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Oral history interview with Arno L. Winard

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0095.94 | RG Number: RG-50.163.0094

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    Oral history interview with Arno L. Winard
    Transcript
    My name is Neal Goldenberg.
    Today is September 29, 1984.
    I am here to interview Mr. Arno I
    Winard, 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.
    Would you please tell me your name and where you were born?
    I assume you want the original name, not the changed name,
    right?
    Yes.
    The original name was Arno Ingo Winogrodzki.
    Do you want to spell that?
    Could you spell that?
    Spell it.
    OK.
    Arno, A-R-N-O. Ingo, I-N-G-O. Winogrodzki,
    W-I-N-O-G-R-O-D-Z-K-I.
    And the new name that you changed it to is?
    The first name is the same, and the middle name is the same.
    And the last name is Winard, W-I-N-A-R-D.
    Where were you born?
    I was born in the free city of Danzig.
    And when?
    August 1929.
    August 29, 1929.
    Where were your parents born?
    My parents were born in Poland.
    Where were you living before the war?
    Well, I said I was born in the city of Danzig
    from 1929 to 1937.
    In 1937, things got pretty unbearable because the Nazis,
    even though they formally didn't take over,
    they dominated the city.
    So we moved to the city of Gdynia,
    which was the Polish harbor next to Danzig.
    Could you describe some of the things
    that were happening that prompted
    you to move away from Danzig?
    Well, my parents were both Polish.
    You could not become a German citizen
    unless you lived there for 20 or 25 years,
    so special problems were.
    So they were Polish citizens.
    But because most of Danzig was German, we used German at home.
    And my father was in the export-import business,
    and that's why he lived in Danzig,
    which was good for the business until the Nazis took over.
    So they were Polish citizens, but they brought me up--
    I mean, I spoke German until we moved to Poland.
    And things were, I thought in the beginning
    they were very good from the early childhood,
    because Danzig was a beautiful city.
    But I don't remember exactly when, but I think 35 on,
    things gradually got worse.
    First, my father couldn't work in the export-import business,
    and he bought a shoe store.
    And then I vividly remember that the Nazis picketed the stores
    and said, don't buy from the Jew.
    And there were German flags all over the place--
    I mean, Nazi flags.
    And eventually, they decided that this wouldn't work.
    So 1937, we moved to Gdynia, which was a mistake.
    But it didn't turn out--
    I mean, we didn't notice at that time.
    Why was it a mistake?
    Well, from my memory, Gdynia is one
    of the most antisemitic cities imaginable.
    There were very few Jews there.
    The peasants, for some reason called Kaszubi,
    are the people living in--
    Gdynia was a city built from nothing.
    In other words, it was flat land.
    And after the Versailles Treaty, Danzig,
    the corridor was established.
    And the Poles decided that they need their own Harbor.
    So it was built from scratch.
    And apparently, the people who lived nearby--
    I never studied the sociological or political reasons.
    But from personal experience, they were impossible.
    They were not used to Jews, and yet they
    knew that they didn't like them.
    So there were very few Jewish people in Gdynia.
    We lived as assimilated Jews, which
    means we didn't speak Yiddish.
    We didn't do anything openly that would identify as Jews.
    Yet they knew we were Jewish, and they acted accordingly.
    Some examples of what it was like.
    We lived in a large apartment house.
    I was only 7 when we moved there,
    and yet the kids in the apartment building
    knew I was Jewish.
    And they would pick on me.
    If I went to play during whenever, on the weekend,
    or after school, I remember I often
    had to run back in the apartment because somebody
    would be after me.
    In school, I was in the first and second grade
    in a Polish school.
    I remember I was the only Jewish child in that classroom.
    I don't know whether there were other children in the school.
    The teacher would pick on me.
    The teacher would tell the other kids, he is a Jewish kid.
    We really don't want him, but we can't help it.
    But he is no good.
    And I remember during the breaks in school,
    they would again pick on me.
    And they would either beat me up or call me names.
    I often had to be escorted from and to school
    either by my parents when they were free,
    or I would have some kind of problem.
    And often, I to sit in the classroom during the break
    because going out in the yard was too dangerous
    even I was only seven years old.
    So even though we left Danzig because of the Nazis,
    personally, I had never experienced
    antisemitism in Danzig.
    It was more addressed against the adults or the atmosphere.
    I think the Germans, or the German-speaking people in Danzig
    were not--
    were either more cultured, or less peasant-like
    than the ones in Gdynia.
    In Gdynia, the first time I experienced
    personal antisemitism, and it was really of the worst kind.
    Because as I said, my parents used German in Danzig.
    Then they taught me Polish when I moved to Gdynia.
    I spoke perfect Polish, never spoke Yiddish, never
    heard Yiddish.
    Because Yiddish was the thing that they could easily
    recognize a Jewish person.
    They didn't-- I had no mannerisms taught,
    at least by my parents, that would identify I was Jewish.
    I might have looked Jewish, but I was
    dressed like everybody else.
    And things were pretty bad.
    If you want a specific experience how bad they were,
    as I mentioned, first, my father gained a shoe store in Gdynia.
    And I remember that the Poles would have pickets saying,
    don't buy from the Jews.
    I don't remember whether they were done on specific occasions,
    or all through the year, but I remember visiting sometimes
    in the store, and that those pickets were there.
    So obviously, business wasn't too good.
    But yet he didn't--
    it was a harbor, and supposedly, he could have taken a ship
    and gone anywhere.
    But he felt ties to the family, and all his relatives
    were in Poland, or my mother's relatives were in Poland.
    And they just never took the boat
    and just said, let's get out of here,
    which I sometimes resented after the war and during the war.
    Specific example of how bad it was in Gdynia, which I really
    never heard from anybody else.
    What happened, besides my father telling me about it,
    I read a story in a Polish newspaper which he saved.
    And I have it somewhere, but I haven't read it recently.
    Anyhow, what happened is that Sunday was a day where Poles
    didn't--
    was the Sabbath for the Jews.
    So you were not supposed to do anything.
    Well, anyhow, for some reason, my father
    asked the superintendent, who was a woman,
    to take the keys so they could wash the laundry
    in the basement on Monday.
    And I don't know whether she misinterpreted
    or chose to misinterpret, but she somehow
    assumed that he wanted to wash the laundry,
    or that my mother wanted to wash the laundry on Sunday.
    And they got in an argument, and some shoving.
    And she went to the police and accused my father
    of assaulting her, and of committing
    this terrible act of wanting to wash the laundry on Sunday.
    And he was arrested and sentenced
    to a long term jail sentence.
    And we did have money, and he had some good lawyers.
    And the thing went all the way to the Polish Supreme Court,
    and it was reversed.
    But it cost us a fortune both in lawyers,
    and in, obviously, aggravation.
    And I remember this story that my father saved
    from the clipping that said, Polish Jewish vampire
    was something like the heading.
    Like this Jewish vampire acts whatever, and then presented
    the Polish point of view of what happened.
    And I'm sure from knowing my parents, who
    were trying to be as unobtrusive, that they couldn't
    possibly have happened that they really were out to get them.
    It's just the thing was in the air,
    as it was that easily to have an argument.
    Maybe the superintendent resented us anyhow,
    and here was an occasion.
    I really don't know the details because I wasn't there.
    And if I had been there, I wouldn't have understood it.
    But from what my father told me, it was trumped up.
    And obviously, the higher courts decided that it was unjustified.
    But that was pretty bad.
    How big a city was Gdynia?
    Well, as I said, it was built from scratch.
    I really don't know the population,
    but I think it was smaller than Danzig, but it was substantial.
    Let's say over 100,000.
    I really don't know of that.
    In your household in Gdynia, who was in your household there?
    Just my-- I was the only son--
    I mean, the only child.
    My father, and mother, and myself.
    What about in Danzig, where you left?
    Was the household the same, or were there any grandparents?
    No, no.
    All my family lived inside Poland.
    We alone moved to Danzig.
    Before the war, did you begin to feel that war was coming?
    Did you know that war was coming?
    Yes.
    In 1939, the Poles would have during the summer a parade
    of some patriotic reason.
    And I remember my father took me to this parade and said,
    this is the last parade you will see because we will have war.
    So he was fully conscious, and so was everybody else.
    As I said, Gdynia was right next to Danzig,
    which is where the war started.
    So the people were there, were educated, all
    listened to Hitler speeches.
    And that's what he told me as a child,
    that this is the last year there will be peace.
    Did you detect tension in your parents,
    or with yourself about war coming, or about the fact
    that you were Jewish?
    Did you think that it would be any different that you
    were Jewish if war came?
    Was there any tension--
    Well, as you heard, antisemitism was such
    that really, the Germans didn't bother me.
    It was the Poles that was more the immediate problem
    of going to and from school, and surviving the apartment
    building.
    Like, I did have Hebrew lessons, but they
    were given privately by somebody coming to the house.
    As far as I remember, we did not attend services.
    Either they were too far, or there weren't enough.
    But there wasn't a big Jewish congregation in Gdynia.
    I know Danzig had a much bigger Jewish community, and much more
    established, but I was too young then
    to really know what they were doing.
    Had you attended services in Danzig, or--
    I think the way it worked, my father
    was either not religious, or because of his attempts
    to assimilate, he had a difficult time
    deciding what he was.
    But my mother kept kosher at home, and was much more Jewish.
    She stayed home and practiced Judaism.
    And this is one conflict I had.
    I remember when I went to a store
    in Gdynia, he would take me to a delicatessen,
    or whatever that was called, and feed me ham, and caviar,
    and other things.
    So it was obvious that he did not observe the Jewish customs.
    That created a confusion in my mind
    because my mother was kosher at home
    and he was not kosher outside the house.
    So I really didn't have very good guidance on this score.
    Do you remember when the war started?
    Well, what happened is that, as you know, the war started
    in September 1, '39.
    Since everybody knew the war is coming,
    about 10 days before the war started,
    my father shipped my mother and me on the train
    to Radom, which all of her family
    lived, to get away from where the war would be taking place.
    We left all our possessions there,
    thinking we would come back after the fighting is over,
    and of course, we never went back.
    So we lost everything at that point.
    And your father stayed in Gdynia?
    He stayed in Gdynia, I guess, trying
    to see how bad things would get.
    And then eventually, he came himself to Radom several months
    later.
    So you went to Radom just before the war started in 1939?
    Right.
    Can you describe your feelings when
    you learned that the war had started, and you were in Radom?
    Well, the first thing is interesting
    that we had a large apartment house on the main street
    in Radom where the family owning that building lived in front,
    and then there were side buildings.
    And it felt like if you see the vanquished world.
    It felt very strange because there
    were all these people running around
    with the black clothing, and long hair, and payos.
    And I had never seen that before.
    So the first thing for me was really just
    to get used to living among Jews.
    So I said, Gdynia, we did not live--
    we lived the only Jewish family in that apartment building.
    And if we knew other Jews, they were assimilated, too.
    And so I really had no experience
    being with Jewish people.
    So that was the first shock.
    I remember I got there a few days before the war.
    Now the war started, the Germans bombed Radom,
    and in fact, hit some buildings near us.
    I remember the building where I was was shaking,
    or something was--
    paint was coming off, or whatever.
    But there was one machine gun, I think,
    on the building of some municipal building.
    They had absolutely no defense, and no--
    they were not prepared even though supposedly they
    knew the war was coming.
    So the Germans, just after a few days of shooting that you heard,
    they just marched in.
    And I remember since I said I was on--
    we lived on the main street.
    I remember seeing them with their--
    I think they still had horse-drawn ammunition wagons,
    or whatever they were.
    And they were marched through the main street
    to show all their might.
    It was pretty frightening experience for a child to see.
    I did not know anything about what they were like.
    So even though I knew that they drove my parents out
    of business in Danzig, I had no personal experiences
    with the Germans that were negative.
    So really, I didn't have any feeling about it
    unless I heard somebody talk about it.
    I think one problem was a lot of the adults in Poland
    tried to shield the children.
    And when they talked about what was happening,
    or they thought might be, they did not talk around children.
    So I think I was protected, or perhaps over protected.
    So I don't remember hearing anything other than the one
    thing that my father said, that next year,
    there won't be a parade like you just went to.
    I don't remember telling anything
    like this is what's going to happen, or what might happen,
    or you got to be careful of this, that, and the other.
    They really try to protect me.
    I don't mean-- they shielded me from knowing things.
    I don't know what the reason was,
    or there was just thinking might go away and why bother.
    Or whether-- I just don't know the reason.
    But I know I didn't know anything other
    than what I saw for myself.
    As I said, in the beginning when the Germans came to Radom,
    it was very clever that everything was gradual.
    First, they didn't allow you to live
    in certain areas of the city.
    And I don't remember how long, but I
    know that we had to move out.
    Where we lived, I said, was the main--
    wasn't the best street, but it was the main street in the city.
    And I know after several months, the Jews couldn't live there.
    So we had to move.
    Could you describe Radom itself?
    How big a city was it?
    Radom is an industrial city of about 100,000,
    and 30,000 Jews were there.
    A very large Jewish population.
    And you lived with just your parents in the apartment
    on that street?
    No, that was my family's home.
    So there were a lot of relatives.
    It was just the opposite from Gdynia.
    In a way, even though the Germans were there,
    in the beginning, I felt a lot better in Radom
    them than in Gdynia.
    Because I was surrounded by relatives, and people
    were friendly.
    And as I said, I was the only child
    that was, well, a mistake, I think, on my parents' part.
    But my relatives had lots of kids, and some of them
    were my age.
    And they were very nice and intelligent kids,
    and I had a great time.
    So the first few months, even though things
    were happening, since I said my parents protected me,
    I really was doing quite well.
    There was no school, as you know.
    The moment the Germans came in, they
    said all public schools for Jews are forbidden,
    and all private schools, as well.
    So there was absolutely nothing to do except play.
    And I remember my cousins were exceedingly--
    in fact, they were mostly girls.
    And I remember playing a lot with girls.
    Didn't bother me at all.
    But doing more their kind of thing.
    They were sewing clothing for dolls.
    And I remember there were what I later
    remember were girl activities, which I might not
    have done if I was more--
    I was so happy to have somebody to talk to and play
    with that I certainly wasn't worried about male
    versus female activities.
    I said, but later, I remember that everything I did
    was more girl-oriented because that's what they were.
    I had an older cousin who was a child, but he was older.
    So I didn't play with him.
    I mostly played with the girls who
    lived either in the same building or very near by.
    Could you describe who your family was?
    My mother's family was named Salbe, S-A-L-B-E.
    Was a very prominent family in Radom--
    very well-off.
    And they owned property, and factories.
    And my uncle was a prominent attorney,
    and active in Zionist activities.
    And I don't know what each relative,
    but I know there were about 100 between the-- my mother
    had four sisters.
    One of them lived in Palestine.
    Except this is so unusual.
    She happened to be in Radom in 1939.
    My mother's sister from Palestine
    came to visit with her son and got stuck when the war started.
    So at that point, all the sisters were living in Radom.
    So there were four sisters in itself,
    and they each had children.
    And then there were more distant relatives, and I really don't--
    remember, when I came to Radom, I was 10 years old.
    And I had no experience in extended family
    because there was no family in Gdynia or Danzig.
    So I was totally unused to trying to learn
    about who everybody is.
    And so I mostly knew those that were either living very nearby,
    or were my age.
    And were very friendly to me.
    And I especially remember those girls who I think
    were the daughters of this attorney.
    He was a brother.
    There were four sisters and one brother.
    And his name is Solomon.
    These were on your mother's side?
    Mother's side.
    My father's family is not from Radom.
    My father's family is from Opoczno, O-P-O-C-Z-N-O,
    which is a small town 30 or 40 kilometers from Radom.
    So really, there was nobody from my father's side in Radom.
    Was all my mother's side.
    We're talking about the family in Radom.
    And your father's family was not from Radom.
    Right.
    Did your father do any work in Radom when he got there?
    Well, as I mentioned, my father was
    in the export-import business in Danzig.
    He spoke perfect German.
    He went to university in Vienna, where
    he studied whatever he studied for export import business,
    I guess business administration.
    He never lived, really, in the ghetto till the very last moment
    because he felt that he could do a lot better on the Aryan side.
    So what he did is he got himself a Polish papers,
    and he did not live in the ghetto.
    He really didn't live with us.
    That doesn't mean he didn't come--
    you have it on now?
    It doesn't mean he didn't come to visit.
    But as far as I know, he had no activity
    that had anything to do with the ghetto, or with other Jews
    in the--
    it wasn't a ghetto immediately.
    Everything was gradually, and everything gets enmeshed one
    into the other.
    There was a progression of things.
    But I know he had nothing to do with us.
    Could you describe what happened,
    how the ghetto was formed?
    You said before that you lived on the main street.
    Well, I know that several months after the Germans
    occupied Radom, they said the Jews
    had to live not so much a ghetto,
    but couldn't live in certain parts of the city.
    So we had to move.
    And we moved several times.
    And I really don't remember all the places we lived in.
    But being that we--
    as I said, he really lost--
    maybe he took money with him.
    I know we lost all our possessions
    that he had to carry from Gdynia,
    but it's possible that he had money that he took with him.
    Or that my mother's family had money.
    I know we were not poor through most of the war.
    So that means they must have had money in different forms,
    either they had jewelry, or gold, or whatever they had.
    But even we moved, we did not have a problem finding
    food to eat.
    Or obviously, things got gradually worse
    from a large apartment, you had to take a smaller one.
    And everything was very clever.
    You didn't notice how you were getting degraded.
    But I definitely wasn't as badly off
    as I saw other people around me.
    Who were you living with?
    It was still your mother?
    I living with my mother and her family.
    The four sisters, or--
    Well, I don't think they all lived in the same building,
    but at least one of them lived in the same building.
    So even with time, you stayed together?
    Right.
    You said things progressively got a little worse.
    What were the special measures that the Germans
    took against the Jews?
    Do you remember any of those?
    Yes.
    They were endless.
    Like first, I remember for a while, we lived--
    when we had to move out of the house,
    we had a nice apartment in some other part of the city.
    And for some reason, I got friendly
    with a son of a Nazi official.
    And apparently, he was not trained to be antisemitic.
    And I remember one day, his father telling him--
    maybe in my presence, or he told me--
    he could not play with me anymore.
    And that really bothered me because apparently we
    got-- since I spoke German, maybe the other boy
    had nobody to play with.
    And he liked me, but he said his father didn't
    allow him to play with me.
    So that was one blow.
    And they would just gradually go like this.
    You couldn't walk certain times in the street.
    You couldn't walk in certain streets, especially
    the nicest streets.
    You're not supposed to go.
    Then you had to wear the--
    I don't think it was an armband.
    I think it was a Star of David or some kind of a thing that
    identified you as Jewish.
    That bothered me no end.
    As I mentioned, we grew up as assimilated Jews,
    so this wearing of the badge was a real blow to me.
    Which means even if I wasn't recognized otherwise,
    this would identify me as Jewish.
    In fact, I think I did-- for a while, I ignored it.
    Because I think there was an age limit, like under 10
    you didn't have to wear it.
    So I just pretended to be under 10 even though at this point,
    I was over 10.
    The boy who you had befriended earlier
    that you spoke of earlier, was he the son of a German soldier?
    No, official.
    Nazi official.
    But it was German?
    Right.
    How did your family--
    your mother and your aunts-- react to these changes?
    Well, that's what I was trying to mention about being shielded.
    I really had no idea.
    They left us alone.
    In fact, it was the strangest time.
    The children would just play all day long and do anything
    they wanted, and that I liked a lot.
    Because, as I said, before the war,
    I really suffered with this antisemitism in Gdynia.
    So I ignored all problems.
    I mean, I really didn't ask what's
    going on except when they affected me directly.
    So I really don't know what they were going through.
    I don't know whether this was my parents' policy,
    or Jewish policy, but I know that they
    didn't tell me anything.
    They did not explain, this is what's happening.
    Maybe they didn't understand it.
    Maybe they didn't themselves.
    Maybe they couldn't explain it.
    But I know they made no effort of getting me involved.
    So I really am not aware of what they
    were going through except when something happened that I saw,
    and they couldn't help me seeing it.
    What things?
    Like what things did you see that they couldn't help?
    Well, the rules.
    At some point, you had to give up your fur coats
    because the Germans said that they needed for the war effort,
    or to help the--
    I think that was when they were preparing
    for the war with Russia.
    They wanted all the fur coats.
    So my mother had to go and give up her fur coat, which
    apparently meant a lot.
    I said, since we're from upper class, plenty of fur coat
    was essential.
    So that was a big blow.
    So some things that happened in the family I obviously
    was aware of because I had-- she was very unhappy, or whatever.
    There must have been a scene around it.
    Whether should we hide it, should we give it up,
    should we destroy it?
    But I don't know what she did, but I know she didn't have it.
    I think she gave it up.
    Some people tried it because they really
    didn't like what's happening.
    They would sabotage it, cut it up in pieces,
    or destroy the lining.
    I remember just talk about it, but I don't
    know what she did specifically.
    But I know losing the fur coat was a blow to her.
    So that kind of thing I would experience
    because it couldn't be helped.
    But I know they did not--
    since I said my father didn't live with us.
    I don't know where they talked to each other,
    but certainly not in my presence.
    You didn't see your father during this time?
    Well, I said he did not live with us.
    He came to visit.
    About how frequently would you see him?
    I don't know.
    Maybe it's on weekends he came.
    So probably once a week at least.
    So the ghetto in Radom was not a closed?
    Well, no.
    In the beginning, wasn't a ghetto.
    Was a main thing of moving from section to section, saying this
    is-- have to now move from this street.
    And if you happen to be unfortunate enough
    to live on that street-- if you lived in the area which
    eventually became the formal ghetto,
    then you didn't move at all.
    Like I had some relatives who had a store in the main ghetto,
    so they just stayed exactly put.
    But we, for some reason, because we were not in the ghetto, had,
    I remember, moved quite a few times.
    But I don't think it was-- the formal ghetto wasn't
    formed until '42 probably.
    First, it was just a gradual thing,
    saying you got to leave here, and leave there.
    And there was a pushing towards one area,
    which was the original Jewish--
    or the former ghetto.
    Like 19th century, there were ghettos in Poland where the Jews
    lived.
    And then the Jews moved out into the rest of the city.
    So I think what the Germans did gradually pushed them back
    into the original ghetto area.
    I don't know it was the whole ghetto area, or larger,
    or smaller, but in the area that was known as the ghetto.
    But there was a specific day where you knew you had to--
    where the ghetto was established formally.
    I think my parents knew about it beforehand,
    and they probably moved into the area beforehand.
    So it wasn't like I suddenly was told, you got to leave this day.
    I think with my father's not living in the ghetto,
    and of what he was doing, he had very extensive knowledge
    of what was coming out before it happened.
    So except for things like the fur coat,
    which you couldn't help, I think he would try to protect us
    and not having directly to face everything as it was happening.
    Could you describe what happened when it was formally
    commissioned as a ghetto in '42, or when it became the ghetto?
    Well, I know that as the events progressed,
    people would disappear.
    From what I understand, what I learned later,
    that there were different kinds of actions.
    They were not formal deportations,
    but they would say, we need a group of people to work on--
    go to a labor camp, or do some project.
    So they would take young people, or men, and send them away.
    And I think many of them never came back.
    But it wasn't, especially to a child,
    it wasn't as obvious what the purpose was.
    You just knew that--
    well, first, you knew that it was good to have a labor pass,
    to have an official job.
    Since I was too young to do this,
    I often stayed inside the apartment.
    I didn't go out.
    In fact, now when people want to know my sons,
    why don't you play sports?
    There really wasn't anything to do anything.
    I lost my childhood.
    They didn't care what I did, my parents, inside the apartment,
    but I really didn't go out because you never
    knew what's going to happen.
    So children stayed while the parents found things to do--
    legitimate or illegitimate labor.
    The children, obviously, to my age, couldn't work.
    So they just stayed in the apartment
    and hoped that nobody would come and see them.
    I remember they gradually did have--
    I don't know what you'd call it, but the Nazis
    would come and search the apartments
    and drag everybody out who stayed at home where they
    shouldn't be during work days.
    And my parents apparently knew enough to just make me
    disappear when this happened.
    So I never experienced it personally,
    even though I heard that children were taken away,
    or that old people or sick people were.
    I didn't see it.
    So apparently, they hid me somewhere
    while these actions took place.
    I said, because of my father--
    you have to understand what my father was doing.
    Because of his knowledge of German and of business,
    he was very good in business.
    And I said, because he lived in Danzig, he knew German business.
    What he did, many of the factories in Radom
    were Jewish-owned.
    And when the Nazis came, the Jews
    had to give up the factories.
    So they needed people to administer the factories.
    So what he did, he became an expert in I
    think it was iron works.
    And he administered for the Germans several
    of the iron factories.
    But they didn't know he was Jewish?
    No.
    As a Pole.
    Really, Poles normally were not allowed to do this.
    But because he knew German, they so much liked somebody
    that they could talk to rather than--
    they really couldn't stand the Poles either.
    They thought they were subhuman.
    They didn't know anything.
    So I don't know quite what the official role was,
    but maybe officially, there would be somebody else in charge
    of the factory.
    But the practical work he did, you
    know what I mean, in helping them run the factory.
    And I think what they often did, they
    would have the Jewish owners work there as clerks.
    They would be there, but they couldn't-- they would be given
    a job of some type, but they just weren't, obviously,
    managing the place.
    This was in '42 also?
    No, see, the thing was he was not from Radom.
    Nobody knew him.
    That's why he disappeared.
    He didn't stay in the ghetto and then move.
    He disappeared at once.
    Because once you get known, one would tell the other.
    And then would say, he is a Jew doing.
    So really, nobody knew who he was.
    I don't even know the name that he had during the war.
    He didn't tell us, and he didn't tell anybody else.
    And I think that's why he often came and came to visit,
    was either at night, was in such a way that he didn't get--
    he wasn't seen by too many.
    I remember that because I remember
    that he was never around.
    Which means he probably, when he came,
    he did in such a way that nobody knew he was there,
    or those that knew he trusted.
    So that's why he was able to do this.
    The Poles in Radom didn't know him, and the Jews in Radom
    didn't know him.
    Now-- I'm sorry.
    And I don't really know what my mother told others where he was.
    I mean, sure, she had some story.
    During this time, the family was still pretty much together--
    Right.
    --except for your father?
    And what happened as time moved into '42, '43 in Radom?
    How did things change?
    Well, things, as I said, got progressively worse.
    They didn't get worse for me.
    Because of his jobs, he brought us,
    I remember, chocolate, and whatever
    goods that we could have used.
    I [? don't ?] think my mother was too happy
    about the activities, his absences, and the whole thing,
    but he didn't really ask her, as far as I know.
    But personally, I know that I gradually
    became much more aware of what was going on--
    that the sheltering didn't work.
    Well, for example, the worst thing
    I remember, one day, I don't remember what year, '41, '42,
    I had a bicycle, which was a big deal in the ghetto.
    I was absolutely crazy about the bicycle.
    And I remember one day, the German
    said all bicycles have to be given up.
    I now know of my parents did this deliberately, or to teach
    me something, or because--
    I'm sure the law didn't say you had
    to bring the bicycle yourself.
    But for whatever reason, they made me do it myself.
    Maybe to make me on the other hand aware
    that things are happening that I should know.
    And I just couldn't get over that.
    I mean, you have to in person go up, and put your bicycle
    in a pile, and never see it again.
    So this kind of thing I remember more than others
    might remember maybe more important things.
    So this is where it affected me personally.
    I told you, first have to--
    I don't remember exactly what we did
    with the wearing or the star, but it just bothered me.
    And now I guess eventually started wearing it.
    I was getting-- I was pretty tall for my age,
    so I looked like an adult, or at least a teen--
    older teenager.
    And how long were you in Radom?
    Well, this is the reason why proportionately more people
    were saved from Radom than many other places.
    In fact, most people never heard of this kind of thing.
    What happened in Radom is that the concentration camp
    came to us, which is totally unheard of.
    Instead of people being shipped to a concentration camp, in '43,
    they made a part of Radom into a concentration camp.
    And those people that were not deported were sent to that camp.
    So we just physically moved to the camp in the same city.
    So I was in Radom till July '44, which is very late.
    That's maybe five years.
    Was your whole family together in the concentration camp?
    No, no, no.
    As-- which I didn't go into yet, they gradually
    had these housing limit deportations.
    And because my family was permanent,
    like this lawyer that I mentioned
    was my uncle, who was a leader of the Zionists, by name,
    they had one of those things where they called.
    And they got him, and I guess they killed him.
    But he was selected out by name.
    What they did is try to get all the intelligentsia first
    so there would be no uprising, or no activity.
    So one way or the other, now, the women and children
    didn't go that time.
    But then they were caught in the first major deportation.
    I think the major one was in summer of '42.
    Let's see, I said originally was 30,000 Jews in Radom.
    Many more Jews came because the smaller towns around Radom
    were liquidated, so they moved to Radom.
    So got even more crowded.
    And then they would have these--
    I said first the work details which affected
    only a few hundred people.
    And then-- oh, I know when it was.
    Because it was August '42.
    Because of all things, I was studying with bar mitzvah.
    I would have been 13 August 29, 1942.
    And I remember just before the bar mitzvah, I was--
    I remember how [INAUDIBLE], instead of studying,
    I was hiding under a table under something
    because that's when they had the worst selection.
    That's out of the 30,000 Jews in Radom,
    at least 20,000 were taken to Treblinka in '42.
    And only my mother, and father, and I stayed.
    All the other relatives went at that time.
    We were not in the ghetto.
    And as we-- he managed to--
    there were certain factories that
    were allowed to keep their Jews on the premises.
    So what they did, when the German supervisors
    knew that the thing is coming, they told the Jews
    during that day, or days, you take your things
    and you stay at work.
    So we did not stay in the ghetto because the likelihood
    that children were taken first would have been--
    I would have disappeared.
    But my other family didn't have this kind of protection.
    He found a job for us that was ironclad--
    in other words, some kind of factory
    that did something important for the Germans
    that they felt that they wanted to preserve their Jews at that
    point.
    So while I heard all about it, I was not
    there physically when they took most of them away.
    So in the 30,000, at least 20,000 were deported in August
    '42.
    So you didn't see the selection?
    No, I only heard about it.
    Did you go back into the ghetto after the--
    Well, what happened, obviously, the ghetto got much smaller.
    When they took that many people away,
    they told us to go in this real small area.
    And we lived-- however, we were pretty fortunate.
    We lived in the ghetto--
    part of the ghetto was--
    Radom had a very large leather goods industry which
    was exclusively run by Jews.
    And one of these leather goods--
    tanneries, they made the original skin from-- they--
    whatever they do with that, it's a tannery.
    Well, what my father did is he got us an apartment
    in the superintendent's-- the superintendent was Polish,
    so he had to move out because it was the ghetto.
    And we took over the superintendent's apartment
    in that tannery, which belonged to a close friend of our family.
    They lived somewhere else in the same factory,
    in a fancy apartment.
    So we lived in the ghetto, but we shrunk on us.
    But it was still--
    but at that point, we didn't have to move as much.
    The factory where you worked, that was outside the ghetto?
    I didn't really work.
    That's all a phony--
    so he managed all this.
    Because he supposedly worked there, and he just--
    and we were workers for the day.
    I really did not work.
    Was this factory outside the ghetto?
    Yes, yes.
    Was there fairly easy access into and out of the ghetto
    at this time?
    No, you had to have passes, and special permits, and all that.
    So that your father was able to get you the pass.
    He had enough money.
    He could get anything except knowing how to leave.
    What about the food situation in the ghetto at this time?
    Well, there were many--
    the food rations were very small.
    I know they were getting--
    like I remember standing on line that I think once a week
    or twice a week you got your food ration,
    so much bread and so much.
    And I think gradually, my parents
    decided that I ought to know what's going on.
    So they would send me to stand in line.
    So I learned what was going on.
    And I would see the amount of bread they gave you for--
    I guess you had some kind of a identification.
    It said for three people, you get this, or two people.
    I think since he still didn't live in the ghetto,
    he probably didn't exist.
    So let's say for whoever I picked it up for.
    And it was very minimal.
    Like you got a loaf of bread for a week.
    So most people who had money bought extra food
    on the black market.
    There was no way you could live on what they gave you.
    So they either begged, or they got money from others, or--
    I mean money-- food from others, or they bought it themselves.
    What you got officially was not enough.
    I remember that, again, this was probably for my benefit
    or whatever they were doing-- their guilt.
    There was an orphanage in Radom, and they were very--
    children that lost their parents first before the war, and others
    during the war.
    My parents would load up a wheelbarrow with flour,
    and had me push the thing to the--
    I was pretty strong--
    push it to the orphanage and give it out.
    So that was to teach me charity.
    I don't know if it was because they were so well-off that they
    felt--
    I mean, they were so well-off relative to the others,
    or because they just felt it was the right thing to do.
    But I remember they made me go in personally, tried to either
    divide the thing, or just to be involved in it.
    When was this now?
    During the ghetto period.
    What--
    '42.
    And where were you able to obtain all of this flour?
    He had money.
    He had endless money.
    Because of all this work that he was doing for the--
    he had money.
    So I guess some of the money used to not just feed us,
    but to also feed others.
    Was this orphanage Jewish children?
    Yeah, just Jewish children.
    Before, you said that after the Germans came into Radom,
    the public schools stopped.
    But then you described that you were
    studying for your bar mitzvah.
    Right.
    Were there Jewish schools going on?
    No schools-- tutors.
    We had enough money to have tutors.
    And there, there were many people
    who had no jobs and no money.
    I think I had tutors not just in Hebrew, but also
    in some other regular school, or they tried to do this.
    But after a while, it got very difficult because of-- see,
    well, you were not supposed to be--
    You were describing--
    Yeah, I think that even though we had the money,
    and there were people that knew how to teach,
    and could use the job, because of the danger of being seen
    during the day in the ghetto without a legitimate job,
    I think it was very difficult to do this.
    So I remember this bar mitzvah learning was a pain.
    First not being assimilated, I had a great difficulty
    learning the material.
    And then there was the constant danger
    because I did know it was illegal to do this.
    So I really didn't enjoy this.
    It wasn't enjoying that you're screwing the Germans.
    You really felt that it wasn't worth the risk.
    So I was doing it, but I really felt--
    in retrospect, I remember I was very apprehensive about it.
    I just was doing it for my parents.
    Where would you have been bar mitzvahed?
    Wasn't there a synagogue?
    No, there were no synagogues.
    Would have been in the house.
    I guess the rabbi or whoever would come,
    and that's what they were planning to.
    Was, like I said, was near the--
    before the big deportation--
    the biggest deportation.
    Was there a Jewish community organization within the ghetto
    that functioned to take care of things?
    Yes.
    There was a Jewish council of elders
    with police, Jewish police, and Jewish doctors,
    and Jewish welfare officials, and fully organized.
    Radom was very well organized.
    Were they there, in your mind, to help the Jews,
    or were they there to help the Germans?
    Or how did you view them?
    In the beginning, I think a lot of people
    volunteered for this because they thought that they could--
    by running the ghetto themselves,
    that they could avoid some of the worst things
    that the Germans planned for us.
    But probably what happened, many of them were--
    either the Germans didn't like what they were doing
    and they got rid of them.
    Gradually, people got into these jobs were not the best element.
    So they got worse reputation, and they all took-- not all,
    but I mean, you knew they took bribes.
    In the beginning, it definitely was like--
    it was an esteemed thing to be a Jewish elder.
    I know that because some of the friends of my parents
    were doing it, and they definitely
    didn't do it to help the Germans.
    But said gradually, maybe people came
    from other towns, or different elements,
    and obviously, they couldn't control
    who had all the positions.
    But from what I understand, compared
    to other ghettos or other cities,
    like compared to Lódz which had the famous Rumkowski who really
    was a collaborator of the worst kind then, and very egomaniac.
    I assume you heard about it--
    had his own money printed, and the stamp with his face on it.
    There was nothing like this in Radom.
    While they may have collaborated with the Germans,
    I think the only way that they collaborate
    is that they protected their family over others.
    That was the biggest problem, that people would--
    let's say they were given--
    if they were asked to deliver X number of people for some labor,
    or some thing.
    They would protect the friends, and send people
    who were not known to them.
    So they made choices over human beings, which in retrospect,
    certainly didn't look too good.
    And others just took money.
    If you give them enough money, one person would be let off,
    and another one would be picked.
    In fact, that's how you bought the permits,
    both to work in desirable jobs, and not to work in undesirable.
    Those that didn't have the money got the undesirable jobs.
    But I don't think there was anybody there who outright
    was out to help the Germans.
    It was more daily men, daily occurrences their way.
    Or any job you have is a favor.
    I know in my work now, some people
    always say my boss favors some people and not others.
    So nothing to do with collaboration,
    but I don't think there was any collaboration
    in the formal sense that somebody
    would help the Germans or Nazis to get rid of the Jews.
    It was just when they had to make choices,
    they chose what they thought was good for them,
    and their family, and money, if that was involved.
    What happened when Radom became a concentration camp?
    Well, that gets complicated.
    What happens, there were several important--
    Poland was divided in five districts,
    and Radom was one of the main districts.
    That's one of the five districts.
    So a lot of German administration
    took place in Radom.
    It wasn't just a city.
    It was a whole large area like called the Northeast here
    in America.
    That was Radom.
    That's all the port Nazi officials were working out
    of this.
    I think they had some important things running where they needed
    assistance in different ways, and they
    had munitions factories.
    And they had-- in fact, that's when I finally got my first job.
    For some reason, the Germans decided
    to have a printing shop established in the ghetto.
    Or at least, I don't know the way it was physically,
    but the employees were Jews from the ghetto.
    And what we were doing, which is the strangest thing, whenever
    the Poles committed sabotage, they would say,
    for killing one German, that's 100 Poles would be shot.
    And the way they did it, they said,
    60 Poles will be shot or hanged on this and this day,
    and the 40 would be left.
    So when the next occurrence came,
    they would have it by name.
    There was at least 40 will go, plus the next 60.
    Numbers may not be exactly what I'm giving you,
    but I remember that I was involved in printing this.
    My father got me this job, and I was very good at it
    because I liked reading, and writing,
    and some mechanical skills.
    And they taught me how to run a printing-- there was
    a foot-operated letter press.
    And I would print those, and I think
    they had printed those things because they knew
    that they didn't like Poles.
    So they didn't-- even though obviously,
    we liked the idea that the Germans were being killed,
    we didn't mind as much printing the names of the Poles.
    I think we printed other things in that printing shop, too,
    but I vividly remember because those
    were big colorful posters with the names that would
    be pasted all over the city.
    And I, in a way, felt proud that I was part of this operation.
    So they had this kind of thing.
    I don't know why it occurred to them, whether it was deliberate.
    I think it was deliberate-- that they had Jews print the Poles.
    They wouldn't have Poles print the posters about Poles,
    and there were not enough Germans to do this.
    So there were certain industries that they thought was essential.
    I know there was a large munitions factory in Radom,
    and thousands of people worked there.
    And it was very hard labor, and very poor conditions.
    But whatever the reason was, they
    decided, instead of getting rid of all the Jews,
    they just build a concentration camp on the outskirts
    of the city called Szkolna.
    Szkolna means the street of--
    school street.
    And at some point, I think late '43,
    that was another experience that was unforgettable.
    Because we had to move from the ghetto to the concentration
    camp, and at that point, you had to put on the striped clothing.
    And before you put the striped clothing,
    you had to take a bath in public.
    And I remember never before that having to strip naked and be
    with hundreds of other people.
    You see, that's how protected I was.
    Till '43 I did not have to be exposed to any of that.
    And the striped clothing felt like a zebra.
    Bothered me no end.
    I think you had a number sewn on,
    but otherwise, you couldn't tell anybody.
    We all looked the same, and so on.
    I mean, now I call it zebra, but it really
    felt degrading and inhuman.
    That was another after the bicycle incident,
    having to put in this-- and also at this point,
    the men and women were separate.
    So that was another terrible experience for me.
    At that point, my mother is no longer with me.
    At this point, my father was with us.
    So sometimes during this period, he
    decided that there was no point staying.
    I think he could have stayed out,
    but he did it for the family.
    So he moved into the ghetto.
    So that when you went to the concentration camp,
    he was with you?
    Right.
    And she was separate.
    And your sisters had been--
    They already were gone, right.
    We were alone.
    So she was by herself in the camp.
    Could you describe camp?
    What did the concentration camp look like?
    Well, it was completely different from ghetto.
    See, in the ghetto, even though we
    lived in a very small apartment-- in fact,
    after this thing called a large ghetto,
    after the big deportation, there was a small ghetto.
    First, we were three in one room.
    Then I remember there were six of us in one room,
    and maybe you had a curtain.
    There were two families in one room, the small ghetto.
    But you still were together.
    In the concentration camp, it was just
    like concentration camps elsewhere.
    There were three bunks.
    It was hundreds of people in one room.
    And that's in one barrack.
    The whole Szkolna was five barracks.
    The whole concentration camp with 3,000 people was five
    barracks.
    So they either was large barracks,
    or we were terribly crowded.
    So this was-- the only advantage was
    that we were in the same city, and all the people around us
    were people either that we knew, or that
    were not complete strangers.
    These were all Jews?
    Yeah, all from Radom, unless there
    were some that I mentioned that some people from smaller towns
    were sent to Radom.
    So maybe not everyone was Radom native.
    But were they all Jewish?
    Oh, yes, all Jewish.
    This was a camp just for the people in the-- but that--
    while it was a concentration camp, we preserved those 3,000,
    which is 10% of 30, which I think is a high proportion
    to survive till July '44, when we were taken away from there.
    And in this camp, every morning, or sometime,
    you would be marched out, go out to work in the factories?
    Yeah.
    Well, at that point, everybody had a job.
    And I think I worked in this printing shop from what
    I remember, till the end.
    Which was important work from the Nazis point of view.
    And yeah, you were counted out in the morning.
    It was like a regular camp.
    In the morning, everybody would stand and be
    counted, and the evening.
    And if they couldn't get the count straight,
    you stood forever--
    whether it's warm, cold, or whatever.
    They were big on counting.
    I mean, they had to count.
    As if they knew the evening count was that much,
    they want to be sure that the morning count was the same,
    and that somebody died.
    And they would-- I guess I forgot to add this.
    But the count had to be done at least twice a day,
    and that was morning and night.
    And when you left the camp, I mean,
    they counted out how many came out in that group,
    and how many came back.
    So you couldn't just disappear.
    What was your father--
    what kind of job did he have at this time?
    I think he was in the same printing shop
    where I was doing something else.
    Were you able to see your mother?
    I think there was something like the barracks were
    so close that you could stand that they were not electrified.
    You could stand at, what do you call this, at the fences
    and talk.
    But not personally, not go to their room.
    But you could see each other maybe
    in the evening, or in the weekend, or what
    Weekend was one day.
    I think Sunday.
    They still observed the Polish custom.
    There was no work on Sunday.
    How many hours a day did you work?
    I think 12.
    You would leave about what time in the morning?
    I really don't remember, but let's say 7:00,
    come back at 7:00.
    What about food in the camp?
    Well, at this point, it was a lot worse.
    We started depending-- most people had
    to depend on what they choose to give you.
    Now, because we were considered essential workers,
    remember, they got rid of all the people
    that they thought were old, infirm, or any way undesirable.
    I think they fed you enough that you didn't collapse.
    It was not an extermination camp.
    It was just that I really don't understand
    why they decided to do this.
    I mean, it's very unusual that they
    felt that they wanted these people to work there.
    Not everybody did the same.
    There were many different activities--
    clothing factories, and leather goods,
    and furniture, and munitions.
    And I said I worked in a printing shop.
    And I really don't know what my mother did.
    I forgot.
    But they all were gainfully employed, and we really were.
    Was a black market in existence then, you could buy food?
    Yes, it still was.
    Otherwise, we would have starved.
    My father always managed to get something.
    The Poles, when you went out of the enclosed area,
    there was some kind of arrangement
    that you'd meet people in some way
    that he had that he give them the money,
    and they would throw whatever you ordered the day before,
    whenever.
    And I remember that we would buy additional supplies.
    So tell, as long as I was in Radom,
    I think I was better off than what the Nazis intended for us.
    So for the people who didn't have the means to do this.
    Were there any brutalities by the Germans
    at Radom in the camp?
    Well, as I said, I was very well protected.
    I heard of all kinds of things.
    I did not see too many of them myself.
    I only remember the one thing is that in the concentration camp,
    in the Szkolna, that they found that somebody dug a tunnel which
    they were going to use to run away when they thought
    things were getting bad.
    And the Nazis discovered the tunnel.
    So what they did is there were four men and one woman,
    and they built a special scaffolding.
    And the whole camp stood there, and they flogged them naked.
    They didn't kill them.
    They just told you that--
    and that I watched, and that was, for a child,
    a pretty gruesome experience.
    Because they were pretty bad condition.
    They were hiding three months.
    I think they either didn't decide yet to leave,
    or they weren't ready, but they were discovered.
    So there was this public flogging
    with everybody watching on.
    That kind of thing.
    Now, obviously, you were slapped if you--
    that's when you walked in the morning to work.
    The guards that we had when-- again, this
    is my strange experience.
    I don't have any experience with Germans.
    I think the guards that they had were Baltic--
    were either Ukrainian, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian.
    So they were recruited into the SS, not Germans.
    The Germans were the officers, and we never did do with them.
    So I think they would push you, or kick you,
    but you were so used to this that that doesn't really--
    I don't vividly remember.
    But I know that there were people who were slow,
    or didn't look the right way, that they would
    mistreat one way or the other.
    But I didn't see any shootings.
    When you read in any concentration camp literature
    that people saw bodies all over.
    I did not see that.
    Like I said, the worst deportation took place,
    we were not in the ghetto.
    At that point, maybe several hundred people
    were killed as part of the action.
    But by the time we went back to the ghetto, this was clean.
    So I only heard about it.
    So personally, I did not see it.
    What about the health and sanitation conditions
    in that ghetto?
    How were they?
    Ghetto--
    Szkolna.
    Szkolna was a concentration camp.
    I mean the concentration camp.
    I'm sorry.
    Well, we were very crowded.
    I can only say we'll get to that later.
    Later, I was in a real concentration camp,
    but it wasn't bad.
    That was compared to being in a real camp.
    Even though it was called a concentration camp,
    I think that there was no--
    well, I'm sure people were sick, but somehow my parents
    managed to--
    my father, at this point-- to see to it that I was not--
    Really, I was very mixed up.
    Being an only child, I was not used
    to talking to people that I didn't know,
    or talking to a lot of people.
    So I really had nobody to talk to.
    And you remember, there were not--
    I was-- that's, what is it, '43?
    I was 14.
    There were very few 14-year-olds, if any.
    So there really was nobody to talk to.
    So I did not talk to people that would hear the stories of what
    was going on.
    A few minutes ago, you talked about when they took Poles
    because German had been killed in and around Radom.
    Did you know there was much resistance to the Germans?
    Yes, there was resistance all over Poland.
    The Pole, even though the Polish underground was antisemitic,
    they also hated the Nazis.
    You always heard about it that they would blow up a truck,
    or blow up a railroad, or kill a German just going to a bar
    or sleeping with a Pole.
    They did this all the time.
    And that's what these posters--
    you remember, I knew German because I grew up in Gdansk.
    So I could read them, and they did
    describe what happened, more or less, from their point of view.
    So if a Pole who was not Jewish killed a German,
    they would kill Polish Jews?
    No, Poles.
    Poles.
    Oh, these are Poles, not Polish Jews?
    No, we did not print them, no.
    I see.
    I'm sorry.
    No, they were all Poles.
    Those are Poles.
    Unless there were Jews hiding with Poles.
    Do you know of any resistance by Polish Jews around Radom?
    I know that the cousin that I had who was a blonde
    and not much older than I, but much taller--
    well, he must have been older.
    Let's say he was 15 when the war started.
    So he was seven.
    He went to join the underground, and I think he was killed.
    The thing you often heard that the Jews went
    to join the Polish underground, and they either would
    be killed by them or denounced.
    The Poles did not believe that the Jews knew how to fight.
    So they-- or they were so antisemitic
    that they couldn't accept them, but they did not accept them.
    Except for the leftist groups, of which there were very few.
    Most of the underground was right wing, or to the right,
    and they really were antisemitic.
    So even though they hated the Nazis,
    they couldn't accept the Jews.
    That was very difficult. I know he was killed.
    I know he was killed by the Nazis or by the other Poles,
    but I know that he didn't survive.
    So that was my own cousin who did just that.
    So I think many of the young people who
    were strong and not fearful did try to leave the ghetto
    and do something different-- either go to Russia
    or join the partisans.
    But I think as Jews, I personally
    don't know the Jews did anything of--
    like the hiding I wouldn't call sabotage-- the thing where they
    was discovered in the tunnel.
    But nothing like what you read that happened
    in Warsaw, or in Vilna and some other places,
    where they actually had active armed resistance.
    That doesn't mean that in their own ways,
    people didn't sabotage.
    From what I understand, many people
    working in the munitions factories sabotaged the weapons.
    I think they didn't build guns.
    They were building, what do you call,
    bullets of different sizes.
    I think they sabotaged in that way.
    But I think you were asking about regular resistance.
    Nothing like what the Germans did-- the Poles did.
    They would go into a bar and shoot
    a German that was sitting there, or dynamite
    a truck, or that kind of thing.
    I never heard of it.
    Doesn't mean it didn't happen.
    Could you give us some more information
    about the sabotage that they did with the bullets,
    or anything like that?
    That I know was I know people worked there.
    They just sabotaged them.
    We all did that.
    We slowed the work down, or we did whatever we could not to--
    I understand that many of the people
    that they worked on clothing, they
    would make the seams in such a way
    that they would fall apart when they were really used.
    And they were building-- they were making winter clothing.
    So there were different ways that you could do this--
    that you just wanted to be sure that they really
    couldn't use it.
    I don't know what they did on the bullets.
    I'm really not up on-- but I know that those that understood
    the chemical process, that they made sure
    that they were not usable if they were getting to be used.
    Did people actually talk about this amongst themselves?
    I think I learned this mostly from people
    after the war who worked in this particular munitions factory.
    This was the major industry in Radom.
    Not that-- there were many industries,
    but I think the largest number of people
    worked in that munitions factory because it
    was such a large factory.
    It's possible that they bragged.
    Remember, I am not an expert on munitions, and I didn't--
    it's possible that after the war, people--
    some of this was embellished to feel
    that you did something to them.
    But I know that from my personal experience, that we
    did everything not to sabotage with these words,
    but to make it, I don't know what you call this,
    to hinder the effort.
    And you left the concentration camp at Radom in what year?
    Well, what happened is the Russians were coming closer.
    They went to Poland, but where we were was not where--
    they got up to a certain point, which was Lublin, which is only,
    I think, it wasn't--
    well, they were within 50 miles of Radom.
    And for some reason, they stopped.
    Either that's where they were regrouping.
    But I know that we could hear them.
    We could hear the shelling, the big artillery.
    So maybe it was closer than 50 miles.
    I don't think you could hear that far.
    And then they stopped.
    So we thought they would continue, and unfortunately,
    they didn't.
    In July of '44, I never could get over this.
    The Germans always had trains for us and all that where they
    supposedly didn't.
    They evacuated the Radom concentration camp
    and took us to Auschwitz.
    That was a terrible experience.
    Because what happened is that they
    didn't know how soon the Russians will be here,
    so they didn't have trains.
    So we walked 120 kilometers from--
    we had to go to some other town, which was the nearest
    train that they could find.
    And it was 120 kilometers, which is, what, 60 miles?
    And all the women and whatever, old people had to walk.
    And they would have these horse-drawn wagons
    going alongside.
    And those people couldn't walk, they said, go in the wagon.
    And every few hours, you would hear
    the wagons go into nearby woods, and you heard shots,
    and they came back empty.
    So it means you knew if you want to survive
    that, you don't go in a wagon.
    What month was that?
    July '44.
    So we had to walk 120 to the train station.
    Even Radom was a big--
    for whatever reason, they did not have the transport there.
    So they just walked us.
    You and your father were together then?
    At this point, my mother was together, too.
    Because the whole thing walked as one mass.
    So the three of you were walking?
    Right.
    And then I remember people carried a lot of bundles,
    and they gradually threw everything away
    because you obviously couldn't carry it.
    And it was very hot.
    And the Poles-- you ask for water.
    And only one place I remember people came and gave you
    water, or carried something.
    But most cases, there was no water.
    And it was very hot and dusty.
    The roads were not paved where we walked.
    And so it was a terrible ordeal.
    I don't remember how many days it took,
    but it took several days to walk.
    And then we were taken to some factory in this town
    where the train was.
    And seven days we stayed locked in like 3,000 people
    in a factory with 300.
    And it was terrible conditions-- no bathrooms.
    It was just the worst experience ever-- no air.
    I guess they were waiting for the transport to get there.
    So when we finally got to the trains,
    it was like not liberated, but I mean, we just
    couldn't stand that place.
    Totally locked in this.
    I don't remember what the factory did,
    but it wasn't working.
    But, I mean, this factory, for some time we were locked up.
    During the walk, did you stop at different times, or--
    No.
    We walked till the evening, and then they--
    on the field, and they would surround you with searchlights.
    And just maybe a few people escaped, but most, I think,
    got shot.
    You could hear--
    That was the first time I did not see anybody killed.
    But you could hear the shots.
    You could see the wagons.
    You obviously knew what's going on.
    And yet I didn't--
    and again, I saw-- they beat, if somebody walked too slow,
    they would hit you with a rifle butt or what we call it.
    Now, who were these guards?
    Again, they were not Germans.
    These were recruited other nationalities.
    That's why some of them managed to dislike Poles
    and others more than Germans.
    The Germans personally, I still had no direct contact with them.
    None, because the officers were up in the clouds somewhere.
    So even though you knew they supposed to give the orders,
    what you really disliked the most
    is what you experienced personally, not
    some abstract thing that you can read after the war,
    but all the plans there.
    My personal contact was not with the Germans.
    When you were locked up in the factory for those three days--
    No, it was seven days.
    Did you have any food at all?
    If it was, it was minimal.
    It was really terrible.
    At that point, I saw people dying of starvation, or disease,
    or whatever.
    I don't remember what food there was, but all I remember,
    there was an unbelievable experience.
    I think in the factory, again, the men and women
    were separated.
    They sent them-- they were in different parts.
    The walk we were together.
    Then the factory was separate.
    Is there anything else that you wanted
    to describe about the factory before we leave that subject?
    No, except the things that I said got progressively worse.
    That's how you got used to things.
    You see, they didn't do anything at once.
    I don't think it was all planned,
    but that's how I was getting from one thing to another.
    And you sort of took the worst things
    without realizing how much worse they were.
    Even in retrospect, you knew they were terrible.
    Like the walking, I happen to have been in good shape.
    But I knew that people who was used to walking 120 kilometers.
    When you first in the ghetto where you barely move,
    camp where you barely--
    I mean, we walked--
    in the camp, you also had to work to work.
    But I think these were nearby.
    I mean, none of these were long walks,
    and nobody was in great physical shape.
    OK, what about the ride from--
    So from this town, which I forgot
    the name, which was near Radom somewhere,
    we were taken to Auschwitz.
    And this is interesting because nobody believes that.
    My father told me we're going to Auschwitz.
    He knew it.
    By the way, he knew in '42 that everybody that was gone
    was exterminated, and he would tell everybody else.
    And they wouldn't believe him.
    They told him he was a troublemaker.
    People absolutely didn't want to believe.
    I think a lot of Jews died.
    I think this is the Hannah Arendt thing about what-- you
    know what I'm talking about?
    The theory that Jews helped--
    I think if they faced up more what's going to happen,
    they would have either resisted, or run away,
    or killed some Germans.
    They didn't believe it.
    I knew he knew definitely that people ran away from--
    the people that were taken away during the large deportation
    were taken to Treblinka.
    Some people escaped either on the train, from the train,
    or from the camp, and came back to Radom,
    and told the more influential people what happened.
    And they absolutely wouldn't--
    I mean, some of the leaders wouldn't believe, and sometimes,
    the rest of the people wouldn't.
    So they never did anything about it.
    They didn't plot and say, look, we're all going to be killed.
    Why don't we figure out what we could do?
    I know they didn't believe.
    And that I remember hearing as we were--
    as I said, we were, at this point, six in a room.
    And they couldn't talk around me.
    And I remember he would try to tell people what is happening,
    and they would just ignore him, or call him names, or whatever.
    So I remember we were going to Auschwitz.
    He just said, we're going to Auschwitz.
    How did he know this?
    I don't know.
    Then when the train was moving, people who knew geography
    could tell--
    like if you knew a map by heart, you
    could tell from what you were passing.
    But he said at the moment we got on the train
    that that's where we going to go.
    And that's what we ended up, in Auschwitz.
    Did he ever suggest escaping or trying to escape?
    Yes, but my mother looked very Jewish.
    And she was very unused to--
    remember, she did not live outside the ghetto.
    She did not know many Poles.
    She was very protected.
    She actually didn't want to take the chance,
    and he didn't want to leave her alone.
    And I also looked Jewish compared to him,
    who looked totally Aryan.
    There's always the thing that I remember in Poland,
    the Poles said they could tell 50 feet away a Jew.
    They're really good at that.
    I mean, I think either Jews looked Jewish,
    or whether the Poles were that good at that,
    but she was very afraid of it.
    So we had enough money to go to Switzerland
    or try to go somewhere else.
    But obviously, it was a risk while you were in transit,
    and she didn't want to take the chance.
    Other people would live with Poles,
    pay money, and have them hide you.
    And I think she didn't want to try that either, because again,
    you could sometimes be seen, and then other people would
    say you're hiding.
    It was better to hide somebody didn't look Jewish.
    You could say, that's my relative from somewhere,
    or friend, or whatever.
    So there were never any active plans that I know of.
    Doesn't mean you didn't have plans,
    but nothing ever materialized that I became aware of.
    How long was the train ride to Auschwitz?
    I think it took several days because even
    the distance isn't big.
    Poland isn't big on railroads, so maybe another train
    would come by, military, they would have to let it by.
    I know it always took forever.
    You didn't feel like an express.
    In fact, I could look out and see, these were not barricaded.
    They were not the trains like you read about
    that people were dying in them.
    They loaded us-- a lot of people together, but not in a way
    that you couldn't survive.
    But arriving in Auschwitz, that's an awful--
    you remember, we were in the striped uniform.
    If you see the typical picture in Auschwitz,
    in fact, I've never seen one.
    Otherwise, they arrive in regular clothing.
    We were already in concentration camp clothes.
    And while we were there, now, that's
    how I survived is they decided to take
    the men without unloading the train is to take us
    to a work camp in West Germany.
    I don't mean that we waited like a day or two,
    but they never unloaded us to stay in Auschwitz.
    But at this point, they took the women away.
    All the women were taken away in Auschwitz.
    Anyway, at that point, my mother left.
    She was taken away.
    That was probably the worst experience
    I had because remember, we knew what Auschwitz stood for.
    That's what I can't believe with people from Hungary
    or wherever came.
    They said they didn't know.
    We knew exactly what it was.
    The chimney, you could see the chimneys in front of you.
    You heard the-- it smelled.
    It smelled like-- remember I worked in a tannery?
    It smelled burned leather, and you knew that it was human skin.
    Had the same smell as in the factory where I lived.
    Except they didn't-- the factory wasn't operating most
    of the time when I worked-- when I lived there.
    But here, you had it right in front of you.
    And we stood there 24 hours.
    The train stood till they decided what to do with us.
    And they had a selection.
    In other words, the children--
    In fact, I went through that.
    The people were infirm, or old, or whatever,
    they didn't think was good for work.
    And I survived that.
    And you just knew that those people
    told to go to the other side.
    Then they would be put on trucks, and agonizing screams.
    They would be-- either they were straight taken to crematoria,
    or--
    but you just knew that wasn't very good.
    Now, the women were not taken on trucks.
    They were just left in the camp.
    In Auschwitz?
    Right.
    They did not get on these trucks where
    you thought they going to immediately be exterminated.
    You're saying there was a selection
    of the men and the children?
    Of the men.
    Of the male, boys.
    The men.
    The women all stayed automatically.
    The men were selected out to weed out the weaker ones.
    Where did the selection take place?
    Right on the platform, in front of the train.
    Can you describe some of how that process works?
    That's the famous--
    I don't know that Mengele was there,
    but it's the process that everybody-- they had a routine.
    You stood in rows of five.
    And they marched up the row, and then somebody would look at you,
    and say, this one goes this way.
    That one goes that way.
    It's just a standard procedure.
    What were you feeling?
    Do you remember your feelings at that time?
    They were awful.
    I mean, first you're worried to death
    which way you're going to go, and I worried about my mother.
    Because we saw they were taken first.
    They were just taken away, and there were all these screams
    about.
    We were in the train, but we could see, if not everybody,
    whoever could look throughout the--
    it wasn't a train.
    These were cattle cars which had some--
    if you were tall, I think you could see over
    the top of the door.
    I remember that I could see a lot of it because I was tall,
    or they lifted me up, or whatever.
    But your mother-- had your mother
    been on the train with you to Auschwitz?
    You mean-- on the train, I'm not sure that was in the same car.
    But she was on the same train.
    So you walked to the factory with your mother, though, right?
    Yeah.
    We were walking together.
    And then you would separate at the factory?
    Yeah because at the factory, women were taken.
    So I think she was in a different car.
    So did you see your mother again?
    Only in the sense that I saw the women lined up somewhere
    and marched off.
    I'm not sure I saw her because you remember,
    we were in the striped uniforms.
    You really couldn't tell one person from another, at all.
    And I'm nearsighted, so I really don't see well.
    So I might have seen women.
    I'm not sure that I saw her.
    I think on the train, the women were not together.
    Pretty sure of that.
    And then you had the selection--
    Of the men, right.
    And you and your father were put back on the train?
    Right, and waited.
    Yes, took forever.
    And while we were there, in fact,
    we saw a train coming from Hungary.
    This was August '44, with a large--
    where they went after the Hungarian Jews.
    And they would come in railroad cars with windows,
    and suitcases, and overcoats.
    It looked so funny to us.
    We had not seen this in months.
    We'd never seen anything like this.
    And they had no idea what they were going to.
    They went through the same--
    so you could just where we were waiting there,
    they were being selected out.
    But none of them were sent for work.
    They would just maybe select those
    they would liquidate immediately and those that would
    send to work in Auschwitz.
    But you don't feel they knew what was happening?
    No.
    you could tell from--
    I mean, I don't know Hungarian, but maybe yelling.
    Whatever they were doing, you just
    could tell they had no idea where
    they are because they're worried about their clothing,
    or their suitcases.
    It just-- they were not-- it wasn't real.
    It was like a joke to us, you know what I mean?
    Here we are, I mean, aware of what's
    happening, watching this scene.
    Also, I did hear this symphony, which
    is on-- there was a Jewish symphony.
    And they would play for the Nazis
    while they were doing this.
    You heard of that?
    And I could hear the music.
    I don't think they were near us, but maybe I
    think the platform was very long,
    and maybe there were other things you could hear.
    They were playing Beethoven, or other German music,
    or light music.
    It was just the strangest thing, totally unreal.
    And we saw the smoke in the distance,
    and you [? hear ?] the train.
    And you hear the Hungarian trains coming.
    And I think we were 24 hours there until they decided what
    to do, or decided how many--
    I don't know what they were deciding, but we were near the--
    I think we were part of the time of the train.
    And I guess after they finished the selection,
    back in inside the cars, but we still didn't move.
    So we were there at least 24 hours.
    Was the symphony playing when you went through the selection?
    No, I think I just heard it.
    It wasn't for us.
    I just heard it at a distance.
    when the sound wasn't great.
    Where did you go from Auschwitz?
    Well, from Auschwitz, that was also strange for me.
    We got this free trip, 1,200, maybe 2,000.
    We went all the way to Western Germany, near Stuttgart.
    And I think we went--
    I don't remember.
    It was either Vienna or Prague.
    Big one of them capitals.
    I forgot which one.
    But what was so interesting, since I know German,
    we were stood--
    let's say it was Vienna.
    When we stood on the railroad, for some reason,
    the train stopped at the station, the main station.
    And people would ask the guards, who
    are these people inside these cars?
    And they would say, these are saboteurs from Russian fighting
    zone.
    And I thought that was so funny.
    Do you know what I mean?
    We are the saboteurs that they have to-- you
    know, people just passengers standing on a platform.
    So when they always said that they try to hide everything,
    I don't know why they would have this train stopped right
    on the main railroad station.
    So we got this ride all the way to Germany.
    We got to see, as I--
    must be 2,000 kilometers.
    So I remember for years after the war saying,
    we got this free train ride, 1,000 miles,
    seeing all of Germany.
    How long did that take?
    Days.
    You know how they move.
    These things don't move fast.
    What about food and water?
    Well, they had some minimum rations
    that they decided to give us.
    It wasn't an extermination.
    Again, we went sent from one camp that
    was an extermination to another one that was supposedly a work
    camp.
    So they were not out to kill us at this point.
    So I don't remember how much food,
    but we were getting used to not eating.
    Gradually, there was less and less.
    We were very skinny.
    I remember I was tall and very skinny, bare bone.
    But I don't remember food being the main--
    main thing was the whole upset over my mother
    being there and staying there.
    And there were other things on our mind
    than food, so I just don't remember them.
    How was your father reacting during this time?
    I don't remember.
    I think I was preoccupied with myself.
    Where did you go to then?
    We went to something called Vaihingen, which is a city
    30 kilometers from Stuttgart.
    And they were trying to build an underground airplane factory
    as they were moving things underground ground
    because of all the bombing.
    So we were supposed to help build this factory.
    But none of us having any skills in underground work, or I
    mean, in work under the--
    I remember at that point, I was sent on a work detail to--
    the Americans would bomb the railroads every day,
    and then they would every day, next day, they
    would rebuild them.
    So I remember that I was sent to fix the railroad ties
    or whatever you call them.
    And that was really backbreaking work.
    I was totally unsuited for it.
    12 hours in the hot-- that was still summer '44,
    and it was really terrible.
    That point, they would beat you when you didn't work, or move,
    stopped, or whatever.
    These were not the German guards, though, yet?
    These were still the--
    I think they were still the same guards that were with us, yeah,
    under German supervision.
    But there were Germans there.
    I just think that they gave the orders, but they didn't do them.
    So my father was able to get me out of that,
    and I became an orderly in, what do you call it, in the hospital.
    In the camp hospital.
    At this point, we had typhoid of the worst
    type with thousands of lice.
    In fact, I never forget this.
    In this-- it wasn't a hospital, but I
    mean, whatever it was-- a barracks
    at the site for the sick.
    Were these the prisoners who were sick?
    Yeah, yeah.
    I remember that this blanket had so many lice,
    they would walk back and forth.
    And they would look like the whole blanket
    is walking back and forth.
    And I just couldn't get over that sight.
    And here is a deathly ill person covered
    by this blanket, which really--
    and was terribly contagious.
    Well, I got typhoid eventually, too.
    We all got it.
    But that was an epidemic.
    And we had-- of all things, we had an Arab doctor working there
    whose method of--
    meanwhile, it's getting winter.
    His method of cleaning was to put the patients out
    in the snow, and having us scrub them with floor brushes.
    Can you imagine, naked in the snow?
    He was really anti-Jewish or whatever you want to call it.
    I can't call him antisemitic.
    I suppose he was Semitic too.
    But I remember that for some reason,
    I don't know where they got him.
    It was an Arab doctor then.
    Isn't it strange?
    Was he a prisoner?
    Yes, but he was the doctor.
    And that was the order.
    At that point, I had more food than the average
    because I would dish--
    it was my job to dish out the food.
    And it was out of a big pot.
    So obviously, you're the one dishing out the food.
    You managed to get some for yourself.
    So that was-- even though it wasn't a good job
    because the disease, was a good job that it wasn't like this
    railroad job, which would have--
    guess my father, I don't know what he did.
    He probably bribed the guard.
    I would have died on that in a few days.
    Just couldn't take it.
    I mean, I was not used to physical labor.
    This is 12 hours a day of physical labor.
    Very hard labor.
    Because you see someone building a railroad,
    and you got to be in shape for that.
    You're not building.
    You know you had to move these things a certain distance,
    and whatever you do with fixing a railroad.
    So that was the job I had rest of the time.
    Was an orderly in this--
    hospital is the wrong term.
    The sick area, sick bay, whatever you want to call it.
    No medicine.
    None whatsoever.
    I remember for diarrhea, they would
    feed you some black powder or something
    that they made out of coal.
    You're not a doctor [INAUDIBLE].
    I know some surrogate, but they absolutely
    did not provide any medicine, either deliberately
    or they didn't have it.
    Probably deliberately.
    Was there only one doctor?
    That Arab doctor?
    The only one I remember is that it was official doctor.
    Maybe there were Jewish doctors--
    performing doctors, but they were not in charge.
    The Arab doctor was in charge?
    Right.
    Where did you live?
    Was there a concentration camp there, too?
    Oh, yeah.
    That's a regular with the usual three stories of bunks,
    and two people in a bunk.
    I mean, they're very, very crowded.
    This was an awful camp because even though it was not
    extermination camp, it was in the middle of nowhere.
    It was built in--
    because they were trying to hide this factory.
    It like in a field--
    it wasn't a desert, but it felt like a desert.
    There were no trees there.
    Just flat land, and these barracks, and then the job
    was nearby.
    And the only thing is there was a lot of bombing--
    Allied bombing.
    So whenever there the planes went overhead,
    the Nazis would hide.
    So we loved that.
    We could look at the planes that came by the thousands overhead.
    And then I always saw the bombing
    of Stuttgart, which was one of these massive bombings.
    These were the whole city.
    But Stuttgart was only 20, 30 kilometers from where we were.
    So that's the time we didn't have to work.
    Whenever there was a siren, we didn't have to hide.
    They didn't care what we did.
    They went in shelters, the guards, and they would just say,
    don't move or we shoot you.
    And we just stayed same place.
    So I thought it was funny.
    While they were afraid, we would enjoy--
    some of us we hoped they would drop a bomb there
    to destroy the whole thing.
    That's like the Auschwitz story.
    But they never did.
    I never saw any bombing directly.
    Only near me.
    I saw it 20--
    the distance burning, but no bombs
    falling that I could see myself.
    When you had typhus, how long were you sick?
    It's typhoid.
    Typhoid.
    Well, this is a mess.
    So at the end, I just--
    at the end, everybody in this camp, I think, got the--
    because there's such-- with no sanitation, all these lice.
    What happened, I got it, like how old was I?
    That was in Spring of '45.
    And it's just before the--
    So now, we were a few miles from the French border,
    and the French, or the Americans were coming.
    So that was a big decision.
    They said they're going to evacuate the camp,
    and they said the sick can stay there.
    And there were like 800 people who were sick.
    And it was a big decision whether you should walk or stay.
    They thought, well, on one end, they might kill the sick.
    On the other hand, maybe the Allies
    will come before they do it.
    OK, well, I said, we had this big decision to make.
    At this point, I was getting sick.
    And my father was sick, and I think
    I had the equivalent 105 fever.
    But he somehow decided that he didn't want to be with the sick.
    He meant with those that couldn't move.
    So we walked.
    So, again, we had to walk, walk away from the western border.
    I don't remember how far we walked,
    but it was an awful ordeal.
    I mean, normally, I'm sick, now, I just go to bed and can't move.
    We walked when I was sick.
    I think I was just getting started.
    I wasn't yet fully incapacitated,
    but I remember I had high fever.
    And I think we walked like 50 kilometers,
    not as long as the first time.
    And they finally found the train.
    And they took us to Dachau.
    That's when I got the whole tour,
    imagine Auschwitz, some obscure camps.
    And we ended up in Dachau, not that we cared where we're going.
    And there we were totally sick.
    So they took us.
    There, they had a real hospital.
    Did you go by train to Dachau?
    Yeah.
    First, we walked, then we went by train.
    How long of a trip was that?
    I told you.
    I was sick.
    I totally forgot.
    OK.
    But I know I was sick enough that I couldn't care less.
    And my father and I both ended up in the hospital in Dachau.
    And Dachau is one of these camps,
    like Theresienstadt, which was a model camp.
    They had Red Cross visits.
    And they had Red Cross packages where we--
    I stayed with other people there who were not Jewish.
    And they would get packages and open them.
    They never gave me anything, but just the atmosphere
    was so different, white linen.
    And it was not like the-- hospital in [? Weinheim ?]
    was another hospital.
    It was just a dump.
    This was a real hospital.
    Except you knew, again, that the sick usually killed.
    But we were totally sick, so we couldn't care less what--
    we couldn't move.
    So it didn't make any difference.
    And so what happened there is that, in Dachau,
    all the Jews were told to leave on a forced march out of Dachau.
    But since we couldn't move, they left us there.
    So when the liberation came, we were one
    of the very few Jews in Dachau.
    There would be 30,000 people, but there was another camp.
    The Jews were only there by accident, like the transits.
    So the Radom Jews were all taken on the march.
    And many of them died on that.
    I think they're first taken on the train to Austria,
    and then they were asked to march.
    And this was spring '45, still very cold.
    And they were sick, too.
    And they many of them died at that point.
    So let's go back.
    When did you get to Dachau?
    In, like, four weeks before the war ended--
    and I said that just before the war ended
    that Jews had to leave Radom.
    Because they thought that the last resistance was in Austria
    or was supposed to be the last stand or whatever.
    They always had time to figure out what to do with us.
    But we couldn't move, so they just left us.
    They intended to kill us anyhow.
    They said, we're going to die.
    And they didn't care.
    So when Dachau was liberated, I was in coma in the hospital.
    I couldn't move.
    That was the strangest.
    Because a week after liberation, I think--
    I survived, the disease and by miracles.
    It wasn't the drugs.
    And I couldn't walk.
    I was crawling on all fours.
    I was so weak.
    So I really did not see the Americans,
    even though we supposedly were liberated,
    because of the epidemic.
    I don't know was epidemic in Dachau, too,
    or whether he brought it.
    they did not enter the camp.
    The Americans?
    Right.
    There were no Americans inside.
    I knew we were liberated, but I didn't really see anything.
    And I don't blame them.
    I mean, that's a very contagious disease.
    And I think it's terribly deadly.
    In fact, the worst--
    this was the terrible thing.
    After I was-- what do you call it?
    I was sent from the hospital to a regular barrack
    because the doctor decided that we were not--
    we were recuperating.
    Which doctor was this there?
    These are now regular Dachau--
    whoever they were.
    These were regular doctors, camp doctors.
    The ones who had been there when you arrived at the camp
    originally?
    Yes, yes.
    And were there medicines at Dachau when you got there?
    Not for typhoid, I don't know what you do for this anyhow.
    But I think they gave us something.
    It was a lot better.
    I mean, just to see, I tell you, a hospital white was just
    so overwhelming.
    Even though we're two--
    the hospital still was overcrowded with two people
    with different diseases lying in the same bed.
    Can you imagine it?
    But it was a lot better.
    So anyway, at some point, they decided that they
    couldn't do anything for us.
    So they sent us to a regular barrack.
    And there were 350 people in the barrack.
    And seven people--
    I just remember that because suddenly told--
    seven people died a night on the average.
    Because what happened is when they liberated the camp,
    but they didn't--
    we were not free to leave.
    What the people did, they got a hold of the German supplies,
    the food supplies.
    A lot of this was, I remember, pork or sausage in cans.
    And they opened these cans, and they ate it.
    And this was deadly, apparently, when you're undernourished.
    And again, my father was there.
    He told me not to eat it.
    The only thing we ate is zweiback.
    You know what it is?
    It's like cod-- what they call this--
    carcass.
    And they ate this stuff.
    And people would vomit.
    And you could just see them.
    That's the only time I saw people dying in front of me.
    Can you imagine it?
    It's after the war and dying.
    I partly blame Americans for it.
    I'm saying they--
    I don't blame them for not going in,
    but someone should have done more than they did.
    I think they came, they looked.
    And they just left.
    They just-- I don't know what they did.
    But there was a quarantine.
    That was official.
    But there was really nothing done.
    They had no business letting people eat this stuff.
    I don't mean that they gave it to us.
    The inmates just went and grabbed the supplies.
    But they should have had something going.
    I mean, I [INAUDIBLE] space uniform and telling people,
    if you're in the condition you're in, you shouldn't do it.
    They were totally unprepared.
    So the worst dying in conditions of all times I saw
    was in Dachau after the war.
    We were liberated in May.
    I could not leave the camp till August,
    till they decided that the quarantine was over
    and that we were individually-- you'd
    have to pass individual inspector that you were
    no menace to the surrounding.
    You understand?
    We survived, but we were prisoners a different time.
    So that was really terrible to see that.
    And we didn't know enough to tell the others not to do it.
    It's just my father knew enough.
    First, you couldn't stop all of these people.
    They were so hungry and greedy.
    They just grabbed everything in sight.
    In fact, I remember not only the pork,
    but I remember some of the stuff they ate.
    They were white--
    I don't know what those are-- maggots running back and forth.
    He just knew that that wasn't a good food,
    but they ate it anyhow.
    Can you imagine eating fat sausage,
    and you're starving a week before, day before?
    So the worst that I personally saw, the most deaths,
    were this point.
    And also, I saw, of course--
    you must have heard of these things.
    Dachau had a camp.
    There were railroad cars with bodies.
    I don't know.
    These people died on the way.
    They were just standing there with the bodies
    hanging out of the cars all over the place.
    And that's the thing that got us because the Germans
    in the little town in Dachau said
    that they didn't know anything.
    These cars went this way through the town with--
    some of these were open cars, coal cars.
    And they were full of dead bodies
    just sitting there because there was
    nobody to unload them or figure out what to do with them.
    Because eventually, they buried them, or they did something.
    But that was the site when you walked around.
    I tell you, I crawled on all four.
    I really felt lousy.
    So I wanted to meet Americans or something or--
    I didn't see anything, back in the same conditions.
    There was no medical help at all coming into the camp?
    Well, remember, I was not liberated.
    What you call it?
    I was discharged from the hospital as not being sick.
    So this was a different kind of sickness.
    I don't know what they did in the hospital.
    These were the people living in regular barracks who
    just happened to eat food that they shouldn't be eating.
    I don't know.
    They died just of that food or whether they were sick anyhow
    or not.
    Remember, people normally didn't want to go to the hospital
    because you knew you might be--
    so I think only those that couldn't move and couldn't--
    so you didn't go to the hospital just to go.
    You had to be totally immobile.
    Did you ever see any American doctors in Dachau?
    No, I did not see.
    And when you got your pass to leave Dachau--
    Yeah.
    That, I told you, I resented the most.
    They were free, the Germans in Dachau.
    And we had to have a pass to leave the camp.
    Who gave you the pass?
    Yeah, these were American administration.
    I think they used camp inmates to do most of the work.
    Again, they were not Americans there.
    But they were no-- you didn't see any American Medical
    supplies or physicians [CROSS TALK]
    Well, I really wasn't a student of that.
    I know that these seven people a night
    wouldn't have died in the barrack
    if there was somebody there to tell them.
    There just was nobody there.
    And how many days did this go on for?
    For about a month, you see, it was total quarantined
    because the camp had typhoid epidemic.
    I don't quite understand because I know that typhoid was
    where we were near Stuttgart.
    I don't know that Dachau how happened to have the same thing,
    or we brought it there.
    But I know that the Americans decided
    that that camp will be closed.
    I mean that you couldn't get in and out.
    They couldn't go in either because they
    didn't want to have anybody catch what was there.
    After you left the camp, where did you go?
    Well, once we got out and we gained some of the strength,
    my father got in a black--
    he knew English, too, of course, besides German and Polish.
    So somehow, I remember that one of the chief administrators
    of the camp was a Jewish officer,
    an American Jewish officer.
    And there were a lot of supplies of German goods that were there.
    So somehow they got together, and they were selling them
    on the black market.
    I think the guy would open the warehouses,
    and my father would figure out what to do with it.
    That was a tremendous thing going,
    selling the German goods to whoever they was selling it to.
    And after a while, my father said--
    I can remember this being protected.
    He felt that he didn't like me to be exposed
    to things that are not good.
    After a while, I think he felt bad about it
    and just stopped it.
    I mean just cut it off, like maybe he
    made enough money to get by for a while
    and just cut it off while many others continued, maybe
    not as successful as he, but continued the black market.
    In fact, that was a big embarrassment.
    Dachau is near Munich.
    So we moved to a suburb of Munich
    after we got out of Dachau.
    And the main occupation of the Jews and at least where I was,
    it's called Dachau Munich Pasing, which is a suburb of--
    it was black market.
    And it was really unpleasant to--
    see, near the railroad station, they would stand lined up
    peddling stockings or whatever people would pedal, cigarettes
    and other things that were not available.
    And he didn't do that.
    My father found some kind of activity that wasn't--
    I don't think it was quite kosher,
    but it was not that kind of thing of standing on the street.
    And I found that terribly embarrassing
    that I had to see this.
    Because in a way, that was the view that many had of Jews,
    that they're middle man and black market.
    And that's just what they did.
    It was the easiest thing to do.
    There was nothing else really to do.
    Many were in camp in displaced persons camps.
    But after this experience in Dachau, the first decision
    we made-- no more camps.
    We don't care how we manage.
    We don't want any camps.
    And at this point, we resented the American administration.
    You could go to a displaced person camp,
    and the Jewish organization would support you, give you
    food and some kind of activity.
    But we had enough of camps of any type.
    So I never seen--
    I don't think I even went to visit one even though I know
    they existed all around Munich.
    So we just moved to a regular--
    we sublet a room in somebody's house in a suburb
    from a German family.
    And how long did you stay in Munich?
    Six years, that's another interesting thing.
    In '45, when we left the camp, the Americans
    would ask you, where do you want to go when you're out?
    And we said America.
    It took us six years to get the--
    because they still used the quota system.
    And we were in the Polish quota, which is very small.
    This is a leftover, the 1924 quota system,
    which now doesn't--
    and so they took forever.
    You know what I mean?
    If you were in the Polish quota and there
    were all these Polish Jews wanting to go,
    there's so many took--
    I'm not saying she took all of the time
    because they weren't pushing it all in there.
    But it took me till April '51, which
    is exactly six years until I arrived in the United States.
    How did you feel about living amongst the Germans
    during that time?
    It didn't bother me at all.
    That was very strange.
    You remember I said that I had no unpleasant experience
    with Germans?
    I only resented the Poles.
    These landladies, we had two landladies.
    I had a room on the upper floor and my father the lower floor.
    Both of their husbands were Nazis,
    one who joined the Nazi Party in 1923, which is early.
    And the other one was a high official something, Gauleiter.
    But the women were very nice.
    I don't know that they were--
    their husbands were old and frayed or whatever.
    They had nothing to do with us.
    The wives, I had things with two different landladies.
    He had one, and I had another one.
    And they were exceedingly good to us, especially my--
    really his landlady, my father's, was
    especially good to me.
    And she took care of me like a mother.
    And then her husband died while I lived there, some cancer
    or something.
    And then I was a full-time occupation.
    So we had no problems.
    Well, I first had tutors.
    Remember, I didn't go to school during the war.
    So my father got German tutors.
    And I would get up 5:00 in the morning and study till 9:00
    in the evening.
    I mean trying to catch up.
    And that I didn't like too much.
    They were autocratic.
    These were German officers who would make money tutoring
    students.
    You know what I mean?
    I would say they were somewhat antisemitic indirectly
    or directly, the way they treated me.
    They took the money.
    But the last year, in order to get a formal piece of paper,
    I went to a German high school.
    And so I was the only Jewish person among 800 German boys,
    and nobody bothered me.
    Just imagine the difference from elementary school in Gdynia
    where I was bothered every day.
    I don't know whether they weren't antisemitic,
    or they turned it off.
    Nobody ever said a word to me.
    It wasn't like they said, well, we really hate you,
    but we can't do anything because the Americans are--
    I think they just turned it off like it never existed.
    I just couldn't believe it.
    Some were friendly, and others didn't have anything
    to do with me.
    But what was embarrassing is that I couldn't
    get into the school without my landlady writing
    a letter to the principal saying that I'm an honorable person.
    Because of this black market in Pasing,
    people were afraid of the Jews.
    They might contaminate it.
    So I had to get her certificate.
    Can you imagine that, to say that I was not
    going to do anything?
    So the German, I had no problems.
    Now, after finishing high school,
    I went to the University of Munich.
    And that's the first time when I experienced some antisemitism.
    My father decided to go to medical school, which
    wasn't for me.
    But usually, you chose a profession
    that you could use anywhere.
    And if you studied law, that German law
    is different from American law.
    So anyhow, I felt the German medical students weren't like I
    used to skiing and sailing, and they couldn't get over that.
    They kept telling me in different ways,
    like why aren't you in the black market?
    That's for you not--
    I mean, they were much more--
    so either that's because these were former officers who
    were going back to school.
    That's the first time when I really felt uncomfortable.
    With Germans?
    Right, in university, not high school.
    Do you still think about the war much or experiences?
    Well, let me tell you one more story.
    After being in Munich for a while,
    we went back to Poland in '46, in the summer of '46.
    And the worst experiences we had besides Auschwitz was--
    well, first, I didn't tell you the worst experience ever
    was when I learned that my mother died.
    See, remember, till the war ended,
    I knew she stayed in Auschwitz.
    But I didn't know what happened.
    Well, at some point, my father met somebody from Auschwitz
    and learned that she died of starvation.
    And that really was the worst thing
    ever because we were very close.
    And I just couldn't get over that.
    So that ruined all the liberation, all the rest.
    I don't know when that took place,
    but let's say in fall of '45 when we definitely
    knew that that was it.
    And not of being just of--
    she was not-- she just died of what she was doing.
    But somebody was there with her from Radom
    that we know, told us directly.
    So at this point, I didn't care too much anymore.
    So anyhow, '46, we went back to Radom,
    since he didn't like the business activities in Munich,
    to see whether he could reestablish himself.
    For some reason, it was the worst period
    of antisemitism in Poland.
    And we were in the worst part of it.
    Have you heard of Kielce?
    No.
    Well, that's a famous story.
    Well, I was there.
    First, I can described to you.
    We were back living in the same tannery
    that we lived during the war because the people
    that who owned it stayed in Poland.
    They were living outside among the Poles.
    So they went back, and they took over the tannery.
    And they were running it for the communists.
    So when you got there, they would have a big door,
    like a garage door.
    And they would have a 5 inch thick bar of iron
    they would take and put in that night
    because they said people might come and try to kill you.
    And they had a box of hand grenades
    sitting under the window.
    Can you imagine?
    This is summer of '46.
    They said that's how dangerous is to live in Radom.
    Because there was underground right-wing movements
    that were fighting the Russians.
    And of course, they considered the Jews to be communists.
    So they were fighting them, too.
    I still thought it was a joke seeing the hand grenades.
    But then, while I was there, a town nearby
    called Kielce had a pogrom.
    This was fall of '46, the holiday like now, Rosh Hashanah.
    The typical Polish belief is that the Jews used
    Polish blood for baking matzo.
    I mean the people that were lower class.
    So in this town, a Polish child disappeared.
    And in the paper was that the child disappeared.
    And the rumor spread that the Jews took her to whatever
    they do with the blood.
    And they had a big pogrom.
    They killed about 30 Jews.
    And those that didn't kill came to where we were,
    the stragglers and survivors, and told us all the horror
    stories.
    And this not to be enough, you remember I come from Danzig,
    which is a city on the sea.
    And Gdynia is also on the sea.
    I love the water.
    And there was no water that I had been to in years.
    During the war, the Nazis built a swimming pool in Radom
    for the officers.
    Because the river in Radom is only like a foot high.
    So I asked the guy at the [? place ?] where we stayed.
    The son of the friends of my father was my age.
    And I asked the guy, is the swimming pool there?
    And he says, yes.
    And I said, well, why don't we go to it?
    He says, well, I never go there.
    I'm not sure it's safe.
    But it was a very hot day in the summer.
    And I said, well, let's go.
    And he said, OK.
    So we go to the swimming pool.
    And after 10 minutes in the pool, we hear somebody saying,
    Jews are here.
    And the whole people around the pool surround us in the water
    and start being very menacing.
    And the guards, I mean, the whatever you call them,
    lifeguards, whoever was there, took us out of the pool,
    locked us in the locker, called the police.
    And then they said, look, you're rescued this time.
    But if you come again, you'll be dead.
    I mean, that's the--
    can you imagine that?
    That's '46 in Poland after so-called liberation.
    So after this and a few other experiences
    my father had on his own, he had enough.
    And we went back to Munich.
    So we stayed there about three months.
    He's trying to re-establish, but he didn't.
    He could have done business, but it was deadly.
    So we left Poland.
    So really, the Poles bothered me more than the Germans.
    See what I mean?
    Even the Germans supposedly gave all the orders,
    my own personal experiences were with the Poles.
    And I said the guards were Ukrainians
    and other non-Germans.
    Is there anything that we've left out
    that you want to share with us?
    The only thing I think is of interest,
    my mother was a dentist.
    But because of the class that we were in,
    the women didn't work if the husband--
    she was married.
    That bothered me no end, too.
    So she sent home.
    She was trained dentist.
    Why did it bother you?
    Well, it bothers me.
    I mean, I think if she had gotten out more among people,
    maybe we would have left.
    She just wasn't used to do anything on her own.
    That didn't help her making decisions
    during the war about where we could run away.
    And maybe we would have been dead if we did it.
    But of course, she died anyhow.
    But I think she just was home, never
    practiced as far as I know.
    She had a degree.
    Thank you for sharing your experiences.
    You're welcome.
    This has been Neal Goldenberg interviewing Arno
    Winard about his experience as a survivor of a Nazi Holocaust.