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Oral history interview with Simon Nagrodzki and Helen Nagrodzki

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1992.A.0128.79 | RG Number: RG-50.165.0079

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    Oral history interview with Simon Nagrodzki and Helen Nagrodzki
    Transcript
    About how long did they live here?
    Sacks-- Sacks-- my-- they moved away.
    About how long did they live here?
    Sacks-- Sacks-- my-- they moved away.
    And they went to Milwaukee.
    To Milwaukee.
    You remember Wilf?
    Yeah.
    How long did he live here?
    We've been-- we've been very good friends over here.
    And they lived here a few months, I believe.
    They lived about seven or eight months.
    Seven or eight months.
    They couldn't-- they couldn't get a job over here.
    And he got a job.
    And he didn't like it.
    He got about $50 a week.
    And they couldn't live on it.
    So they decided to go to New York and to New Jersey.
    And they were the whole family, practically the whole family.
    So he got into a used car business.
    And somehow, he bought a house.
    Made a lot of money.
    And a company needed a corner lot, whatever it is.
    And he sold it.
    They gave him a lot of money for it.
    I don't know how much, but I understand it.
    And then he bought another lot and so on.
    He made an investment.
    He was-- he was in the right time and the right place.
    I think he's one of the owners of the Ramada
    Renaissance in Jerusalem.
    He bought--
    And Halpern, Pantera-- do you know these names?
    No, no.
    No, there's a group--
    and that was about 10 years ago, the mother-in-law told me.
    He bought a property in Israel and building.
    Tell me, when he was here, what was his job?
    He was working on a--
    He was working in--
    --mattress factory.
    --a mattress factory.
    Did you think he was such a big genius
    that he would become so rich?
    Or was he just--
    He was a young guy.
    He was a young guy.
    Let me tell you something.
    In order to become rich, you don't have to be a genius.
    You have to have mazel.
    You have to have mazel.
    And you got to be in the right place in the right time.
    Sounds like a saying I know, called [YIDDISH].
    You know what that means?
    Yeah.
    Like you said, you have to be in the right place,
    at the right time, and you have to do something about it.
    I used to board in Birmingham too.
    I wanted be richer too.
    What?
    I wanted to buy a house in a certain place
    where that house was worth 50 times as much
    they needed for a hotel in that house.
    And they bought it out for hundreds of thousands
    of dollars.
    Really?
    Right.
    And my wife talked me out of it.
    Because she said-- at that time, I didn't make much money over
    here.
    And she said, well, it was a two-story home.
    And she said, well, how are you going to-- how
    are you going to manage?
    You make so much [INAUDIBLE].
    And we cannot afford even to heat that house
    in the wintertime.
    Interesting.
    Then we just ignored it.
    We just didn't buy it.
    And that house was worth a lot of money.
    But forget about it.
    I forgave her.
    And sure, I mean, she meant right.
    I mean, she--
    Well, in business, many people who made it,
    they went broke a couple of times.
    And I tell you something else.
    I could have made a fortune.
    I was in the wrong place in the wrong time.
    And that was her too.
    Why?
    Why?
    Because 20-25 years ago, I want to buy stock.
    Coca-Cola was $50.
    And I had money to buy 200 shares.
    And I begged her.
    I said, let me go buy 200 shares of Coca-Cola.
    So she said, oh, you always--
    you make up your mind.
    You're right away.
    Wait till tomorrow.
    Maybe tomorrow, maybe go down another couple
    of points, another--
    keep going down.
    So I said, well, I guess I'll just--
    [NON-ENGLISH].
    Listen, when you have small kids and you
    don't have too much cash, you don't take no chances.
    She was scared.
    She was afraid to invest all the money I had.
    And you're in a strange country.
    The language is barely there.
    And in that time, for $50 a share-- now,
    the next day was $51, $52, $53.
    It went up to $153 for one.
    And went up again and again and split.
    And--
    How much would you have had?
    I missed the boat.
    How much would you have had?
    Oh, then was money.
    Right now, I probably would have a few hundred thousand dollars
    or more.
    More.
    You were $5,000 [INAUDIBLE].
    Right.
    More-- maybe a half a million.
    Well, you think that Wilf--
    This thing was 25 years ago.
    In other words, when Wilf came here,
    there was nothing that would make
    him stand out from all this?
    No.
    Nothing, nothing.
    He was an ordinary man.
    He was a young guy.
    And he was a young man.
    He was a young man yet from us.
    He came in with his wife, and his mother-in-law,
    and his father-in-law.
    And the brother-in-law.
    And the brother-in-law.
    So then for him, the best thing that happened to him was he
    left.
    Was that he had when he left.
    And he just start to [? be. ?]
    Well, he had a brother coming to New York.
    Not Harry.
    No, because it says on that list, Joseph and Harry.
    You see, there are two people listed there,
    that they both came to Birmingham.
    No, no, his brother didn't.
    Harry was his father.
    He came to Birmingham.
    Oh, you see it there?
    Yeah the father.
    Yeah, I see Harry.
    Twice, right?
    Yeah.
    Joseph and--
    Joseph and--
    --Oscar Wilf
    Oscar.
    This is the-- his father.
    The father.
    Oh, Harry is, I think, his brother maybe.
    That's the brother, probably.
    No, the brother didn't come to France.
    No, I mean, the brother was Harry who didn't come here.
    No, he came to New York.
    And he stayed there.
    Yeah.
    He settled himself [INAUDIBLE].
    Listen, this happens.
    Anyway, you could see that you're listed here,
    Simon Nagrodzki, K11656.
    That's the-- was the case number--
    that you came here on the 11th of November, 1949.
    And it says here, completely self-supporting.
    They listed what happened, a Greek Jew, difficult adjustment,
    it says.
    I go the list--
    Beressi.
    Do you know Beressi?
    Yeah, Beressi died.
    He died?
    He was a great man.
    He was a great Jew.
    Was it difficult for him?
    He made a living.
    Well, he made a living.
    He had a pretty good job.
    But he was an old bachelor.
    And I guess he died of cancer or something.
    He just died the last year.
    He was-- he was a-- he was a nice fellow.
    Here one was 218 Adelsberg.
    I don't know.
    Probably don't know.
    He left for Nashville.
    Michael Gross left for Chicago.
    Marcus Fisch.
    This was Wilf's father-in-law.
    Wilf?
    Yeah, Wilf's father-in-law.
    Yeah, yeah, Marcus.
    He's dead.
    He's dead too.
    And then there was Samuel Grunsban.
    Grunspan.
    Grunspan.
    They lived over here too.
    They moved away--
    To Cleveland.
    --to Cleveland.
    What happened to them?
    I think they moved when he had a few--
    I think they went to Israel.
    You do?
    I don't know.
    I don't know what happened to them.
    You think they went to Israel?
    Uh-huh.
    Ah, I'd like to track them down.
    You know why?
    I'm going to be in Israel this summer interviewing survivors.
    Is there anybody here who would know where they went?
    They were in Cleveland.
    I don't-- I don't think so.
    And would their name--
    They went to Cleveland from here.
    Do you think their name would be spelled G-R-U-N-S-P-A-N?
    It says here Grunspan.
    Greenspan.
    I would-- I would spell G-R-E-N-S-P-A-N, Greenspan.
    OK.
    You think they may have made Aliyah?
    I don't know.
    My wife--
    Well, it's--
    --would.
    --they mentioned one time in a letter they might go to Israel.
    Well, they might--
    They still might be in Cleveland.
    They have a little boy.
    And was another-- was another survivor--
    Yeah, a girl.
    Well, she was-- they were hide the child by the Gentiles there.
    During the war?
    Yeah.
    And after the war, the Gentiles didn't want to give her.
    Give it up.
    Yeah, that happened a lot.
    And what about Simon Lipschitz?
    I didn't know a Lipschitz.
    It was another family over here.
    Frankels.
    Frankel.
    Gershon Frankel.
    He lives in New York now.
    And how long ago did he leave from there, a long time ago?
    He didn't find there so--
    And Leon May or Nay?
    Leon Nay, never heard of.
    Feivel Portnoy and Paul Shearer.
    All right. [?
    Lives in ?] Pittsburgh.
    I tell you what that happened.
    It was quite a few refugees over here, survivors.
    But no time before you looked around, they just moved away.
    And I didn't even have a chance to get to know them right.
    Did most of them come here because they had relatives here?
    No.
    No.
    Most of them come here--
    There was hospital.
    --because leaving Germany, we all had a quota where to go.
    And I'd see 1,000--
    let's say 5,000 to the South or 5,000 to the North, East,
    and West, so on.
    The HIAS quota.
    Yeah.
    So we had our papers made out to come to Birmingham,
    to the South.
    So we came to Birmingham.
    But not because you had a relative.
    Not because I had a relative and not because--
    and to me, at that time, what difference
    did it make to me Birmingham or [INAUDIBLE] or Oshkosh?
    It was America.
    That's where I want to go.
    Who gave you the-- who gave you the affidavit
    to come here at all?
    In Germany, they-- from the--
    The register.
    It was a corporate affidavit, a group affidavit?
    Yes, group affidavit.
    From HIAS?
    Yeah.
    Because you didn't have a relative here?
    No, I did not.
    I had relatives in New York.
    But I couldn't ask.
    Where were you born?
    I was born in Drobin.
    Drobin-- D-R?
    D-R-O-B-I-N.
    And where is that?
    This is-- do you know where Plock?
    Yes.
    It's about, let's say, 16-- about 30 kilometers from Plock.
    It's between Plock and Warsaw.
    And Plonsk, you heard of Plonsk.
    Plonsk, yeah.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Congress Poland-- was Congress Poland.
    What year were you born?
    1917.
    1917.
    So you're 71?
    72.
    72.
    In April.
    [GERMAN]
    [INAUDIBLE]
    How is your health, OK?
    Well, I had a open-heart surgery.
    And she had open-heart surgery.
    But you survived it.
    We survived.
    How long ago did you have it?
    I had two years ago.
    And you?
    My second?
    About two and a half.
    She had twice open heart.
    Before that, you were healthy, though?
    I haven't been in days sick in all my life.
    I haven't been to a doctor in all my life.
    Really?
    And all of a sudden, I was playing with my grandkids
    over here.
    And they went home.
    I told my wife, I said, you know what?
    It was 11 o'clock at night.
    After the kids left, I said, well, I'm going to take a shower
    and go to bed, I said, tomorrow and go to work.
    So I took a shower and tried to get in in bed.
    And I bent down and--
    You fell to your knee.
    And I felt it in the chest.
    Pain.
    I was in pain the whole night.
    Since you were in good health all your life before then,
    how do you explain the fact that you had this good
    health all the time?
    Well, did you eat right?
    Did you exercise?
    What did you do?
    All your life.
    Oh, my life before I came over here.
    Now, I eat pretty well.
    When I came over here, I was strong.
    I eat a lot.
    And we were in the-- in a butcher business
    at home in Poland.
    And I wasn't-- but I didn't feel any fear for nobody
    or for nobody.
    We were a big family.
    We were seven brothers and two sisters.
    You were the tenth?
    No.
    There were seven including you.
    Nine including me, we were nine kids.
    And your father was a butcher?
    Yes.
    And my mother helped him in-- with his business.
    And you helped too when you got older?
    No.
    My brothers, they did help.
    And they were still young.
    I was the oldest.
    You were the oldest?
    How old were they?
    And my younger brothers, they helped a little bit.
    And I went to in apprentice to become a tailor.
    Because I have to help it out.
    My father alone for nine kids was a little hard--
    very hard to live.
    So I used to help out.
    And I become a tailor that time.
    And I came over here.
    So I become-- I was a tailor too.
    So I just went and got a job.
    At least you had a training.
    It wasn't.
    Yes.
    My father used to tell me in Yiddish--
    you want to sing Yiddish?
    [YIDDISH]
    My father used to say, why don't you go and have a trade?
    He says, [YIDDISH].
    That's right.
    Wherever you go, you can always become a--
    you always become a businessman.
    But you cannot become a professional with a trade.
    And if you have a trade, you can make a living anywhere
    in the world.
    [INAUDIBLE] Did you go to cheder?
    Yes.
    Did you go beyond cheder?
    No, I didn't go, no.
    Well, it was a hard life.
    We-- I had to go--
    when I was young, I had to go to work and help out the family.
    How many people lived in your town, approximately?
    In Drobin.
    In Drobin, I mean.
    Not a lot.
    I will say it was about maybe 800 families.
    And how many of them were Jewish?
    800 family Jewish.
    And non-Jewish?
    And non-Jewish was maybe, I would say, a couple of thousand,
    couple of thousand.
    Was a small town.
    And during the war, where were you?
    During to war?
    Now, I was--
    I was a--
    21 years old.
    I was drafted in the Polish Army.
    OK.
    I was in the Polish Army.
    In 1939-- the war broke out in 1939.
    We were at maneuvers in Warsaw in the Polish Army.
    And then about 12 o'clock at night, then we had a--
    a [? Appell. ?] And the war broke out with Germany.
    The Germans attacked Poland.
    And we never did go back to the barracks.
    They loaded us on the-- on the train.
    And we went right there on the front line with the Germans.
    The war didn't last long, though, with Poland.
    It didn't last long.
    It last just a few weeks.
    And then after that, I--
    You were a prisoner.
    Well, I get-- I was a prisoner of war.
    We try-- we had--
    let me go back.
    And after the Germans start coming forwards,
    we tried to retreat, retreat, retreat.
    So we retreated until we came to Chelm in Russland--
    in Russia.
    And from there, the Russian surrounded us.
    And I was scared for the Russians too.
    And I didn't know that-- what's going to happen
    with Hitler like that.
    I mean, nobody ever dreamed about it what's going to happen.
    So I escaped from there--
    Into Poland.
    --into Poland, turning back.
    I want to see my family.
    A lot of people did that.
    Yeah.
    Thousands.
    And once I came to see my family and they took
    the whole city, the whole town.
    All the Jew was in the ghetto.
    In which ghetto?
    In Radom.
    Radom.
    Radom.
    And how long were you in the ghetto in Radom?
    And I was in the ghetto in Radom just a few months.
    And then my parents, they tried to smuggle back through Poland
    from Radom.
    And they caught them on the road.
    And they were in Warsaw ghetto.
    Your parents?
    The parents.
    They didn't make it?
    They didn't.
    And you?
    And me, being in Radom, I started working for the Germans
    there.
    They took Jews out of the ghetto to work for the Germans.
    And you had a trade.
    And I had-- not a trade, but they worked all kind of work.
    We unload trains.
    We unload everything what came on.
    And from there, from Radom, they send us to Skarzysko,
    another city in Poland, where the able-bodied people,
    they took out from Radom and sent us to Skarzysko.
    Over there was an ammunition factory.
    What that the place where Mrs. Neselrot was from?
    Yeah.
    Yes, she was from that place.
    So make a long story short, they sent us to Skarzysko.
    And I worked in the munition factory.
    We put in-- we made bombs and bullets and everything.
    I used to work on six machines, where
    we used to make the locks to the carbines.
    The carbines, yeah.
    Anyway, and then, all of a sudden, I saw a friend of mine
    from my town, that he was in Skarzysko also.
    And when I saw him, he came by.
    And he was yellow and like a canary.
    I said, what happened to you?
    He says, he worked in the other side in the factory
    where they load the powder into the shells.
    And from that powder--
    you see, before the war, they had the people working
    on that factory.
    They worked three months in a year with special masks
    and got paid for the whole year.
    But once they got the Jews over there,
    so he could stay there two or three weeks and die.
    So they replaced it.
    They replaced it.
    They had six million.
    They replaced it.
    So I--
    They died from the powder?
    Yes.
    And I was scared.
    I says, well, I'm dead over here anyway.
    So I made a deal with five other people
    to escape back into the ghetto.
    In Radom?
    In Radom.
    Because there was nowhere to go.
    The Polish people, when they caught a Jew,
    they got 10 pounds of sugar when they turned them over
    to the Germans.
    So it was no hiding.
    But I didn't look like a Jew.
    I had those--
    Whiskers.
    I could see, yeah.
    It could have been--
    And we planned to escape.
    So one night, it was kind of drizzling, raining a little bit.
    And I said, well, this is the right time to go.
    And we had a fence around where we worked in the factory.
    Was a--
    A chain?
    --not a chain, a concrete-- a concrete fence and wiring there.
    On top.
    On the top was that--
    what do you call it?
    Barbed wire?
    Barbed wire, yes.
    And at that time, we managed to get on the top.
    And the minute we got on the top, we heard shots.
    Was the guards was in a--
    Patrolling.
    --patrolling every 20 or 30 yards.
    It was 20 yards.
    And I figured, I'm dead anyway.
    What difference does it make?
    So we heard the shots.
    And I jumped over on the other side.
    It was a dark, very dark young night.
    And I ran into a forest.
    And I heard another shot and another shot.
    And I thought, they're all dead.
    I didn't know what.
    So I've been running all night straight ahead.
    Away from the camp.
    Away from the camp.
    And you know what happened?
    In the morning, when the sun start rising,
    I was in the edge of the forest.
    And I looked out.
    I was probably about 10 blocks from the barrack.
    That's all.
    I was walking in--
    Circles.
    --in circles.
    At night in the woods is very hard time to walk.
    I walked in the circle.
    So I didn't know what to do with myself.
    I was scared to death.
    And I was scared to--
    so I dug a-- dug a hole for myself.
    And I laid down and cover myself up with leaves.
    And I heard the Germans with the motorcycles
    going by and riding around, looking for an escapist.
    They didn't send dogs?
    No, they didn't have any dogs over there anyway.
    And then it was--
    in the afternoon, I said, well, I can't stay here
    too much longer.
    I just got up.
    And I started walking.
    I started walking.
    And I saw a Polack.
    He walked a cow to sell some way to a--
    To market.
    --to the market.
    And I ask him, where do you go?
    And he said, well, he's going to market.
    And I say, how far is it from Radom
    where you going, in Polish.
    He told me, was about 10 kilometers from Radom.
    And we've been walking and talking.
    And Germans are all over.
    He knew you were Jewish, this Polack?
    He didn't I was Jew.
    No.
    He didn't know I was Jewish.
    And I didn't look like a Jew.
    And you weren't going to tell him.
    And the Germans, they passed by.
    And we just walked.
    Anyway, I got separated from him and came close to the--
    to Radom, to the ghetto.
    I saw the other fellow that he jumped out with me.
    He was sitting there.
    He made it too.
    Yeah, he made it too.
    So two of us made it.
    And two got killed.
    Probably [INAUDIBLE].
    So going into Radom, we had to find a way
    to get into the ghetto.
    We had to open the sewer.
    We got in the sewer and walked in into the ghetto.
    How'd you know the way?
    Well, we were right there where the--
    On the other side.
    On the other side the ghetto.
    And you couldn't-- you wouldn't have a pass to go.
    I wouldn't have a pass.
    And I would have got caught.
    Your family was religious?
    No, not religious.
    They was what, socialist?
    No, not socialist.
    We're Jewish.
    And we're not--
    But listen, in Europe is not the-- like we do here.
    We kept-- we kept-- we kept everything kosher in the house.
    But we weren't too religious.
    The butcher place was kosher?
    Yes, it was kosher.
    And I'm just curious.
    In those days, if a butcher wasn't religious,
    it didn't matter.
    They would still [INAUDIBLE] to the Jews?
    See, it wasn't-- it wasn't to the point that he was a Goy.
    I mean, it wasn't--
    they not particularly religious with a beard, no.
    No.
    My father used to say, better to be a Jew without a beard
    than a beard without a Jew.
    Did he go-- did he go to shul on Saturday?
    Yeah, and Shabbos, he went the Shabbos to school-- to shul.
    Did he wear a yarmulke?
    Wear a yarmulke to shul.
    We had to wear a yarmulke.
    A hat too.
    Well, in Poland, you were shegets
    if you wore without a hat or without a yarmulke.
    You had to wear a hat.
    And I was-- I was a butcher's son.
    I could not walk out in the street without a hat on.
    When you say you were not religious,
    you mean, you weren't a Hasid.
    Not a Hasid, no.
    Not a Hasid, a real Jewish family.
    No.
    Other Jews, though--
    We kept kosher and everything.
    So what happened then?
    You were in the ghetto in Radom.
    Oh, one question-- were they Zionistically-inclined,
    your family?
    Yes.
    Did they belong to any Zionist group or anything?
    Well, we-- there was-- yeah, there was a Zionist club.
    And my parents did not belong.
    But I did belong.
    And before the war, did you think sometimes you
    might want to go to Israel?
    Everybody was dream.
    Everybody was dreaming to go to Israel.
    Even now.
    My aunt who is in Israel now, and she had to go through her--
    Hachsharah.
    --a Hachsharah for about three years
    and work hard, and scrub floors, and everything to go to Israel.
    So you came back in Radom.
    You stayed there for how long, for a while?
    In Radom, I stayed there for a little while.
    And then from Radom, they took the ghetto all out of the ghetto
    again.
    And they load us on the train.
    And they took us to Auschwitz.
    And other-- in Auschwitz--
    when we came to Auschwitz, we got off the trains.
    They packed us like cattles in the train.
    We got off the train.
    And a German officer was sending the--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    --and the able-bodied people, they were able to work,
    they one side.
    And the other side going to crematorium.
    Which side went to the labor?
    Well, to the right is all right.
    To the left is the crematorium.
    So when-- they took the kids and the women and children
    and took them to the crematoriums.
    And the rest of them, they loaded back on the train.
    And we went back there from Skarzysko to--
    You were only in Auschwitz a short time, a few hours?
    Yeah, it was for the selection.
    And we went back there.
    From there, they took us back to Germany, to Stuttgart.
    They must have been--
    In Stuttgart, we worked on a airfield where
    the planes, the German--
    the American planes, they come in and bomb the airfields.
    And we could never figure out why
    they come bomb the airfield because there was nothing there.
    Was a flugzeug.
    You know that.
    And our barracks was maybe from there maybe about--
    I'll say about five miles from the airfield.
    And every day, we went there and patched up the holes
    where they bombed.
    This is similar--
    I don't know if you know this, but this is similar to the work
    that Ilse may have done.
    Yeah.
    She worked somewhere else on the runways.
    And all of a sudden, one day, they came by those planes.
    Our barracks-- the planes, they got so low,
    we were afraid they're going to hit the barracks with the--
    with the wheels of the plane, they got so low.
    And finally, they hit a place on that airfield.
    You never saw in your life that smoke they hit on them.
    They dig for, you know, oil, or gas, or whatever it is.
    And everything starts burning.
    The Germans, they used to run away to the foxholes.
    And we stood there and watched the planes dropping those bombs.
    How come you stood there?
    Because--
    We wished they would kill us.
    I would wish that a bomb will hit me and get it over with.
    Why?
    Were people-- how terrible was it?
    How terrible was the treatment in that camp?
    It was terrible treatment.
    Because when they took us in the morning to the camp, we--
    first of all, we didn't eat anything.
    We had just a little water in the morning
    with a just a loaf of bread with a tiny teaspoon
    and this much bread.
    And when they took us to work there with the--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    --yeah, the guards took us to work, and the whole road,
    it was planted with fruit trees--
    apples, and pears, and all that.
    If you bent down for pick up an apple or a pear,
    you didn't get up anymore.
    They shot you?
    And that happened to some people?
    Oh, yeah.
    Why?
    Didn't they learn after one time seeing somebody else shot,
    don't do it?
    How can you learn if you're hungry?
    You think you--
    You think you're going to get away with it.
    --you're going to get away with it.
    But you didn't get.
    Nobody got away with it?
    Nobody got away with it.
    And then-- and then did they--
    did they also kill people for other infractions, or any other
    [INAUDIBLE]?
    They killed for everything.
    We worked-- we worked--
    we unloaded also.
    We unloaded trains with all kinds of iron
    and what they brought it back for the manufacturers.
    They're making all the bombs and everything.
    And if you cut your finger or something like this,
    took you away and then shot you right there.
    How long were you there?
    I was there, I will say, maybe about a year.
    What year was it that you were there?
    I really don't remember.
    Before the liberation.
    When we were liberated.
    Before the liberation.
    And then from there, there must have
    been close to the liberation.
    They took us to Dachau.
    And there you saw--
    And I was in Dachau.
    And in Dachau, it was death.
    I mean, it was the death sentence.
    And you could see piles of bodies laying there.
    They're starved, and killed, and shot, and all of that.
    Were the people who were starved and shot right there
    or who had come from other places?
    Right there, right there on the spot.
    So you had to avoid them.
    You were afraid that you--
    you didn't get typhus, right?
    No.
    But were you afraid of this?
    The funny thing is I didn't get any typhus.
    And I wasn't sick.
    I wasn't nothing.
    I just was undernourished, but skinny.
    But I wasn't sick at all.
    Matter of fact, there was a friend
    of mine, who was a little kid.
    And he cuddled to me like I was his father
    And he survived because of me.
    What's his name?
    Binyamin, Binyamin Bregman.
    I don't know where he is.
    There was a story about him too.
    When we were liberated, in the--
    well, I'm just going back and forth.
    I don't know that's--
    when we were liberated, he was with me,
    that Binyamin was with me.
    He didn't want to get away from me.
    He say, I'm going to be with you the rest of my life.
    So he was there.
    We were in Germany.
    And we were liberated.
    And before long, he found out that he had a sister in Italy,
    that she survived.
    And I told him, I said, well, I didn't have any money.
    I got $20 with me at that time.
    And I got a watch.
    It was pretty-- a watch was that time-- was a luxury.
    I had a nice watch.
    And I told him, I say, Binyamin, I say, I tell you what I'll do.
    You got a sister in Italy.
    And you want to see her, you want
    to bring her over over here.
    I took off my watch.
    I say, there is the watch.
    You go to Italy.
    You sell it if you need the money.
    And come with your sister over here.
    She can come over here.
    Sure enough, he went to Italy.
    He brought the sister.
    The sister came to our lager.
    She was a pretty girl.
    I liked her very much.
    And before, I knew her.
    And then he comes out with a story
    that his sister found out her boyfriend survived.
    And he is in Italy.
    So--
    You were such a mess.
    --I gave him money again.
    I gave him a few dollars.
    I said, I tell you what.
    I like your sister.
    He want me-- he wants to marry, he said.
    He wants me to marry her.
    I said, I tell you what.
    She don't know me.
    I don't know her.
    She had a boyfriend from home that she knows who he is
    and what he is.
    I give you some money.
    Go bring him over and let them--
    let them get married.
    I like your sister.
    But she loved him.
    And they've been friends from before the war.
    He went there.
    He brought.
    I can only tell you there was a man by the name of Bregman.
    Bregman.
    Bregman, who ran a dry cleaning store in Manhattan right
    next to the house I lived in.
    He was a survivor.
    Maybe this is the-- this is the one.
    He had black hair.
    Maybe this is the one.
    It could be the one.
    Bregman?
    Bregman.
    And so anyway, how he disappeared is--
    I tell you.
    When the-- when that man came from Italy--
    He was probably--
    --they married.
    I was at their wedding.
    Their wedding was in Starnberg.
    So we went there to the wedding.
    And they married.
    And he still came to me.
    I say, Binyamin, I say, I love to have you.
    I say, my life--
    I risk you my life for you to survive.
    And I love you.
    I'd do anything for you what you wanted.
    But you got one surviving sister.
    I said, don't you think you would
    be better off with your sister?
    And somehow, he moved back to Starnberg.
    And then you didn't see him?
    And the sister got married.
    And after they married, they went to France
    and left him in Germany, didn't take the brother with them.
    And that kid came--
    I saw him one time.
    He told me this.
    And then he walked away and disappeared.
    And I didn't know what happened since then.
    Tell me-- interesting story.
    Well, I tell you.
    You see--
    Typhus-- well, we were really afraid for a cold.
    I omitted a lot of things.
    Well, it comes to my memory.
    I'll tell you--
    From the beginning, when I was a prisoner of war,
    before I went to the concentration camp,
    after the Germans got me, I was a prisoner of war in Germany.
    If you heard from Stalag 17 in Vienna, was--
    in Vienna.
    So one day, they said, they wanted
    to release all the Jews from--
    as prisoners of war.
    And then they released the Jews as prisoners of war.
    And we came back to Poland.
    We came back to Poland.
    They concentrated us, all the prisoners, in Lublin.
    You know where Lublin?
    You heard about Lublin?
    Sure.
    All printed-- and we wore uniforms and everything
    in Lublin.
    And then from Lublin, they took us to Biala Podlaska.
    It was near the Russian border.
    Was like if you--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    And from Lublin to Biala Podlaska, we had a death march.
    We were a few thousand prisoners of war.
    And every few kilometers we walked, they cut off four,
    eight from the back, took it to the forest.
    And then shot.
    They were shot and killed.
    And everybody was running forward--
    To the front.
    --to move to the front not to be--
    This was the way they got them to move fast.
    And that was-- and that was in the wintertime,
    when snow was up to here.
    And when we were relieved from the prisoner of war,
    we didn't have any shoes.
    Wooden shoes.
    They served us with wooden shoes, like they wear in--
    what country was it?
    In Holland.
    In Holland.
    They got the wooden--
    Clogs.
    Yeah.
    And those wooden shoes, when you walk on snow, it clogs up--
    They get stuck like this.
    --like stills.
    You fell.
    And once you fall, you didn't get out.
    Bingo.
    They shot you.
    How did you survive?
    I took the shoes off and throw it away.
    I walked barefoot.
    How many kilometers did you walk barefoot?
    I must have walked about 60 kilometers barefoot.
    You must be some tough guy to do that.
    And when-- and when we came there and they took us out every
    morning for the exercise--
    naked in snow up to here.
    Why did they take you out [INAUDIBLE]?
    I had-- well, they wanted to--
    Sadists.
    It's just sadistic.
    Sadistic.
    They wanted to get rid of it, to kill us,
    I mean, any way they could.
    And from then, they released us home.
    This was nothing to do with the fact that you were Jewish?
    These were everybody who was in that army?
    No, no, no.
    No, no, that was-- all were Jews.
    How did they separate it out to Jewish soldiers?
    They separate the Jewish soldiers.
    How did they do that?
    Did you have to say you were Jewish?
    I had to say.
    And I had a hard time to convince them that I'm a Jew.
    Because I wanted to go home to see my family.
    Why did you tell them you were Jewish?
    Because I want to see my family.
    If you were Polish, they wouldn't have let you?
    They-- no.
    They kept it in Germany.
    And anyway, you wouldn't have been able to pull that off.
    I mean, you were circumcised.
    You wouldn't be able to pull that off for five years.
    Yeah, but they-- over there--
    I know a lot of-- a lot of Jews where
    they didn't admit that they Jews,
    they were in Germany working for the farmers in Germany.
    And they never found out?
    And they never found out.
    If a Jew took off his clothes and someone else saw it,
    they saw he was circumcised.
    Well, it was a way that you could avoid it
    without being seen.
    Now, tell me.
    I'm very interested in the question of what happened
    after you got to America.
    Because I felt that there are so many books on the Holocaust.
    But there aren't really any about the lives
    that the people made when they came here,
    the families they raised, what they
    did in the Jewish community.
    Well, when we came here to America--
    First, tell me, how did you come?
    Did you leave by boat?
    By boat.
    From Bremerhaven?
    From Bremerhaven.
    And what was the name of the boat?
    General Stewart.
    It's a well-known boat.
    And from--
    Had you already met your wife?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, we got-- we was married already.
    Where did you get married?
    In which camp?
    In Germany.
    In '46.
    In which-- were you in a DP camp?
    Yes.
    Which one?
    In Feldafing, by Munich.
    There's a book about Feldafing by Simon Schochet.
    Was about 5,000 refugees on that boat.
    So you came-- so you got married there.
    And you came on the boat.
    And she was in Bergen-Belsen.
    No.
    I was liberated in Sudeten.
    No, no, no.
    Wait a minute.
    I'm going to get to you in a minute.
    She was in Bergen-Belsen.
    And she came to see a cousin to Feldafing.
    And just so happened that she saw me.
    And we got--
    That's it.
    --we got hooked.
    OK.
    Wow.
    What can I--
    And still married.
    --what can I do?
    Yes.
    Anyway.
    So tell me-- so then you got on the boat.
    And what was the boat ride like?
    The boat ride was a military boat.
    I mean, it was-- we--
    A few thousand people, you said?
    1,000.
    1,700.
    1,700.
    And we were--
    And we were bottom on that.
    --we were-- we were sleeping on the cots, those military cots,
    hanging.
    They were hanging.
    The wives separate and the men separate.
    Men separate and the women.
    How many people in the room?
    About 200.
    It was a big, huge room.
    Was maybe about 200, 150 people in the room.
    And where was your luggage, whatever you had?
    Luggage?
    I didn't have any.
    Did you have any suitcase?
    I got 53 pieces.
    Well, listen, we had some luggage in the depot.
    I mean, the luggage--
    everybody had a suitcase.
    We had a few something.
    I got a tally of cards and a handkerchief.
    That's all you had?
    Yeah.
    We had some luggage.
    I didn't have no luggage.
    And we came in.
    We were in-- well, [INAUDIBLE].
    I got-- you could-- you could have bartered here for $5.
    But you had a bag, right?
    You put your schmattas in.
    Every Jew had a bag.
    Right.
    And did you keep the bag with you?
    No.
    They delivered that we--
    from New York, when we--
    they put us on.
    Anyway, we came from Hamburg--
    To New York.
    --to New York.
    And then from New York, they put us on another boat.
    The boat was General Stewart--
    General Muir.
    Muir-- M-U-I-R. I know the name, know the boat.
    Muir.
    From that boat, they took us from New York to New Orleans.
    I want to ask you a question on this.
    OK?
    Yes.
    I want to slow down a little bit here.
    When you came in, it took you about two weeks, right,
    the trip?
    11 days, 12 days.
    15 days, yeah.
    And did you try to get information about America
    while you were on the boat?
    Yeah.
    We [INAUDIBLE].
    I couldn't-- how could I get information?
    I didn't speak English.
    No, I mean, did you ask some of the other people
    on the boat who maybe they knew something?
    No.
    We--
    Nobody.
    --we met a Schvartze, the cook on the--
    on the ship.
    And he asked, where you going?
    One say, California, one say, Atlanta.
    And he ask us.
    I say, Alabama-- no good.
    For him.
    Don't go Alabama, say, no good.
    No good.
    So oh, my goodness.
    So we got--
    Did you get scared?
    Sure, we got scared.
    We thought.
    I didn't know.
    Listen, we didn't--
    We didn't know the Schvartze.
    I didn't know what Alabama is or what Birmingham is
    or New York is.
    We didn't know too many Schvartzes.
    All I know is America.
    So if I were to go for Kansas City or Baltimore
    or whatever it is, it's America.
    Same thing.
    It's the same thing.
    You knew you were going to America.
    I know I'm going to America.
    Let me ask you one other question.
    Did you think at all of going to Israel?
    Yes.
    Yes, I did.
    What happened with that?
    Well, I tell you what happened with that.
    In Germany, we were prepared to go to Israel.
    After we got married, it took us quite a while.
    And we had a child.
    He was about a year old, maybe a year and a half.
    And I had an aunt in Israel.
    I wrote her a letter.
    I say, Aunt, I wanted to come to Israel.
    And she wrote me a letter.
    She said, listen, Simon, if you want to come to Israel,
    I would like you to come to Israel.
    But you have to be prepared to live in the tent in the desert.
    And because of that child, I said,
    my god, that just a few months, I were liberated.
    I barely--
    Had recovered.
    --survived and recovered.
    And to go to Israel and live in the tent in the desert--
    The baby was the main thing.
    And she cried.
    She says, I'm afraid the baby is not going to survive.
    And we [INAUDIBLE].
    So we always say, from America, we always can go to Israel.
    But then--
    I hear what you're saying.
    In the family, are you the more careful one?
    You are the less willing to take risks?
    Yeah, she's not going to take any risks, no.
    And you like to-- you were more willing to take risks?
    If I want something, I do right away.
    You're more careful.
    I make up my mind.
    I do it.
    Now, when-- so you heard that the life there was pretty tough.
    Very tough.
    Every-- then we had--
    [INAUDIBLE] So I say, let's wait after Passover.
    In the meantime, letters start coming
    where they left about couple months before Passover.
    His friend Gedaliah, he's on a moshav in Israel.
    He say, don't come.
    It's terrible.
    People were going a big transport in '48.
    So everybody wrote us, go anywhere.
    Don't come here.
    Don't come to Israel
    Well, we were sorry we didn't go to Israel.
    When are you sorry?
    You mean, now, you're sorry?
    Now, I'm not so-- well, now, the kids are grown.
    And they are--
    It's too late to be sorry now.
    We're too old to.
    But then you were sorry because you
    wanted to go to your homeland.
    Yeah, because--
    And you had a relative there.
    Did you have any relatives here?
    No.
    I had relatives in New York.
    But they didn't give you an affidavit?
    They couldn't--
    No, they--
    Were not--
    I tell you, I'm a very independent person.
    If you don't do for me right with a question mark,
    I ignore and don't want anymore.
    I can take care of myself.
    Because I have an uncle in New York.
    And I wrote him a letter that I want to come to America.
    And it took him a year before he answered.
    So you figured, to hell with him.
    And in that time, after he answered me the letter,
    we were married.
    We were about to have-- was a year or was a year and a half
    we were married.
    We're about to have a child.
    I say, Uncle, I appreciate what you want to do for me.
    But I've got a wife now.
    And we've got a child in the way.
    If you want to send me papers to-- for my wife, we'll come.
    And he quit writing.
    I said, forget it.
    So we went to the--
    United Jewish.
    --United Jewish--
    The Joint.
    --the Joint and registered to come to America--
    How was this uncle--
    --without him.
    --how was the uncle related to you?
    My father's brother.
    Did you ever talk to him again?
    Yes.
    I came here.
    When I came here, I say, I want to see that uncle.
    So I went to New York.
    And he was sitting there.
    And I came into his house, knock on the door.
    And see, I recognized him right away.
    And he saw me.
    And he was eating breakfast.
    I saw that it got stuck right here.
    He choked.
    And he start crying.
    He asked me about the family.
    Yeah, his wife was mad at him.
    Because from the boat, I wrote him a telegram
    that I'm on the boat coming to New York on a certain date.
    And he wasn't there.
    And he wasn't there.
    Now, that was enough for me.
    So why did you bother to go see him?
    You just wanted to look him in the eye?
    I just wanted to look him in the eye and see what kind of coward
    he is.
    So I came into the house.
    And oh, he tell--
    I say, Uncle, I say, you don't need to cry now.
    I don't have any tears anymore to cry.
    But if you want to cry, you can still cry.
    And I didn't come to America to be on a burden--
    a burden to you.
    I said, I can take care of myself.
    And he says-- so we talked.
    And he says, would you go out with me to have lunch?
    I said, yes, Uncle, I'll go out with you and have lunch.
    But you pay for yours and I pay for mine.
    I don't want a penny from you.
    I didn't count the money.
    So we went to lunch.
    We ate.
    And I smoked at that time.
    I bought me a pack of cigarettes.
    He said, let me pay for the cigarettes.
    Said, wait a minute, now.
    You ain't going to pay for my cigarettes.
    I told you, I don't want any help from you.
    So I paid for my own cigarettes.
    Then we went back to his house.
    And we talked again on the family, his father,
    and his sisters, and all them.
    And then he says, let me take--
    call my son.
    And he'll take you back.
    Because I have an aunt in Brooklyn.
    This was in the Bronx.
    And then he lived in the Bronx.
    And my aunt was in Brooklyn.
    He said, well, let me tell my son.
    And he'll go with you and show you the way back to Brooklyn.
    I say, Uncle, I came through the ocean
    so many thousands of miles.
    And I found your house.
    And I know where you live.
    Don't you think that I will find Brooklyn?
    He say, don't call me, son.
    Thank you.
    And I left.
    And then he wrote me letters.
    Wait, you didn't go to Brooklyn, though.
    Huh?
    I did go back to Brooklyn.
    To see my aunt.
    The mothers.
    And she couldn't send you an affidavit?
    No.
    No, they was poor.
    How about the uncle?
    Was he rich?
    No.
    He's got a grocery business.
    I don't know how rich he was or how poor he was.
    But he tried to send me an affidavit.
    But it got mixed up with it.
    The truth is, though, if they send you an affidavit,
    they don't have to support you once you get there.
    They only have to say that they could.
    But once you get here, you could work.
    Yes.
    But he didn't do it.
    So anyway.
    And that was the story.
    And then he wrote me some letters
    that he wants me to come to New York, and work for him,
    and maybe be a partner to the grocery store business.
    He felt guilty?
    And all that.
    You think he felt guilty?
    He must have felt guilty.
    I said, dear uncle, I came to America.
    I can take care of myself.
    I don't want no help.
    You lost touch with him?
    Yeah.
    And the cousins too?
    No, we used to-- we used to get letters on Yom Kippur, a card.
    Once a year.
    But anyway, it--
    Petered out.
    --fade away, fade away.
    And I don't know.
    When you got married in--
    '46.
    --'46, what kind of a wedding was it?
    It was a Jewish wedding.
    I mean--
    A Hasidisher wedding.
    --we were a poor Jewish wedding.
    A Hasidisher--
    How was it Hasidish?
    The rabbi made it?
    It had to be.
    In Feldafing?
    In Feldafing.
    They did all the weddings similar in Feldafing?
    Yeah.
    It was all--
    What did they do?
    They rented a little hall?
    They had a little--
    No, oh, on a boat.
    On the-- on the street.
    And then we had a chuppah.
    And the little place we have, we--
    people come in.
    And they eat.
    And they drink.
    They made this.
    And they-- you mean, it made it sort of like a Kiddush?
    Yeah.
    You gave herring out?
    Yeah, we had herring.
    We had everything.
    You had dancing?
    Did you have any music?
    No, no, no.
    No, no.
    We didn't have any.
    This was a--
    It was a poor wedding, just like--
    I tell you, the wedding, it's like Fiddler on the Roof.
    You remember the--
    Lazar Wolf, the butcher.
    I'm the butcher, that kind of wedding.
    Well, the rabbi looked like Lazar.
    And that kind of wedding we had in the--
    No.
    You have to go.
    Are you sure you were happy?
    Well, I was happy and I was unhappy.
    We not too happy.
    We live in a small, little room.
    You see, at times, even today, I say, maybe I was--
    I'm lucky.
    Maybe was I'm unlucky.
    Because I came here, I have no family.
    I was like Adam.
    Like an orphanage?
    Adam.
    I mean, no background--
    No language.
    --no language, no father, no mother.
    Nobody knew me.
    Nobody know who I am or what I am, just a person.
    And no relatives.
    And no relatives.
    So anyway, we-- from the beginning, we had--
    Miserable.
    --a pretty good-- tough time here.
    At that time when we came here, we didn't have--
    they didn't have any apartments to live in.
    And we lived in a garage apartment
    where it was a landsman, they called.
    He spoke Jewish.
    And I was tickled to death.
    That made him a landsman.
    And that-- and that--
    and that made me happy because I could correspond with him.
    He's not a-- he did Jewish records.
    Jewish records and all this.
    He tried to make me comfortable.
    You lived in the garage?
    In a garage.
    So when we want to get down at night, the cockroaches
    about like this, they were flying around all over that.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    You could hear them walking like that, those cockroaches.
    Misery.
    And my daughter, mine--
    was two years old.
    And she was sick at that time.
    No heat.
    And we didn't have no heat.
    We had a miserable time.
    I came home, I cried, I cried.
    I told my wife, I said, you see, if we would live in the tent,
    we probably would be maybe better
    off than we are over here.
    But anyway, the second day I was here, they found me a job.
    I went to get a job.
    And they paid me $9.
    And I came home.
    And I cried again--
    $9 a week.
    Bupkis, nothing.
    I say, I could have beg in Israel and I would have had $9.
    What kind of job was this?
    A tailoring job.
    So it was--
    Who found you this job, the HIAS?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    The United, this was.
    They used to say, don't worry how much you make it.
    And they told me-- they told me--
    at that time they gave me $60 a week to live on, from the United
    Jewish Fund till I--
    Work myself up.
    --work myself up.
    So I got that job for $9.
    I went back to them.
    And I told them.
    I said, well, I got $9.
    You gave me $60.
    Take off the $9.
    Give me $50.
    And I live on that $50.
    They respect you for that?
    And they say, no, no.
    We want to give you.
    Is just a few more months.
    I say, please, no.
    So-- and I couldn't work for $9 a week.
    I just quit that job.
    Quit that job and went to New York, looking for another job.
    You left and you went to New York?
    Yes.
    By himself.
    With your wife?
    No, no, by myself to look for a job.
    Why didn't you go with your wife?
    Well, just to look for a job.
    She was--
    I went--
    Oh, and then you would send--
    Then I would say.
    And then we would.
    So I went to New York.
    And I had a few friends in New York.
    And the way they lived there in New York,
    I couldn't accept it either.
    Why?
    How did they live?
    Because they lived in one room.
    They had a tub, a bathtub where--
    like this.
    A cabinet.
    In a cabinet.
    It was under the cabinet.
    They had to crawl in into that tub like this to take a bath.
    [?
    From 4 o'clock. ?]
    And they went to work about 6 o'clock in the morning.
    And they came back about 8 o'clock at night, schmutzig--
    T-shirts.
    --t-shirts and all that kind of--
    dirty and all.
    Was Delancey Street.
    I can't.
    I can't.
    I can't.
    Delancey Street?
    Yeah.
    I say, I can't accept this.
    I came back to Birmingham.
    I came back to Birmingham, it was an opening.
    It was an opening job.
    Excuse me, but the people that lived in Manhattan, they--
    in this one room, they were single, though, right?
    No, no, they had wives and kids.
    No, no, they have all kids.
    You mean, and how-- who would live?
    One couple with kids would live in one room
    with a bathtub in the room?
    Yeah, with two.
    And a kitchen there too?
    Yeah.
    And they had cockroaches too, I'm sure.
    Cockroaches.
    And smelling in the morning, they--
    The herring.
    The herring, they used to--
    The streets.
    --the sanitary workers go by with the streets
    and all that thing.
    It was probably a lower section--
    The cheapest.
    --cheap section.
    Sure, Lower East Side.
    Anyway, I didn't like it.
    So I came back.
    I-- was an opening in another business, in a-- in a store--
    Department store.
    --department store.
    So I applied for the job.
    And there was-- the buyer there was Jewish also.
    He says, how much do you want?
    I say, I don't want anything.
    I say, I want you to give me a chance to see what I can do.
    And after you like me, then we'll talk about money.
    Because if I tell you $50 or $20 and I
    can't do the job that I'm telling you,
    so I'm not worth $5.
    So don't ask me about money.
    Let me work two, three week.
    He say, you know what, Simon?
    It's the first offer I had in my life
    that the man gave me an offer like that, that he
    don't want anyone, just--
    So he respected you.
    Yeah.
    So he said, OK, go to work.
    I worked three-four weeks.
    He say, you hired.
    Said, how much?
    Guess it was $50 he paid me, $50 a week.
    Ludicrous, five times as much as the other job.
    Yeah.
    So I went back to the United Jewish, to the community.
    Something.
    United Jewish Fund.
    I told them, now, listen, I'm making $50 a week.
    Please, take it off me.
    Say, oh, no, we cannot do this.
    You make a few dollars, put in the bank in case
    you may need something.
    I said, please.
    No.
    I say, I can live on the $50 now.
    And I don't want it.
    And I hope, next year, I will be able to give to charity $50 too.
    And I say, I don't want any more.
    Please, take it off.
    And they did take it off.
    I didn't align to it.
    Were they nice to you, the people in the United?
    Very nice.
    They were-- we were the first refugees over there.
    You were the first ones to come to Birmingham?
    Yeah.
    Yes
    Yeah.
    And everybody would say, oh, go to the Nagrodzkis
    if you want to know.
    And up till this date, we have all-- we--
    I don't have not an enemy in town.
    I'm just curious to see if they-- they do
    record it this way.
    One man came here the same time.
    Yeah, the Greek.
    The Greek, I think.
    No, no, the Greek--
    Oh, no, there was a guy who came here--
    Lipschitz.
    --a bakery.
    It says here, Simon Lipschitz.
    Yeah, yeah.
    Came one day before you, one day.
    That's right, right, right.
    He worked in a--
    Or one month before you
    He worked in a bakery shop.
    Bakery.
    And he also was self-supporting?
    No.
    I don't know.
    He was single.
    And he left.
    But you were the first couple with a baby to come.
    You were the first family to come.
    Well, tell me-- let me go to you now for a little while.
    All right.
    Where were you born?
    In Niwka.
    Spell-- N-I-- how is it spelled?
    N-I-F-K-E.
    In Poland?
    Poland.
    Near his town?
    No, no, no, no.
    I'm close to Katowice, Oberschlesien.
    Western Poland?
    Yes, close to the German border.
    Near Germany.
    And what--
    Bedzin, Sosnowiec, this.
    Sure.
    It's three kilometer.
    Bedzin?
    Kilometer, sure.
    And oh, I know there was a ghetto in Sosnowiec,
    a big ghetto.
    Yeah, my mother was over there in that.
    I interviewed some people from that ghetto.
    So what year were you born in?
    '23.
    '23.
    And your family?
    I had a brother two years older than me.
    One brother, that's all you had.
    Did you have a sister?
    No.
    In other words, you only came from a family of two.
    Two.
    Is there a reason why you came from a family of 10 and you two?
    Do you know?
    There was no reason.
    No reason.
    Some families are big, some families no.
    Same thing here in America, some of them are big.
    OK.
    I'm just asking.
    Now, did he make it through the war?
    No.
    No.
    And you don't know what happened to him?
    I saw a friend from the same time.
    He was killed six months before the war was--
    Was over.
    --over.
    Around there, he was kill a month before the war was over.
    Your father was killed a month before the war?
    And your mother?
    My mother went to Auschwitz from Sosnowiec with her sister.
    She had a sister in Sosnowiec.
    And she had two--
    three sisters in Bedzin.
    It's close.
    And they went with the same transport.
    They had small kids.
    And I got one cousin living over here.
    His sister got killed in the wagon, in the train.
    In the train?
    When she was crying--
    she was nine years old.
    And they--
    Can I offer you a drink?
    Oh, thank you.
    I'm fine.
    This is my meal.
    I listened to you.
    I ask-- [INAUDIBLE].
    It's OK, really.
    And mother-- mother and two the other sisters went to Auschwitz.
    And she didn't make it?
    No.
    Now, what happened to you during the war?
    Where were you-- just tell me in brief where you were.
    I was in Sudeten.
    In '41, they took me.
    Where Czechoslovakia was?
    Yes.
    They took you there to work?
    Well, we were all in the ghetto.
    And I used to work in a coal mine
    in Poland to have a piece of paper
    to get out from the ghetto, to go bring a loaf of bread
    or a few potatoes.
    But one night, my mother say, don't come home.
    We had property.
    Don't.
    He say, go to this Gentile.
    And you stay down there.
    Somehow, my heart says, no, I got to go home.
    About 2 o'clock, I woke in the night.
    And the Polack went from the coal mine.
    So I used to say, oh, I got a husband in the war.
    And I'm married.
    I was afraid of them.
    So I came to the ghetto.
    And about a couple of hours later, they took us all out
    to Sosnowiec, the whole ghetto.
    And they throw the old folks from the steps down.
    It was terrible.
    So we-- so in Sosnowiec was like this--
    picked up a few.
    They need-- in Sudeten, they have a lot of Spinnerei factory,
    where they making thread, all kind of thread
    for the airplanes.
    So they need seven of them.
    Thread?
    No, they need seven girls.
    No, what were they making for the airplane?
    Oh, they-- thread, like cotton.
    They made-- they made the thread--
    Material.
    --material.
    The material.
    The whole Sudeten was with ladies' camps.
    They have a lot of camps, every little city.
    For industry?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And Kruger was the owner from the factory.
    So we were then there 1,000 girls.
    And we were around in 25 to 14/15.
    We worked in the factory 14-16 hours.
    Hard work.
    Very hard work.
    Some of them-- kids had blisters.
    They didn't have gloves to wear it for--
    the thread goes through water.
    And you have to pull it and tie it and the water in this.
    And the hand was just rotten from that.
    Did you get sick in the camp?
    I got sick.
    I had pneumonia.
    About-- I have a year before the war ended.
    And my friend had typhus.
    When you say, it's contagious, I don't believe
    in nothing you can catch it.
    We ate from the same bowl.
    I washed her laundry and helped her out.
    And you didn't get it.
    And I didn't get it.
    And they had probably about 150 girls.
    Were you there for the entire war?
    Yes.
    Did they kill people in that camp too?
    They-- when they liquidated Auschwitz,
    they sent a lot of people from Auschwitz, the end of it,
    to Sudeten.
    And it was a lot of Hungarish Jews,
    where they really didn't get killed themselves.
    And they were dying like flies every day.
    How come they were dying like flies?
    Because they weren't tough enough?
    I mean, they hadn't been long.
    They were undernourished.
    I mean, the people--
    They're not undernourished, they didn't get care.
    They got the piece of bread, they ate it up in one time.
    Some people said that the Hungarian Jews were not
    used to it because they were taken late in the war.
    They were the last ones.
    And that they were not experienced in what you had--
    how you had to live to survive.
    You see--
    But the bread, they ate it all at once.
    Yeah.
    And then in the Sosnowiec and Bedzin,
    this was the group where we were.
    So everybody saved a piece of bread for every day.
    And then we ate rutabaga.
    The rutabaga, oh, this was just unbelievable.
    Why?
    Because you blow up like a balloon from that.
    That's what happens when you eat rutabaga?
    Oh, yeah.
    Well, we ate the rutabaga.
    We ate anything you could find.
    And then they didn't have nothing.
    We used to steal.
    We used to steal food from the dogs, from the pigs, and eat it.
    And they didn't--
    Whatever was out.
    In the camp, in the concentration camp--
    and when we used to go to work and--
    Tell me, did--
    I'll ask both of you.
    Did you-- did you lose hope at various points
    that you would make it alive?
    Well, we want to get killed from a bomb.
    This was the prayer.
    Well, I didn't-- I didn't--
    I didn't have any optimism.
    Because you-- every second, you were dead.
    I mean, it was.
    And you said, you stood out on the runway.
    You were hoping for a bomb.
    So now then they started the planes, they used to turn the--
    But you were not a terrorist.
    --napalm.
    But you would never kill yourself?
    I mean--
    No, no, no.
    --I know that people had opportunities.
    No, no.
    No, no.
    What I mean is that sometimes--
    Suicides, no.
    I don't mean suicide.
    But for example, that if you would run away from the camp,
    they would shoot you.
    That's one way to die.
    That's right.
    So when you say that you hope the plane would hit you,
    that's another way.
    But there are different levels.
    You said, ah, it wouldn't be a bad idea if it ended.
    But you didn't say, I'm going to make it end.
    No, no.
    Well, what happened--
    It would be a good idea.
    Because a bomb hit you, you don't even feel it.
    You just--
    Is-- it was a German girl, a Jewish girl.
    She found that she had a sister maybe 50 kilometers
    from the camp where I was.
    And she wanted-- she heard the sister is down there.
    So she ran away from the camp.
    And they find her.
    And they brought her back.
    And they sent her to Auschwitz.
    She was about 16 years old.
    So you knew that that's what would happen if you got-- tried
    to do something like that.
    Oh, yes.
    So when the war ended, you were sent to Bergen-Belsen?
    Yeah.
    And then they had another camp what they brought.
    We were ready to leave to--
    it was in the mountains.
    I've forgotten the name, was on television.
    Tyrol?
    Tyrol, we were not far from.
    In the Tyrol.
    They were planning to--
    they came and took all our clothes.
    And we were all ready to go to Tyrol.
    And they took us from Dachau to Tyrol.
    And we were liberated between Dachau and Tyrol
    from the Americans.
    What does that mean, Tyrol?
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Tyrol was-- they--
    in Tyrol was the Italian border.
    Tyrol was the big mountains.
    And they supposed to finish us out
    so nobody wouldn't ever know what happened.
    Were you afraid of that, that if you died,
    no one would know the real story?
    Did you want to live to tell the story?
    Well, when--
    And did you think--
    --when we walked-- when we walked on that death march,
    I had my picture, a military picture.
    And I wrote it down on the picture, the other side,
    that I'm here.
    And I believe I'm not going to survive.
    I'm here in such and such a place.
    And please, whoever finds there--
    and if ever finds for somebody from the-- my family
    to deliver that card.
    I threw it away.
    Because I figured that I'm not going to survive.
    But you did.
    Well, I didn't-- I don't know if you told me your first name.
    Helen Nagrodzki.
    No, you didn't.
    Helen.
    Helen, didn't write it down the first tape.
    After this, you went to--
    you went to Bergen-Belsen?
    Well, what happened--
    And that's where you--
    --after the war, everybody was traveling.
    The borders were open.
    And you looked for family.
    So what I did in--
    I had my--
    I had my mother's cousin with me.
    And we went back to Poland to look for maybe somebody survive.
    We were a big family.
    My mother had six sisters.
    But in meantime, we didn't find nobody.
    And we were afraid for the Polack.
    They were very cruel.
    They killed Jews left and right.
    I know the Kielce pogrom.
    Yeah, they--
    And they took them off the trains.
    Off the train the minute they find the Jewish.
    And we spoke real well Polish.
    In camp, we spoke Polish.
    We didn't wanted the German--
    Yiddish, it gets closer to the German.
    So everything was Polish.
    So the accent was not a Jewish accent.
    We spoke a real good Polish like the Polacken.
    So we were afraid of them.
    And then I said, well, let me go to Bergen-Belsen.
    Maybe I find somebody down there.
    People were looking, like my-- from one came to the other camp,
    just find somebody--
    or the relative, or the a person who lived in your town,
    or somebody who you know.
    Maybe he knew somebody from your family.
    Maybe he was together with one of your family.
    Was just looking for clues to see if anybody survived
    or whatever.
    Was a funny story--
    I went to-- in the train.
    And I find somebody.
    I say-- [YIDDISH].
    Oh, he's a Bendiner?
    I said, Bedzin?
    Said, I have a big family down there, the Schwartzberg.
    So if there was any Schwartzberg is alive.
    I didn't even expect him.
    He was about 11 years when they took him to concentration camp.
    Now, he's a little off.
    He's-- he got a son who is mentally retarded.
    And he's just a nervous wreck.
    He was in Auschwitz a while.
    Where does he live?
    He lives in Florida.
    And then he got two daughters in Detroit.
    Tell me.
    You-- afterwards, you went to Bergen-Belsen.
    And then you met-- and then you came from there to--
    Yeah, went--
    It happened you met before she--
    She went to Bergen-Belsen.
    And then she had a cousin.
    She called him--
    Was my mother's cousin.
    --she called him a cousin--
    He was not a cousin.
    --to come to see to where I lived in Feldafing.
    And she come to see the cousin.
    And it was an old man over there.
    And he tried to be a shadchen, he told me.
    In Bergen-Belsen is a neighbor of this.
    He survived-- a friend of mine survived from Bergen-Belsen.
    He was an older man.
    He was like a--
    She told me about him.
    He was like an old father to the young kids.
    So he said, who did you meet in Feldafing?
    I said, it was down there, a Nagrodzki
    and this one and this one.
    A Nagrodzki, he say?
    He's my neighbor.
    He lived in the same town.
    We used to be neighbors in the same town.
    This way, he wrote him a letter.
    And then he say-- one day, he say, I want to go see Altmann.
    Yeah.
    And I went to Bergen-Belsen to see him.
    And after a while in--
    we proposed and we married.
    Now, let me ask you.
    I'm caught up to where you were.
    You came to America.
    In those early years, you couldn't speak English too well,
    right?
    No, couldn't speak English.
    What was the reception like in the Jewish community here?
    They were very nice.
    They were very nice.
    Were they understanding?
    Understanding, very nice.
    Did people invite you over?
    That's right.
    They invite me.
    They-- my daughter-- they invited my daughter.
    Because when she was here, she was two years old.
    And she was here about two months or three months
    and she spoke English.
    How old was when she came here?
    When she came here, was two.
    In September, she was two.
    And in November, we came over here.
    And they used to come in here.
    And they take her out to the community center.
    She spoke Yiddish like an old person.
    And they--
    Must have been cute talking.
    --and they enjoyed to listen to a child speak Yiddish,
    and a perfect Yiddish--
    not like a baby, but like a child.
    And then she starts speaking English also.
    And she spoke English.
    So we lived with a neighbor who was a Gentile.
    She goes there.
    This goes there.
    And where we lived, they were Jewish.
    So my daughter went out there and spoke to the Gentile
    in English.
    When she came into the house, she said, Shirley--
    her name is Shirley-- she says, Shirley,
    why do you speak to the lady--
    Ms. Fein.
    --to Ms. Fein in English, and when you come in in the house,
    you speak to me in Jewish?
    She say, Ms. Goldstein, she is a goy.
    She don't understand Yiddish.
    And so you understand.
    She was only how old?
    Well, about two and a half.
    She must have been three by then.
    Two and a half years old.
    How many children do you have?
    Three.
    You have three.
    You have the daughter.
    I have two daughters and a son.
    Two daughters and a son.
    Yes.
    Show the picture.
    And I'd like to see the picture.
    See, it so happen--
    so happen that that is not our family.
    Let me look at it.
    This is your family.
    Sure.
    This is the Shirley.
    This is my oldest daughter.
    She-- we talking about her when she
    was two and a half years old.
    Now, this is her husband.
    And this is her child, her son.
    And this is her son.
    OK.
    Now, this is my daughter where she lives over here.
    And this is her son.
    And this is her daughter.
    And--
    There's several.
    --this is her daughter.
    OK?
    Now, this is my son.
    And this is his wife.
    And this is his son.
    And this is his daughter.
    They're all married to Jews?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    They all married Jews.
    No Goyim.
    Now, he is a doctor.
    Lucky.
    Yeah.
    He is a doctor.
    Who is a doctor?
    He, my son.
    He's a doctor.
    My son-in-law is a doctor.
    And my son-in-law is a lawyer.
    So you have my--
    a son, the doctor, a son-in-law, the lawyer,
    and a son-in-law the doctor.
    That's right.
    The son is there.
    How about-- what does she do?
    She got a master's degree in psychology.
    She has a master's degree--
    Oh, in my field.
    I'm a sociologist.
    And she had a master-- my other daughter,
    she had a master's degree--
    In education.
    --in education.
    And she had a master's degree in education.
    Your daughter-in-law.
    So your children have master's sociology, master's
    of education, and a doctor.
    Doctor.
    What school did she go to?
    She went to the University of Alabama.
    And then she went in Georgia.
    Where, which?
    Her master's degree, I don't know where she went.
    In Atlanta?
    In Atlanta.
    In Atlanta.
    She go to Georgia State University?
    Yes.
    That's where I taught.
    That was my first job teaching.
    You know what?
    And she went to Atlanta to be a social worker when
    the Schvartze were rioting.
    And it was terrible.
    I couldn't sleep.
    What year was that?
    She majored in history.
    And she have enough sociology--
    To do that too.
    What year-- what year?
    She was born in '47.
    No, what year did she go to Atlanta to study sociology?
    Shirley is 10 years in Washington.
    She was 21 when she went to Atlanta, 20 years ago.
    20 years ago-- 1969.
    She's 41.
    No.
    She might know me.
    She might-- I've written other books.
    She may well know me.
    She has a memory like an elephant.
    Well, I came to Georgia State University in 1971.
    So that's-- but she might have been finishing in 1971.
    The chairman of the department, you'll tell her,
    was Schoenfeld, Eugen--
    he was a survivor of Auschwitz.
    And I was a professor there for one year.
    And then I went to Yale to teach.
    But I lived there for one year.
    She lived in Atlanta quite a few-- about four or five years.
    Where did she live in Atlanta, Northeast?
    Buford, Buford Highway.
    Buford?
    Buford Highway?
    Oh, yeah.
    I was there yesterday.
    If you don't mind, just put a note, please.
    No, no.
    I'm going to give you my card.
    All young people lived on Buford Highway.
    I'm going to see her Wednesday.
    Where does she live now?
    She lives in--
    In Maryland.
    Silver Spring?
    No, in Maryland.
    Maryland.
    Not in-- she lives in--
    Where in Maryland, Bethesda?
    Not Bethesda, it's Gaithersburg.
    Gaithersburg.
    Gaithersburg.
    So you would say had naches from all your children?
    Oh, yes.
    Well, I tell you what.
    I'm very successful here in this country.
    I have nothing to complain about.
    We had a hard time in the beginning.
    But I believe I'm the richest man in the world.
    I-- see, some-- success, you can measure.
    Some people successful, they make a few dollars.
    Some are successful, they are good health.
    Some are successful, they've got good children.
    I got-- I had my children educated.
    And they all--
    I never have a minute's trouble from them.
    The Louise is very involved in Jewish.
    And a close family life--
    and they all involved in--
    they know they Jews.
    And I'm very proud.
    The younger daughter is very involved in United Jewish Fund.
    Her father-in-law--
    Which is the one with the master's in education?
    Yeah, Louise.
    Where does she live?
    She's in Mountain Brook.
    She lives here.
    So you see her a lot.
    Yeah.
    She has three children here?
    She has three children.
    Yeah, and they go to day school.
    And my son lives here too.
    Your son, the doctor?
    Yeah.
    You see him.
    He lives here.
    And where did he study?
    In Birmingham.
    In Birmingham.
    And he got his doctor degree too?
    Yes.
    He is-- he is a--
    Anesthesiologist.
    --anesthesiologist.
    Let me ask you a question.
    A lot of the survivors had problems with their children.
    No problems.
    But you didn't.
    Why?
    No.
    What do you think you did?
    I was very strict.
    Well, I tell you what.
    In other words, give me advice.
    What would you recommend to people?
    I lived-- I lived for my children.
    We never had a maid.
    We never left them alone.
    Wherever we went, we took our children with us.
    We loved them.
    They loved us.
    And if I told them--
    We kept religious time.
    You know about a holiday was a holiday.
    And if I told them not to do certain things,
    and when they got a little bit upset, I--
    Didn't mind that they cry.
    --I didn't mind.
    I explained it.
    I explained it to them why I said it.
    And because I-- certain thing are.
    A matter of fact, I give you an example, my daughter over here.
    At one time-- at one time, she had a boyfriend here.
    And he came-- and he came to the house--
    was in wintertime.
    It was snowing outside, freezing, snow.
    She had a date.
    I say, Louise, I say, you're not going to go tonight.
    And she got kind of upset.
    And she ran away in the other room, closed the door,
    and was mad--
    was mad at me.
    So I didn't feel too proud.
    I went back to her.
    I opened the door.
    I said, listen.
    First of all, never run away from me
    and close the door to me.
    Do you want to say something?
    I'll listen to you.
    Now, and I want to tell you something.
    And I don't want no answers from you.
    Don't talk to me.
    Just listen.
    I say, I love you so much.
    I'm scared.
    Suppose you go out there in that snow, and that frost,
    and that sleet, and you get stuck on the freeway,
    on a highway, and you cannot come back.
    Now, what do you expect me to do?
    I couldn't sleep all night.
    I would worry about you.
    If you want to do something wrong,
    I say, you don't have to wait till night.
    You can do it daytime.
    You can do it lunchtime.
    Any time, you want do something wrong, you can do it.
    So that shows you that I'm not afraid
    because you're going to do something wrong.
    I'm afraid because I love you.
    And so happened, another couple came by.
    And it was start snowing.
    And they couldn't go home.
    They got stuck over here.
    So I had to call their parents.
    I said, now, listen, don't worry about them.
    They're in my house.
    They're going to spend the night over here.
    And in the morning when it lets up, they can be able to drive,
    they'll go home.
    And she came down and said, Daddy, you were wrong.
    I'm sorry.
    She hugged me and kissed me.
    My oldest one is--
    what do you call it-- a genius, brilliant.
    The other ones was smart too, straight-A student.
    But this one didn't have to study.
    What did she do with her sociology degree?
    Was she able to do anything with it?
    Well, she was a social worker in Washington too.
    She got a-- but she got a degree not in social work,
    in sociology.
    In history.
    But she got a degree in sociology, you say,
    not social work.
    Social.
    Was it social work or sociology?
    Social work, yeah.
    Social work-- this is not so much my department.
    I may have known her.
    Does she go to Emory?
    I don't know.
    I really don't know.
    Sure.
    She was-- she is--
    she was unusual.
    She was ahead in every class.
    When she was in the fourth grade,
    they wanted promote her two years.
    She used to go to a special school for gifted kids.
    For gifted children?
    So let me ask you, was--
    did you give them a Jewish education also?
    Oh, yeah, Hebrew school, Sunday school.
    Yeah, they all went to Hebrew school.
    They all understand Yiddish.
    And you all-- what did you do?
    You sent them all to Hebrew school?
    They speak Yiddish.
    To Hebrew school, yeah.
    But how often, on Sunday or during the week?
    Well--
    On Sunday.
    --twice a week during the week.
    Conservative or Reform?
    Conservative.
    And you belong to a Conservative temple now?
    Yeah.
    Who is the rabbi there?
    Rabbi Glazer.
    Glazer.
    Glazer.
    I think I spoke with him on the phone.
    Do you think that the reason that they all wound up
    marrying Jewish people--
    Well, we were against Gentile and mixed marriages.
    But did you tell them so?
    Yes.
    I tell them.
    I still talk about it.
    I cannot stand.
    I know, a Gentile is not a friend of a Jew.
    Even if they convert?
    Nobody can tell me.
    If they-- see, the reason is--
    I told them a million times.
    When you meet a girl, a Gentile, or whoever it is,
    you're two people.
    When you get married, you're 22 people.
    You might have a [INAUDIBLE] in--
    They know Christmas and Hanukkah.
    --with all kind of in the trash in the family and all
    that thing.
    I says, after you married, you're not just two, you're 22.
    You have a cousin.
    You have an aunt.
    And you have a grandfather and a grandmother.
    I mean, it doesn't mix.
    We were against mixed marriage.
    We just don't think, when you-- when you go with a girl,
    you think about that girl.
    But after you get married, it's more than the girl.
    So what would you have done if one of them
    had married someone not Jewish?
    Terrible.
    Well--
    We would be heartbroken.
    --I would be heartbroken.
    And they knew it.
    Maybe I wouldn't survive.
    I couldn't take it.
    You mean, you could survive--
    you could survive the war and the Holocaust,
    but something like that, you wouldn't?
    No, I couldn't.
    Would have terrible.
    No.
    Because I know all my life what the Gentiles did to the Jews.
    It just unbearable.
    The biggest antisemitic people in the world, especially
    the Catholics, especially in Poland.
    Of course, there was--
    And when I came over here--
    when I came over here and I used to talk to people,
    I say, well, it could happen in America too what happened in--
    say, oh, in America-- in America, cannot happen.
    You see what happened in Skokie, Illinois, what
    happened with the Skinheads.
    It can happen everywhere.
    The shocks were against the Jews.
    And it's no such thing that you say, well, I'm not Jewish.
    I'm an American.
    I'm an American too.
    But I'm Jewish too.
    And between the two--
    You cannot--
    --being Jewish is more important?
    Yes.
    You can-- you cannot--
    you cannot-- you know what it say, get away.
    Hitler taught us that you are a Jew.
    There's no such thing as you deny.
    You cannot deny you are a Jew.
    Three, four generation he know them.
    What were you saying about the Schvartzes?
    You said that they--
    Well, the Schvartzes big antisemitic too.
    They're worse.
    It's amazing, though, I mean, when you consider
    that they suffered also.
    That's right.
    It's not the Jew, then it's them.
    When I came-- when I came to America,
    I was the most liberal person in the world
    because I lived through all this.
    And I saw what happened with the Black people over here.
    They had to eat on the street.
    They couldn't buy there from the--
    Couldn't use a water fountain.
    It wasn't right.
    It was wrong.
    Maybe it's still wrong.
    But they still not angels, the Schvartze.
    They don't like Jews either.
    Maybe less.
    Whenever you talk to a Schvartze, oh, you're Jewish,
    you must have money.
    A Jew cannot be without the money.
    Jew had to have money.
    Didn't they think that about the survivors,
    that when they came here, that they did well and everything?
    No, we don't hear-- we don't hear about that.
    In New York, they say that.
    We don't hear about it.
    I told-- I mean, we talk over here with my wife
    every once in a while that we get here Jews.
    We get Russian Jews, German Jews, Polish Jews.
    You get Vietnamese-- from every corner of the world,
    they come to America.
    Somehow, they survive.
    And they can make a living.
    And the Schvartze are born here and for hundreds of years.
    And all they know is a--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    --90%, I guess, is the third or fourth generations on welfare.
    Maybe that's part of the problem.
    They have three generations on welfare.
    On welfare.
    They're also--
    And I worked with Schvartze.
    They don't want to work.
    And they got a slogan on-- they got a slogan.
    If you hire a Schvartze, you cannot fire them.
    Because their slogan is because I'm Black, he fired me.
    They going to say because I cannot do the work.
    Or I don't want to work.
    Or he don't want to work.
    He omit.
    He goes away.
    I work with Schvartze.
    They go out for lunch for two hours--
    an hour and a half or two hours.
    And they don't care.
    They don't work three day-- three hours a day.
    And they don't care.
    And I'm not going to squeal because it's not in my business.
    I do my day's work.
    I come home whenever I go to--
    Where do you work now?
    I work for his father, for Parisian's.
    Parisian?
    Yeah.
    And what-- and that's a big place?
    It's-- the Parisian's, they got about--
    13-14 stores.
    They're very well.
    Maybe more than that.
    13-14 stores?
    Yeah, multi-multi-millionaires.
    So what, you think their problem is that they're lazy?
    They're lazy, yes.
    Basically.
    They want the welfare.
    I have one Schvartze once a month, she come.
    My baby-- did you know, my baby going to have a baby?
    And she say, she went to get welfare.
    Yeah.
    And they don't want to give her so much.
    She wants more than they will give her.
    And the baby getting food and baby this.
    But-- and the son--
    Were they any different when you came here?
    Huh?
    Yeah.
    They were different when we came here.
    They were polite.
    And you weren't afraid for a Schvartze.
    Now, you scared to death.
    You could go-- you could go to--
    I used to park my car, like in New York, in Harlem.
    I used to go pick up my car.
    The store would-- used to be open till 10-11
    o'clock at night.
    I used to go there in an alley, dark, pitch dark.
    I used to pick up my car.
    I wasn't afraid.
    I wasn't scared.
    How was this neighborhood?
    Now, I'm scared to go in daytime.
    I'm scared to go over there.
    This is other neighborhood.
    This is OK?
    This is the best neighborhood.
    This a Jewish neighborhood?
    Well, a lot of Jewish--
    This used to be the Jewish neighborhood.
    Now, they moving farther out.
    Well, a lot of Jews, they live around in--
    I would say, in two miles already.
    Now, when you came here--
    Two miles already.
    Now, when you came here--
    All right.
    I have no grudge against the reform Jews,
    but I was brought up, when I go to the synagogue,
    I feel very uncomfortable not to wear a yarmulke.
    And I feel uncomfortable to go in with a sport
    shirt with short sleeves.
    When I go to the synagogue, I like to be dressed in a tie
    and to wear the yarmulke, not because I'm that religious.
    I'm not-- it's just--
    In the-- in--
    It's in me.
    It's a tradition.
    It's a tradition.
    What keeps the Jewish thing is a tradition.
    Are you more, would you say more of the tradition
    than the religious part?
    Yes.
    I mean, like, do you believe that after you
    die, something will happen to you, that there'll be something?
    No, I do not believe.
    But would you say you believe in God?
    Yeah.
    Or are you not sure?
    I'm not positive.
    Because one of the questions that people sometimes ask
    is, if there's a God, how did he allow all this to happen?
    That's what I said a million times there.
    That's what he thinks.
    And what do you think?
    I believe in God.
    And I believe it's no such thing.
    If he could allow to do this, he's no such thing.
    You wouldn't accept that we can't understand it.
    No, I don't.
    I don't know.
    I'm not a genius, but I just don't believe.
    You don't accept God.
    And how about you?
    How come you do believe after everything?
    6 million people died.
    Well--
    A lot of them were religious.
    But what way did they die?
    How did they die?
    There's a guy who survived the camps who wrote
    a book called Janowska Road.
    It was about the ghetto in Lwów.
    Yeah.
    He said, God, if you had to kill us, OK.
    But like this?
    Like this.
    Yes.
    Took children by the feet and knock on the wall and kill them,
    burn people alive.
    And you tell me, that there is a being that
    can look at us like this?
    We were supposed to be the chosen people.
    And what wrong did I do in my life?
    Even if I'm not religious, I haven't stole anything
    from nobody.
    I never killed anybody.
    I never insult anybody.
    I do my work and everything.
    What did I sinned?
    I have no sins in this world.
    I know I have no sin, because if I were to steal something,
    if I were to kill somebody, it would be a sin,
    would be unproper thing.
    But I have never done.
    I've worked on a job for 38 years.
    I didn't have not one person on that job that didn't like me.
    I know that Nathan spoke very highly of you.
    I didn't go around asking people, but they spoke highly.
    And Neselrot.
    I don't have an enemy in town.
    Nathan, she came the same time--
    Having a good name is also and important ingredient--
    That's right.
    Well, they were--
    --success.
    In town, people who were jealous.
    Everywhere I go, oh, [INAUDIBLE].
    They used to say, Helen, how can you raise kids like that?
    You got kids.
    The whole town.
    The kids and kids and kids, and what kind of kids.
    Oh it's not there any [INAUDIBLE].
    Everybody calls on him.
    And--
    The people, the sick people, they love him.
    And the first thing, they're very generous with the money.
    They making good money.
    They generous.
    They generous all the time.
    First of all, he comes in and see, before Dynasty or something
    like that, he explained the patients.
    They say, now, don't worry about.
    You in good hands now.
    What's his name?
    His name is Arnie, Arnie [? Wilcher. ?]
    [? Wilcher? ?]
    [? Wilcher, ?] yes.
    His parents are Russian Jews.
    And he didn't know too much think Yiddishkeit.
    So she makes him--
    After he got married, he just announced he's going to shul.
    He [INAUDIBLE].
    He went to what?
    The shul, the temple.
    And he goes to temple.
    And he's very religious?
    Yeah, not religious, but he goes to temple with the kids,
    and the Sunday school.
    Tell me--
    He never knew that such thing as a temple.
    When you think back on this whole camp experience,
    what do you think you learned from it?
    What did it teach you about camp?
    The whole thing.
    The war.
    Being in the camps.
    What did you learn about human nature?
    Bad memories.
    Besides the memories.
    But what did you learn about human nature?
    What lessons can you take there?
    Well, sometime we wish I would be a dog
    outside, a animal, somebody.
    Even after the war--
    we were liberated by [INAUDIBLE].
    Even a Jew, any Jew in any country is you have a,
    you know, yeah, very close, Jews.
    Even [INAUDIBLE] know any [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].
    You see, what I learned--
    [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] in the camps.
    You know what?
    [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].
    And then we had prisoners in South Africa, 48 boys--
    Yiddishe boys.
    From South Africa?
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    In the war in Sudeten.
    They were--
    How did they wind up in Europe?
    Oh, they were in English military.
    Oh, I see.
    A soldier.
    [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Yom Kippur.
    We just passed by the machines of the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
    But you do it for community, right?
    That's right.