instance, we had a chance to send GIRO forms
    to people who you left behind, in my case my neighbors.
    And you put on there, please send me
    that food or this, or repair batteries for the torch,
    or whatever it was.
    So I asked them to send me some food.
    So my neighbor used to send me glass jars with brown beans.
    It's nice like Heinz baked beans,
    but these are the Dutch ones.
    And more than once or twice, the packets arrived
    and the glass was broken, so we had to throw it away.
    But if they did arrive, you sat on a table
    with eight, of wooden tables, and you share it out,
    even if you didn't know who it was.
    But you got to know them people and you share them out.
    I remember there were three brothers there who were later
    interned-- old friends of mine-- interned
    because by chance, they had their passports
    and the SS okayed that.
    So for the while being, they were in prison in Westerbork,
    but they went later on to be interned.
    They came back.
    There was only two alive, I think now.
    And they had loaves of bread, small ones,
    and they're eating it.
    I'm blooming hungry, and the kid, and we haven't got enough.
    So I said, if you give me bread, I
    said, as soon as my passport comes in, you'll get it back.
    And they gave me a small loaf.
    And as it happened, I had a niece in Amsterdam--
    who also was sent away later on, didn't come back--
    who sent me two long loaves of bread.
    Beautiful.
    And a loaf of bread you could buy the black market
    inside the camp.
    How they got it, I don't know.
    About 10 pounds at a time, more than that.
    So I opened the parcel and two of those loaves are out.
    And everybody's looking.
    So I thought to myself, I'll keep my promise.
    They gave me bread.
    And they didn't have to have it, but I gave it to them
    and they accepted it all.
    So we had this loaf of bread, I remember.
    Well, time went by.
    You were in barracks with other--
    British.
    British-Dutch--
    British-Dutch, yes.
    --people.
    About how many would that have been?
    Oh, about 100 or so.
    Yes.
    And were you kept separate from the other people in the camp?
    We were kept separate.
    We slept separate.
    The Dutch-Jews were in our barracks,
    but you could mix one another.
    But when nighttime came you went,
    you found your own barrack because you
    was registered at that barrack.
    So you had to do with the British-Dutch.
    Was the camp crowded or did they only take as many people
    as there was room for?
    Once or twice, Westerbork was overcrowded, I remember.
    Everybody was cursing and this and that.
    Sleep was bad.
    Rowing went on.
    My poor wife and kid suffered a lot through that.
    My wife wasn't there, not one of them.
    Yet some were rowing one another.
    Anyhow--
    Because it was an English, British-Dutch barracks,
    did you speak English?
    I spoke English.
    I even gave conversation English to about half a dozen
    or eight British-Dutch who didn't talk English, only
    were born in England, that went straight away to Holland
    like by myself.
    And the Berlitz Method, I was telling them
    how to pronounce it, in case the British come in.
    And they won't take long.
    Boy, a couple of months and the British come here.
    They know what to talk about.
    That's how we thought.
    And probably that went around, that this fellow
    is teaching English there.
    Probably I would not have done it, but I did.
    So that went on for October right up to Christmas.
    In between, there was a little bit of variety
    now and then in the barracks, which I did not enjoy.
    My feelings in there were not for laughing and singing.
    My child became very ill.
    Went into the child's hospital barrack and became
    very skinny, very thin.
    What was the problem?
    He had something in the ear.
    We only could see him through the window.
    Little champ.
    They were so thin, his legs, like legs from a table.
    Must have had a temperature and all that.
    Anyhow, it probably saved us a few weeks
    from not being sent away sooner.
    In the meantime, my father was picked up in Rotterdam
    with 200 Dutch men and sent to Westerbork.
    I'd made myself a nuisance by speaking to Kurt Schlesinger.
    When are we going to be interned?
    We're British subjects.
    Didn't hear.
    Can you tell me about Schlesinger?
    Who was he?
    Schlesinger was a German-Jew.
    He was born in Gelsenkirchen in Germany.
    And he was the chief inside the camp.
    He was the Hitler inside the camp.
    He was the head that gave the orders, and of course, a few
    of the others surrounding him.
    He used to wear Wellingtons, walk through the camp.
    And he was a nasty man, as one can read now--
    with what I've said years ago, he was a bad man--
    in the books coming out recently.
    For instance, my father was picked up with 200 men
    from Rotterdam and sent to Westerbork.
    I was awakened by one of the maids.
    Leon Greenman, there's 200 Rotterdam men
    coming this morning.
    They're in the barrack down there.
    So I dressed and went.
    I thought to myself, my father might be there.
    Yes.
    I was not allowed to get in, so I climbed on to a window shelf,
    opened the light on the top, and shouted out, Barnard Greenman.
    And 200 men were there, talking and smoking and the noise.
    And they heard me, and my father came to the window.
    I said, Dad, don't leave the camp tomorrow morning.
    Stay in.
    I'll come and get you and I'll take you to Dr. Neuberger.
    Dr. Neuberger was a German Jew, a lawyer.
    And professor Alfred Myers, a well-known law man in Holland,
    one of the biggest and best--
    those two were trying to get my British papers.
    I said, they can do it for you.
    It never happened that way.
    They could not.
    They didn't succeed.
    So I was standing there, talking to my father
    when somebody pulled my leg.
    And I heard, who is this up there?
    Another voice said, this is the Englishman.
    That's the Englander.
    That was the assistant of Schlesinger
    and Schlesinger was with him.
    He said, come down, Schlesinger, he said,
    or I'll send you to Poland.
    I said, you can't send me to Poland
    because I'm waiting for my British papers.
    I said, and why can't I talk to my father who has just come in?
    And then he walked away.
    Well, the next morning, I took my father to Dr. Neuberger
    and explained it to him--
    Dr. Neuberger was presumably also
    an inmate, a prisoner at camp.
    Yes, a prisoner like myself.
    All prisoners in there, all Jewish.
    So he took particulars on my father
    and we stayed there in the camp.
    My father had a barrack.
    I had a barrack, where I was with my wife and child.
    So we saw one another every day until the day came.
    Yes, while father was outside yet, before he was taken in,
    we had a solicitor in Rotterdam, who so-called was trying
    to get us out of Westerbork.
    He never succeeded.
    Later on, I found out that he was an anti-Zionist,
    so he didn't help me.
    Stevens, his name is.
    Lives in Rotterdam.
    Stevens and others wanted a lot of money to see to it.
    It seemed like a lot of corruption, you know.
    So I did this in the camp, that type of work
    I did, getting the food for the people.
    And days went by.
    And so often a week, I went to find out if any of my papers
    had arrived.
    And I did see one letter, of which I got a copy, which says,
    so and so and so and so is to be held back
    and the question of agreement is under view.
    I was glad at last someone--
    Who was this letter from and to?
    From some authority out in Germany.
    Where from I don't know.
    I don't know exactly.
    But after that-- they told me that.
    After the war, I saw that letter and I had a copy made of it.
    I got a copy at home.
    But there was something ready for me.
    I had only a matter of time.
    So my child came out of hospital.
    He was still very ill.
    And all of a sudden one morning, about 2:00 in the morning,
    the lights went on in the barrack--
    of course in various barracks, but in my barrack.
    And there they called out a name.
    Some people had to be deported, Dutch-Jews, English-Dutch,
    everything.
    And it was Greenman, Leon; Greenman Barnard Van Dam;
    Esther Greenman, or Greenman Van Dam, Esther.
    I was surprised.
    Said, what could we do?
    We could do nothing.
    There was a man on the table calling these things out.
    He didn't mean nothing to me and he couldn't do nothing.
    The only thing is I had to get to Neuberger.
    I got dressed and I went out to Neuberger's office.
    Woke him up and told him, look, I got to go.
    They called me up.
    He couldn't understand it.
    He was also flabbergasted.
    So I went back and got my wife and child
    and waited till about 8:30, when you
    were let out of the barrack.
    Had other people been called the other night?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Did you know where they were going?
    To Auschwitz.
    That's the main word we heard, Auschwitz.
    Work.
    Work.
    And what did Auschwitz mean to you?
    Work.
    Work.
    I didn't think of people being killed, no.
    If you were healthy and strong, you could hold it.
    So half past 8:00 the next morning,
    we got out of the barrack.
    Everybody had to stay in otherwise.
    Only those that were called up had to walk to the gate
    and pass the gate into the trains.
    When was this?
    On the 17th or 18th, January 1943.
    I said to my wife, look.
    There's Schlesinger standing, talking to Hammeke.
    Hammeke was the SS commander outside the camp.
    We had to stay with the whole lot.
    But Schlesinger was his co-operative in camp.
    I said, there's Schlesinger talking to Hammeke.
    I says, Else, you walk on the side, the baby in your arm.
    I'll walk next to you.
    And when we get to Schlesinger, we'll stop.
    And you have to say to him, Mr. Schlesinger, we need not go.
    We need not be deported because our papers are on the way.
    We did that.
    We stopped.
    My wife said that.
    He looked at us and he looked at Hammeke.
    He said, that's been refused in The Hague.
    They got to go.
    That was the last word.
    Pass through the gates into the train.
    The doctors came by the trains and I showed my baby.
    Look, he's still ill, but he couldn't help me.
    Once in the train, you're finished.
    Right about half past, 10:00, quarter to 11:00, the train
    leaves over the border into Germany via Bremen.
    It's 36 hours journey to get into Birkenau.
    Would you describe the train, please?
    Train where we could still sit, covered.
    Not open trucks, but ordinary passengers train at that time
    yet.
    There were about eight of us in a compartment.
    I just want to record on this, the train left
    and we were on our way to Auschwitz.
    I didn't hear then of Birkenau.
    Nobody knew of Birkenau.
    When I came back from the camp, I
    knew that Birkenau and Auschwitz were two different things
    next to one another.
    But the people outside didn't know about Birkenau.
    When I said Birkenau, they didn't
    know what-- so every time a question came up,
    I said Auschwitz.
    Auschwitz.
    What did you have with you?
    We each had a blanket and pillowcase with some medicines.
    The same as before?
    As before.
    And my wife had made for herself and the child
    a sick cape with a pointed hat covering the shoulders halfway.
    We had very heavy velvet curtains.
    And she had cut them up and made one for the child and one
    for herself.
    What about food on the journey?
    No.
    I don't remember.
    There was no water, no food for the kids,
    although they said a wagon has gone along with food,
    but we didn't get it.
    But I just want to trace back that when Schlesinger said,
    they got to go--
    when he got back to his office, say 11 o'clock,
    and he opened his morning mail, he found papers in there
    that I, wife, and child should be--
    what do you call it?
    I forgot the word now.
    What's the word?
    Mean that you should be kept behind and not deported.
    Not deported and that I would have been under Red Cross
    protection.
    Interned.
    Interned.
    How do I know that?
    Well, I was in Auschwitz, see--
    February, March.
    January, February, March.
    March, April, May, June.
    June.
    Summer months I was in Auschwitz.
    A very warm day.
    The windows were open, the barrack where I was.
    I'd been shaving people, I think.
    And somebody outside called, hey, Leon, come outside.
    Somebody wants to meet you.
    So I came outside and I met a man.
    And he introduced himself as Mr. Jacobson from Westerbork.
    He had been sent also to Auschwitz.
    But he had worked on the administration.
    And he said, Mr. Greenman, you're a very unlucky man.
    I said, why?
    What now?
    What have I done now?
    No, he says.
    Your train had left a quarter of an hour, 20 minutes--
    your train had left a quarter of an hour, 20 minutes after that.
    Your name was paged all over the camp.
    Your papers for internment had arrived.
    What could I do?
    So I hold Kurt Schlesinger responsible for not
    opening his mail before.
    If he would have, he would have held my family
    out; Eddy Hamel, an American Dutchman; Rostock and his wife,
    English-Dutch; and who knows how many more.
    Those people went under because of his badly performed work.
    So we arrived--
    It sounds as if he didn't care because he missed--
    He didn't care.
    He didn't care.
    I read--
    Saving his own skin in collaboration with the SS.
    Well, I don't think they would have ever sent him away.
    He was too much German first, and probably
    Jew the second category.
    If he wouldn't have been a Jew, he
    would have been a second Hitler.
    Before you progress, do you have any other reminiscences
    about him in the camp, in Westerbork?
    Only that he didn't like me, and what I just
    been saying, that he told me he'd send me to Auschwitz
    and he didn't care.
    He never listened to me.
    And everybody was afraid for him, kind of frightened of him.
    What he was saying was master.
    You do it and that's it.
    Lately, I can read in the books--
    I always look in the books for his name.
    If they're there, then I'll read what kind of man he is.
    If the young girls agreed with what he said,
    they were allowed to stay longer.
    If they didn't, they weren't--
    that type of man, not caring.
    They didn't expect any of us to come back and to tell them
    or to find them.
    I've been seeking for this man for years,
    and certainly on paper since '76,
    to the American Bureau of Criminal Investigation, war
    criminals.
    I've never had an answer.
    Gave them all the information, photograph.
    I still wait for an answer.
    There is a book lately came out, in which
    Schlesinger is mentioned.
    And I wrote to this author in America,
    can you give me information about Schlesinger?
    And he wrote back, Schlesinger, I think,
    was living in Rotterdam and I've been
    looking for him in America.
    And he says presumably he's dead.
    Oh, if it's so, I missed him again.
    Recently in Rotterdam, in Amsterdam,
    I phoned the Department for Wartime Investigation
    and Documation.
    I asked them-- because they sent me a letter about Schlesinger
    upon my inquiry, where he was.
    They couldn't tell me.
    I said, this man was apparently a criminal.
    He did this and do that.
    He said, it's none of our business.
    If you want to follow that up, you've
    got to go to the Minister of Justice in Holland.
    Well, that's a very big and difficult thing to do.
    They didn't care.
    I was arguing with him on the phone for over a half an hour.
    They didn't want to know.
    I say, you don't mind what people you had in the camp?
    You don't want to talk or write about it.
    I hope he's still alive and I may meet him one day.
    Anyhow, I was there.
    We arrived at Birkenau.
    On the train journey, you said it was 36 hours.
    About 36 hours, yes.
    And no food?
    No food.
    No drink.
    Toilets?
    I didn't leave.
    I didn't leave the compartment.
    I don't think the wife left.
    What about sleeping?
    Sleeping?
    Just sit and sleep.
    And in turn, we gave one another the baby.
    And I could sleep.
    One might sleep.
    You're thinking and dozing off and talking.
    And what I talked about was this-- if I don't come back,
    you may marry again.
    Find a good man who is good for the child.
    And she said, and if I don't come back, if I'm ill
    or something like that, you take a wife
    who is good for the child.
    That's how we were talking.
    We didn't know then what was going to happen to us.
    Only we knew it was a cold country.
    You could catch flu or influenza, whatever it was,
    and you could not come back.
    All the work was too heavy.
    We didn't know.
    And how was your son behaving at this point?
    Well, a bit sleeping through, you know.
    Sleeping through.
    More or less, he had a temperature
    and I think he was ill.
    He was ill.
    And I remember, there was an old couple
    there in the name of Van der Zandt.
    He was a photographer from The Hague,
    as we got a little bit in conversation.
    But I didn't hear of them anymore.
    Anyhow, we went and it stopped again.
    The train went on and it stopped.
    And at last we arrived at a place,
    which we didn't know then what it was, but it was Birkenau.
    Birkenau is going to be the greatest extermination
    camp there is.
    They got the gas chambers there and the ovens.
    There were 800 people of us that were left
    at Westerbork that morning.
    It usually is more, usually 1,000, 1,200,
    all the [INAUDIBLE].
    The train stopped.
    I got up and looked through the window and I saw heaps of snow.
    But have a good look, here and there.
    A corner of a suitcase is sticking out.
    I thought, that's funny, luggage.
    They said they're going to get it
    later on when the snow is gone.
    Then the bullying come.
    Get out, [GERMAN].
    Leave everything behind.
    Leave everything behind?
    It's cold.
    Leave everything behind, [GERMAN],, all what we had--
    blankets, medicine.
    And we got out and we stood there empty-handed.
    Then they separated the women from the men.
    Could you describe what it looked like, what you saw?
    There was a platform with the snowy heaps of suitcases.
    Those were suitcases from people.
    Mr. Greenman, reel 6.
    You were describing the scene on arrival at Birkenau.
    Yes.
    We were bullied out of the train and there we
    stood, waiting for things to come.
    It must have been about two hours, past 2:00
    in the morning.
    It was dark.
    Only a blue light was shining on the platform.
    And I saw a few SS men walking up and down.
    And they separated the women from the men.
    So I stood, say, right in front of the men.
    And I could see my wife there with a child in her arm.
    She threw me a kiss and she showed the baby, like that.
    And then all of a sudden, one of the women
    ran away from where she was, towards her husband,
    hysterically.
    Probably she sensed something.
    Halfway she was met by an SS officer,
    and he let a club come down on her head.
    She dropped to the ground and he kicked her in the belly.
    That was new to me and to all of us.
    And it went so quick that the shock wasn't
    over when he turned around and counted 50 men from the men
    standing there, by placing his hand on his shoulder-- you,
    you, you, boy's club.
    50 men.
    And then one of the prisoners in striped uniform,
    who had been there already, commanded us to follow him.
    Well, we turned to the left and we walked a little way.
    And we walked two or three minutes.
    A truck arrived, stopped almost near us, slowly.
    And on the truck, all men, all women, children,
    babies, and in the center my wife and child, standing up.
    Those people supposed to have gone to the bathroom
    to have a bath, to eat, and to live.
    Instead, they had to undress and into the gas chambers.
    And two hours later--
    and that's a long time-- two hours later,
    those people where ashes, included my wife and child.
    We didn't know that.
    We thought we'd see our wives every weekend.
    That was told us.
    At this point, when you saw your wife and child
    for the last time, did they see you as well?
    I doubted.
    I called out to her, but the engine was running
    and I didn't see her face turn below to look at me.
    No.
    How could you tell it was she?
    She and the baby had those pointed capes.
    And they stood up to the light, as
    if it was meant to be like that, that I could recognize them.
    Otherwise it would have been amongst probably people
    you wouldn't recognize it.
    And a picture, I'll never forget it.
    It's the very last thing I saw of my wife and child.
    So from the 800 people, 50 men were sorted out
    to work and to die.
    Of the women, about four or five good-looking young women
    were taken out, probably for Dr. Mengele.
    What had you 50 in common who were taken?
    What do you mean in common?
    Why were you chosen?
    Ah.
    Probably we stood in the front.
    I stood in the front.
    Probably physically, we weren't old.
    Young and fit?
    Yeah, so he must have been taken them.
    Who was doing the sorting?
    The putting the hand on the shoulder
    was the SS officer who had kicked that woman.
    Yeah.
    And you couldn't do nothing.
    In a normal way, you'd say he would have beaten you there,
    and then he would have--
    because you were a witness.
    He didn't.
    That woman on the platform was your first inkling.
    Yes.
    That something was wrong, yes.
    Yes.
    Bodily, what I saw there.
    Yeah.
    So then the 50 of you were taken off?
    We marched away to another barrack.
    We marched inside a barrack.
    It wasn't a large barrack, small one.
    And as I got in, the floor was covered with envelopes,
    photographs, papers, heaps, and I couldn't
    understand what it was.
    Photographs, all people, all the people
    that were coming in probably and all the papers