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Oral history interview with Hilda Thieberger

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0095.84 | RG Number: RG-50.163.0084

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    Oral history interview with Hilda Thieberger
    Transcript
    My name is Gail Schwartz.
    Today is July 25, 1989.
    I'm here to interview Hilda Thieberger, who
    is a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust.
    I am doing this under the auspices of the Oral History
    Project, Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington.
    The purpose of this interview is to add
    to the oral history of the Nazi Holocaust
    so that through this living memorial,
    future generations will know what happened.
    With this knowledge, hopefully we
    can prevent any such occurrence in the future.
    Could you begin by telling me your full name?
    My name is Hilda.
    Hildegarde was in my birth certificate.
    Hildegarde Goldberger.
    Goldberger, from home.
    Born February 26, 1913.
    And your married name?
    My married name is Hilda Thieberger.
    And where were you born?
    I was born in Teschen.
    It was Silesia, Teschen, Silesia,
    at that time when I was born.
    Then they divided the town in two parts.
    Half was Czechoslovakia, and the other half was Polish.
    And I was on the Czechoslovakia side born.
    That means in '22, they divided the town in two parts--
    Polish and Czechoslovakian.
    And that's what I am born there.
    So I'm Czechoslovakian.
    And my paper goes still Czechoslovakian born, not
    Polish, but just--
    Only my husband was Polish.
    He was German, but I don't know.
    He had German.
    One year, when he was older, his parents moved to Poland,
    and so we was always--
    when I got married, I was married in Poland.
    Who made up your household?
    Who did you live with?
    Before?
    Before the war.
    Before the war, I only had--
    well, I got married in 1935.
    Well, now let's talk.
    We're talking about your childhood, now.
    Oh.
    As a young--
    From my childhood.
    Yes.
    Well, my mother, my father--
    I was the fourth child in the family,
    but my other brother and sister died before I got born.
    So I never met my sisters before, or my brother.
    My brother, I think it was two brothers.
    I don't remember because I was too young to ask.
    After me is my brother.
    He's one year younger.
    And then six years younger was my sister, who was born six--
    after I was six years old, she was born.
    And my father and my mother.
    And we always had a maid in the house.
    That was my family in the house.
    What was your father's name?
    Julius Goldberger.
    And your mother's name?
    Rosa Goldberger.
    From home, Gross, born Gross.
    And the other children's names in the family?
    Well, my brother is Eric.
    He's in Florida now.
    He also lived.
    And my sister was Ana.
    But she didn't survive.
    She was, after my father and mother passed away,
    my grandfather took her to Berlin, and he raised her there.
    And she was sent to Auschwitz from Berlin
    when the war started in Europe.
    When Auschwitz existed, they sent everybody.
    They send them.
    And my whole family--
    well, not my whole.
    My mother's father and a step-grandmother
    lived in Berlin.
    So they took my sister.
    She was only six years old when my brother died.
    So they took her and they raised her.
    And my brother was already schooling, and then in the army,
    in the Czechoslovakian army.
    And then he went to Berlin.
    But he came back from Berlin because when
    the German, when the Hitler, in '33, came in,
    his own friends was bothering him.
    And since he was Czechoslovakian,
    couldn't stay there.
    They told him to go back to Czechoslovakia.
    At that time, it was still Czechoslovakia.
    And then the Hitler came to Czechoslovakia.
    So they came to us, to Poland.
    And he stayed one year with us till '39 and '39,
    when I was married already in '39.
    I got married in '35, but I was already four years married,
    and I lived in Poland, so he came to me.
    He was not married.
    What kind of work did your father do?
    My father was a sheet-metal man.
    Over there it was-- they called it a Klempner,
    but it was a sheet-metal man.
    He made sheet-metal work, like here, all that.
    He was like a artist too.
    If he would ever live the war, he would be a big artist.
    He was very good in his work.
    Did your mother work?
    No.
    My mother never worked.
    How would you describe the status of your family?
    Were you middle class?
    Well, we were in the middle class.
    Middle class.
    It wasn't poor.
    We had our own house, and we had two tenants in the house.
    And my mother had three children,
    and all the family from all over,
    they always came visiting us.
    We was the poor from the family, but always
    place for everybody in our house.
    My mother died, she was 37 years old.
    What kind of town was it.
    Was it a rural or urban?
    No, it was like the suburbs.
    It wasn't in town.
    We had to go to school to town.
    But we lived about--
    we had one hour to walk to our schools, everybody.
    And our schools was divided from 8:00 to 12:00,
    and then two hours was lunch time.
    And we had to come home again.
    So we came home, we ate, and we run back
    to school, because it was at 2 o'clock
    till 4 o'clock every day--
    even Saturday, Saturday, half day.
    Here is off, Saturday, but in Europe it was school five days.
    What was the name of the town that you were--
    Teschen.
    Teschen.
    Teschen.
    Yeah, but was this closer to another, bigger city?
    It was.
    Yes, it was a city.
    We had a--
    I had some friends the other day from New York,
    and they was from my hometown.
    And they said, they're laughing.
    Teschen was a small town.
    But we had a Burg--
    that was the Kaiser, the Austrian.
    When he came--
    Later.
    Mm-hmm.
    He had the whole--
    there was a whole mansion from him there.
    And everybody knew that town because it was so popular.
    How did most of the people earn their living in town?
    Well, I lived mostly in a farm direction.
    We didn't had any farm.
    We didn't have any land.
    But mostly around us, everybody had land and farmers.
    We only was three Jewish families close to me.
    I'm sorry.
    Closer to the house.
    It was only three.
    And in the city, we had a big Jewish crowd there, we had.
    They're very religious.
    And then we had this.
    It was already in two parts--
    the very religious with the beards.
    But my parents was religious, but not fanatic.
    We didn't have anything much.
    I mean, we went to the synagogues
    and we went to holidays, but not like the other ones.
    We was not involved in their religion
    so much because my father worked on Saturday sometimes,
    and they didn't let us.
    So we had a nice kosher home.
    My mother was very devoted to the Jewish life.
    And she was a very good person to give.
    Everybody knew her.
    She was only a giving type.
    She liked to give.
    Everybody who needed something came to my mother.
    Even the rich family came to visit us
    and stayed in one bedroom with us together.
    Always she was laughing because it
    was three children, my parents, and we had one bedroom.
    And everybody slept in that one bedroom.
    It was good.
    Here, every child has to have a special room, now.
    How did most of the people in the city earn their living?
    Well, it was many.
    For example, I had an uncle, my mother's sister's husband
    was a shoemaker.
    He had a shoe--
    he made the tops and they made the bottom.
    But he had man working for him too.
    Many had trade.
    But some of them had stores too.
    It was this and that.
    But it was a very nice--
    everybody knew each other and everybody helped each other
    if they could.
    They didn't go to buy from--
    one helped the other.
    Helping hands.
    How close were you to the non-Jewish population?
    Well, my mother was very close to the, all the farmer.
    Whenever somebody was sick or something,
    my mother cooked, and she sent food to them.
    She was one of the providers for the poorer people.
    We wasn't rich, but we--
    my father worked, and he didn't have any car and any
    on a bicycle, or we had-- and he had
    to take some material to a house, or something
    to do, then he hired horses with the buggy,
    and they took it down there, and he went on the bikes,
    and the men-- we had a shop in the house too, in our house.
    Your father worked at home.
    Well, at home and not in home.
    If it was outside, something to do, like addition,
    and he had to do, he did even--
    they didn't do roofing like here.
    They put some sheet, tin, mostly tin roofs,
    and then they painted that or something.
    I was too young.
    I never did too much interest in them.
    But I remember he had a--
    people had the pots.
    He made new bottom to the pots, and it was--
    here, they don't do it.
    They throw out the pot.
    But my father did everything.
    He made bathtubs for the houses from metal.
    He formed that, and he made that.
    He made for the houses the, when it's thundering, and it's--
    they have the-- they call it Blitzableiter.
    He put up so they--
    Lightning rod?
    Yeah, it didn't burn down the house.
    A lightning rod.
    Lightning, rod.
    Yeah, that's what he did too.
    He was in many.
    He made coal bottles, bottles like from metal,
    everything in a metal work.
    He was very, very good in that.
    How much education had he had?
    Well, we only had--
    He, your father.
    My father?
    I cannot even tell you now, because I don't know if he had
    a full eight years, because in our time we only went eight
    years to school.
    And then, when you went for a trade like me--
    I am a dressmaker.
    When I finished my high school, eight years, then I went for--
    I was supposed to go for three years in a school.
    It was a private school.
    And we could go for three or four years if you wanted,
    and then be a teacher.
    That was every year you took up a other subject, whatever
    you like.
    And the last year you completed.
    So you could be--
    had all the papers.
    You could.
    But I didn't finish.
    I only started one year, and the second year my father died.
    And I couldn't do that anymore, because--
    You were how old then?
    When my father died, I was 15.
    See, I stopped my schooling, was 14.
    It was you go eight years to school.
    So it's 14 always.
    And then I started at private school.
    That what my father wanted me to be, like a teachers.
    I could be in cooking, like it was like a whole year
    where you only cooked.
    Stuff like that.
    But it was a private school, and you could
    do whatever you liked then.
    But like college now, for example, it was.
    And when my father passed away, it was expensive,
    and we couldn't afford my school.
    In the meantime, my father died--
    when my mother died after one year,
    my father remarried, because we was three little children,
    and there was nobody to take care of us.
    So he remarried.
    And my stepmother, when my father died.
    My brother and my sister went to Berlin later on--
    my sister right away, my brother later.
    And I didn't go to my family to Berlin.
    How old were you when your mother died?
    My mother, I was 12.
    Not quite 12.
    One week it was before I was 12, on the 10th of February.
    And I am on the 26th of February.
    So I was not 12.
    But my father died when I was 15, three years later.
    He got blood poisoning and his lip.
    He probably dirty hands, and he squeezed it out, something.
    I don't know what he did.
    I was not home.
    I was visiting my family in Berlin at that time
    when got a telegram.
    My father is very sick.
    So I came home.
    And three days later--
    one week, and he died.
    Let's talk a little bit more about the town.
    How large a town was it?
    Do you know what the population was?
    I don't know.
    I don't know today.
    Teschen was, like I said, divided.
    So people went-- we had to have a paper to go through
    the-- it was a bridge.
    There was a river, the Olza.
    And the other side was Czechoslovakian,
    and this was Poland.
    But we had papers to go when we lived there,
    and we had to show it to the guards there.
    And if you had something on it, they
    took you to look for it because you couldn't buy anything
    there and bring it to Poland or from Poland
    to [? Czechs. ?] It was like you have to pay duty on it.
    And you had something like.
    But my father worked mostly.
    He had three places where he had in the house and so on.
    And then by where he was born, in his mother's and his parents'
    home, he had another place where he had working too,
    when he went there.
    Sometimes they needed someone, they called him.
    It was not too far.
    So he would go there.
    And then the third place was he hired an outside place,
    because I remember, before he died,
    he started to work on a development, all the houses.
    He had the gutterings and the roofs.
    And he started maybe four or five houses.
    And then he got--
    in August, he died.
    That's next month will be [INAUDIBLE].
    What percentage of the population was Jewish.
    [SIGHS] Maybe one third.
    One third.
    Mm-hmm.
    One third.
    But it wasn't like now, that you--
    I mean, not now.
    Now it's again fine.
    But we was like with the not Jewish population.
    Like, we didn't see the difference.
    We didn't feel it.
    I didn't feel it.
    Never.
    Maybe then, when Hitler came, then yeah.
    Then you feel it.
    So you had no antisemitic incidents as a child?
    No, no, no.
    I had all friends, mostly friends.
    Everybody was.
    My class, in my schooling, when I went
    to school, to regular school--
    I mean to-- it is five years is Volksschule
    and then is Bürgerschule.
    That's three years.
    That's the eight years together, like here, high school
    and grammar school.
    So it was five years and then three years.
    We were 18 Jewish kids in my class.
    Out of how many?
    Of 32.
    So it was Saturday, the class was empty,
    because we-- mostly the Jewish people,
    even we wasn't so religious, my stepmother send me to school.
    But I didn't go to in the school.
    And were boys and girls together?
    Yeah, mm-hmm.
    But mostly girls.
    We was more girls with boys.
    I don't know.
    We had many boys there too, but not percentage.
    And I remember 18 Jewish kids was in my class.
    But you were friendly with the non-Jewish students?
    Yeah.
    What else I did, till my mother was alive,
    I went to a Catholic-- to a cloister.
    Why?
    Because the public school was not good enough for my mother,
    and she wanted to educate me more.
    So we was four Jewish girls in that class, in my class.
    But that was only to the fifth grade.
    And then my mother died.
    And my father said, no, he will not pay.
    It was high.
    But my mother thought I had better education there.
    But you don't remember any unpleasant incidents in the--
    No, no, no.
    --school.
    The nuns was very good to us.
    They liked me better maybe than the other girls,
    because maybe my mother was always coming and talking
    to them.
    And it was very interesting too, because she lost three children
    before I was born.
    And so he was--
    she wanted to keep me up better maybe.
    I don't know.
    And the other children, the other Catholic children
    were pleasant to you?
    Yeah, I cannot say anything wrong.
    I only remember that once a week, we
    had to go from that Catholic school,
    we had to go in that other school for our religion classes.
    They didn't, in the class that they didn't, we
    didn't have to bend down.
    We didn't have to pray because they
    knew that we shouldn't do that.
    But we had to go to a--
    to the other school, what was not private.
    Only the regular school.
    And we had to have, one afternoon, we had a religion,
    they called it, class, religion class.
    And I remember my teacher one time wanted
    to spank me or spank me even because I didn't make
    my homework right, or I said to him,
    a girl doesn't have to pray like a boy.
    He wanted me to pray from the book something,
    and I was not prepared so good.
    So he hollered at me, and he called my mother and my father.
    I don't know.
    We didn't have telephones, but we got somehow together.
    And he told, and that I didn't--
    I told him that a girl doesn't have to.
    And my mother was very upset.
    And my father came from a religious home.
    Very religious, his father was, and the beard.
    And he was not a fanatic.
    But he was very--
    he knew the whole Jewish religion in the head.
    But he died when I was a little girl.
    I remember him.
    But I don't know.
    I only know that he--
    What was his name?
    Leopold Goldberger, his father, and my grandfather.
    But my grandmother lived.
    She was 83 years old.
    And she was a little woman.
    I remember her.
    And she was always working so hard.
    They had a little store in a mountain resort.
    And she fell-- they had to go for water to the whole garden,
    to bring the water in the house.
    There was no-- because we didn't have it--
    when I was a young girl, we didn't have lights, electric.
    We didn't have.
    It was only a pump in the garden.
    And it was everything.
    It was not like today.
    But then later, my parents put in the lights in later on.
    What was your grandmother's name?
    From my father's side was--
    Sara?
    No, not Sara.
    And do you remember the name of the town they lived in?
    Yeah, they lived-- my grandparents
    lived in Kameral Ellgoth, Komorni Lhotka
    in Czechoslovakian language.
    But we was on the Silesian side, and everybody spoke German
    there--
    Polish, German-- mostly German and Czechoslovakian then later
    on, because they divided it.
    But these people who lived on the border,
    they spoke all these languages mixed up together.
    So I have a friend in Florida now, and she comes here.
    She lived here before on Grape Road in Silver Spring.
    So when we got-- we was every day
    together because she was very good friends.
    She knows me when I was old--
    I'm older than she is.
    And she remembers me when I went with my husband
    the week before we got married.
    And so we speak our language from home.
    And she always laughed that she doesn't
    speak with anybody that language anymore-- only with me.
    And it's so many.
    What language did you speak at home in your house?
    German.
    German.
    I had schooling.
    All my schooling was German.
    Even the cluster was German.
    That what everybody thinks, I am a German girl.
    The other day somebody called me and they said,
    I got a letter from the German embassy,
    and they don't understand.
    But since I am a German, I could probably.
    I said, I'm not German.
    [LAUGHS] She said, oh, you're not?
    I thought you're German.
    But they know that we speak German.
    OK.
    What was the political structure in the town?
    Were you aware of any groups?
    No.
    It was--
    Any organizations?
    It was the Jewish organizations.
    Which ones?
    They said the [NON-ENGLISH].
    I don't know.
    There was Jabotinsky, and there was a group.
    But I don't know.
    Since I was leaving out of town, mostly,
    and I had to come so far to town-- in one hour
    it took me to walk.
    And then my parents died so early
    that I don't even had any chance to go in any organization.
    I belong to Maccabi.
    Maccabi was a sports.
    The group we had every week we had twice.
    We went to gymnastic, we made, and we
    learned all different stuff, in gymnastics, mostly.
    And they had a--
    baseball?
    No, not baseball.
    Basketball?
    Soccer?
    Where you kick.
    Where you kick.
    Soccer.
    Because we didn't all these other games.
    We knew only that what you threw the ball and then
    you kicked then or something.
    The boys mostly.
    We didn't do it.
    We girls was in there different.
    And then I was mostly working with handwork.
    I know all the--
    my whole family got always presents for me.
    I embroidered and I paint.
    I made whatever you wanted.
    And then I went to learn how to sew.
    And then I was a dressmaker.
    Oh, that helped my Lagers.
    If I wouldn't be knowing how to sew,
    I would probably not ever live, because I
    had my daughter with me in the concentration camp.
    Yeah, we'll get to that.
    We'll get to that.
    And that helped me.
    Yeah.
    So you were a member of the Maccabi?
    Maccabi, yeah.
    I was Maccabi very, very strong.
    How old were you when you--
    Well, I remember when I was about 11 or 12 years old,
    I was dancing in a theater.
    There was three girls.
    It was the best from all the other kids.
    And they taught us how to.
    And we had to, like a show, a big show.
    And then they took us in many other places
    to repeat what we know.
    But it was everybody was friendly.
    And then we went every week we went in the mountain.
    It was like sports.
    There was, like, they called it the [GERMAN],
    with Jewish kids only.
    And we had a lady who was in charge.
    And every week we went somewhere else.
    We was in a mountain area.
    Have all these mountains, the Beskids.
    I don't know.
    You probably didn't hear anything about Beskidy.
    It was smaller mountain.
    That's the name of the mountains?
    It was so many, I cannot.
    I know that [PLACE NAME], that was where my grandparents lived.
    We went from there on.
    They lived under the mountain on the bottom.
    And then we would go up.
    And there was many other ones.
    Everything was borderline.
    You could go from one, like from Czechoslovakia,
    and you meet people from Poland, because it was--
    the mountains was the borders mostly.
    We had, in this city, we had a river was the border.
    But when I-- and that what it was.
    What was the name of the leader of your Maccabi group?
    There is still one sister is still living in my from Mrs--
    she was a Miller from home.
    I don't know what she's married, because this girl, what is
    went with me to school, that was her sister.
    I am still in contact.
    She lives in Los Angeles.
    And now she is Green--
    Greener.
    Gruner.
    Gruner she writes her name.
    But she's a Miller from home.
    So when I talk to her-- she calls me sometimes,
    or I was in California I saw her too.
    And she told me she didn't [INAUDIBLE] live,
    that girl didn't [INAUDIBLE].
    And then there was a other girl, Ilona Polack.
    I saw her in Israel, but now, when I was there,
    she is not there anymore.
    She died too.
    Did you wear a uniform?
    No, never.
    Nothing.
    Where?
    In school?
    In school or in youth group.
    No, we only had to have an apron.
    Everybody had to have a, over the dress, an apron.
    That was even home.
    Everybody.
    Because we didn't change every day our clothes.
    We had once for Sunday or for the holidays,
    and once maybe for Shabbos.
    And shoes, the same thing.
    We had to wear out one pair of shoe the whole week
    and one dress the whole week.
    And once a week we got a bath.
    My father made these taps.
    So I know we had it better than the other ones.
    Maybe they had some different to take a bath.
    And one child after the other went in that bathtub.
    There was no running water.
    We had to warm the water on the stove
    when we needed it, to the bath.
    OK, let's--
    Primitive.
    Everything was.
    But it was good.
    We didn't need better.
    Let's move on a little bit.
    So you were, let's say, maybe 16 years old, which would be 1929.
    [SIGHS] Then, with 16, I stayed with my stepmother.
    And she was a widow.
    And she had little stores.
    So one's here, and one's here.
    And then she didn't-- couldn't make it.
    So she moved somewhere else.
    And I was always with her.
    But then--
    What was her name?
    Hermina.
    Well, after my husband, after my father,
    it was Goldberger, after my father.
    But she was a Thieberger because she was a sister of my husband.
    How shall I say?
    My husband comes from 10 children,
    and she was one of the oldest ones,
    and my husband was one of the youngest ones.
    So between 10 children there was 20 years' difference.
    So when I met the family, Thieberger, and my father
    got married to a sister, I met the whole family.
    And I was at that time already 15, maybe 15 years, 14.
    15, because my father died--
    no, 12, 13.
    13.
    13.
    But I met them, and I know all the kids were still there.
    And it was a few of them was married, but not all of them.
    OK, you're now 16, and you were talking
    about being with your mother, your stepmother.
    16 I was with my stepmother.
    And then I had once the arguing with her in that store.
    I don't know.
    She was somehow mad at me.
    And I don't know.
    I went.
    I left her.
    And I went on a job in a other town.
    I had some uncles, and I knew that if I would go there,
    they would help me.
    So I went to another town.
    In [? Orlauder ?] was in a other--
    not maybe five was station with the trains to go.
    And I got a job, and I stayed half a year
    on that other job in a store.
    Where did you live then?
    By these people who had the store.
    They took me in because they didn't had any children.
    They liked me very much.
    And I had a very nice time there.
    I mean, "time."
    I worked very hard, 4 o'clock in the morning.
    We had to go in the store already.
    But then my stepmother came up after me.
    [AUDIO OUT]
    You were talking about how your stepmother had come for you.
    She came after me, and she cried,
    and she said, why did you run away from me?
    I didn't mean it.
    And she apologized.
    And she made me go back to her.
    So I left that good place and I came back to her.
    And then she got with her sister in a bigger store.
    She had a other sister who had money probably were.
    And they bought a bigger store together.
    And I was working for my stepmother.
    And the sister had two children.
    They were small.
    And they always argued together, the sisters,
    because when the kids was crying upstairs--
    she had a maid for the children, that sister.
    But when the children cried, and she
    could hear them in the store, of the upstairs crying.
    So she left everybody in the store standing
    and she ran to the children.
    And my stepmother, she always says, I pay.
    She paid me for the--
    a very little sum.
    But that what I worked for her.
    And they argued always, because when she send me
    up for doing something in her apartment, then
    her sister was mad that I am not in the store.
    And it came so far, that-- and I was maybe 17.
    And I wanted always to sew.
    So I had my aunt in--
    my stepmother wasn't in fashion anymore.
    We was in Katowice.
    That was a other city.
    It was not in Katowice directly, but it was close to them.
    When did you move to Katowice?
    When I moved?
    Well, what shall I say?
    When my father passed away, they sold everything from him.
    Not we sold it, but we had a-- we was not 16 or 18
    or whatever at that time-- was 21
    or something-- we had to had a guardian, the children.
    So that man who was the guardian of us,
    he sold everything for almost nothing.
    So my stepmother couldn't stay anymore in that place
    because we didn't had any income.
    So she went after her family.
    And that what she went to other sister, and I went with her.
    That was by Katowice.
    But that was before when I went the first time.
    And then we moved back closer to Belice, to our hometown again--
    all in Poland.
    It was not in Czechoslovakia anymore.
    It was all Poland, because I married then later in Poland
    too, because they came from Poland,
    so she went closer to her family.
    And when I came back from that place where I worked,
    I was in Czechoslovakia working about half a year.
    When I came back, she had that sister what she went together.
    And that was closer to Katowice.
    But I always cried because she made
    me miserable, that stepmother, because she
    had to fight with her sister.
    So it always turned on on me because I was the one what
    [CLAPS] was the--
    [CLAPS] I made that between them,
    because when I did something what--
    You were the peacemaker.
    Yeah-- not the peacemaker, but--
    The middleman.
    The middleman between them.
    So I said, why should I be here?
    And you have aggravation to me.
    I will go and learn how to sew.
    So I went in my hometown in Teschen back.
    And I went to a--
    it was like a friend, a older friend lady.
    And she took me in.
    And he stayed with her two years-- not with her.
    With my aunt.
    I had a aunt in Teschen too, my mother's sister that lived
    there, who was a shoemaker.
    My husband was my shoemaker.
    So I lived with her, and I went every day to that friend,
    and I was learning how to sew clothes, the dresses.
    This is maybe 1930, 1931?
    I got married in 1937, so that was before.
    Yeah.
    So we're talking about the early '30s now.
    Yeah, the early '30s.
    Maybe '32.
    '32.
    OK.
    Yeah, my father died, it was in '28.
    My mother in '25, my father in '28.
    Three years later.
    And I was then thrown around from one place to a other.
    So I don't-- it was maybe '31.
    All right.
    In these different towns that you lived, were you
    close to the non-Jews there?
    No, maybe not.
    I had always I was singing in the choir in the synagogue,
    in my hometown when I was still in school, even.
    In Teschen.
    In Teschen.
    And I had many friends in Teschen,
    and I had my aunt in Teschen.
    But she lived on the Polish side, and I was on the Czech.
    So anyhow, but I was always here and there.
    I could go back and forth whenever I had time.
    I was holding mostly to the Jewish people better.
    I had friends when I was home in that--
    when my father was still alive.
    So I knew every house.
    And everybody knows me because we was very known there.
    Did you have any experience in the early '30s--
    No, no, no, no--
    --of any antisemitism?
    No, never.
    They never said to me that time "Jew" or something.
    I had the experience later, when I was married,
    and I saw some kids on the street,
    and they said, hello, where are you going?
    To the Jew's?
    It was a Jewish store I went to.
    So that, I remember that they always
    didn't say the name Gichner, because it was a store, Gichner,
    it was family the next over.
    OK, we're in 1932 now.
    So I went and I learned how to sew.
    And when I finished, I went back to a little Polish town
    where my stepmother had still that store with her sister.
    And the name of this town.
    Zabjek-- [NON-ENGLISH].
    [NON-ENGLISH].
    That was the town, and that was, like, 20 minutes to go and walk.
    It was Zabjek.
    It was a little village.
    And the town was [NON-ENGLISH].
    It was by Bielsko, Belice.
    There are so many places there.
    And I was sewing for people then by my stepmother.
    I lived by her.
    But meantime, I start to date my husband,
    who was five years older than I was.
    And I was already 20, 21.
    And we got married.
    My stepmother married me off and made me the wedding.
    So this is 1934, 1935?
    When did you get married?
    In 1935.
    1935.
    What day?
    On the 11th of November, '35.
    OK.
    Were you aware of any political changes up to that time
    in the early '30s?
    Well, I was still sewing before I got married.
    And I had mostly all these teachers in school.
    They all not Jewish people in that school where I was then,
    in [NON-ENGLISH].
    But no antisemitic incidents then?
    No, we even had a friend.
    My husband, his family there had a very good friend who
    was German.
    He told my husband, when we were married already--
    that was later-- that the German are coming here.
    He knew already.
    So he was probably connected with the Germans.
    But he came every day to us in that they had a restaurant,
    and they had-- his sister.
    And the other sister had that store.
    So they came every day, And they had--
    there was the best friends with us.
    And he told my husband then that the German will come.
    So he probably was already in a group.
    But we didn't.
    Nobody was thinking of anything bad.
    Only we knew that first the German came into Austria,
    and from Austria they came to Czechoslovakia,
    and I was in Poland.
    So my brother was in Czechoslovakia.
    He came after me that time, and he stayed with us the last year
    before the war broke out, because they threw him out
    from there, the German.
    They wanted to probably do something to him.
    So we ran away.
    He came to us.
    And he stayed by us.
    He worked there, and he went every day on the bicycle
    to work.
    He's a furrier, my brother.
    How did you know what was happening in Germany
    besides this one friend?
    Because my whole family lived in Germany.
    I was in '34.
    In 1934 I went to see my family in Berlin.
    And what were the conditions?
    What do you remember about Berlin in 1934?
    I remember.
    I remember I went one time with them on the street,
    and they was marching, the Nazis.
    And we all ran in a--
    Were you frightened?
    Yeah.
    I went because my sister was there,
    my grandparents was there, and two sisters of my mother
    was there.
    And they had children too.
    So I don't know.
    Before I got married.
    And I was Czechoslovakian citizen.
    We had always we lived on a passport,
    so we could go whenever we wanted.
    We didn't have to go for a passport.
    And so I went to my family.
    I wanted to.
    Your mother, your mother's family came from Berlin?
    No, no, no.
    My grandfather was born in Auschwitz, in Oswiecim.
    But when my grandmother passed away,
    then he remarried, and he married somebody from Berlin.
    I don't know how it came that they moved.
    And then the daughters followed him.
    Only my mother didn't, and the other sister of my mother
    didn't, what was Teschen.
    When I learned how to sew, I stayed with them in that house.
    Any other experiences when you went to Berlin in 1934.
    We didn't go out too much.
    I remember one time we went to Teplicki or whatever.
    It was a very known restaurant somewhere.
    And we was afraid, because everybody was saluting,
    and I didn't know what to do.
    But I was with my family, and they lived there.
    So I was more protected.
    I didn't go too much in the street and not shopping
    or something.
    And then, when I came back, when I got married,
    my aunt wrote to me from Berlin that she is leaving Berlin too.
    And she went to Brazil.
    That was in '35.
    Her name?
    Lemberger.
    Her name was Lemberger.
    But they came-- my uncle was from Poland.
    And he moved in Berlin and married.
    Well, my mother made--
    married them off, because we had a house,
    and she was the oldest daughter in the family.
    So she took care of her sister.
    So that was like--
    --a must.
    The father went to Berlin, and the children stayed mostly here.
    So my mother was like a mother to them, to the sisters.
    They was all younger from her.
    And then they went, two of the sister.
    One cousin still lives, from my mother's mother daughter,
    lives in New York.
    Friedlander.
    They worked in the Y, in the Jewish Y.
    He worked for many years, her husband.
    And they was in Theresienstadt in the war, not in Auschwitz.
    On in Theresienstadt.
    She met him there.
    And after that they married.
    They lived in New York.
    So you went to Berlin and then came back.
    Yeah, I was only for a visit--
    I think four weeks or three weeks.
    I don't remember how long I stayed.
    And soon after that, you got married, in November 1935.
    Yeah, I was before in Berlin too,
    because my father and my mother passed away.
    I was supposed to learn how to sew.
    And since in Teschen was not the right opportunity,
    maybe, to find a nice place where to learn,
    my father send me to Berlin to the family.
    And I was supposed to learn how to sew there.
    But I was there maybe three weeks,
    and I got a telegram from my stepmother
    that my father is in the hospital
    and has blood poisoning.
    I should come right away.
    So I packed my suitcase and I came back.
    And that was when my father died, in '28.
    When you were there then, did you
    notice any anti-Jewish feeling?
    No.
    No.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    I remember that my aunt always says,
    I would rather die here in Poland,
    because like everybody knew that the Polish people was
    more antisemitic than the German people.
    I think my family was all connected with big companies,
    and they didn't had any problems.
    They was working for them.
    My uncle was a sew--
    I don't know what he was sewing clothes for them.
    And my grandfather made buttons.
    He had the machines.
    And they put some material over the buttons.
    At that time, it was--
    you didn't buy so much button, ready-made button.
    And my other uncle, who my cousin lives here,
    he was more with pins, with--
    it was all connected with clothes,
    like one was doing that one.
    But they had all connection with big companies.
    And I don't know.
    They never said anything that they would have problems,
    or they wouldn't pay them, or they--
    They worked hard there too.
    But it was a different life than in where I lived.
    There was the more educated people,
    that what I never wanted to go to Berlin, to my family.
    I cried all the time, because I knew I come from a little city,
    and I cannot jump like--
    I don't know.
    I was not comfortable in Germany, so good.
    And so I came back, and I came back because I had to.
    And then I didn't go back anymore.
    My brother went to in Germany and learned
    how to be a furrier there.
    He learned four years.
    And then, when Nazi came, they threw him.
    They hit him many times on the street, the boys there,
    with the red--
    I don't know.
    He said they was friends between before,
    and then, because they found out they are Jewish, he's Jewish--
    my brother looks 100% Jewish.
    Everybody thought I was Italian when I was in the Lagers,
    because they thought I am Italian because I was dark.
    But my brother learned.
    And then, when the Hitler came, they
    told him the Czechoslovakian embassy, the best thing.
    Go back in Czechoslovakia.
    That where you belong.
    We cannot protect you here anymore.
    One time they broke his hand.
    They hit him with a stick over his hand.
    And he was holding his face.
    And he hit them.
    So he had problems there.
    So he went to Czechoslovakia, and he
    stayed maybe two years in-- he was already a furrier,
    so he had right away a job.
    What year was this that he went to Czechoslovakia?
    My brother came to Czechoslovakia in maybe
    '33, '34.
    Between '33 and '34, when Hitler came.
    Yes.
    And then he came to Czechoslovakia.
    And first he had to go to the Czechoslovakian army.
    And when he left them then, then he had a job right away there.
    But then Hitler came to Vienna, Austria and then
    to Czechoslovakia.
    So they behind him again.
    So he came to Poland.
    And so that what we was-- to years when I got married,
    he was already with us then.
    OK.
    Let's talk about now that you're married.
    Where did you--
    When I get married in Belice, that's--
    yeah, Belice.
    That's a Polish town, but everybody
    was a German, German inclined.
    It is Austria.
    They called it always Silesia because all these people
    where it was before--
    You see, Austria was then divided,
    Hungarian part, Czechoslovakian a part,
    and Poland a part from that.
    And Vienna and Austria was farther down.
    And we was here divided in little pieces.
    So mostly these people, they had German schools.
    You only had Polish one hour a week in school, Polish.
    And it was a Polish town.
    But that what it was.
    Everybody spoke German.
    And Belice and Katowice was taken from the Poles.
    But before, it was Germany.
    What percentage of Belice was Jewish?
    In Belice a lot.
    Mostly stores.
    All the big stores was Jewish all over.
    In Biala, where I lived, we had, when I got married,
    we had a grocery store.
    And the whole street was stores, all kinds of stores .
    And mostly everybody was Jewish there.
    Did you have contact with non-Jews at that time?
    Well, customers.
    See, they came from the mountain, the people,
    and they bought some--
    everything they needed.
    Once a week they came with the--
    how do you call it, what you hang on on your back?
    Knapsack.
    Knapsacks or big bags.
    And they bought everything in that town.
    It was a other mountain city, a beautiful one.
    Belice was one of the-- they said it was
    klein Paris or klein Prague.
    The big cities, they, it was very nice.
    And Katowice was not far from them.
    That's the border from, again, now--
    not now.
    But when I was in Poland, it was Germany, and it was Bytom,
    and here was Katowice.
    It was like Teschen, half and half.
    And here was the same thing.
    That was from the other side.
    See, where I live, it was like a triangle.
    Here was Czechoslovakia, here was Germany,
    and here was Poland.
    So every side was different.
    They had borders and borders and mountains and borders.
    That was all what we saw there.
    But it was--
    What do you remember about the political situation at that time
    when you first got married?
    I say even now, I don't know anything which happened.
    My husband--
    Was your husband active in any way?
    No, never.
    He learned Hebrew one time.
    I remember he always wanted to go to Israel.
    At that time, it was not Israel at that time.
    It was Palestine.
    But everybody wanted to learn Hebrew at that time.
    I learned too, but I don't remember anything anymore.
    I went too much to the war.
    Everything is died in my memory, what I had in my--
    my husband was very easy to learn.
    His whole family-- my niece in Israel, his niece,
    or his brother, she speaks--
    my brother-in-law spoke eight languages fluently.
    He came here with us in '49, and it was after one year he died.
    He spoke eight languages fluently.
    That's the father of that girl who in Israel, my niece--
    his niece and her husband.
    In writing and reading and in speaking.
    Self-educated.
    Nobody taught him anything.
    He knew the Jewish, the Gemara and the five books of Moses,
    everything in his head.
    And my niece is the same thing in Israel.
    She is like Golda Meir.
    They call her Golda Meir because she's so bright.
    Everything.
    She knows every tree.
    She knows every story about Israel.
    She is there.
    She went with the Haganah in '47 from Germany,
    when we was in Germany.
    Well, that's later with me.
    I came to Germany after the war again.
    Your husband was a Zionist at that time.
    Yeah, we all was Zionists.
    I was always for Zionism.
    Did you go to any meetings?
    Maybe a few times, but I don't remember what name it was.
    The kids took me in when I was in town, and I have nothing.
    But we always only--
    I wanted to go always up in Hachshara.
    I wanted to go to Israel at that time already,
    since I lost my parents, and they
    was talking like I had cousins in Czechoslovakia,
    the Thielbergers.
    They wanted to go.
    See, since I was--
    I don't know how to explain.
    Since my husband-- my stepmother was a Thieberger from home.
    She had relatives somewhere else too.
    So I was with them very often together,
    because there was girls and boys,
    and we was close to each other.
    And one of the boy went on a Hachshara.
    You know what's a Hachshara?
    They learned how to make--
    no.
    They learned everything there, for cows, how to milk the cows--
    How to farm.
    Farm.
    More farming.
    And then that one cousin.
    And I wanted to go so badly.
    But first of all, I didn't have any push from anybody.
    And I don't know how.
    My brother was here.
    And I didn't know what I should do.
    Nobody told me to go.
    He left his mother and his sisters,
    and he went to learn the Hachshara.
    And from there, he went straight to Israel.
    He was the first of the newcomers there.
    And he's still there in a kibbutz.
    He was the starter from the kibbutz.
    He's very educated.
    He writes books.
    I have here so many books from him,
    too, calendars, and all the education for the whole kibbutz.
    Now he is 75 or 76 maybe, and he's not so well.
    But when I was there, he gives me always the whole Haggadah.
    And one year we was there.
    It was Hanukkah.
    So Passover one time and one time Hanukkah.
    So he writes all these amazing stories.
    He is not in a religious place in that kibbutz, that cousin.
    But my husband's cousin, Thieberger, too, they
    changed the name.
    Now he has a different name.
    But he's very active in that kibbutz there, he is.
    Everybody knows him there.
    What's the name of the kibbutz?
    It's Ma'anit.
    Ma'anit, they call it there.
    I was there visiting now with him.
    And he was-- had a broken hip, so he was not very active.
    But he took us around with this.
    He walked me around and showed us everything.
    Let's get back to 1936.
    So '36, I was married already.
    About '35 I got married in Belice.
    And before we got married, we bought a store
    in Belice, a little grocery store.
    And we worked in that store one year.
    In the meantime, I got pregnant with my oldest daughter.
    My husband had to go.
    And they called him in the army that time.
    Well, before I got married, he was
    in the army for two years, three years, three years.
    Four.
    And then he had to go every year.
    Like now in Israel, he had to go in Poland too.
    This is the Polish army.
    In the Polish army.
    He was born in Germany, but he was only
    one year old when his parents moved back to Poland--
    to Austria at that time.
    So they called him back.
    And I was pregnant, and I had a very hard time in that store
    because I was very sick in the beginning.
    So his sister, who lives now in Sweden, my husband's sister,
    came and stayed with me.
    And we had two boys in the store too, like [INAUDIBLE].
    And he was six weeks.
    And then I had the baby in Belice, my daughter.
    She was born in '37, in April.
    In February, my daughter was born.
    That's that one who died.
    And after that she was maybe three months old,
    four months old, there was a big revolution in that village,
    in that city there.
    Why?
    Because some Jewish man had a restaurant, and somebody
    came and got drunk there, and they start to fight.
    And that owner from that restaurant took a gun
    and shot this Polish man.
    So it was terrible.
    Every store was plundered.
    Like here, many years ago in Washington, the same thing.
    So we run away.
    I took my child.
    They took everything.
    We lost everything in the store.
    Do you remember the name of the man who owned the restaurant?
    I don't know.
    I don't remember those.
    I didn't even know him.
    They said somewhere there was a restaurant.
    And then, from the mountain, all these people came,
    the Polish people.
    And they plundered the whole Jewish stores.
    They only attacked Jewish stores.
    Mostly Jewish store, because he was a Jewish man, that man who
    did it.
    So we run away from there, from that city.
    But up to that time, had you experienced any antisemitic
    incidents?
    No, not too much.
    It was more people, Jewish people, like concurrent.
    How you say that?
    One was a penny cheaper.
    And they made in the window a big sign.
    So people in this mountain, people came from the mountain
    to shop.
    And we had many of them.
    But when they saw it was on the other side
    something a little bit cheaper.
    So they didn't come to us, they [INAUDIBLE].
    So that was the only what we knew that we had trouble,
    because we was a young couple.
    Money, we didn't had, because we started with nothing.
    Only have what I had, a few dollars,
    and he had a few dollars-- not dollars.
    Only the Polish money.
    And with that we started.
    But that was all stores what was years and years,
    and they could afford to get cheaper, to buy cheaper and sell
    cheaper, a little bit.
    Like a sack of flour.
    People came mostly for flour, for sugar, for this.
    So they didn't make any profit, but only
    not to let these people go in my store.
    Because you were Jewish.
    No, that was all Jewish, mostly Jewish.
    Oh, those were other Jewish.
    Jewish people, but older people.
    And they had money.
    They could afford to lose on one thing,
    and then they made them up on the other thing.
    Like here, the same thing here.
    But we couldn't.
    And then, when they came, and they did that to the town there,
    we didn't want to stay any longer.
    So we run away from there, and we
    went to his sister what had a restaurant in that Zabjek
    where I got first.
    I told you, in Dziedzice where I live,
    where I was sewing for people too,
    when I, before I got married, I was staying there.
    When was this that you had to leave?
    Well, my daughter was born in '40--
    in '37.
    And I was maybe--
    she was maybe half a year.
    I don't know if she was half a year.
    But it was summer of '37.
    Yeah, about to the fall, around to fall, [INAUDIBLE].
    Of '37.
    Because we came to his sister, and she gave us a part in her
    store up.
    And my husband opened up a bicycle store.
    That means he bought parts from wholesale and put them together.
    See, on our road where we lived, when we was living in that house
    by his sister upstairs, on that road, every day, maybe 150, 200
    men came by on bicycles, because there was--
    Dziedzice is a town where all the trains came from, Kraków,
    from Katowice, from Belice.
    And here it was a very big--
    Center.
    --center.
    So everybody in the neighborhood worked there, the Polish people.
    And we only was three or four families in that little town.
    There was Herschlowitz and Gessners and Thiebergers
    and Leffler.
    Those were the only Jewish families.
    Yeah.
    So we didn't feel the difference so much.
    That was in '30--
    '7 --7 about in the fall.
    And my husband worked for the sister in the store,
    a little bit, helped out.
    And then he worked in that--
    he made, like, a little room, and he worked then
    with his bicycles.
    We were talking about how your husband started his bicycle
    shop.
    Yeah, he started and you know--
    This is fall of 1937.
    He started very nicely.
    People liked him because they knew him from before.
    He was very often by his sisters.
    There was two sisters before then.
    And then one went to village in the city.
    And the other one we took over her apartment.
    But he was very liked.
    He was a good man, and he did good job.
    They left him an old bicycle broken,
    and he gave him another one and they went to work.
    And when they came back in the evening from work,
    they picked up his bicycle.
    You know, he repaired everything.
    He was always very handy with his fingers, with his hands.
    And there was no tension because he was Jewish?
    Customers--
    They didn't even know that he was Thieberger.
    They called him Erwin.
    And they didn't call me Mrs. Thieberger.
    They called me Mrs. Erwin, Mrs. Erwin, Erwinowa, Erwinowa
    in Polish.
    And Renee, my daughter grew up there, grow up.
    She started to walk and everything.
    And the people was-- she was so good
    looking and such a good baby.
    Everybody who came to us, to that sister in the store,
    and they saw her, they put her on her hand.
    And I had we had a big German shepherd.
    And that shepherd followed her.
    If somebody picked her up and she start to cry,
    then he jumped on that people.
    If she didn't cry, he was always around her.
    He was like the maid by her.
    He loved her.
    In the winter time, I put her in a little sled.
    And she was tied up here in that.
    And he was pulling her, the dog.
    He was-- my husband had--
    that dog, my dog was--
    he dances.
    I will show you later.
    He knows everything.
    When I tell him going back, he listens
    because my husband had very much patience with animals.
    He was very good to them.
    And they liked him.
    The kids liked him.
    Everybody liked him.
    What was his name in Polish?
    Erwin.
    Erwin.
    That's what he was called at that time.
    Always Erwin.
    They didn't know Thieberger, nobody.
    Even now, when somebody writes to me, they write Pani Erwinowa.
    Erwinowa.
    That means first name, his name.
    And--
    Were you more aware then of what was happening in Germany
    at that time?
    Well--
    --in 1937, '38.
    See, my aunt-- my aunt when I was first married
    and we had the store, I remember, my aunt
    called me from Berlin.
    That was the aunt what went to Brazil.
    What I showed you the uncle in the picture here,
    and they had two sons, because the son went already--
    one went to Israel on the Hakhshara and went to Israel.
    And the other one went to Brazil and was working
    with the parents in Brazil.
    So my aunt and uncle, before they left Berlin,
    I remember we got a package to Poland.
    And they sent us a warm winter coat for my husband
    because he was my uncle.
    He was a short one like my husband.
    And so they couldn't take everything with them
    so they sent us some stuff.
    That was before they went to Brazil.
    I never saw my aunt after that because she died
    after I was liberated already.
    She sent me one time $20.
    But I never got it because till I got it, she died anyhow
    and we didn't take it.
    And so--
    We were talking about how aware you were of what
    was happening in Germany.
    We knew-- we knew.
    What did you know?
    We knew that all the Jews had no more stores.
    My grandparents lost everything.
    They probably took it from them.
    My sister was working in somewhere.
    She never wrote me where she was.
    But she always said my eyes are getting--
    she was only 19 years old.
    And she was engaged in Berlin.
    And-- but that was not in '37 yet.
    That was when she was still with my grandparents.
    And then I don't know if the grandparents died.
    I cannot exactly tell them because if they were deported
    or they were taken out or my grandfather died or not,
    because we wanted to--
    they had some houses there.
    We wanted after the war.
    We wanted to find out if--
    they told her that was in East Germany.
    And we have no--
    they have no connection or something.
    So we didn't bother anymore.
    But there was nobody--
    my aunt in Brazil, she would probably know more.
    I don't know.
    But I never saw her.
    So 1938, you knew what was happening in Germany?
    We knew that it was the Kristallnacht.
    And we knew all these bad things were going on.
    You would heard about Kristallnacht?
    Kristallnacht.
    Well, I don't know if--
    now we hear more about Kristallnacht.
    But at the time.
    Yes.
    But at that time, I told you that everybody
    was afraid to go in the street.
    And nobody had anything anymore.
    They were sitting at home.
    My cousin, this one from Berlin, she was in Theresienstadt.
    And she tells me sometimes about my grandparents a little bit
    and about her parents because she lost everybody too.
    She's by herself.
    But she was to the end with her mother and her brother.
    And she wasn't home.
    So they came and they picked up her mother, father--
    her mother and brother because her father was gone already.
    Your cousin's name is what?
    Friedlander, Margot Friedlander.
    She lives in Kew Garden in New York.
    Now, she's in Europe.
    OK.
    It's 1938.
    1938, right.
    And it's you and your husband and your daughter.
    Yes.
    And our neighbors-- yeah, and we--
    And again, any antisemitic incidents yourself?
    Well, we probably could feel it that time already.
    Not antisemitic against us especially that I would
    say something bad about us.
    But when you saw on the street a child or--
    you see, there was a friendly city.
    And they said always, they said, everybody says--
    because everybody knew us.
    First of all, we was in the store.
    My husband's sister had a big store,
    a grocery store with materials, everything,
    like a country store.
    And she gave everybody for the monthly pay.
    They took everything on a book what they buy.
    And then end of the month, when they
    got paid by the railroad-- it was mostly railroad
    people there.
    Everybody worked on the railroad.
    So they came and they paid.
    And she was a good person, that sister.
    She was a widow too.
    She was married to Gichner too, some family Gichner.
    I don't know how she got Gichner.
    There was a sister of my husband.
    And when I saw kids on the street,
    everybody said hello to you, good morning or good evening
    or afternoon, you know, like Polish.
    I learned Polish that time.
    In school, I only spoke German.
    And home, I spoke German with my parents.
    But then I learned very good Polish.
    Everybody says, how do you speak so good Polish?
    I said, well, I was married in Poland.
    So when I said, where are you going?
    You know, you're friendly with everybody to the Jew.
    They didn't say to Gichners.
    They didn't say in the grocery store.
    Or they didn't say only to the Jew.
    There was no name for the Gichners' store,
    only to the Jew.
    And, then later it bothered me more.
    Were you frightened?
    Not frightened.
    No, nobody would probably do anything to me.
    But when the German walked in in '39 on the 1st of September--
    You were still in that town?
    Still in that town.
    My husband had a very good store from that bicycle store,
    a very, very good one.
    In meantime, he started to buy glass.
    And he went and when somebody built a house,
    he framed all the glass in the windows.
    And then at that time, they had kitchen cabinets.
    There was always glass in the doors.
    And he was selling all that to them.
    And he did it.
    He did it-- he cut glass.
    And he-- many things what I would never
    imagine that he would do it.
    And he could do it.
    So he was very popular and good.
    So that was '39 on the 1st of September.
    It was 1st of September.
    They said already a few days before, the Poles
    said, that the Germans are already in Czechoslovakia.
    And we was maybe one hour from the border, not in Teschen,
    was one border.
    But we was from the other side on the border
    from Czechoslovakia.
    By train, maybe 40 minutes, 30 minutes
    with a train from our hometown-- from that town where I live.
    There was a little station, like a very little station.
    We could go on the station.
    And we could go to Czechoslovakia over the border
    there.
    We knew that they are there already.
    So when the Poles--
    and everybody was mobilized.
    I was surprised they didn't take my husband in that time either.
    But the Polish younger people, they
    all had to go and get in uniforms, the soldiers.
    So we had--
    I had very many Jewish stuff in my house.
    My grandfather was very religious,
    like I told you, my father's father.
    And he was-- all his books was in leather.
    And he put his name in the back because he did it.
    He put all the leather books in, mostly Jewish,
    because my grandfather was religious.
    And I was the oldest in the family from my father's side.
    So I got everything to my house then.
    And that's when I got married in that Zabzreg there.
    Then I had from my wedding my silverware, my candlestick.
    And I had a lot of stuff what I was hanging to it.
    And my sister-in-law had a store,
    and she had a lot of material and soap and stuff like that.
    So when we saw that the Polish soldiers are preparing
    to make a appeal, and they should come in,
    the Germans, they shouldn't let them in,
    we made a bunker in the house.
    And two of the Polish men was-- see,
    there was a big hall where they make
    dances in that same building from the sister.
    She had the restaurant there.
    And she had a store there.
    But the restaurant, a Polish man had
    it rented in the same building where we lived upstairs.
    They made a bunker.
    In the basement was-- no, in that hall where the dance was,
    there was half of the wall was wood,
    you know like-- you know what I mean, it was the panels.
    So we called to them, not me, but my husband and his sister.
    She was a widow at that time already.
    And they lift up these panels.
    And they made a hole in the wall.
    And we put all that good stuff what
    we had in that bunker there.
    And you couldn't-- and from outside was a door.
    But they put some bricks on it and they closed it up.
    And that's what we thought, when the war will--
    when the Germans will come in, we
    didn't think that they will do something to us or throw us out
    or something.
    So we always can go there and bring out the stuff
    what we was hiding there.
    On the 1st of September '39 at 6 o'clock in the morning,
    I remember like today, I went-- we lived on the second floor,
    had a nice apartment, two bedrooms and dining room
    and kitchen--
    I saw the German flyers coming over the house.
    And maybe an hour later-- and that was on a Friday.
    And I usually for Friday baked challah
    and had a chicken or turkey or a goose.
    That time in Europe was always a goose.
    And I prepared Thursday everything in the evening.
    And then on Friday morning, we had across
    from my house was a bakery.
    So I took always the goose over and the challah
    when they baked them.
    I took them over and they baked it for me in the big oven
    there in that--
    not Jewish people, goyim.
    But they knew us.
    And we did it for years, everybody there,
    my sister-in-law, all of them.
    So 6 o'clock, when they came over, we started to think,
    what will be now?
    We couldn't imagine how can they come so fast.
    Maybe by 10 o'clock I was ready to go with-- my challah was
    already ground and everything to go to the bakery over there
    to bake it.
    The police came, Polish police, the Polish.
    And they said, listen, we are leaving
    because they are already--
    we saw already fire coming, like they burnt houses
    and because they came with a big truck, with the big--
    Tanks.
    --tanks.
    And so by 10, 11 o'clock, we saw two tanks
    by our house coming by.
    But they didn't stop.
    They went farther.
    So when the police came and said,
    we are leaving and we cannot protect you.
    You are Jewish.
    You know what's waiting for you here.
    If you can, go.
    My brother was gone.
    In the morning at 6 o'clock, he always went on the bicycle
    to other city to work.
    And we were still there.
    So what I did, I put my baby in-- see, at that time,
    you put the baby in a pillow and you tie her up.
    And I had like an open wagon--
    open-- no, carriage, I put her in.
    And I took the not baked challah and not baked that--
    Goose.
    Goose, I think it was a goose.
    I don't know.
    I think it was a goose at that time.
    And I packed everything in a suitcase
    and hanged it on that wagon.
    And my husband took four bicycles from the store
    because we had a maid, and there was two boys in the store.
    So everybody got a bicycle and his sister
    and the daughter of his sister.
    And we ran away.
    And we ran.
    11 days we was on the road.
    I lost twice my child from the wagon
    because everybody was running, day and night.
    We run.
    We run, and behind the Germans and behind the Germans.
    Was it Jews and non-Jews running?
    Both?
    Polish people.
    Everybody left everything what they had because they
    was burning the houses.
    And we was running, was afraid, we Jewish.
    So we came first to Kraków--
    first to Wadowice, then to Kraków.
    And wherever we came, they said, in the morning
    will be here a big fight.
    Don't stay here.
    So we ran farther, 11 days till they caught up with us.
    And we were so sick of running.
    And we had that big dog, that German shepherd.
    He ran up with us.
    So on the way, my husband was three times attacked
    by the Polish soldiers.
    They wanted to take his bicycle away.
    And I was pushing that.
    And I found my daughter in that crowd.
    It was unbelievable.
    I was on my knees because I feel something was lighter in my--
    so it was dark.
    It was only the flames, what you saw in the back yard behind you.
    But we came to a place in a forest.
    And here, it was a bridge.
    And the bridge was already bombed.
    So we couldn't go over the bridge.
    And there was a farmers around.
    And so we said, what shall we do now?
    Where will we go?
    So that one of the women said, if you want to stay here.
    She saw me with a little kid and my husband.
    And he was so sick on the way.
    He was vomiting.
    There was no water, nothing.
    We didn't have anything to eat.
    And she was crying all the way because she lost her pacifier.
    I couldn't find any.
    I had such a hard time.
    But finally to that woman, and she took us in, in her house.
    That was an old house.
    But everybody had room there.
    And she said her husband ran away.
    It was a Polish woman.
    We never saw her.
    But my sister-- his sister who didn't over live the war--
    I have pictures of with her daughter--
    she was with us too.
    And we stayed together.
    And then three days, we stayed there.
    And, well, it wasn't 11 days.
    11 days we came back.
    After 11 days, we was back in the house again.
    That was erev yontif, Rosh ha-Shanah.
    And we came back, but that time, that woman kept us.
    And we found a man there with horses.
    And he promised us he will take us back home for money.
    And we had some money because we didn't--
    whatever we had, we took with us.
    So we gave him, I think, that time, I don't remember,
    the sister had some money.
    And we had a little bit money.
    So we put everything together.
    And he took us on a open wagon, like in Europe, they
    had some two boards and you can sit on the wagon.
    And the horse is pushed up.
    So, yeah, my sister-in-law asked that woman
    if she has eggs or something so we can take home
    because we didn't have-- we didn't think that we
    will have something left home.
    Were you not afraid of going back home?
    We was afraid.
    But we couldn't stay there.
    And the German was already past us.
    Past you.
    So they didn't do anything to us.
    So we figured if we stay here and they kill us here,
    or they kill us on the road.
    What can you do?
    Before that woman let you in, where did you sleep at night?
    On the road?
    We walked-- wherever we could.
    It was quiet two hours, we sat down, wherever it was.
    And we stop wherever we could.
    We stopped here a little bit.
    There was no--
    Were you always part of a big group, or was it--
    Always people, full of people.
    Not only Jews.
    We didn't know who was there, who was--
    we was holding together our group.
    We had my maid and my sister-in-law's maid.
    And then the two boys from the store went with us.
    And my sister-in-law and her daughter and my husband and--
    The maid and the boys who worked in the store were not Jewish?
    Not Jewish.
    Nobody was Jewish, no.
    We never had Jewish people working for us.
    Only the bosses was born Jewish.
    But we didn't have any problem.
    When I had the store in Bielitz when I was first married,
    we had two boys that was not Jewish.
    And they were so close to us.
    And when he went to the army and I was by myself in the store,
    they was protecting me.
    Every minute, they helped me whatever they could.
    My sister-in-law came and stayed with me because I was not well.
    I was out always.
    And I had to open up the store.
    The grocery store, you had to open up.
    But it was only six weeks he was gone because he
    had to go for six weeks.
    And that was before.
    Right.
    But--
    Now this man offered to take you--
    We don't have any-- we didn't have any trouble.
    I even I will tell you later when I was in one of the Lagers
    later with my daughter behind the fence,
    I saw my maid by a German woman working.
    And they had some chickens there.
    And she saw me.
    And she was holding her hands.
    And she said, [POLISH].
    [POLISH] means, lady.
    My lady, and where is Renee?
    She said.
    Because she was working for me before.
    And I said--
    I don't remember, Marysia, whatever was her name.
    We had I had more of them.
    I was a few years married for years,
    and we had always somebody working for us.
    I said, can you get me maybe an egg from your chicken?
    Because she was by that woman, by the German woman.
    And she said she's afraid to give me anything
    because she can't see her.
    And she would go Auschwitz, probably.
    She didn't say that she knows me.
    They didn't know the Germans well.
    But--
    Let's go back.
    This man offered to take you back home.
    So he took us home, that man.
    We paid him.
    And he brought us home.
    And we came home.
    And who was there but my husband's-- the youngest sister
    who was not married.
    And she came from her hometown with the parents
    where she was before.
    She came and she opened up the store
    because people needed some material-- not material,
    but food and everything.
    And she opened up the store.
    And when we came, she was there.
    So she said she was afraid.
    But some neighbors stayed with her.
    And they helped her out.
    So my other sister-in-law with her daughter
    went back in the store right away and the two boys,
    because we all came back.
    But what happened?
    When we left that woman, that Polish woman,
    my sister-in-law bought maybe 60 eggs from her.
    And she packed it in a box, in a wooden box.
    And she put some straw around.
    And we came home.
    But it was very hot that time.
    It was such a heat on that September
    that we couldn't find a water.
    It was very, very hot.
    So when we came home and she tried to open up an egg,
    it was cooked almost in that.
    But she had chicken, my sister-in-law.
    And meantime, it was gone.
    They had some babies from the eggs.
    They hatched them somewhere in the ground.
    I don't know where.
    So she boiled them, this eggs.
    And then she cut them up and gave them to the chickens.
    But it was still left in the box in that big hole there.
    We came home on the 11th of September.
    And I think on the 15 or 16 was the first day Rosh ha-Shanah.
    It was Rosh ha-Shanah already, I think.
    But it was Yom Kippur.
    I think so.
    And my brother came back too.
    And there was a other brother of my husband in the other village.
    And he was religious too.
    That was the father of the niece what was in Israel.
    And he wanted to make Yom Kippur together.
    His name?
    Thieberger, Max.
    Max.
    Max, he came here with us to America to the Gichners.
    He was working for Giant one year.
    And then he died here.
    He's buried in Adas Israel cemetery in Anacostia.
    And he called my brother and my sister-in-law and everybody
    we should come.
    But my husband didn't want to go.
    On the bicycle, everybody went on bicycles.
    My husband didn't want to go because he
    didn't want to leave me with a child by himself in the house
    there.
    I was erev-- no, Yom Kippur morning, we
    heard a bump in the door.
    And I had a glass door from the hallway to my--
    it was like an entrance to the apartment.
    And we heard 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock in the morning,
    like a terrible bump.
    And the glass was splitting around.
    So my husband got out of the bed, me too.
    And there was 25 Germans came with these--
    Armbands.
    Armbands and the black coat--
    young ones, all young.
    And they took my husband out of the apartment.
    And he was the only man in the whole house.
    This was a big house because it was a store there.
    There was a restaurant in the same house.
    There was a hall.
    And my husband had his store on the other side the house
    in a little place.
    They took him.
    And he had to go in the whole house--
    some of these men who built the bunker there
    gave it out to the Germans.
    And they came and looked for that.
    And he didn't want to say anything.
    He said, he doesn't know anything about it.
    And he doesn't know.
    And he doesn't know.
    So they treated him like--
    they hit him, and they hit him, and they hit him and that
    long till they found it.
    They was-- nothing and all that because he was telling them
    that he work or somebody worked there on something.
    So when they found that, they took everything out.
    And there was sardines.
    There were lot of sardines and cans with food.
    And she put the best thing in there.
    So in case, we will be stuck with food,
    we will have somewhere to go for it.
    And my good stuff was there too.
    But for my I don't talk because it was not important,
    only the food.
    And then they opened up the hole that where it was the densest.
    And it was not--
    has my sister-in-law's place.
    It was her place.
    But she had rented to a Polish man.
    And he was in the army already.
    He closed up.
    He was not married.
    He closed up and he left.
    And they opened that up and they found a gun there.
    And there was papers all over before that
    whoever has a gun has to put it in for the Germans--
    Register?
    Not registered.
    Give it--
    Give it to them.
    But we never went in.
    And my husband didn't know that he had something.
    But that was not a real gun.
    That was only for hunting, a hunting gun.
    And why did he did it?
    I heard it later because somebody didn't pay him
    when he was drinking.
    There was a restaurant.
    So he left his gun as a when he will pay, then he will give it.
    In the meantime, the war started so sudden.
    So he didn't have any chance with that man.
    And that's what they claimed my husband was--
    he should give it in.
    And he should bring it in that a Jew has a gun.
    The Jew had the gun.
    So they treated him all these bad acts what was in that bag,
    in that bag, in that--
    Box.
    They put him in a corner.
    He was all day standing in the corner with his face
    to the wall, my husband.
    And all the eggs went on his head.
    And then they found the sardines in that bunker.
    So they brought everything out.
    And they was 25 people.
    They sat down around the tables there.
    And they ate everything.
    And they threw all the bags, the empty cans and everything
    on my husband.
    And then it was still a lot of material and other stuff.
    So they brought a truck, a big truck.
    And they took a lot my stuff what I had
    and that stuff from my sister.
    And everything got on the truck.
    And to the end, they took my husband
    and they put him on the truck too.
    And they took him.
    Now, where were you?
    Were you watching this?
    I was upstairs in my bed, in my room.
    And I had my child on my hand.
    And when I saw that they put--
    because when they took everything,
    I didn't care anymore, because what can I do?
    But when I saw that they loading my husband on the truck too,
    I ran to that window.
    I open up the window.
    I had like a window of two sides.
    And that was like a driveway.
    It was a building where they had the magazines,
    my sister in law's warehouse.
    And on the other side was the house.
    And I was upstairs on the second floor,
    I opened up the window.
    And I took the baby, Renee, on my arms.
    And I ran to that window.
    And I start to scream in German.
    I said, he didn't do anything to anybody.
    Why do you taking my husband?
    And I screamed.
    And one of these German boys, men, came with a gun.
    And he said in German to me, [GERMAN].
    Verflucht is a very bad.
    He crossed-- cursed me, I should go away
    because he will shoot me.
    And I didn't even hear.
    I didn't-- I don't know.
    I was so upset and so nervous that I don't know.
    But believe me today, I don't know if I moved
    or the wind moved me or God moved me.
    I moved away.
    And four shots went through that window in the ceiling.
    If I wouldn't move from that window at that time,
    I would be dead with my daughter by that window.
    I swear I don't remember if I moved myself to the side,
    or God did it for me.
    Or I don't know how I--
    And when the shot came in, it was holes in the ceiling.
    They took my husband.
    We didn't know for three months what happened to him.
    [AUDIO OUT]
    Your husband had just been taken away.
    He's taken away.
    And we didn't-- somebody came and told us that they saw people
    making graves and then they shoot everybody from a truck
    and everybody got in that hole there and there.
    So every day we had some new news.
    After a little while, we found out
    that he is in a jail in village, in a regular jail.
    They put him in a jail.
    So then I-- there was the other Jewish family
    what lived not far from me.
    Their husband got there too.
    They took him because they said he stole a hat from someone.
    They had excuses for nothing.
    That what they said, somebody said.
    So that lady, Mrs. Horowitz-- no, it wasn't Horowitz I think.
    She came one time to my house.
    And she said, do you know my husband is in that jail where
    your husband is I heard.
    And we can take some clothes for these people.
    So I walked.
    We didn't have any trains.
    We had to walk 2.5 hours, one side.
    So I took some clothes.
    And I went with her.
    And we got to the jail there.
    It was a jail, a big jail.
    And there was outside the police or whatever.
    And they told me I can give them the clean clothes,
    and I could come next week again and bring him fresh ones.
    And they will give me the dirty one from him.
    And then I can give him.
    I didn't see him.
    I didn't know if he's dead or not.
    But when I came the next time, there
    was a package in a newspaper.
    And in the newspaper was his underwear and his undershirt,
    I think a shirt too.
    I don't remember.
    But it was a picture--
    no, it was a little slip there.
    And it says, please send me next time a picture of you
    and of Renee.
    So next week, we went again back.
    She went and I went.
    And I got him the package.
    And I gave something to these--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    So your husband left a note that he would like a picture.
    Picture and I should bring him a picture
    from me and from the child.
    So I went next week again.
    And I put some money in it, a little money.
    I don't remember how much.
    But I did something.
    And I gave something to the man who took the package because I
    thought if he opens it up and he will see money,
    then maybe he will not give it to him and maybe the picture.
    I didn't care for the money so much.
    But meantime, I found out through--
    he send me that he got everything.
    And he send me other slip.
    And he said his brother is in the jail there too.
    That was the brother who lived--
    lived in-- well, his wife only, he
    died in Lyon, France, my sister-in-law.
    Is the other brother of my husband.
    His name?
    And his name?
    Simon.
    Simon.
    Simon.
    And I told you that picture, that was the brother.
    Everybody thought that was--
    and we went to Leon, France, one time after the war.
    And he was dead.
    The people stopped my husband and thought that was him.
    They said, we heard you died.
    And thank God you're here.
    And so that was so close.
    So anyhow, his brother was there too.
    We didn't know how long.
    And we didn't know how he came there or how they got him.
    And they put him in that Lager there too.
    So what happened--
    Do the name of the prison?
    Bielitz, Bielitz, Gefaengnis Bielitz,
    that was the big Gefaengnis.
    Gefaengnis is a jail in German.
    That's what it was called in Bielitz, Bielsko.
    In Polish was Bielsko, Bielsko.
    But in German, they called it Bielitz.
    And after three months, one day, the door opened up.
    And my brother-in-law came back from that jail there to us.
    And his wife was already with me at that time.
    And we start to scream, where is Erwin?
    We heard you are together.
    He said what happened.
    First of all, they took him from other town where he lived,
    where they lived before.
    And they got in Schwarzwasser.
    And they took him.
    And they brought him there.
    But they didn't put him in the cell
    where my husband was, only in the basement.
    And he said they was the whole night--
    schlagen-- [GERMAN].
    They hit him all night.
    And he was screaming.
    And the water was dripping from the ceiling on him.
    So in the morning, they brought him up in the cell
    where my husband was.
    And there was a single cell.
    And it was 11 people in that cell, he said.
    And they didn't sleep.
    They slept like that.
    And when one moved, the other had to move.
    You know that was--
    And he said that my husband heard
    him screaming in the basement.
    He knew it was a very familiar voice.
    But he had no idea that his brother is in the basement.
    And my husband was already a little bit better off.
    He could go in the kitchen and wash the big pots.
    So they gave him always a little bit better.
    So when I went before, I went to see him, not see him, but bring
    him the clothes, I brought him one--
    he asked me for a razor blade.
    And I brought him the razor blade.
    So he told me when he came, and I brought fresh underwear,
    he said, next day when I brought that package--
    because we didn't know that she was dead too.
    So we didn't bring for him.
    They came, they opened up the door, the people from the jail
    there.
    And they called out all the names on the list what they had.
    And everybody from that room was on the list.
    Only my brother-in-law wasn't on the list.
    And they said to them, take whatever you have
    because you're going home.
    So my brother-in-law started to cry terrible.
    He's an older brother from my husband.
    He started to cry.
    And my husband said, don't cry, Simon.
    I leave you everything what I have.
    We had that money what I sent him.
    And he had that to shave.
    And I will do everything in my power to get you out from here.
    And maybe 20 or 15 or 20 minutes later, they came back,
    and they called him out.
    And they called him out.
    And they said, come in the office, to my brother-in-law.
    And when he got in the office, he
    saw a truck with all these people on the truck.
    And my husband was on the truck too.
    So when he came to the office, they
    let him go home with the other one they sent away.
    And he didn't-- and he brought everything back what I brought,
    the underpants, the money, only not the pictures.
    My husband took the pictures.
    So then we didn't know anything.
    We didn't know what happened to them.
    And they took-- that was maybe 10 days after they took him
    the first--
    from that corner that was.
    But then they took him away.
    And he didn't come back.
    In three months, we didn't know anything.
    So that's what the people said.
    They saw trucks coming and people.
    And they had to make graves.
    But my brother-in-law came home.
    And he had to register in three days in the Jewish community
    center in Bielitz back because they sending out people
    to make houses on the Russian border, they said.
    So he had to register back.
    Tell me a little bit about the Jewish community center.
    How was that--
    I never been in that.
    What was it--
    It was a big one.
    And there was probably a president there or somebody.
    But, see, they wanted to save their selves.
    So they put people in more and more.
    They gave more.
    I was in Auschwitz before, we lived in Auschwitz.
    Well, later.
    We'll get to that.
    Later.
    We'll get to that.
    In Auschwitz.
    So when they asked for 100, they gave--
    Jewish communities, they gave them 200 people
    to work because that's what they wanted.
    But these were the leaders of the Bielitz Jewish community
    center?
    Yeah, but in Auschwitz was other.
    So anyhow, only I didn't hear about that.
    Only my brother-in-law was somewhere
    hiding by a farmer or somewhere.
    And then he came to us.
    Erwin's, my husband's mother was,
    they was thrown out for their houses.
    They came to us.
    And we were still in our house.
    Only my husband wasn't there.
    So they didn't take me.
    They only take my husband.
    And my brother came back.
    My brother was by that--
    his brother, by my husband's brother, for that Yom Kippur,
    he wasn't in my house.
    So they didn't take him.
    They took my husband.
    If he would be there, they would probably both had to go.
    But he was saved because he was on that Yom Kippur
    by that other brother.
    And they didn't go there.
    They came to us.
    It was in another village.
    So that day-- one day, I heard my brother-in-law was
    talking to his wife and to my mother-in-law, I think.
    And they told them--
    and I don't know how I could hear it.
    I was never noisy and never listening to anybody.
    But they were speaking very low.
    And they said something like my husband's name.
    So I know right away I got more.
    And they said that somebody ran away
    from a prison in Czechoslovakia.
    And he was with my husband together there.
    And he came to his father what was hiding by somebody there too
    in a village.
    And he came to my father.
    And he told him, if you would see your son how he looks,
    he will never come out from there.
    He is so beaten up that probably you will never
    recognize him how he looks.
    But I ran away.
    He was not Jewish.
    He was a goy.
    And I ran away, and they didn't caught me.
    So I had the chance to come and tell you
    because your husband always talked--
    your son always talked about his parents and everybody.
    So he knew everybody.
    He knew.
    He wanted to know.
    But I didn't believe him.
    I thought maybe it was only a story.
    But after three months, that other man
    came back, that Herszlewicz.
    Herszlewicz was his name.
    Now, I remember, not Horowitz, Herszlewicz.
    And he came what I told you that his wife went with me always
    there.
    And he came back.
    And he had to stop first in my house
    because I was closer to this road.
    And he was farther in the village there.
    And he came.
    When I saw him, I start to scream.
    I said, where is my husband?
    And he said, I cannot tell you anything.
    I was-- they came in.
    And they call by the alphabetical.
    And I am Herszlewicz.
    So they let-- they ask me if I'm able to walk.
    And I said yes.
    So they let me go.
    And probably your husband will be later, he said to me.
    I said, come up in my house upstairs to me
    and tell me where were you.
    He said, I cannot talk.
    I have to go in the register in the Jewish community center
    because in three days we will go in a transport, wives
    and husbands, to Russia--
    not to Russia, to the Russian border,
    to Poland, down to Poland, because we was here,
    and that was by the Russian border, and the whole Poland
    too, behind Warsaw.
    And he said, I cannot go upstairs to your house because I
    am full of lice, he said.
    I am infected with lice.
    And I am afraid if I go in your house,
    I will be probably dripping.
    And I have to go home because my wife--
    he had two boys, little ones--
    will wait for me.
    And I said, Mr. Herszlewicz come and tell me.
    Tell me.
    So he whatever he could, he said that Erwin is very sick,
    and he is not well.
    But he will be here maybe in two or three days, he said to me.
    You know, I will never forget the days waiting.
    And after three days, my sister-in-law went in the city,
    to Bielitz.
    And she said, what shall I bring you from there?
    I said, bring my husband back.
    And she came back.
    And she said, he came, but he had
    to go first in the Jewish community center
    and register there because that was first.
    And then he will come home.
    So next day in the morning, he was supposed to come to my house
    back.
    It was about 2.5 hours to walk.
    So I was waiting and waiting and waiting.
    And when he walked in, only my dog recognized him.
    He jumped over his head.
    He was so beaten up that he couldn't sit.
    He couldn't lay.
    He couldn't lay in bed.
    He was full of lice and in a terrible situation.
    His own mother didn't recognize him when he came.
    And he couldn't say anything what happened to him.
    He told me that he was standing by a red oven,
    like a round oven.
    And it was red.
    And somebody pushed him.
    And he was burnt, he said.
    But he was so beaten up.
    He even now, he didn't have any meat on his body.
    Everything was only-- you could see--
    when he went to a doctor, everybody said, what's that?
    He said, what do you have operation on your back?
    He said--
    Scars, you mean scars?
    Scars.
    So what happened?
    I found out later, later, later, what happened.
    When he came in with that, out of 50 people on that truck,
    from the 50 people, 4 people left alive.
    Why?
    They put everybody down from the truck, and right away,
    like in a what you wash clothes in--
    A pit.
    In-- and there was a table with a leg, a very lower one,
    like a bench.
    And there was from one side and from the other side the SS
    with legs from a table, heavy legs.
    And he had to lay down on that table, everyone,
    one after the other.
    When he came in, he said he walked in blood.
    It was deep in blood already.
    That was the worst what he saw in his life.
    And he had to come in.
    They put a bag, a potato bag, or whatever,
    from material, over his head.
    He laid down on that table.
    And these bones that came to the end.
    And they tied his hands.
    And one was pulling his hands up.
    And this other ones was hitting.
    And he had to count.
    So he remember what he said, how many counts he made,
    even in that other one because I have
    here a letter from a Polish man who was later his ordnance--
    he washed him, or washed him.
    He did whatever he could.
    And when we needed it for the Germans after the war,
    he sent me from Poland that letter.
    It was from Polish of German translated, somebody translated
    from him.
    He told everything, how he found my husband alive at that time
    because he was like an--
    Orderly.
    Orderly or something like that.
    So he said he counted, but he doesn't remember how far he came
    because he lost his conscious.
    And when he woke up, they took that sack
    from his head-- and one man was sitting on his head, front,
    so that he couldn't move.
    And his hand was tied.
    When he came, they took a can of water, a bottle of water,
    and they threw it over his head.
    And he woke up.
    And he said at that time he didn't feel anything.
    He was like unconscious, but he didn't feel any pain, nothing.
    And then they had to run.
    There was a big like a football place.
    It was an old factory, from sugar factory,
    in Czechoslovakia, in Skrochovice.
    See, and he didn't get anything from that place.
    They don't even have it marked in the books in anything.
    I looked through so many books through because all these people
    died there.
    There was a Jewish girl that too.
    And they said she was a whore.
    But she was a very fine girl from a fine house.
    What was the name of the--
    Oh, goodness, it was three sisters.
    No, no, no, the name of the place,
    the actual name of the place.
    That place, Skrochovice.
    That was in Sudetenland.
    It was not far from Troppau in Czechoslovakia.
    That's what they brought all these people.
    And his brother-in-law when he came then
    was a little bit better.
    People told him his brother-in-law was killed
    three days before he came in.
    One of his brother-in-law, his sister's husband was dead,
    killed.
    So anyhow, he got a beating.
    And that Herszlewicz didn't get any beating.
    Somehow he slept through.
    But after a few days, they found out they didn't beat him.
    So he got beating.
    So they broke his nose.
    But he went to work.
    All these people who could work, they
    had to go somewhere to work.
    I don't know where.
    I forgot what they told me.
    So when he got a little bit something, milk or something
    he brought from my husband.
    And he couldn't swallow because when he had laying on that,
    they broke probably that bone or something.
    And his hand was out of his apples,
    or whatever they call it.
    The socket.
    And somehow then he told me there
    was a man there, a Jewish man.
    He was crazy.
    He was from Kraków.
    He was a crazy man in a institution.
    But when the Germans came in, they let everybody out.
    And they caught him again, this man.
    And he was from Kraków.
    And he was there too.
    So every day-- see, the Jews was laying--
    this was an old--
    you didn't see anything like that.
    It was an old sugar factory there.
    And they had downstairs was the Polacks laying on floors.
    And then you had to go on a ladder, on a ladder up.
    And there was another--
    Shelf.
    Shelf.
    And there was the Jews there.
    And the priests-- the priests too.
    They treated priests exactly like Jews.
    So someday, the SS men came up and said, Jews hit the priest,
    and the priest should the Jews.
    And they wanted to kill each other.
    But my husband was very, very sick, and he couldn't move.
    So he was always laying on the stomach
    because he was so beaten up on his back.
    And these crazy men were there to,
    that Avram or Aaron or something they called him.
    And every day in the morning came in one of these SS men
    and said, Aaron, I don't remember the name, what
    they called him, come up here.
    And he had to come on that ladder on the top
    and scream and say, the Jews--
    in German-- [GERMAN]--
    I have to think what we had to say--
    that the Jews are the worst people in the world in Germany.
    And he was not normal.
    And he had to scream.
    So he said that.
    The Polish was downstairs, and the German
    was-- the Jewish was upstairs.
    So he had to scream that in Polish.
    But somehow one day--
    and then when he was finished, they threw him a piece of bread.
    So he could eat.
    Every day, the same piece.
    One day somehow he got something in his head
    when then they called him out.
    So he said, [GERMAN].
    The Jews are the special people in the world.
    [GERMAN], most--
    Chosen people.
    Chosen people in the world.
    And he screamed, what did you say?
    You make a mistake say that.
    And he said again, the same thing and the same thing.
    Aaron, come down, the steps down.
    So he came down.
    And he started to hit him that way and that way.
    And there was that--
    Ladder.
    Not only the ladder, but that poles what was holding the top.
    So when he had to stand there.
    And they hit him back, go upstairs and say again,
    [GERMAN].
    He went up.
    He said the same thing again.
    He was not dead.
    He was still in his mind.
    Come down again.
    They hit him so many times that he couldn't talk anymore.
    And this man was washing my husband.
    He said, when they peed, he saved that water,
    and that's what he washed his [NON-ENGLISH].
    He said he was so full with lice.
    And that did somehow help my husband a little bit.
    So after 3 months, 2 and 1/2 months, what he was there,
    when they Let people go, my husband was still very,
    very sore, everything.
    But what happened?
    They started me the alphabet from the beginning
    and they came to Herszlewicz, with H.
    And next day they were supposed to go the next, the farther.
    They started from the end.
    And my husband was the last from the T on the back.
    God wanted him still here to tell the story
    because Herszlewicz doesn't live.
    He was-- later on, they killed him.
    Anyhow, but that was the first three
    months in the war, the first three months.
    So my husband came back.
    And they said to him, can you walk?
    And he says, yes.
    So they let him go.
    Otherwise, if he would say no, he wouldn't come home.
    And that was when he came home.
    So then when he came home, he had to register.
    And in three days, they told him,
    bring your wife and your child.
    And we send you to Brzezinka.
    I don't know where they wanted to send these people out.
    I didn't wait three days.
    And he came and he couldn't sit-- he
    didn't tell me what happened.
    But my brother was there and my brother-in-law was there.
    So they washed him, and they cleaned him,
    and they did-- but they didn't let me in because they
    didn't want me to see anything.
    My husband didn't want me to--
    Because they told him, if you say a word, you will come back,
    but then nobody will see you anymore like that.
    So he was afraid to talk.
    He didn't want to say-- even to my brother,
    he didn't want to say.
    But maybe men could tell then.
    So I took my husband and my daughter.
    And we smuggled ourself to Auschwitz, because in Auschwitz
    is a river, is Sola.
    You mean the town of Auschwitz.
    The town of Auschwitz.
    It's a Sola.
    It's a water.
    So the German didn't let Jews anymore--
    after the three days, all the Jews
    were supposed to go from Silesia.
    They could go behind that water.
    And that was the first town was Auschwitz.
    That time it was Oswiecim in Polish.
    And I had some Polish man who had paper.
    And it was a border too.
    Like you had to have--
    not real papers, but permission to go over the border there,
    over the bridge.
    And I knew about it.
    So whatever we still had in the house,
    I said, we will not wait till I take us somewhere to Poland
    because he was not able to sit and not to lay.
    I knew they will kill him on the way because they shoot.
    If somebody couldn't do it, he was gunshot.
    And this man came and brought me the papers.
    And he hired a wagon with a horse.
    And he took us over the border.
    He had somebody else papers or something.
    I don't remember exactly from where he--
    but when God wants to save you, he gives you the [NON-ENGLISH],
    everything.
    And he took us in in that Auschwitz.
    There were only Jews there.
    Not only-- it was not Jewish, but the Jews
    had like a ghetto already there.
    And--
    What was the name of the man who got you there?
    Czirok, A Polish man.
    He worked once for my brother-in-law.
    And he knew us very well.
    So he said he will help us.
    He was a ganef too.
    I had such a beautiful picture.
    And I gave it to him.
    And I told him, when I leave, I want it back.
    He didn't want to give it back to me.
    He said the Russian took it from him.
    But that's not true.
    OK, I don't know if he's alive or not.
    I don't want to hear from him because he did a lot of--
    I think he gave the message to that man who--
    I don't know.
    I didn't want to say anything.
    But I think they had their fingers in it.
    But for money, they did it.
    We had something to give him, so he did it.
    So we came to Auschwitz.
    That was only a ghetto.
    At that time, it was not the ovens.
    It was in '39, maybe in December.
    Or was it the beginning of January?
    I don't remember now.
    In '39.
    And we came to Auschwitz.
    And now, I knocked on every door to let me in with the child,
    with my husband.
    And nobody wanted to let me in because when they looked at him,
    they fainted almost.
    They didn't-- they thought he's going to die on the steps.
    He was so terrible, my husband.
    And my mother-in-law stayed in my house.
    My maid stayed in my house.
    My brother stayed in my house.
    Only we ran away because I didn't
    want him to get registered again with me, and with the child
    to go to Poland, or somewhere.
    But it never came to it.
    It was only saying and then it got postponed somehow
    to the spring.
    They said, not now, but in the spring.
    So we didn't go back anymore.
    We was a whole day I knocked on many, many, many doors.
    And nobody wanted to let--
    Jewish people.
    Jewish people?
    They didn't want to let me in.
    So finally, somehow I found one door.
    I knocked.
    And there was a woman.
    And she only had a daughter in her house
    because her two sons was already run away to Russia somewhere.
    She said they ran away.
    And she didn't know at that time where they were.
    She was a widow.
    And she let me in.
    And she said, what can I help?
    What can I do for you?
    And I said, my husband just came from a murder Lager, I said.
    And he is very weak.