Oral history interview with Harry Weinberg
Transcript
- Lean back.
- OK.
- I just want my pad--
- Right.
- Have we started?
- Yeah.
- OK.
- This is Harry Weinberg.
- Today is November 5.
- Mr. Weinberg, if you'd be good enough
- to begin by talking about your boyhood and your family
- and how things were in your country of origin.
- And from there, we'll progress through time.
- OK?
- My name is Harry Weinberg.
- I was born in 1916 in Bezovce, Slovakia.
- When I was about four, the family
- moved to Uzhhorod, the capital of Ruthenia,
- or Podkarpatska Rus.
- When I was about 4 and 1/2, they took me
- to cheder, or Hebrew school.
- At 6, I started public school.
- It was a Jewishly kept school.
- And language was Ruthene, Ukrainian or Ruthenian.
- I went to school for four hours in the morning,
- went home for lunch.
- In the afternoon, I had to go back to Hebrew school
- till about 6:00.
- When I was enlisted to the high school,
- I had to get up every morning at 4 o'clock,
- go to the temple, pray and study,
- come home, run to school.
- After lunch time, back to Hebrew school, came home around 5:00.
- And nearly every day, I had to chop
- the wood for the next winter.
- Beside that we always had three or four hour homework
- from our regular school.
- As you can see, my boyhood was spent all studying,
- all working.
- If I had extra time, I had to help out in the store.
- Can you tell me a little bit about your family?
- How many children there were?
- What your father--
- Yes, I was 1 of 10 children, 7 girls and 3 boys.
- It was a very loving and close knit family.
- And I suppose that's what took me to a happy boyhood
- because I never had a toy in my life.
- It was always work, always study.
- But when the Shabbat came, the Saturday came,
- and everybody sat in a beautiful room, the nice white tablecloth
- and the snow coming down through the curtains, beautifully,
- slowly, and so peaceful and quiet.
- And everybody had a book and reading or studying.
- When I was about 11 years old, we
- were happy in spite the population was
- very antisemitic and very rude.
- I never could go by on the street without yelled "Jew,
- you kill God."
- "Jew, go to Palestine."
- One morning I was going to school,
- a Gentile boy about my age came along and stabbed me
- with a rusty knife.
- I was about a half a year in the hospital
- to have blood transfusion.
- This was about 1928 then?
- About, yes.
- And I went around with my father all the schools
- to find the boy.
- He was in the neighborhood.
- But it seemed they moved away or something
- they heard about it that I was looking for them.
- When I finished the high school, work was very hard.
- I was between the youngest.
- The girls finished school at 14, 15.
- They all had to go out work, millinery or dressmaking.
- Everybody brought home the money.
- Here's money.
- Here's the money.
- My mother worked very hard.
- She got up every morning at 4:00.
- She had to bake and cook, darn everything, scrub the floors.
- And beside that, she had to go to the business
- because father was out shopping, getting the merchandise.
- Were Jews able to freely hold businesses in those days?
- Yes, in those days.
- It was a lot--
- it was very easy for the Jewish community,
- even with the hatred around us, because the Czech government
- was very liberal and protective.
- We had equal protection at the law.
- My mother's only joy was Saturday afternoon
- when the three oldest girls dressed up beautifully,
- going out to show themselves on the promenade.
- And she was going on her toes because they
- were gravel in the yard.
- They showed here.
- And as I was very young, I was always
- watching my mother what she is doing.
- And she went to the gate.
- And standing there, and the beautiful smile
- on her face, that was her only joy in life, the children.
- Otherwise, was only work.
- When I finished high school there was at 14.
- It was a complete education in Europe.
- Then you can go out in the world.
- You had an education, maybe as good as college here.
- But you decided to pursue it further?
- I intended to pursue some--
- always had ideas, doctor, lawyer.
- I couldn't decide, engineer, whatever, even a painter.
- I was very good in painting.
- My high school teacher came over to my parents
- they should send me to academy for painting.
- My father said, what?
- Do you want to starve?
- All the painters starve.
- So that was the end of that.
- But at 14, my father insisted I have to go to yeshiva.
- He took me to the local rabbi.
- And the rabbi said to me, well, now
- you'll have to put on a round hat, black hat.
- And you have to burn all your books.
- And then I'll accept you as a student.
- And I don't know where I got the nerve to say,
- well, rabbi, I came here to study a little to know
- what Jewish life is all about.
- I intend to pursue my studies further.
- So I won't burn my books.
- If you want me as I am, fine.
- If not, I'm going out and I'm going right away to school.
- So I suppose I didn't give him any choice.
- He said, all right, you can stay.
- After the first semester, there is always exam.
- And there was a part of the Talmud
- that had only three lines and all the other was commentary
- from the Rambam, Maimonides.
- And we studied for weeks.
- It was very hard to understand because all philosophical.
- So the exams, rabbi asked one, two, three.
- Nobody knows it.
- And he says, not for the 200 boys?
- And boys, boys are people 30 years old students.
- No one is here who can explain what it's all about?
- Put up my hand.
- And I come up here on the podium.
- And I recited the whole thing.
- He said, you see, I didn't want to take this little boy
- to the shul because he didn't have the right hat.
- You be ashamed of yourself.
- So I studied there for about a year.
- And then, my father had an idea that he
- is an adherent, a Hasid, of the Munkácser, Munkácser rabbi.
- I have to go to his rabbi to study.
- I had quite a shock at the first Friday evening
- sermon when I heard the rabbi calling fellow Jews, who maybe
- they were Zionists or Aggadist or Mizrachi,
- which I was secretly too, really cursing them, condemning them,
- and condemning Palestine.
- Now, after what happened years later,
- that I went through the Holocaust,
- and I see all my best friends and families die
- in the concentration camps, I really think most of the blame
- can be put on those rabbis who kept back the Jewish population
- from going to Palestine.
- When I was growing up, it was going up
- a new generation, highly educated, idealistic,
- most of them belong to Zionist--
- different kind of Zionist organization.
- And they were willing to go and build a new land.
- And these rabbis kept them back.
- And, of course, we, in Europe, father said, you can't go.
- That was it.
- You can't go.
- And I think the history of Israel
- would have been different because we
- would have had a majority.
- They would have let these people go in time where they could go.
- They could have been a majority.
- Maybe they could have taken in more Jews.
- And it was trouble.
- And there was a need to have a land where to go.
- I was in that yeshiva for half a year again.
- But I never went back to the sermons, Friday evenings.
- And I came back, and I insisted I
- want to have a modern yeshiva where
- it's more freedom to think and to do what you want.
- So first, my brother-in-law had a textile store in Michalovce.
- And he had a manufacturer in Galanta.
- And he persuaded me that that's a very good yeshiva.
- So I went there.
- I was there for one year.
- Then that wasn't modern enough.
- So I decided to go to Bratislava.
- That's Pressburg yeshiva.
- And that was a place where mostly rabbi's children
- were studying.
- The reason for it was that the congregations
- in the '30s already demanded that rabbi should also
- know something about worldly issues,
- not only about Judaism or about the Torah.
- Custom was in Europe that the son inherited the rabbinate
- from the father.
- So those children who knew there would be rabbis came there.
- And there was a possibility in evening schools
- to advance yourself and to finish colleges.
- So you were able to pursue secular studies there?
- Secular studies.
- But for three years, it was impossible
- because they gave you board and you
- had to go to all the lectures and to all the studies and all
- the exams.
- So you didn't have time for other studies.
- But after three years, you were exempt from all these thing.
- And that was, I suppose, done primarily
- so the boys, or the men, have time to go out and pursue
- their own studies.
- And they had enough to eat and where to live.
- I always wondered where that money comes from.
- There were hundreds of students and very good meals.
- And one of the holidays, I wasn't
- able to go home because I didn't have enough money.
- And I stayed in for the new year in Bratislava.
- In the temple, the most prominent Jews-- and there
- was such a beautiful community in that Pressburg.
- It's just unbelievable, every Saturday afternoon, all
- the temples were full, people studying.
- And you never could tell they are Jews--
- no beards and no kaftans.
- They were just beautiful Jews.
- On that holiday, they called to the Torah about 300 people.
- The custom is that you read a verse.
- And then somebody else comes.
- But they read one word.
- And somebody else came.
- And these people donated hundreds of thousands of koruna
- to the yeshiva.
- And then I realized that's what the money comes from.
- How long were you at the yeshiva?
- When did things--
- Yeshiva, I was still '38 till Chamberlain and Hitler decided
- that Czechoslovakia will be divided.
- What happened then?
- And that part of the country that my family lived
- became Hungary.
- And Bratislava was in Slovakia.
- So I had to come home.
- And as my parents were quite elderly,
- we, the younger children, took over the store.
- But we couldn't manage on our own
- because there were new laws that Jews can't own stores.
- So there was a acquaintance, the wife of the railroad--
- because we had to go to the railroad station
- constantly for merchandise because we
- had a wholesale business.
- And we got to know the railroad manager.
- And he suggested that his wife, of course, become a partner.
- We have to give her half of the profits.
- She became a partner.
- And the business was running on her name.
- So she became the front for the business?
- For the business.
- Were there many people who made that kind of an arrangement--
- Most--
- Many Jews who made that--
- Whoever wanted to stay in business had to do that.
- Otherwise, they just--
- Had to make an arrangement with a non-Jew--
- Right.
- --in order to stay in business.
- Right.
- So was there any risk involved in doing that?
- No, because they knew.
- And there was no risk because they
- knew that the only way that they will have merchandise and food
- to eat if the Jews stay in business.
- All they wanted-- or to give bribes to the officials
- or give the Gentile population the half share.
- So we took over the management of the store
- and was going pretty well, even better than
- before because the city was included
- in Hungary by all the villages.
- The surrounding neighborhood was cut off.
- That stayed Czechoslovakia.
- That meant that we had no choice but to go to Hungary to get
- the merchandise, the food.
- And because that woman was so prominent,
- she got the only permit.
- So we were the only ones who brought in-- like
- on a Saturday--
- on a Friday, we used to bring in 600 to 700 fattened geese.
- This for the Jewish population.
- They used that for the set of lard, or Crisco.
- Then in '39, end of '39, all the Jewish men, young Jewish men
- had an order to report in Mukachevo in the barracks
- that we are taken into the army.
- We arrived.
- We were equipped with Hungarian military clothing.
- And we started to drill.
- And it seems there was some confusion because a week later,
- there came an order that we are not soldiers.
- We are labor camp inmates and all the restrictions and--
- we worked all over Europe.
- We worked in Yugoslavia.
- We worked in Romania, in Hungary, in Podkarpatska Rus,
- mainly building roads in quarries
- to bring the stones for the roads.
- We built railroads.
- We had to carry those heavy tracks.
- And we got orders to build a railroad without any equipment,
- even not a measure.
- We had to fill up first the embankment
- where the rail was put down.
- We didn't even have to make the ground even,
- like a measurement like a water measurement.
- So I was the one who went around to the boys a little more
- a little less, grading down.
- We had to build in [NON-ENGLISH] a second line so the Germans
- can--
- was only one line running.
- And they had to go through.
- They wanted to store some carloads on the side.
- So we had to build tracks, new tracks.
- They didn't even give us the measurement, how much wide
- the tracks should be.
- So we took a piece of wood and just measured the one
- on the track, put it to the other one.
- We built that track for about two years.
- Then the management from Budapest
- came out with the engineers.
- And they went through with the locomotive
- because you had to have-- this was very complicated
- to go for one railroad to the other one, one
- track to the other one.
- I don't know what they call the--
- Switch.
- You had to switch.
- Switch.
- They went through it.
- And it was perfect.
- Because we were very young, mostly 16, 17, 20 years
- old ones, we are still strong enough.
- The food wasn't very fancy, but adequate.
- It was beans without butter, and potatoes without butter.
- But we filled up our stomachs.
- And we still go on working.
- Were you lives at all at risk?
- Did you feel very insecure?
- Or--
- We didn't feel insecure because we knew the families there,
- and we still could get letters once in a while.
- And the hope was always there that they will send us home.
- In fact, we had to be in the camp only two years.
- And then an order came that we have to go home.
- But we had a very vicious colonel, Hungarian colonel.
- We were all under the Hungarian command.
- The enlisted men were mostly--
- I think it was done on purpose--
- primitive people, couldn't read and write.
- We had to write their letters to their girlfriends, read
- when they come-- the letters came back.
- After the heavy work, all day long from 6:00 in the morning
- till 7:00 in the evening.
- We came home, instead to let us eat first,
- they would let us run for 3, 4 miles or push-ups 100 times.
- And I think they liked the idea that here is a man who is
- primitive and he can-- these all these educated people mostly
- started college already--
- he felt that they are something because he puts
- us down, because we are Jews.
- Was there any chance for any kind of Jewish observance?
- You had come from--
- Yes--
- --a yeshiva.
- There, if you wanted to, I suppose you could.
- People get up an hour earlier.
- If you had to be 6 o'clock out in the yard, you got up at 5:00
- and you put on the tefillin.
- The food was non-kosher, of course.
- But at the same time, in the beginning,
- they gave you a little bit of a square of pork fat, which
- those days I didn't know.
- But now I know that would have kept alive because that's
- the calories in it.
- And I just couldn't bring myself to it to eat it.
- I just gave it--
- I just no way, even today, I just can't eat it.
- I think I'm brainwashed because you are taught as a child this
- is it and that's it.
- So they were very brutal and hard work.
- But the knowledge that the family is still home and get
- letters-- and it came a time after two years
- that we got a weekend, different people
- got a weekend to go home.
- But the man I'm talking about, the last commander,
- we always-- let's say I was responsible for 50 boys.
- It was like an army.
- Like I would be a sergeant or something equivalent.
- I was getting orders what to do, and I
- had to execute the order with the boys.
- And the bookkeeper and the cook and all these
- were very good friend of mine.
- We were many years together.
- So the cook came over once and says
- that I am writing down in the books
- that you went to the baths and we paid 300 pengo.
- And we didn't take a bath for two years.
- He was stealing all the money.
- He put it on the books.
- He gave us pork meat.
- We didn't see ever any meat, not even horse meat.
- He is giving us beans, potatoes, every kind of thing.
- All he fed us for two years was lentils, morning lentils,
- noon lentils, no salt, no butter, full of gravels.
- I suppose he bought the cheapest there on the market.
- And when he told--
- he told us, if we finish the railroad,
- he will give us a big meal.
- He will kill a pig.
- And we'll have a celebration.
- We finished the railroad.
- Everything was perfect.
- And there is no meat.
- There is no meal.
- And then one of the boy came and says
- the colonel is on the station with plenty of suitcases,
- and I think he is taking home the pork to Budapest.
- I went out myself, and I see them standing there.
- So I let everybody sign a petition sending
- to the command what he's doing, that we are all getting dirty
- and he doesn't give us the bath and he's
- stealing all that stuff.
- So after about two weeks, there came an order
- that we have to go-- we are dismissed.
- We have to go home.
- But he had some very good connections in Budapest.
- And they reversed the order.
- And we have to go--
- he arranged it that we should go to Romania.
- There was a rumor that there is a very vicious Hungarian unit
- on the border.
- They are killing all the Jews.
- And he arranged for us to be sent to that unit.
- A commission came out from Budapest about that petition
- that we sent in.
- And the men came--
- the general came in front of us, all right,
- anybody knows something was going on, stand forward.
- Everybody is quiet.
- And I just stand out.
- And my commander comes and get back to the line.
- So the general said, come into my office.
- There I told him that we signed it and all that stuff.
- So in the evening after the general left, he made a circle.
- He was in the middle.
- And he was going on, raving and ramping all kind
- of stuff against the Jews.
- None of us will survive.
- He will show it to us, go and complain against him.
- About two weeks later, they loaded us up on a railroad.
- And they took us to Romania.
- We arrived at 4 o'clock in the morning.
- We had still something from home on our bags, some covers
- and shirts and pajamas.
- And he let us stand there till 4 o'clock
- in the afternoon in attention.
- It was a very hot summer.
- And some passed out.
- At 4 o'clock, he gave us the order to march.
- We had to go 40 miles into the mountains.
- We arrived.
- And he was in the back of the guard.
- And I was in the back.
- And he kept telling me, you bastard Jews, none of you
- will survive.
- I will show you.
- We arrived in the village where we had to go.
- And there was one little room.
- He had four layers of cut prepared for us.
- And it was very heavily rain.
- We're soaked.
- And some of the boys were in the chicken coop
- wherever just to hide from the rain.
- 6 o'clock in the morning, he comes out
- and starts to yell at the sergeant,
- how come we are still inside?
- We have to clean up the yard.
- He said, we don't have any utensils.
- We don't have anything to do with it.
- They should do it with their claws, with the fingers.
- We have to go down and get out of the grass,
- to pull out the grass.
- About 8 o'clock, a local commander arrived.
- And he said to the men, where are the accommodations?
- He come in, he says, what do you think about?
- How can 200 people live here?
- He was a general, the one.
- Go right away.
- Get out all these people here the neighborhood.
- Get them out and--
- these people have to work.
- And they have to have decent accommodation.
- So right away he knows what's wrong
- because he see something isn't right here.
- So he took us out to the work.
- And they didn't have the shovels and all stuff to start digging.
- And again, he said, we have to go down and do it
- with our hands to dig out the stuff.
- When he left, the local people--
- it was another unit there.
- The Russians were already advancing.
- And that vicious unit, the Hungarians were pulled back,
- and only local Hungarians were working there.
- And these people brought us bread and potatoes.
- Instead of a bad time, we had a really very good time there.
- So about a week later, a new commander
- arrived to replace this one, the one who
- fed us with the lentils.
- We had to line up on the yard.
- And the new man comes along.
- We had-- four of us had to stand in the front.
- He comes along and shakes hands and
- like with the Hungarian style--
- shakes hands with us.
- And the guy got right in the face of the other one
- and turned around and just left.
- Now, this guy was pretty good.
- He told me all the thing was going on in the neighborhood.
- They're taking away the Jews and what the Christians are doing.
- He was a Christian himself.
- But he was a very liberal man.
- Then we suddenly had an order we have
- to start marching back because the Russians were advancing.
- We marched about 1,000 miles, always stopping.
- If there was a little Russian stopped,
- we had to build the fortifications.
- We started advance.
- We went there.
- It took us about half a year till we arrived in Budapest.
- About what year was this?
- Pardon?
- About what--
- It was in 1944.
- 1944.
- Right.
- All these years we were working all over.
- And did you have any knowledge of what was going on--
- Nothing at all--
- --at that time in the world?
- Nothing at all.
- No.
- We have seen in Romania far away,
- we have seen a railroad blocked.
- And they had those windows for the cattle.
- And they had wirings on it.
- And some people yelling something Romanian.
- But we didn't know they are Jews.
- We didn't understand Romanian.
- And those were the cars that he took Romanian Jews
- to Auschwitz.
- But you had no idea--
- No idea--
- --that was a world war going on?
- That we knew, of course.
- That you knew.
- We didn't have-- we knew because the Russians are coming.
- So we didn't have any papers.
- But here and there a snatch when they
- were talking with themselves, the Hungarians, we had an idea.
- And then seeing that we are coming back,
- and we hear the bombardments.
- And we always was praying to get captured by the Russians.
- We think that will be a paradise because we knew communism
- from the books.
- Even we had a border in 1938, we became neighbors
- to the Russians, the first time in history.
- We still didn't know what's going on in Russia
- because completely sealed.
- In fact, we had the wholesale place.
- And my parents had to go out buying merchandise
- all over the neighborhood.
- And many of these very intelligent boys, very
- educated boys, unfortunately believed in communism
- because they said this is the only way out for Judaism
- because this is equality.
- Everybody is equal.
- When the Hungarian army came in, they
- were all captured and very terribly tortured.
- So my brother always had to go with the truck to the border,
- to Uzhok was the border town.
- He always took three or four boys as helpers.
- We had to write it down that he takes helpers with him.
- There, we had a man, and he was paid a sum.
- And he took these boys over to Russia secretly.
- My brother was coming home and telling the parents,
- they are safely over.
- Oh, everybody is happy because now they are safe.
- I tell you the story later what happened to those boys.
- What happened in Budapest?
- In Budapest, we were assigned to unload the barges
- from the Donau, in the port.
- The Russians were advancing.
- There was a sugar factory downstream from the Donau.
- And they were sending home the barges with the sugar.
- Also, the local officials who could manage,
- they sent home their furnishings and their belongings
- to Budapest.
- And our task was to take those things out of the port.
- When I was first assigned to it, I said to the port manager,
- well, I have to go for one ship to the other ship
- to supervise these people, and that's quite a distance.
- And I might be stopped what am I doing here.
- I'm lose.
- I'm walking around.
- So he gave me a permit that I can freely
- walk in Budapest, not in the port, but in Budapest.
- Now, a few days after we start to work,
- they have over about 3,000 to 4,000 Hungarian Jews,
- children, women, old men, with their hand ups
- and were taken with the soldiers across the bridge to Buda.
- There was a concentration camp where they gathered them
- to send them away to Auschwitz.
- As I was still in that Hungarian outfit, and when I was younger
- I didn't look Jewish at all, just took off my yellow band.
- And I walked in and looked around and saw they didn't see.
- I put my arm around a girl and I took him in the public toilets
- and say, stay here till they are gone, and went out again,
- another girl and another girl.
- And I saved about 6 to 7 that way.
- When they marched away, then I took them in.
- They walked away, back to the Swedish homes.
- Can you tell me how you first became aware
- of the exempted homes, the Swedish homes?
- Yes.
- So the American planes started to bomb the neighborhood.
- And they gave us permission to hide in those nearby homes
- on the port.
- As we were working in that sugar barges,
- everybody filled up their pockets.
- And we went out.
- There was a grocery, and we sell, very good money
- because it was completely shortage.
- There was no sugar in the city, which money came very handy
- later on in our lives.
- And we usually stayed in the doorway of these buildings.
- And somebody was curious, I go see who is there.
- And then I realized, talk to the people
- that they are the Swedish homes exempted from deportation
- by Wallenberg.
- So anytime after that, I told the boys,
- anybody see something that belongs to the kitchen,
- any food, just break open the boxes and take it out.
- So I was carrying it in those houses.
- Then I also ventured out into the city.
- I see a big line standing.
- It would have been 500 people standing
- in line in front of a bakery.
- So again, as a soldier, I had a privilege
- to go in without a line.
- So I went in.
- I said to the baker, listen--
- I talk Hungarian.
- It was easy-- we are starving.
- Our people here, they are starving in the houses.
- They have one hour to go out for shopping.
- By the time, they come out in the afternoon,
- everything is gone anyway.
- You hear the Russian cannons already.
- The Russians come in.
- I will protect you that you have these Jews.
- So he gave me a few sacks of bread every day.
- And I was carrying it into these places.
- In fact, in one place, I found a lady
- who had a candy store in my city, Mrs. Gross.
- And she begged me, stay here, surely nobody will touch you.
- I said, well, I have 200 boys with me, my family.
- There's no way that I would even think of it to stay home.
- Then once when the air raid was going on,
- a young man came along.
- And he took one of the boys aside.
- And he whispered something to him.
- The boy came back.
- I said, what is it all about?
- What does he want?
- He said, oh, the guy is crazy.
- He told us they will kill us all.
- We should run away.
- We didn't imagine it's possible what will happen later on.
- We just-- the mind can't comprehend it
- that something like this can happen.
- We didn't want to believe it.
- When I was still at home, a man came to the city.
- And my family took him in from Vienna.
- And he was telling horror stories.
- And we didn't believe him either.
- We always said, no, it couldn't be.
- This man is out of his mind.
- He told us that people are killing
- and concentration camps, all kinds of stuff.
- Now, I took in about four or five people
- because there were rumors going on
- that they are taking all the labor
- camp inmates to Auschwitz.
- But I felt secure because that manager of the port,
- I got very friendly with him because I always brought him--
- he gave me the attache case.
- And I always brought him some sugar from the barges.
- Were you identified as a Jew at that point?
- Of course.
- You were?
- Yeah, sure.
- You were wearing your yellow star?
- I had the yellow-- yeah, we had the yellow-- not the star.
- We had the yellow band because we were soldiers.
- Soldiers.
- And I told him that I heard rumors that they were taking us
- to Poland.
- And he said, well, I have very good connections.
- Anytime you have any inkling that they might take you,
- let me know or phone me, and I will arrange you
- that you will stay here.
- I will claim that you are very important to us.
- You are doing very good work.
- And OK--
- But in spite of that, there were some boys
- who said I don't want any more, I just want to escape.
- So three boys I took to the Swedish consulate.
- We heard about the Swedish consulate takes in people.
- I went in the consulate.
- There were quite people--
- they had cots on the floor in all the rooms.
- They stay there.
- And I had a friend of mine there also.
- And he also said, stay here, you are
- safe here in Swedish consulate.
- I said, no, I'm sorry, I'm pretty safe outside.
- And people, other people who are in danger
- can come and stay here.
- So in other words, in 1944 in Budapest,
- you had quite a few opportunities to escape?
- To escape, sure, yeah.
- I could have gone in any of the Swedish house
- and stayed there because--
- Or sought refuge in the Swedish consulate.
- Right, right.
- As I said, I went out, and I bought a sack of bread.
- I could sit down and have bread for myself
- for weeks, even if it gets hard or whatever, right.
- So one afternoon, the bookkeeper went out
- with a sergeant for supplies.
- And we all knew that he is very good friends with the sergeant.
- And the sergeant came back by himself,
- and the boy stayed outside.
- And we knew if the boy, who is secured,
- has a guard, his own sergeant, he escapes,
- something is terribly wrong.
- Went in the office, and I said to the colonel, I have an idea,
- I have a fear that the group will be taken to Poland.
- No way.
- Who gives you these ideas?
- No.
- No.
- No.
- I said, well, the manager of the port promised me
- something happens that I should let him know or call him.
- Can I use the phone?
- No, you don't have to do that.
- Tomorrow morning, I promise you personally I go there with you,
- and we will talk about it.
- At 3 o'clock in the morning, the camp
- was surrounded by Hungarian army.
- We had all to line up.
- They took us out to the railroad station.
- And we were counted.
- We are exactly enough, the number that he gave them.
- They jammed us 100 in a railroad car, in a cattle car.
- And he didn't say even the hell with you.
- Just turned that way and walked off.
- By that time, the Germans took over the command.
- They locked those-- they locked the cars.
- For 2 and 1/2 days, we were without food, without water,
- without able to go--
- to have our needs.
- Finally, we arrived in Austria on the border.
- Then they opened up the cars.
- And they gave us water.
- Next morning, they put us back in the car.
- And they took us back on the Hungarian side.
- It seemed the Russians stopped for a while.
- In a village called Bucsu, they lined us up
- in front of the train.
- And the German came along.
- And he says, who is the commander
- here of the 50 people?
- I was afraid to step out because I had enough of responsibility.
- And I don't know what will happen in Germany.
- So I kept quiet.
- So the boy said--
- then he asked, anybody knows German?
- And most of them didn't because they were all from Hungary.
- They didn't even know Yiddish.
- So the guy comes pointed me out, I was the commander.
- He comes over, he says, [GERMAN]??
- Yes.
- Say, all right, and you will be the commander,
- responsible for 50 people.
- After the first curfew in the village--
- they took us to a village.
- And they accommodated us in a barn.
- It was quite cold already.
- And the barn had the boards quite apart, just a board
- in an empty space and a board.
- And the wind was blowing through it.
- Well, at least we had something over our head.
- Overnight, the man who was responsible for four of us-- we
- had over us another Jewish boy who
- was responsible for four of us.
- He took the order, gave us to us.
- And we had to execute the order.
- He tried to escape.
- And they caught him, and they shot him.
- In the morning, the commander had to have somebody
- to give the orders.
- He lined us up, the four, and points to me,
- you will be the one who will take orders
- from me, because I knew German.
- He took us out to the working place.
- He gave us the plans, how the bunkers should face,
- how the trenches should run from one bunker to the other one,
- and come on doing it.
- It was very easy for me because I
- was working on that stuff for nearly four years.
- So I made the measurements with a cord.
- And that was it.
- The other companies who I didn't know, other 200 people,
- other groups, they had mostly Hungarian, all the Jews,
- who were manufacturers who had money and could pay for the job
- because this way you didn't have to work.
- You just had to supervise.
- And these people didn't have any idea how to start.
- So the German engineer, civilian who was overseeing the work,
- he had to do all the job and measure things.
- And he was mad like crazy because he has to do the job.
- Around noon time, my commander came over to me and says,
- I want to go and visit my friends at other group, which
- was about a mile away.
- Come with me.
- I start to walk.
- And he says, you know we are in trouble.
- The German army, we are retreating.
- And the Russians are advancing.
- And I assumed that he wants to put a trap for me
- to see what I am--
- how I feel, what I will say.
- So I said, well, don't worry about it, we will regroup,
- and I'm sure the Germans will win the war.
- He looks at me and says, listen to me,
- I am a plain carpenter from Sudetenland,
- which was Czechoslovakia.
- And I suppose that was already humane because he
- had seen humane people there.
- I was drafted to come here.
- I didn't volunteer.
- I know that the only way that you will survive,
- you and the other boys will survive, if we lose the war.
- So you can talk to me straight, the way you feel,
- what you think about the war.
- So I still wasn't too sure what's going on.
- The next day, we are again going to the other company.
- And the planes came along and dropped leaflets,
- they should give up, the Germans.
- So he was scared just as me to pick up a leaflet because that
- was a death sentence.
- He said, go in the woods and see if nobody sees you.
- Pick up a leaflet.
- And go in a bunker.
- Then, I'll come after you.
- He came after me.
- We read the leaflets in German to give up
- and what will happen to them, they
- kill all the Jews and all that stuff.
- About two weeks later, he had one day--
- we were working pretty hard, all these bunkers.
- It was then snow started to come down.
- But at least we were in the open,
- and we had still some meals.
- They were nourishment.
- But at the same time, we are young and working hard.
- We still thought we are starving.
- And my best friend who--
- you had to have to always, two men together,
- because everybody had a cover.
- And we arrived in the woods or in a field.
- It was raining or mud or snow.
- You had to lay down and sleep.
- We were marching.
- So the only way to keep warm that you put one blanket down
- and with one you covered.
- And the body kept warm.
- So you had a buddy system, and you looked after each other.
- So the friend with whom I was partner, he was the medic,
- was nearly finished the college.
- So he knew what's medicine.
- And there were some of the boys who were all lazy or weak.
- And they claimed, I where I'm sick today.
- They all came around, I'm sick.
- And I was sitting there.
- And I look at them because I was next to this medic.
- And I looked at the boys.
- And I saw, well, it's not too bad.
- They complain all kind-- you know you make up
- all kinds of diseases.
- So I said to them, you know what?
- I'll make the list who is sick.
- According to alphabet, every day 10 people will stay home.
- I told the cook to boil water.
- These people had to wash their underwear,
- had to delouse themselves, had to wash themselves.
- And I said to them, in the evening,
- if I come home, because it was cold
- and everybody was under the blanket, was a little warmer,
- if you are too lazy to get up, if I come home, are not clean,
- you won't get supper.
- It happened once only.
- And I thought to myself, well, I make an example
- that I wouldn't give him.
- So I didn't give him for an hour to eat.
- And then, I was so sorry for him.
- So he got a meal anyway.
- But this way, the boys were out in the fresh air.
- And they were clean.
- So I could keep the company, the unit, a little bit in order.
- Then about two or three weeks later,
- the commander, the German commander,
- had a leave for a weekend.
- And he said, you talk Hungarian?
- Yes.
- Will you come over with me to the peasant woman
- where I live and will you interpret
- what I want her to give me?
- Because in Bohemia, in Sudetenland, where he lived
- was completely nothing.
- He wanted some lard.
- He wanted grain.
- He wanted paprika, whatever--
- To bring home to his family.
- So I went over with him.
- And I look around, a very wealthy family, farm family.
- I don't know where I had the idea that I could do that,
- but I said to the peasant woman in Hungarian,
- you know we are starving here.
- And you hear again the same story.
- You hear the cannons.
- We have some money.
- We don't want for nothing.
- But will you be willing to sell us some potatoes, beans,
- so we can have a meal?
- Now I'm telling the story only to show that if the--
- mostly the Germans claim that they had orders.
- They couldn't help it.
- They had to do what they got the order from the Nazis.
- If you were willing to help and you had a human soul,
- there was plenty could do to help people.
- How was this commander able to help you in that instance?
- OK, now, first, I talk to the woman.
- And she says, all right, if you pay for it,
- you willing to pay for it, of course, we will sell it to you.
- The commander came back.
- And little by little, I started to lead him
- into you know we are starving.
- We don't have anything.
- And then I said, you know I talked to that peasant woman.
- And she is willing to sell us some food.
- She said, all right, I will think it over.
- Now, I didn't have an idea what he has on his mind
- because maybe I would have retracted
- the whole thing because a few days earlier a young man
- from Hungary--
- his name was Altman.
- He was in the yard.
- And the next neighbor-- because we were in the middle between
- two neighbors, between two farms--
- the next door neighbor handed him a piece of bread.
- And the engineer, a civilian engineer, had seen it.
- They took him out in the woods.
- They took with them-- the reason I know about it because they
- took four boys from my unit.
- They shot the man.
- And the four boys had to bury him.
- In the evening, it was quite dark, already dark.
- We had to put out all the lights.
- I said a few words as form of commemoration.
- And we made a pledge that every January the
- 2nd we will say Kaddish for that boy.
- It shows you that we have no idea what's coming.
- There will be so many Kaddishes that it's
- impossible to say Kaddish for everybody.
- We already were in their clutches, the Germans,
- and we still didn't know what's going on.
- The man, the commander, comes back
- in the afternoon-- in the evening.
- And he says, I talk to the guard at the gate.
- And he will let us out and back again.
- But we have to hurry up because in a little
- while he will be exchanged with somebody else.
- Went over to the peasant woman.
- And that German man took a sack of beans.
- And I had a sack of potatoes on my shoulders.
- And we had to walk half of the village.
- Lucky, there was no lights in the village.
- And we brought it in.
- And I divided it-- we had those aluminum dishes
- that we got our food.
- So everybody had a dish of beans and a dish of potatoes.
- Next morning, we went out to the work.
- He told me, tell the boys to bring it out to the work place.
- We went out.
- And he said, now, we have to go away because I'm not allowed
- to see that what you are doing.
- Tell them to make a fire and cook this stuff, the potatoes
- or whatever we had.
- That was going on for about two weeks,
- always going out and bringing some stuff in.
- Then the last time I went out and I said, we need some more.
- Well, we are out of potatoes.
- We are out of beans, no more.
- So I said, do you have any wheat?
- Yes, we have some wheat.
- So I said to the German, how can we get the wheat to the mill
- and make some bread.
- He said, I'll take it.
- That German, I have seen him from the yard.
- We could see because he had to walk by.
- The mill was about two miles out of the village.
- He put the two sacks of wheat on a sleigh.
- He pulled it himself.
- He was, I suppose, afraid to confide--
- To trust somebody--
- Trust somebody else to help him.
- He pulled it over to the mill.
- Then I see him coming back with the flour.
- In the evening, he came in and he says,
- tomorrow morning, you know where I live.
- Stand up the company in front of my gate.
- As we had to be early up 4 o'clock in the morning,
- we had to be in line.
- He was running in and out of that yard
- with big loaves of bread under his coat
- and giving it to the boys.
- After a while, the boys said to me--
- every time he wanted to go away.
- He didn't want to be present when they cooked.
- So the boys told me, you look like a father and son
- walking together.
- It was just unbelievable that something like this,
- there will be a man risk his life.
- Because if they catch us, both of us are shot.
- I mentioned that piece of bread.
- They shot somebody for a piece of bread.
- So one day we were--
- that was later-- now, one day in the afternoon, he comes in
- and he's all upset about it.
- They got an order to go home.
- They were two months in, and he was released,
- goes back to his home.
- But he says, I have very bad news for you.
- I talked to the man who will get your unit.
- And he's the most vicious of all of them.
- So I was a little bit scared, you know.
- And then about 4 o'clock in the morning, he wakes me up.
- He says, Harry, get up.
- He brought me a big bread and a jar of jelly and a jar of fat.
- And he said, well, we are going home.
- And I have good news for you.
- I found out which is the best one of them.
- And I let them exchange the units.
- So you will have the better one.
- Next morning, all his colleagues, about 20 of them,
- the other guards, the other officers, they're
- all drunk and with the bottles on the sleigh
- going to the railroad and singing.
- And this man, my commander, marches out with us
- to the working place.
- As he told me, tell the boys to stay a little backwards so they
- don't hear what I'm talking.
- And he was going all the way how he should take care of me,
- how [NON-ENGLISH] I am.
- That means how handy I am.
- And he can trust me and to see that I shouldn't starve and see
- that the boys shouldn't be mistreated.
- And we arrive at the working place.
- And he tells me, come in the woods with me.
- The man shook hands with me.
- And he said, my name is Joseph Drechsler.
- I live in [PLACE NAME] near Moravská Ostrava.
- The minute the war is over, let me know what happened to you
- and what happened to the boys.
- So the other man, well, he was very good.
- But I wouldn't dare even the idea
- to ask him to get food or something like this.
- First time we are out in the work, later in the day,
- and the man walks around, looks at everybody up and down.
- So then I say, what are you looking at?
- Lost something?
- He says, no, but I was told that I am sent to a Jewish unit.
- And he said, this is not Jewish.
- I said, of course, we are Jews.
- He says, that's impossible.
- I said, you never see a Jew in your life?
- He said, no, I live in the Tyrol in a little village.
- And all I have seen is the Stürmer--
- that was a propaganda paper from the Nazi Reich.
- And all I have seen the Jews with big beards
- and crooked noses.
- So he had the idea that we are this kind of Jews--
- or a Jew looks like that.
- He was with us for about two weeks
- when an order came to march.
- The Russians are advancing.
- We left Bucso 17,500 people.
- We heard that we are being taken to Mauthausen.
- They told us Mauthausen.
- But we had no idea that that's a concentration camp.
- Mauthausen was about 40 mile distance
- from the village we were in if we went straight to Mauthausen.
- But instead of, they wanted to kill as many of us as possible.
- So they took us south.
- They took us to Graz.
- And there, I have seen the people
- behind the curtains looking out.
- They claim they didn't know about it.
- But when you see people just skin and bone marching you
- know that something is wrong.
- And on the road one afternoon, the German SS
- ran away because the cannons were too near.
- They just left everything, throw away the weapons and run away.
- The local villages assigned to us
- Hitlerjugend, who were about 14 to 15 years old I estimate.
- I've seen them right walking next to me.
- On the road, I'm walking next to two boys, these two
- German boys.
- And one says to the other one, you see that guy there
- in the brown sweater?
- See if you can get him.
- The other one lifts the rifle and shoots him.
- And these were the Hitlerjugend.
- When today, Mr. Kohl, the prime minister of Germany,
- goes to Israel and tells there the government
- I have nothing to do with the war
- because I was just 15 years old when the war ended.
- And I claim that even 15 years old
- have something to do with it.
- We were marching then about-- it took 5 to 6 miles later,
- some other German guards came along.
- We were marching through villages.
- There were barely anything to eat once
- a day, some loose soup with a few beans floating in it.
- As I said, we had those aluminum little dishes.
- And some men run into a yard, or yards, of farmers
- where the farmers had a barrel keeping all the leftovers, all
- the rotten things for the pigs.
- They were running there.
- And they got a dish of that stink.
- And the farmer would come out and call the German,
- this guy was in my yard.
- Right there in front of us, he will
- be shot for that little bit of garbage that he took.
- One evening, we had to have sleeping places.
- We arrived in the woods or in the road or in a field.
- And I seen it's a potato field.
- I'm pretty well versed in what kind of vegetation.
- It was already harvested.
- But you could still see some stems.
- They were potato field.
- So I said to the boys, let's stay here.
- And it was dark.
- We went with our clothes.
- And here a piece of potato, the way they take with the haul,
- they cut a piece.
- So we had a few days to eat soup of that.
- We are marching on.
- And there was a mustard field still in bloom.
- There were some people running the field
- to get a few pieces of mustard.
- And the Germans just cut them down with the machine guns.
- Quite a few hundred died there.
- But when we stayed at that potato field, somehow
- we stayed nearly to the end of the group.
- There was 17-- by that time, we were maybe 16,000.
- We were in the very end.
- And then I noticed that anybody who stayed behind--
- he was weak or couldn't take keep on walking--
- they just shot right there on the spot
- and left him there on the road.
- So I got the men together.
- And I said, wherever we sleep, wherever we are, we all,
- we are still young.
- We still can walk.
- We always will walk to the head of the group.
- Because if somebody gets sick, something happens,
- so it's time enough till you get to the end,
- maybe we already stopping and it's another evening.
- And then I told them, if you see anybody sick,
- two boys will carry them on the two arms.
- I was carried for three days by two boys too.
- I was-- I don't know, cold or whatever, diarrhea.
- Then--
- --took us up to on the Alps.
- Instead of taking us straight on the straight road
- to Mauthausen, they took us up on the Alps.
- There, I first time noticed people
- falling off and right there dying on the street.
- Everybody left them there.
- Snow started to come down.
- They were covered with snow.
- Nobody knew where they are.
- We were about middle of the road.
- Suddenly, a very severe storm developed.
- And we are walking, marching about 6 to 7 abreast.
- The Germans parked a heavy truck in the middle of the road.
- And when we get to that truck, we barely
- could squeeze to one person because the sides were all
- hilly up.
- So we went through.
- It didn't take about 5 minutes.
- Suddenly, we heard machine gun fire.
- We didn't know what happened, what's happening.
- But we're running as much as we could in the snow.
- Then I found out that they machine gunned on the two hills
- where the truck stood, they were Germans and machine
- gunned the people.
- So they created this roadblock--
- A roadblock so they can kill the people.
- The reason the shooting stopped because the general who
- was supposed to accept us and transfer us further,
- he came out with his Jeep.
- And he was yelling at other guys,
- how come you are shooting them?
- I have to have a count for 17,500 Jews,
- and then I won't have enough to show.
- There were a few huts there.
- I don't know if it was a hunting lodge or whatever it was.
- And they jammed us in as many as we can stand in
- because it was very cold.
- Must have been 30 to 35 below zero on top of the mountain.
- The man who couldn't fit in, there they
- stayed out on the plateau, a very big straight plateau.
- And they slept outside in the cold.
- In the morning, they lined us up.
- Most of those people outside froze to death.
- The Germans were walking around and kicking the bodies.
- Somebody still moved, they shot him.
- They marched us on for another two days.
- And then we finally arrived in Mauthausen late at night.
- We had no idea what Mauthausen is.
- At the gate they counted 200.
- Each unit had 200.
- Could you just tell me what date this was about?
- This was in the beginning of March.
- One thing I left out, when they lined us up to march
- on the beginning of the road, they
- claimed anybody who is sick or weak,
- they have horses and wagons.
- They will carry them on horse and wagon.
- There were quite a few of my boys who said I will go.
- I said, no way, you come with me because I had
- a suspicion something is wrong.
- And we weren't far, too far away where we had shots.
- So they killed all those right there on the--
- who stayed behind.
- Now, in Mauthausen, when we got up in the morning--
- when they counted my group, they made some mistake.
- And at 180, they cut off the unit.
- And I had 20 people stay behind.
- I said this is 20 belongs to me.
- Get on.
- Get on.
- Get on.
- Go weiter.
- Next morning, I found out that they are counting us.
- We have to account for to 200.
- So there are those 20 boys who were with me for nearly 5 years
- to always line up in the end of their company.
- And when they were counted, they all ran over to my side
- and were counted again.
- One morning-- and we had to stand in front of the group
- and be accountable for the 200 people.
- One morning, the next man to my right--
- A commander.
- --the commander, the Jewish commander,
- he could account only for 199.
- The commander says, where is the one who is missing?
- He says, he's dying.
- He's inside.
- He can't come out.
- He took the rubber hose he had in his hand.
- And he kept hitting his head that I had
- seen the man's brain come out.
- Then his dog came along and petted the dog
- and walked off with the dog.
- Now, I was terrified to death.
- Here, for one man he's killed.
- And I have 20.
- But I had a little advantage because I also
- got provisions for 200.
- So always could give a little more soup
- for each man because instead of 200, I had to have only 180
- to discharge.
- One day, a German came in the barrack, in the tent,
- and looks around and points to me.
- He says, come with me.
- I went out with him.
- He said, go down on you four.
- It was all muddy outside.
- He said, crawl on your four.
- And he started to hit me with his rubber truncheon
- on my back.
- It took about a half an hour.
- Finally said, all right, now you go in.
- Now, then, suddenly, I knew that something is terribly wrong.
- First of all, it was a vast camp.
- And there were rows and rows of corpses, naked, outside,
- lined up for maybe a mile.
- Far away, there was smoke going up.
- And I asked some of the boys, inmates who were there earlier.
- I said, what is that smoke there?
- They said, they are burning the bodies there.
- But I didn't have any idea that they were crematoria there too.
- But people are dying so quick, they just couldn't handle it.
- Then I started to see every minute somebody dies.
- And we just gave up.
- That's it.
- We didn't have any hope at all that there
- will be a day that I will be sitting here and telling
- the story.
- One night, we heard airplanes and a bomb explode.
- And it seemed-- it felt like right there next to you
- it exploded.
- Nobody got up to go and look what
- it is because it didn't matter.
- You die today by a bomb or tomorrow by starvation.
- Next morning, I go out the tent.
- And about 20 yards from my tent, a tremendous crater
- and tens and tens of people on top
- of the crater holding legs and feet and eating that.
- So a little while later, they gave us
- an order to be evacuated again to another camp.
- All the meals we got in Mauthausen
- was a little soup and a little piece of square
- through and through green moldy bread.
- But even that, you had to guard and keep
- it to yourself to your body because anybody came along,
- they would grab it from you because everybody was hungry.
- They took us to Gunskirchen.
- And they jammed us in a barrack which
- could have accommodated maybe 400 to 500 people, put us
- in 300.
- 300 or 3,000?
- 3,000.
- At nighttime, we couldn't stretch out.
- We had to pull up our legs and just
- sit down if we wanted to rest a little bit.
- People were dying by the thousands.
- There was only-- in the middle of the barrack
- was a little empty space.
- We had to walk out for your needs.
- Anybody died, we put them on the aisle.
- And anybody had to go out, just walking on the corpses.
- And what else they did, they took off
- the clothing of those corpses.
- And they threw it around all over the yard
- where we had to walk.
- And the reason for it was to spread the diseases.
- They didn't even bury them anymore,
- just threw them around wherever you were.
- You had to watch where you walk on the yard,
- you shouldn't step on the corpse.
- At that time, I gave up cleaning myself.
- There was no way that you can clean off those lice anymore.
- I didn't see myself.
- But I have seen it in other people
- that the lice were like clusters of grapes,
- one lice on top of the other one, the whole body.
- And that was spreading, carrying--
- we were so jammed together that was carrying the disease.
- Finally, as a commander, I had to get
- the soup, the kettle of soup from for the meals at noontime.
- There were six soldiers responsible for 3,000 of us
- with the guns.
- When they made for them a potato soup
- or mashed potatoes for the six people,
- the peels of those potatoes were put in that warm water
- for the 3,000.
- And if anybody had a peel, he considered himself very lucky.
- So finally, one afternoon, the Germans throw away their guns
- and run away.
- The American army was coming in.
- This was in May of 1945?
- May 1945, on May the 4th, 1945.
- There was an advance from the American army.
- They came in the camp.
- And they said, nobody should eat any of the bread
- because it's poisoned.
- The Germans poisoned to kill us slowly.
- Most of the people who could do it, they right away,
- even in the evening, they just marched out of the camps
- and out on the roads and they go someplace.
- And I said to myself, I'm weak.
- Now what can I do?
- I'll stay and sleep over and go in the morning.
- In the morning, about 2 miles away from my camp,
- I arrived at a big German military warehouse,
- which was jammed with all kind of food, beans and peas
- and lentils and sugar and barley, stacked to the roof.
- And those inmates walking around and tearing everything up
- and walking through there with all kind of mixture,
- they mixed up everything.
- And there were also people who found meat conserves.
- And they went out on the embankment near the camp
- and started eating.
- I said, please, don't eat it.
- Your body can't take it.
- There was no bread with it.
- Well, I'm hungry.
- I have to eat it.
- They finished the conserve and just keeled over.
- And that's it.
- The body couldn't take that meal.
- So finally, I had something to eat a little bit.
- We were marching, and American tanks came along.
- And they threw us some white bread.
- So that's what I had.
- But I started to have very bad diarrhea.
- But I had no idea what's all about.
- And we came to another German warehouse.
- And it was full of boots and SS outfits.
- So I put on an SS just make myself clean--
- I became an SS man--
- and some boots.
- And they took us to another camp.
- And then the American Army came in
- and sprayed everybody with DDT.
- But 99% of the people were sick.
- And the only doctors were the doctor inmates.
- Now, later I found out there were
- plenty, hundreds of German doctors,
- and not one volunteered.
- The war is over.
- Now I go and see maybe I can save a few Jews.
- The reason I know it because that medic friend of mine,
- he knew that something is wrong with him.
- And we couldn't wait in line to get into the local,
- inside, because we know it will take days.
- He took off one of the boys on the fence, and he sneaked out.
- And he found a doctor.
- He came back.
- He says, Harry, I have black typhus,
- which was dreaded from him.
- We knew that's very dangerous.
- And he says, if you want to go, because if I have the typhus,
- you must have it too.
- This is the symptom that you have diarrhea.
- He gave me the address.
- And I went out with the same doctor.
- The male doctor looked at me, picks up the phone
- and called a special hospital--
- school, they made a hospital out of it.
- And they took me to that hospital.
- They didn't send me back to the camp again.
- In the evening, they brought in potatoes in shell.
- Everybody is eating it.
- And everybody is happy about it.
- And I just couldn't take it out, just impossible to eat.
- That was the symptom also of the black typhus-- you can't eat.
- Then at night time, I somehow start to feel my pulse.
- There was no pulse.
- It was so weak.
- Just that's it.
- That's the end.
- Next morning, finally, a doctor comes in,
- pulls over a chair in the middle of the room,
- and just collapses into it.
- And he says, all right, everybody will come.
- Get another chair, everybody come to me.
- And I examine them.
- He had the same trouble.
- He had this typhus.
- You cut it off?
- Hmm?
- I want to blow my nose.
- I'm sorry.
- Do you want to take a break for a few minutes?
- Just a minute, yeah.
- OK.
- Because-- pardon?
- Take a picture of the flowers.
- OK.
- You want some water.
- Yeah, I'll have a little water.
- I'll take a hold of that.
- Jacket, oh, I have--
- Put it on your vest maybe.
- Can we pull it down?
- We're going to be going for quite a bit.
- There's somebody-- there's somebody who's waiting.
- There's somebody at 11:00.
- And there's-- no, we'll be done around 12:00 probably.
- Well, let's tell them that--
- OK.
- These lights are--
- I know why all the people who are on TV they all sweat.
- There's a box of tissues there if you like--
- OK.
- OK.
- OK, thanks.
- Help yourself.
- Yeah.
- There are so many things, but you can't remember them all.
- You're doing pretty well.
- OK.
- You tell such a coherent story that we really
- don't have to ask very much and intervene very often.
- Maybe you would ask, maybe I remember more.
- [LAUGHS]
- Well, we don't want to break into your train of thought
- either.
- It's just--
- We're rolling again anytime you want to start.
- OK.
- You were recuperating in that hospital.
- So finally, they took him to the hospital.
- And when I sat down, he looked at me and he says,
- right away you have to be taken away because you
- are end of the stage.
- They called an ambulance.
- And they were going just, I don't know, 100 miles an hour
- through the fields and that bump, bumped me around.
- This was in American hospital?
- American, yes.
- An American medical--
- American medical team, yes.
- And they took me out to a field hospital.
- The trouble was it wasn't-- they just started to put it up.
- There was only an iron cot.
- They put it on top of the iron cot.
- And it started to blow and rain.
- And all I was asking, wasser, wasser.
- I didn't know what water is in those days.
- They didn't have wasser.
- And then I said, I'm very cold, something.
- I don't know how I said it, to cover.
- But everything was still in the crates.
- Then suddenly I felt that I'm sinking, that's the end.
- And my whole family, sisters, brothers,
- I all see them in front of my eyes and I'm dead, dying.
- About two days two days later, I woke up.
- And I had all kinds of wires in my arm.
- I don't know if it was a blood transfusion or feeding.
- I was very weak.
- They brought beautiful food.
- Never seen in my life something like it.
- They had 7 to 8 compartments on a tray.
- And each one was something different.
- And it looked so good.
- I just couldn't take it on.
- The only thing I could take was a little bit of whiskey
- they had.
- They had to wash me.
- They had to lift me.
- They had to give me the pen.
- It was just terrible.
- And I couldn't understand that the people
- next to me in the other beds, they
- were just waiting the minute I put down the tray,
- they just took it, and they double and triple.
- And about a week later, the first time I
- ate a few little things, rice or something.
- And I ate.
- But that was the good time was over right away,
- they thought I feel better, they took me to the Wels
- in the city to a school hospital.
- There terrible things happened.
- Still hundreds of people dying.
- There were cases people jumped out of window.
- They became mad because they found out
- that their families must be dead or something.
- And there, I volunteered to work in the kitchen to help out,
- just to have a little bit more food, because then I
- realized now when you start to get better,
- then you really have to have food.
- Now, there wasn't any reading material.
- And my next neighbor in the hospital
- was a boy who was with me for five years.
- And he was reading a book.
- And I barely could wait till he gets tired of it
- and put it down.
- So finally I said, can I have--
- can I read that book.
- He hands it to me.
- And it has a cross on top and realize New Testament.
- And I just threw it away like fire.
- I can't touch it.
- I said, what are you crazy?
- What are you reading the New Testament for?
- These people just did it to us.
- They are responsible what happened to us.
- He says, well, I'm Catholic.
- I said, how can you be Catholic?
- You were with me five years in a concentration camp.
- He said, well, one of my grandfathers was Jewish.
- So they took him in as a Jew.
- Now, from Wels--
- Had you had any contact with anybody from your family?
- No, I didn't know anything, anybody lives.
- From there, the first thought was--
- some of them stayed in that camp,
- in the concentration camp.
- From there, they took them to Russia or Sweden.
- My first thought to go home and see if anybody from the family
- survived.
- I arrived in Budapest.
- And I wanted to go to the Jewish organization
- to find out anything, they know anything of the survivors.
- On the street, I met a man from my own town.
- And he says, oh, I just met your sister yesterday.
- She left home for Ungvar, Uzhhorod.
- So I took those little belongings I had.
- And I had to go on a train, on the top of the train,
- in the open.
- I had with me a few pictures from my family.
- I had a prayer book.
- I had the tefillin, the phylacteries
- that I carried with me these five years, in good and bad.
- And I guarded it all always just to have it with me.
- The trains were traveling very slow
- because they knew there are a lot of people on top of it.
- Middle of the road suddenly Russian soldiers
- appeared, jumping from one top of the train to the other one
- and taking all the belongings.
- Anybody had throwing it down on the ground, and down
- on the ground Russian soldiers collecting it.
- So they stole the last thing that I had.
- The Russian took it.
- I arrived home.
- It was late in July or in August.
- I went to see my home.
- The home that I kept always beautiful since a child, always
- flowers all along the fence.
- There wasn't a person in the city who wouldn't stop and look
- at that thing, all the roses all along the fence.
- Everything neglected.
- Everything full of weeds.
- The man who was living in the house come out with an ax.
- Get out of my yard.
- What are you doing here?
- That's my home.
- I said, how come it's your home?
- I'm a communist.
- The Communist Party gave it to me.
- I said I know you're a communist today,
- but yesterday you still were a Nazi.
- I didn't listen to him.
- I went up to see the garden.
- We had a big garden, over 100 trees, fruit trees.
- I reached up and I picked a plum.
- A neighbor sees me.
- She called up another guy, another communist.
- He comes running.
- I heard you are stealing my plums.
- So finally, I went up to the city hall.
- And I arranged-- wrote over the property on my name
- because I was the only man who came back from the family.
- When my family left, they wrote me
- that they are taking them to resettle them in Poland.
- That was the standard-- they let them write it,
- not that they wanted to write it.
- It was just a card, a postcard.
- Everything is fine.
- And they are going to work in Poland.
- But they also wrote me that all the belongings,
- they had any valuables or my clothing, if I come home,
- they put it to our dear neighbor, Ilonko [NON-ENGLISH],,
- Mrs. Ilonko.
- So I went over to the next neighbor.
- And I said, Ilonko [NON-ENGLISH],,
- I was told that I have the belongings are here.
- Oh, my dear Harry, I'm so sorry, the Russians
- took everything from us.
- And that was a standard answer.
- You wanted something back, the Russians took them from us.
- The city had about 5,000 Jewish inhabitants,
- the most beautiful, the most kind
- people you ever can find for charity, for goodness,
- for helping people.
- If a girl got married and she didn't have a dowry,
- we running around collecting money.
- My mother, every Friday evening, gave me a basket of food.
- She covered it nicely.
- And every week she sent me to another poor Jewish family.
- And she told me, before you go in,
- look around if nobody sees you because the people will
- be ashamed that they have to have charity.
- If anybody wanted a favor in the city, Gentile or Jew,
- there was always Mrs. Weinberg.
- The Gentile didn't go to the Gentile
- because they knew they can't count on it.
- If there was-- they were usually feeding geese
- to fatten them up.
- If there was a corn in the wrong pipe, the goose will die.
- Both my mother-- and my mother will sit there for half an hour
- and slowly, slowly get it out of it.
- If a chicken couldn't have the egg,
- bring it to my mother, massage a little bit.
- Egg come out.
- If they need chicks, ask for chicks, they came to my mother,
- look at the light.
- And she could tell which is from a rooster, which is not.
- If they needed money, if they needed advice,
- they needed a pot, come to my mother.
- Today, if they-- some of my friends tell me,
- why are you going out of your way to do things for people?
- You know they are not appreciative of it.
- I don't do it for thanks.
- I do it because it feels good to do good thing because that's
- what I have seen at home.
- Because in my home, for one thing,
- there was every day another poor student came for lunch.
- There was never a Friday evening or a Saturday noon
- that a poor Jew from the temple, like beggars
- came to the temple, that they didn't bring them home
- for a meal.
- So you grow up to do good things.
- And when I came home from the concentration camp--
- and I questioned, like anybody else, how is it possible?
- What happened?
- God, how could you allow it?
- When you have seen those Jews, the goodness of it,
- it's unbelievable that what they did to us.
- And for a long while I said to myself, well,
- I will never be a Jew again.
- That's it.
- What's the use for it?
- But then comes a time when you start to reason.
- And I realized that God didn't do this to us.
- People did that to us.
- God has enough worries the galaxies shouldn't collide.
- Maybe the deer should have enough food in the woods
- because it can help himself.
- The man came down on this Earth, and God tell them,
- I'm giving you the reason to know what's good
- and what's bad, and you can choose.
- God had nothing to do with it.
- Because I have quite a few friends who are completely
- unbelievers.
- In fact, there is one friend of mine
- who was always sitting with me on the one bench in school.
- We went through yeshiva together.
- And we parted ways because he became so fanatic in his belief
- that the local yeshivas were not good enough.
- He had to go to Belz.
- The Belz rabbi was a famous rabbi.
- And when I came home from my vacations
- and we met on the street and he said hello,
- he didn't stop to talk to me because my hat was turned down
- modern way.
- He was married at 18.
- The wealthiest man in town gave him his daughter.
- He was sitting and studying day and night.
- He had three babies already.
- He was a genius.
- He knew the Talmud, the 24 books by heart.
- If you told him a sentence, he would tell you
- on what page that is, from what book it is.
- And, of course, he believed that he is pals with God.
- And when he comes home and see his family is wiped out
- and his children are gone, and on top of it
- something happened-- now, he was here in New York last year.
- I invite him for a dinner to my home.
- And he told me why really he doesn't believe anymore.
- Now, he was one of those who were
- caught after the concentration camp on the street
- by the Russians.
- And they took him back to Russia in another concentration camp.
- He was there another two years.
- And he didn't explain quite what happened.
- But some fire was in the camp.
- And I think that might be the same fire where
- my brother died.
- And he said he was working in the office, bookkeeper.
- And he was running to the house to save
- his tefillin and the tallit because he was very religious
- and he was praying every day.
- And they were consumed by the fire.
- So as he told me, if God didn't want
- me to have even my tefillin, then he doesn't want God.
- Now, after the war, I thought to myself, well,
- after a while he will change and reason himself what's happened.
- But a year later on Yom Kippur, I walked by his home
- to the temple.
- And I knocked on the door.
- And I said-- he came out in his shirt.
- I said, put on your clothes and let's go to the temple.
- He said, there's no temple for me today.
- Till today, he's denying there is a God.
- When you came back to your village,
- did you meet any people, neighbors, people
- who had lived in the village with and grown up
- at the same time--
- It wasn't a village.
- It was a town of 40,000 people.
- There were 5,000 Jews in the town.
- We came back about 300 from the city.
- But there were more Jews in the city
- because from all the villages, there was one or two Jews,
- they were afraid to stay in the villages.
- They were persecuted even after the war.
- They all moved to that regional capital, to Ungvar.
- I was about home about two weeks.
- I mentioned that we had to have a front for the store
- before the war.
- When we came home, we found the same woman--
- the husband was taken prisoner to Russia
- because he was a high ranking official.
- And she married a Jewish man.
- She divorced, let him divorce--
- I don't know how she could manage.
- But she married or just lived with a Jewish man.
- The man had a restaurant on the main street.
- And mostly Russians had the money
- to frequent those fancy restaurants.
- And one day, the Russians shot the man.
- And she became owner of that restaurant.
- And when I first went over to tell her
- that we are here, of course, she said come over.
- We rented a room and some of her furnishings.
- And then when she heard about it we are home, she took us in.
- And she fed us well and brought us back to life.
- I wasn't home more than two weeks
- when the agricultural minister came to my apartment.
- He was a man who was our customer before the war
- and became a big shot with the Communist.
- And he embraced me.
- And, oh, I'm so happy that you are here.
- Please do something.
- Bring some food.
- Everybody is starving.
- They had to kill all the Jews, take them property.
- I went out to the flea market to buy an old table.
- And I recognized my matzah cover for my family
- selling the flea market.
- I bought it back.
- They took everything from the Jews,
- but they didn't know and didn't have any way
- to risk their money to go out and buy food and sell it.
- They didn't have no way that they could live.
- They were really starving.
- So I said, well, I'm still sick.
- I was about 80 pounds when I came out
- from the concentration camp.
- I'm still recuperating.
- I said, well, I will think about it.
- I went out on the street.
- And I met a friend of mine, Feierman.
- He was home about a year earlier because he
- was captured by the Russians.
- And he managed to get away.
- And he was already in business.
- And I said, you know the minister
- wants me to go for food.
- He said, I have about 30,000 pengo.
- Let's be partners.
- You will go to buying.
- You know what's it all about.
- And I will give you the money.
- So I said, all right, let's go to Hungary.
- That was the only way that you get merchandise.
- The city in the summer time mostly lived on watermelon.
- Poor people buy watermelon and a piece of bread,
- and that was a good meal.
- It was a very big item.
- So I said, let's go and buy some watermelons.
- I arrived in a village where my parents
- used to buy the watermelons.
- And I made a deal.
- I bought the melons, the acre, just to call it [NON-ENGLISH],,
- estimate how much merchandise there will be.
- We had three carloads of those melons.
- I got to the railroad.
- And I said, I want to send it to Ungvar, Uzhhorod.
- He said, you can send to Uzhhorod.
- You have to put down money for the wagons, for the cars.
- This is Hungarian property.
- There is Russia there.
- And that Feierman got scared.
- I lost all my money.
- And he turned around.
- And next train he went back home.
- And I said to myself, no way, I can't lose all that money.
- It's not even my money.
- I went to Budapest.
- And I tried to get a permit.
- They said, you have to put on a half a million pengos
- for each car.
- No way I had that kind of money.
- I had about 2,000 pengos left.
- So I was thinking for a while.
- Then I said to myself, well, I will
- send the melons to the borderline
- and see what I can do there.
- I send the melons to Miskolc, which is still Hungary.
- No waiting, right away they send it over to Miskolc.
- The train was running from Slovakia.
- They had to go to Miskolc.
- And from there back a little while later,
- that was the only line, to Czechoslovakia, now Russia.
- I had a friend in Miskolc who was with me
- in the concentration camp.
- And I said, listen, I have three wagons of melons here.
- How can we manage to get it through?
- He said, oh, that's no problem.
- The railroad manager is a very good friend of mine.
- I went over there.
- I gave him 2,000 pengos.
- He locked me in the car, gave me the key.
- Middle of the night, suddenly I feel I am traveling.
- First train came along, just latched it on
- and we arrived in Ungvar.
- When I brought those melons out from the station,
- we had they were those flat--
- wagon, flat cars with horses, the people standing
- on the street and applauding.
- And I started to make terrific money
- because most of the customer was Russian soldiers.
- And they paid with Russian rubles.
- Always are, do you take Russian rubles?
- Yeah, of course.
- And I said, a kilo is two crowns.
- So I got two Russian rubles.
- But for a ruble, I got two Russian crowns in the exchange.
- So I had a four.
- Instead of one crown, I had four.
- And I start to make big money.
- But meanwhile, most of the population, the Jewish men
- and women, moved to Czechoslovakia, near Prague.
- And you go there where you have friends, know people.
- And they're writing me letters, come on, come on,
- here they give away stores, and you can have whatever you want.
- You have big opportunities.
- And I naively think, well, I'll make some more money, some more
- money.
- Here my sisters, I have to fit them up with clothing.
- And I have to marry them--
- How many sisters did you--
- Three young sisters, the youngest one who were not
- married, they came back.
- Six of them who were married, they
- had 21 children, from 1 to 14.
- And not one came back.
- That's just the nearest family.
- I'm not talking about cousins and uncles and--
- Three of your younger sisters did--
- Yeah, because they were not married.
- They were in Bergen-Belsen.
- And they kept them also as laborers.
- And they had their own stories to tell,
- the starvation and everything else.
- So--
- You opted to remain in that community--
- The community--
- --with your sisters.
- --as long as I could because the Russian government gave us
- an option.
- The ones who were born in Slovakia or Bohemia,
- the other side of the border, have a year
- to decide if they want to stay in Russia
- or we can go back to Czechoslovakia.
- And as long as you're making money, I said to myself, well,
- I'll wait till the last minute.
- But then one morning, around 2 o'clock in the morning,
- the town was pitch dark because the Russian army shut out
- all the lights in the city so they can go out
- and rape and rob and do what they want.
- I didn't experience it myself.
- But I had many cases, they said that a whole company
- of Russian soldiers would come in the home.
- There was a three-year-old baby or an 80-year-old woman,
- and they all go through.
- So I hear noises downstairs.
- We lived above the restaurant.
- Your sisters were living with you?
- Of course.
- I wouldn't dare-- I wouldn't even think of it.
- I was the man, even I was just 22 years old.
- But I was the man.
- And I have to take care of them.
- That was the custom in Europe.
- I hear noises downstairs.
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- Open up.
- And I didn't know who they are.
- I went out on the balcony.
- And I started to yell to the police across the street--
- it was a police station--
- somebody is breaking in.
- They should come over.
- No answer.
- But at the same time, there was a Jewish soldier,
- a Russian soldier, living also across the street who
- was coming in the restaurant and talking to the girls,
- you know, courting my sisters.
- He heard that something is wrong.
- So first of all, I took the three girls
- and I locked them in a closet because I
- had a suspicion it must be Russians,
- they're there to make a noise middle of the night.
- One of my sisters passed out, lucky
- they didn't notice because they were half drunk.
- These three officers in the Russian army came up the steps.
- And we had a window to the apartment
- through the steps up to the apartment.
- The break in the window.
- They come up on the balcony with a machine gun, [NON-ENGLISH]..
- Jew, I kill you.
- Where are the girls?
- I say, I am not Jewish guy.
- I don't have any sister.
- I don't have any girls here.
- Lucky that soldier heard about it, that noise.
- And he came over and put on his clothes and comes over.
- And it's a different kind of situation,
- you see that they have their own men there.
- And he talked to them, you know.
- I know the man.
- There is no girls.
- You're mistaken.
- This is two doors away from here.
- I had some whiskey in the house from the restaurant, you know.
- She kept some whiskey upstairs, the woman.
- And I kept pouring the whiskey for three hours, the machine
- gun on the table.
- And they lifting the machine gun, I kill you, I kill you.
- I get up early in the morning.
- And I said to myself-- yeah, they left around 5 o'clock,
- the policeman came over.
- And what happened?
- What happened?
- I said, you ask me what happened,
- when I was calling you, there was no answer.
- He said, we can't help it.
- These officers had so high ranking medals.
- There's such a-- 'I don't know what kind of--
- how do you explain that.
- There such rank or such stature--
- Such heroes, such heroes, even they kill you,
- we can't do a thing about it.
- So I got together my sister and said,
- listen, if this is the situation,
- I don't want any part of it.
- I have the store full of merchandise.
- I have my house, my garden.
- We put the money what we have left--
- most of the money was in the bank--
- whatever money we have, I let them put it in the lining,
- in our suit and coat, and we filled our shoes
- because I had plenty of money, all kinds of money,
- Hungarian money, Slovak money, dollars, rubles.
- And my youngest sister had a boyfriend.
- And he insisted that he wants to come with us.
- So I said, all right.
- I gave him some money too in his shoes.
- Now, I was, as a child, I was always on my own.
- I always went out in the villages.
- And I bought my own eggs.
- And I come back to the city, I sold it.
- And that was the way I kept myself always in the schools.
- Or I bought chickens.
- Or I bought melons.
- And I went to the--
- there was always pilgrimages to the churches.
- I brought melons, cut up in pieces.
- I always managed to make my own living.
- In fact, I just remember something
- that I must have had a sense of business as a child
- because they always made fun of me.
- When I was still in the village in Slovakia,
- I was playing with another Jewish kid in the yard.
- We couldn't be more than about three years old.
- And two older Gentile boys came in, and they beat us up.
- And the other Jewish boy said, all the Christians
- should drop dead.
- And I said, no, they shouldn't because where will
- my parents buy all the eggs.
- [LAUGHS] So I must have already thought kind of business
- because we need them to produce those eggs.
- So--
- What happened when you left your town with three
- sisters and the boyfriend?
- So we are--
- I knew all the whole neighborhood
- because I had to go to those villages
- to buy eggs and poultry.
- And it was only about six or seven miles away from the city.
- We just about a half a mile from the border,
- the boyfriend just couldn't walk anymore.
- He's dying.
- He can't walk anymore.
- The money is killing him in the shoes.
- So we walk back on the roadside.
- And there is a little old home.
- And I see a mezuzah on the door.
- So I figured it must be Jewish people who came back.
- Said, all right, must be Jewish family.
- Go in there and change your--
- take all the money, throw it away or give it away,
- and let's go.
- We went about 100 yards away.
- Suddenly, the Russian soldiers arrived.
- The woman, who was, of course, a peasant just
- took over the house, and she didn't bother
- to take down the mezuzah.
- She called the Russian army.
- And they said to us, all right, how much money do you have?
- We had to open all the money.
- He says, give us all the money you have, or we kill you.
- We took out all the money from the linings of our shoes.
- We had to take off the shoes because they
- took our shoes too.
- We stayed barefoot without a penny.
- They let us through the border.
- And we hitchhiked if we could.
- If not, we walked barefoot 40 miles
- to the nearest city of Kosice.
- There were three different boys who
- were with me from that town.
- I visited them.
- They were pretty well off by that time.
- And they gave us money to travel to Podmokly,
- to that city that all the other people from Uzhhorod lived.
- We arrived there.
- Most of the people had small businesses, the one
- from the concentration camp.
- The only bigger businesses or a factory--
- now this was the Sudetenland.
- The Czechs expelled 3 million Germans from the borders
- because they were demonstrating before the war,
- we want Germany.
- So they said, you want Germany, you can go to Germany.
- They gave them 30 kilos to carry,
- like the Jews went out with 30 kilo from--
- we thought they are going to be resettled.
- And there was all kind of wealth.
- People found in the attic all kind of gold hidden.
- And factories were taken over.
- And wholesale places were taken over.
- When I arrived there, and most of the people
- from the concentration camp, could apply only
- for a small business.
- The only people who could get something valuable,
- like a factory, was people who joined the Czech brigade
- in Russia.
- This is where inmates in the concentration camp in Russia,
- finally they managed to build an army, Czech army.
- And they were fighting back themselves to Russia.
- And those were the people who were getting the bigger
- businesses.
- There were people who didn't have any trade
- or couldn't manage a business.
- They made a living on black marketeering.
- They went down to Hungary or other places,
- bought cigarettes and made a living like that.
- Or they brought salami.
- Or they brought textile because everything was short.
- There was nothing at all left after the war.
- How were you able--
- And-- huh?
- How were you able to support your family in that community?
- Now, the family couldn't be supported at all.
- The boy, my younger sister's boyfriend,
- applied to learn as a carpenter.
- He talked about marrying my sister.
- And I said, no way.
- One thing, you don't have schooling.
- You don't have a trade.
- And I, coming from a family, that I
- had higher expectations, or a doctor or a lawyer or something
- like this for my sisters.
- Another thing, you are the youngest.
- In the Jewish family, first comes the first to get married.
- But she was carrying on and carrying on.
- So I said, OK.
- About a year later, I agreed to marry her.
- But by that time I had a big business.
- And I could equip her apartment and buy whatever
- she needs in the house.
- So you had to--
- But that boy didn't have any income at all
- because he was just learning how to carpenter
- shop, carpentership.
- And for half a year, we just got along somehow borrowing money.
- But I just didn't want to do any black marketeering.
- And I didn't feel that I am fit to carry on in a small business
- because I had all these ideas that--
- I grew up in a wholesale.
- So finally, I found a man who is quite
- inexperienced in anything, because if he would have been--
- he was there a year already in that city--
- he would have had something.
- So he is willing to be my partner.
- The name was on his name.
- But I didn't need experience because I knew what to do.
- We applied for a very big wholesale place.
- And we had tremendous warehouses in the villages around us.
- And we were allocated about 300 stores, grocery stores,
- to supply those people.
- And we had to have had about 10 bookkeepers
- because everything was on ration.
- How many children are in each family?
- How many each store has customers?
- And how many are below 12 years old?
- And how many are older?
- That was the way they counted the rations.
- I was bringing in merchandise.
- But it wasn't enough.
- No way that people could live on it.
- Like I was allocated for each family half
- a kalafior-- what is it in English?
- It's white, a head like cabbage, but white.
- Cauliflower?
- Cauliflower.
- [LAUGHS] I was allocated 300 boxes of cauliflower
- when I went with two or three trucks.
- It was nowhere near what I needed.
- And then I wanted to help out all the Jewish merchants who
- couldn't make too much a go of it because most of the people
- will patronize the Gentile stores.
- So I found a way.
- I told the manager who was in the office,
- you have to wait for days till the farmer brought it in
- and then he allocate to me.
- So I paid him some money, some bribe.
- And I said, why don't you send me out to the field
- and I will get it myself?
- You don't have to wait.
- And I don't have time to wait.
- So each box was 12 cauliflowers in a box.
- Now, I gave the farmer a better price
- that he got from the union.
- And they cut off all the leaves.
- And instead of 12 cauliflowers, I had 24 or 30 sometimes.
- So you did good business, yeah.
- Yeah.
- So I lined up the cases on the road.
- Six, seven times the police stopped us.
- How many cases do you have?
- Permit for 300.
- 300.
- That's all, the three--
- come back to the store.
- And all night long, I had to work
- to make the parties' cases because otherwise
- the businessman has a case, I had to give him
- the 24 instead of the 12.
- In the afternoon, I called up always a different merchant.
- And I said, well, I have some leftovers.
- People didn't come for it.
- Here, you can have two or three cases of cauliflower.
- Never black market, just the right price.
- And later on, I heard that there is a possibility
- to bring in merchandise from Slovakia.
- But the Slovaks weren't very friendly to the Czechs
- because they had a Nazi government during the war.
- They weren't occupied.
- The Czechs were occupied.
- And they purposely made their prices higher in Slovakia
- than it was in Bohemia because the government made the prices.
- That way nobody could get anything out of that country
- because you had to sell it on black market
- to get your price because you couldn't
- pay three crowns for a kilo of merchandise,
- or carrots or something, and sell it for two.
- You get broke in a minute.
- So I went up to Prague to the Ministry of Agriculture.
- And I said, I would like to go down to Slovakia
- and get some merchandise, vegetables.
- And he said, all right, how many permits do you need?
- I said about 15.
- He said, what are you talking about?
- He said, I'm giving the local established merchants
- one for one wagon.
- They come back, and they return it
- because they can't get anything.
- I said, listen, we are starving here.
- They have the merchandise.
- If I bring it over, fine.
- If not, you get it back.
- Anyway, what do you lose?
- So he made out a 15, but very skeptical about it.
- I came down to Bratislava where I was studied in the yeshiva.
- And I was running around from one wholesaler to another one.
- No way, you can get it.
- The prices were over--
- too expensive.
- Finally, I got to one Jewish man who was in business.
- And he says to me, the only man who
- can help you is a Mr. Berger.
- He's from a village nearby.
- And he's employed by the government.
- And he allocates merchandise to different people in Prague.
- And he told me that he is in the Mandala Hotel at 10 o'clock
- every Friday morning.
- I went to the hotel.
- I gave a tip, 10 crowns, to the waiter and said,
- will you please point out who Mr. Berger is?
- He says, he's not here.
- But he will be at 10 o'clock.
- At 10 o'clock, I didn't have to have
- to show me who it is because anybody
- who was in that restaurant, the man
- came in, everybody's around him yelling, screaming, I want one.
- I want one.
- So I said to myself, no chance, I won't get anything here.
- But finally, everybody left.
- He had a cup of coffee.
- And I went over to his table.
- And I introduced myself.
- And I told him my story.
- I just came home from the concentration camp.
- And I have a story in Podmokly.
- And I have a lot of trouble from the local competition
- because the other store's owner is the brother of the police
- commissioner.
- And I have every day inspections.
- They want to prove something that I
- am doing black marketeering.
- I talked to him maybe 5 minutes.
- The man says, go home.
- I am expecting a railroad-- a carload of carrots.
- I will send it to you over.
- Next day, I had to be in the store
- to wait for any report from the railroad station
- that apples or potatoes came.
- And we had to put it away for the population
- for the wintertime, to store it.
- And we had to be right away at the railroad station
- because there were no railroad cars.
- They had to empty it right away and send it back.
- And I was expecting some potatoes.
- But the phone rings.
- And the man says, you have a wagon
- of carrots on the station.
- So I was skeptical about it.
- But--
- Mr. Berger came through.
- Came through.
- So we a big sensation.
- I was selling the carrots without coupons because instead
- of a wagon, it was a double wagon, too much of it.
- And it came later on that the merchants from Prague
- came to me.
- And I sold the merchandise wholesale,
- instead of going to Slovakia.
- So what happened, I went back to Slovakia
- and talked to Mr. Berger.
- And I said, what is the way that you get your merchandise?
- He said, well, I have agents.
- And they go out to the villages.
- And they report what they bought.
- And they get commission for each railroad car they send over.
- So I said, how about if I will be your agent also?
- I will go to different villages.
- I won't be competing with you.
- And I will give you the same commission.
- And you don't have to allocate me
- merchandise, that much less that you have to give somebody.
- He said, it's fine with me.
- He called on the minister in Slovakia to his place.
- And they put on the stamps.
- I am allowed--
- I had 14 more wagons to get out.
- I went out to the first place.
- They had cabbage.
- It was a very dry summer, quite late in August already.
- And the cabbage was just like my fist.
- What do you want for the cabbage,
- for the field, two or three acres?
- He says, well, for 20,000 crowns, you can have it.
- Made a deal, 20,000 crowns.
- But I have the right to keep those cabbages till end
- of October on the field.
- Then I have to take it out.
- Then I went out on the market, on the retail market.
- And I see a guy has beautiful cauliflower again.
- And I said, where do you buy this cauliflower?
- What is the price?
- He says, 3 crowns a head.
- And we had to sell it for 1 crown a head in Prague.
- Where do you buy it?
- Give me the name.
- I took a taxi, go out to the guy.
- Beautiful cauliflower, he wants 3, 4 crowns for a head.
- No way I can buy it.
- Go back to the hotel.
- I started this in the morning, look out the window,
- and it's snowing.
- I took another taxi, go back to the guy.
- I arrive in the place.
- The guy is still asleep.
- I say wake up, Mr--
- I don't remember the name was.
- Look what's going outside.
- And I looked at the cauliflower.
- And the ones were already open, they're all frozen, all black.
- I said, come out of the fields.
- Look what happened to the cauliflower.
- All right, I'm selling, what do you want
- to give me for the whole field?
- I made a pretty good deal.
- I brought home the cauliflower, about 5 carloads.
- And as I said, I had tremendous warehouses,
- ones I didn't even know.
- I never opened it.
- I took the cauliflower and put them down one by one
- on the earth on the ground and let
- it stand there for about two weeks before Christmas.
- Before Christmas, I went up to the city hall
- and I said, well, I have cauliflower,
- but you've never seen something like it.
- No way I can sell it for $1.
- I bought it more expensive.
- He gave me a note for how much I paid for a piece.
- He didn't know-- didn't tell-- the farmer didn't say how many.
- I say, or I bring over a cauliflower.
- I brought over a big head.
- And they measured it with a centimeter.
- I never seen something like it.
- All right, you can sell it for 3 crowns.
- The sensation of it in the city at Christmas time,
- no where could you get a Christmas time.
- Before there were no cool houses those days.
- Can you skip along--
- I had so much of that stuff, that merchants from Prague
- came over, wholesalers, to buy it from me.
- Back to the cabbage, in October, when I went to the cabbage,
- suddenly the rains came over.
- And I couldn't lift that cabbage.
- I just couldn't sell enough of it.
- And I made plenty of money again.
- Things started to change once the communists,
- Czechoslovakia--
- So I'm doing the big business.
- I'm up every morning at 4 o'clock.
- Then we also had the oranges.
- We got oranges from Israel as a present
- because the Czechs helped them with the--
- they were the only ones who sold them ammunition,
- in spite of the resolution, the UN,
- that nobody can help any side.
- Since I've been asking you about the years and when it was,
- could you put this in--
- This was--
- --place for me one year this was?
- 1940-- the beginning of 1948 that we got the first oranges.
- I didn't know what a grapefruit is.
- I took it home.
- And I had to put it in sugar, turned around-- we'd never seen
- a grapefruit in the country.
- So we had grapefruit and oranges.
- And I managed with the city council
- that they gave me a permit to discount
- 300 kilo because I claimed that there
- were some rotten ones in it.
- Of course, everybody had a bag of oranges for nothing.
- This way I could help all the Jewish ladies who are pregnant,
- and they needed nourishment.
- So everybody got a bag of oranges.
- Otherwise, a child till 12 had one orange.
- There were-- the Jews were pretty comfortably settled
- at this point?
- Or were there people leaving for--
- was it possible to leave for Israel or for America?
- Yes, it was possible.
- I also had my number already.
- For three years, I was looking for a very dear cousin of mine
- here in the United States.
- All I knew was the name Piri Rose.
- The reason for it I was between the youngest-- of course,
- I didn't correspond with the lady.
- Nearly every year, she sends an enormous box
- of clothing and shoes.
- Well, we couldn't use it because she sent us
- lilac shoes and pink shoes and all kinds of stuff.
- Things that were Gypsies.
- So we just stored it someplace.
- We didn't really want.
- But the clothing they usually put--
- OK.
- But there's a time lag there, and you
- had made your way to Israel.
- OK.
- So I didn't make my way to Israel yet.
- I was going out every morning early, six o'clock [AUDIO OUT]..
- Comfortable.
- But even though the Czech population
- is very democratic, very tolerant,
- something caught on them, too, because they
- were occupied by the Nazis.
- They were jealous, of course, because we just came home
- from the concentration camp, and everybody has nice outfits.
- For one thing, my sisters were home dressmakers.
- Anything they put on, they always
- said they're beautiful, because they
- knew what color goes with what.
- They were still single.
- You were still living together, the three sisters and yourself?
- We were singles until '47, end of '47.
- Then I had that store, and I had enough money,
- so I could marry off that sister and could help them out.
- That was the youngest sister?
- The youngest.
- The other two?
- The other two got married later.
- The oldest one got also married in Czechoslovakia.
- He was pretty comfortable, too.
- He had a soda factory in Podmokly.
- Where was I?
- Yes.
- So I didn't think of it at all, to leave the country yet.
- I couldn't think of it to leave the country, because I
- didn't have the visas.
- Everybody, most of the people were going to America.
- To Israel, you couldn't go because there were a quota.
- They wouldn't let them in.
- Took them to Cyprus.
- I gave up about looking about it, cousin of mine.
- One day I had a call from the HIAS from Prague.
- I should urgently come to Prague.
- Because she didn't know the names of the younger children,
- she knew the ones she grew up with, my oldest
- brother and my two sisters.
- She asked do you have a sister Mary?
- Do you have a sister Piri, your brother Samuel, and the father?
- I said yes.
- He said there is a cousin of yours from America
- who is looking for you.
- When I send the letter, I got a paper.
- But by that time, the number was 2,400,
- and they had only a quota for 100 a year from Czechoslovakia.
- So there would have been 24 years until I can come out.
- But I didn't have for a minute, though,
- that I will leave Czechoslovakia.
- Because I was always a Zionist.
- I said there will come a time when I will go to Israel.
- But in March, in February 28 in 1948,
- suddenly the Russians encircled the country with tanks
- and gave the government an order.
- You become communist, or we invade you.
- The government was a coalition, the socialists
- with the communists.
- The socialists were also infiltrated by the communists,
- and they just gave up and they were communists.
- Next morning, I'm going to my store.
- Unfortunately, I just made a coat, fur-lined, made to order,
- cost me a fortune to tailor.
- I was always sensitive to the neighborhood.
- When I made my suit--
- here, this is my sister in 1947--
- if I made already after I equip them with everything,
- and I started to buy something for myself,
- I never took it home.
- I never took it home in day time,
- and I never put it on to go out on the street.
- Because I didn't want the jealousy of the neighborhood,
- or the neighbors, or the Gentiles,
- that here I am here three years, hoping I
- have a beautiful suit like this.
- That's why I left that coat in the store
- to take it home after dark.
- I was just going when I went home a big apartment house.
- I was always just quietly going in so
- people who shouldn't see me.
- Unfortunately, I forgot the coat and everything at home.
- The morning, I come to the store.
- There were Russian soldiers, everything
- belongs to the government.
- I said can I take my coat home?
- No way.
- The bank account, the stores, the warehouses, everything
- is blocked.
- I'm out completely, nothing left at all.
- Everything was confiscated?
- Except I had a few dollars, of course, hidden,
- because we have were expecting always something could happen.
- So I was really terrified that the communists came in.
- Because I had a girlfriend from Budapest
- in the city who was going out, and the mother
- was courted by a Czech high ranking officer who was
- in the Czech army in London.
- He was a very ardent communist because he knew communism
- from the books, reading Marx.
- But I met him in the house, and I
- tried to explain what communism is,
- and no way that I can agree with the idea.
- Here, suddenly, the communists are in power.
- By walking home, I met the man on the street.
- I was really terrified that he will give me away,
- that I'm an anti-communist.
- He says I want to talk to you.
- I'm very disappointed.
- Can you imagine?
- We had our first meeting of the Communist Party yesterday
- evening.
- The first resolution was first to take everything
- from the Jews.
- Then I realized the other four or five wholesalers
- were kept in.
- They took my store right away.
- I think to myself, we're just three years out
- of the concentration camp, and we have
- the same thing all over again.
- They get everything from us, again.
- So they tried all kinds of things.
- They were very easy to sell out all those warehouses I had.
- Everybody else said they made one store out of it
- on the railroad station.
- The confusion, they didn't know what it is.
- 4 o'clock in the afternoon, they still
- don't know the merchant came, they told me.
- 4 o'clock, I'm still standing.
- I don't have my merchant.
- When I was in the store, 6 o'clock,
- they opened up, everything ready to sell.
- So one day, that communist [? hiring ?] officer
- comes over to me and says, well, we
- talked yesterday in the meeting that we are in trouble.
- We don't know where to get the merchandise and how to get it
- and how to distribute it.
- The only man who will be able to do it will be Mr. Weinberg.
- You will have a deputy, some people come to you tomorrow
- to offer you, you should take over the store.
- So they were going to set you up in business--
- Right.
- --despite your being a Jew.
- But I kind of was a little bit afraid of it.
- Because something happened before that
- I had some threats from that brother of the police
- commissioner.
- I talked to that man, to that communist,
- and he says I will arrange for you a meeting
- with the party in Prague.
- Somebody from Prague came over to my home.
- They asked me the questions, how they are bothering me.
- He said, well, we're going back to Prague.
- Every time you leave home, you tell your sister
- where you are going and what time you will be back.
- If you are not back in time, they should right away
- notify me in Prague.
- I said what is it for?
- What is it all about?
- He says well, we have a system here,
- the communists, that anybody can catch you on the street,
- pick you up on the street, and you disappear, and nobody ever
- will hear from you.
- So I already see that something is wrong,
- and I don't want responsibility.
- Then I knew if I show them where to go, where to buy,
- they don't need me anyway.
- They kicked me out.
- By that time, the resolution came through
- that there will be an Israel.
- Independence was already, it was an independent state.
- I knew I can go to Israel.
- The Czech government allowed to create a Jewish brigade
- in Czechoslovakia.
- It was all done secretly.
- They evacuated five villages on the border.
- We had complete military training.
- We had people from Israel there.
- We had high-ranking Czech officers there.
- They encouraged us very much.
- One said I was to Israel and I see the beautiful country.
- He said those Jews don't even look like Jews.
- They're all snub-nosed, all blonde,
- and their beautiful kids.
- So we were very much encouraged.
- I managed to get out some stuff from Czechoslovakia
- because I had the money.
- I spent the last penny, because I was
- afraid to take money with me.
- I was always, somehow, they taught me
- to be straight, nothing hide.
- So at the end of the training, they
- told us anybody who has a trade can take with you
- the tools to the trade.
- My brother-in-law wasn't with me.
- He was married by that time.
- He had a baby.
- There was a carpenter, one high-ranking Jewish officer
- who was with us from Russia, who became an officer.
- He was a carpenter.
- He had a carpenter factory in the city.
- He said could you please tell me what
- are the items that I have to buy,
- the saws and all that stuff.
- So I said, all right.
- Here's my copy.
- You can copy what I'm writing.
- Here he writes down a saw, 150,000 crowns,
- bench that much money, comes up $1.5 million.
- I said what are you doing?
- They told you that you can take tools.
- They didn't tell you that you can take a factory with you.
- Don't bother me with this.
- I am a high-rank officer, and I know what I'm doing.
- Luckily, I didn't listen to him.
- I wrote down all the same items, but I wrote $5,000 and $3,000,
- all the whole merchandise, and my clothing, whatever
- else I have, possession, 20,000 crowns.
- Excuse me.
- About four days later, all that papers we made out came back.
- Called my name, Weinberg approved.
- In a few minutes, they call Klein, officer, disapproved.
- He couldn't take out anything.
- So my brother-in-law by that time was a carpenter.
- He build a wooden house, windows, doors on it.
- He made around the house two iron rods to hold it together.
- They called from the duty people came down.
- I had to pay a million crowns to let it through.
- Because they said what kind of-- this is not tools,
- this is a factory.
- I was running around because the time
- came they told us we have to leave, the end of December.
- I had only two weeks' time to get them
- paid, any price they wanted.
- One tool wasn't even painted yet in the factory.
- It happened so that they let it through.
- About a year later, it arrived in Israel.
- When I arrived in Israel, they took us
- straight to the military camp, to stay there,
- out in the front.
- My brother-in-law was already in Israel at that time.
- He had already a job.
- But he couldn't get a partner.
- Because all these carpenters didn't have space enough
- to put in all these tools, all these equipment.
- Then there was an article in the paper, a Hebrew paper,
- that a village in the south--
- at that time, it was still the desert, Kfar [PLACE NAME]..
- It was mostly an American-established, American
- immigrants, they need all kinds of tradesmen, also a carpenter.
- They give them two dunam of land,
- which is half an acre of land.
- They can build themselves a place to work and for a house.
- They build them a house of two rooms.
- Of course, I told him to accept it and go down.
- It's a village.
- It doesn't matter.
- It didn't take two or three years
- that he was working with 50 people
- and built, always enlarge the place.
- They build about three miles away a city, Kiryat Malakhi.
- At that time, he didn't build any more furnishings,
- but he put in all the windows and the doors
- for the government.
- This was between the years 1949 and 1952?
- 1953, yes.
- I arrived in Israel after the army.
- I served near the Jordan border and also in Ashkelon I
- was stationed.
- That was the Negev, the headquarters
- for the army, the Negev.
- I was the first one to know that Eilat was captured.
- It was a surprise.
- They went down by Jeeps, and they put down
- wirings on the sand.
- That's why the Jeeps could get down and surprise.
- I was stationed at the Morse.
- I had to interpret the Morse signals
- because I was one of the few in the company who
- knew a little bit Hebrew, or Hebrew reading,
- writing from the yeshiva.
- So I ran to the commander, Eilat is ours.
- After a year, my sister, as I said, moved to Kfar Warburg.
- They lived first in an Arab-abandoned house
- in Tira near Haifa.
- So I stayed with my sister for two or three weeks,
- and I just couldn't get a job.
- I finally decide, well, I came to Israel with the idea
- to build roads or houses.
- Doesn't seem to work out.
- I went to the fruit market.
- The first guy came in, I said do you have a job?
- I'm retired.
- I just came home from the army.
- Man says, well, I need a manager in the warehouse.
- Fine.
- I was there for three years.
- I had a very good job there.
- What brought you out of Israel?
- How did you get to America?
- OK.
- Meanwhile, my sister married in Haifa
- to a Viennese man, young man, very happily married.
- They had a child.
- Right after the childbirth, she got very sick.
- They couldn't diagnose what the problem is.
- Finally, they had to take her to the hospital.
- She had consecutively nine operations.
- The husband was working as a Merchant
- Marine, the Israeli ships.
- He was away for months and months.
- So you were raising the child?
- So I took the little child.
- I took him to a children's home.
- After work, 5 o'clock afternoon, I had to travel about a half
- an hour to the home, bought him some toys,
- and spent some time with the child.
- But I always had difficulty to leave him
- because he was carrying on.
- No matter how I wanted to distract him,
- to give him a toy or something, he was always looking sideways
- if I'm still there.
- Then finally I said it's no good.
- He wasn't taken very good care of there.
- It wasn't the love the child needed.
- I found a family in Haifa who took him in.
- I paid the family monthly.
- But it came so bad that I would bring
- the child to the hospital, he wouldn't
- want to go to the mother.
- The mother cried.
- My own child doesn't want to see me.
- The child didn't know at all the mother.
- She was constantly in and out of the hospital.
- Once I came to see her after work.
- I take leave about an hour early so I could go in yet
- before 5 o'clock.
- She didn't respond.
- She didn't know that I'm there.
- I see a lady next in bed to her, and she was--
- so after she stopped, I said, are you sick?
- Can I give you something?
- She says no, no, I'm praying for that lady next bed
- because she's an angel.
- After every operation she had, a day later she got up
- and walking around the hospital, anybody needs water or help.
- So you took her to this country for treatment?
- That afternoon, finally, she woke up.
- She says, I will be fine, Harry.
- Go home.
- But I felt something is wrong.
- I went down in the garden, hid behind a bush.
- Her bed was next to the window.
- So I was reading the paper and always looking up,
- what's happening.
- Suddenly I see there are six or seven doctors around the bed.
- So I run up.
- I said to doctor, was it very bad?
- He says the only thing that can help her maybe
- you can take her to America.
- I couldn't take her to America, because I
- didn't have the money.
- You needed dollars.
- I had only Israeli pounds those days.
- They didn't have exchange yet.
- They said we can't do it.
- We can't give you dollars.
- I went home to Tira.
- I lived then in that apartment where my sister
- vacated in that village.
- I went home to that village.
- I undressed.
- It was about 9 o'clock in the evening.
- I said I can't stand it.
- I have to go back to see her.
- I arrived in the place and they wouldn't let me in.
- I was waiting around.
- An ambulance came, and they had to open the gates,
- and I sneaked in.
- I arrived at the second floor.
- The light was on in the floor, but not in the rooms.
- I was standing there, afraid to go in,
- if she's alive yet or not.
- Then I hear my name.
- She calls me.
- The first thing I come in, and she says, oh,
- look at that poor man walking in the balcony.
- He suffered so much.
- And just to show you what a soul she was,
- she said I was very unhappy that I sent you home
- because I knew how badly you would feel about it,
- that I'll die and you weren't here with me.
- So I had to do something quick to get some money together
- over here.
- A little while before that, I found out that I have an uncle.
- That cousin of mine, [PERSONAL NAME],,
- wrote me that I have an uncle here in New York.
- I write out a letter and I say my sister is mortally sick.
- Please send me the money.
- I'm coming to America and I will pay you
- back every penny for the trip.
- About a month later, I'm getting a letter with $20 in it
- and not a word, just the address they send it, not a word in it
- for who and what.
- So I managed to get a permission to Canada.
- I was lucky enough to get a merchant ship to go to England.
- On that ship was Ben-Gurion's daughter, Mrs. Golda Meir.
- It was really a beautiful experience
- because we had only 11 people with the captain on that ship.
- We got to know each other pretty good.
- We were about two weeks on the trip.
- She was very plain and very lovely.
- She berated me.
- Why do you leave.
- Israel?
- I said, well, I want to save my sister's life.
- There's no way.
- I wanted some money from the government.
- I couldn't get it.
- So on the ship was also a couple from London.
- Where are you going, and where are you from?
- So I told them my story.
- They invited me to their own home.
- I kept insisting, how can I?
- I don't know you.
- How can I accept this?
- Well, they said, I'll take you to the shelter.
- If you want to live in the shelter, then OK.
- If not, you can change your mind.
- So finally, I agreed I go to them.
- They took me to the London consulate--
- to the Canadian consulate.
- The man who gave me the permit to go to Toronto
- had to write me what kind of relations I am.
- Because that was the only way I could get in there.
- But the man who arranged it apparently
- didn't send him the money.
- I wrote him a letter and he wouldn't tell me what he said,
- what kind of relations I am.
- Waiting that waiting room, the man who interviewed the people
- opens the door.
- Is there anybody who talks Yiddish?
- I said yes.
- Here I am.
- He said this man claims that he can write and read in Yiddish.
- If you are illiterate, they won't let you in.
- So I said I will test him.
- So I tell him a sentence, write it down.
- So I said something in Yiddish, and the poor man
- wrote down something, no way you can read it.
- He didn't know what he's writing.
- So I looked at it.
- I said fine.
- That's fine.
- That's what he wrote, what I said.
- And he was let through.
- So finally, I came next on order.
- When are you born, all this stuff.
- Who is the man who is taking to England?
- Well, I didn't know.
- I had no idea.
- I said my cousin.
- He had a note to cover, that I shouldn't see the page.
- He looks at me, and looks down, and looks at me, and says, OK.
- So I was in Toronto for only six months
- when finally, they couldn't let out,
- they wouldn't let out anybody from Czechoslovakia.
- So the numbers came quicker, and I
- got my permit to come to America six months later.
- You were taking your sister with you?
- No, no, no.
- I had to make money to bring her over.
- So in Canada, I rented a room for $5
- and walking around to get a job, no jobs.
- Finally, I remembered I know about eggs, how to candle eggs.
- I walk around from one place to the other,
- do you need any wholesalers, Jewish wholesalers?
- No, they all do it themselves.
- So finally, one guy says, I have a friend who is working,
- a Jewish man, he is working at the Dominion stores in Toronto.
- He gave me his address.
- He says, go over there and ask him if they need any help.
- I went over, and I--
- trusting man-- knock on the door.
- The man comes out in winter time.
- It's freezing.
- He didn't invite me in.
- He comes out, what do you want?
- I said, well, somebody told me that you are working there.
- Is there any jobs?
- He said yes, we need jobs.
- Do you know the job?
- I said, yes.
- When did you work last?
- I said about 20 years.
- He says make sure you tell them that you
- didn't work for 20 years.
- I accepted the advice.
- [INAUDIBLE] side.
- Oh, OK.
- I went for the interview, and the man says,
- the manager, well, how long didn't you work in that job?
- Do you know the job?
- I said I know it very well, but the last time I did it,
- it was about 20 years.
- The guy goes up and says, well, I'm very sorry.
- But we need it very urgently.
- We can't afford to teach you again.
- And I don't have a job.
- Then I realized that the man did it on purpose
- because he was the only Jew in that place
- and he thought maybe I'll bring shame on the Jewish people.
- We're going to have to skip over some of this information,
- although it's certainly very interesting.
- But you were in Canada then for six months
- before you came to the United States?
- After six months, I sent the money to my sister.
- I worked overnight, nights, and as much overtime I could.
- I sent her the money.
- She was here three days before I arrived
- and I was able to come to this country.
- I came to New York by train.
- My cousin was waiting for me with my uncle.
- She said this is your uncle.
- But I'm very sorry.
- I always wrote you that you live with us,
- but my two daughters came home from the college
- and I don't have enough space.
- Very bad experience, right, very bad impression,
- the acceptance--
- You weren't welcomed?
- The welcome.
- One thing I said, can you tell me
- who sent me the $20 when I asked for the travel expenses.
- Oh, Uncle Sydney from Florida was here.
- He gave $10 and I gave $10.
- So I said OK.
- I have $20 with me.
- You have your $10, and I will give back the $10
- because I didn't ask for charity.
- I asked for the trip to be paid.
- She said what do you talk about? $10
- is a lot of money in this country.
- And they were very well off.
- The other one was a millionaire.
- So my uncle asked me what do you want to do in this country.
- I said, well, I want to go into business, because my mind was
- work in business.
- What do you talk about?
- You can go into business.
- Here is a different kind of business.
- You have to earn your own money, go to the factories,
- earn your money, learn the language.
- Then you can open your own store.
- Of course, he was afraid that I will ask money from him.
- You proved them all wrong there.
- I went to see my friends who were here with me
- in the concentration camp.
- The first thing, do you need money?
- You can have money to help you out, to start something.
- I said what are you doing?
- I'm working in a factory.
- I said you are the same businessman I was.
- Why do you work in a factory?
- Well, you know, I'm married.
- I have a child. and this is sure, so I'm afraid.
- So finally, I loaned $15,500.
- I bought a little store downtown.
- Your sister in the meantime sought treatment?
- The sister in the meantime was taken to the Beth Israel
- Hospital.
- When I first came to see him, the doctor
- took me aside and says, I'm very sorry to tell you.
- It's too late.
- If you want your sister to see her family again,
- send her back to Israel.
- I had a heartbreaking time.
- Because she was still walking around, very good-looking.
- I took her once to a dance here.
- Why do you want me to go back?
- And I couldn't explain to her why.
- She said you don't want me here.
- You want me to go back.
- So finally, she died a half year later.
- I met the doctor again.
- I told him that she lived another half a year.
- He said we didn't realize that she had such a strong heart.
- We would have tried to operate on her
- if we would have known that.
- I was six months in that store.
- It turned out very badly.
- I made a good business.
- I found out that this country is no
- different from any other countries.
- As long as you give peoples money's worth,
- you tell them good morning and thank you
- and a smile on your face, you do business.
- Throughout all this time you remained single?
- Yes.
- I remained single because I had a girlfriend,
- and she was sent to Auschwitz, and she was killed, too.
- Anyway, after six months, the summer came
- and there was no air conditioning.
- There was no windows in the store, no ventilation.
- I was just impossible in there.
- Merchandise suffered because it was all mostly fresh butter
- and eggs.
- Then a man came along one evening
- and he insisted I should sell the store because he heard
- the store is doing very well.
- I wasn't going out any place.
- I even watched how much breakfast I had,
- how much milk I put in my coffee.
- Because I wanted to pay off the $1,500 to my friends.
- By the time that man came to buy the store, I was clear.
- He says, well, what would you like to have?
- I insisted I don't want it.
- I was hesitating.
- He said, well, if you would like to sell the store, how
- much would you want?
- So I said to myself, maybe I say $2,000 and he gives me $1,000,
- I'll take it.
- I said, well, maybe for $2,000 I'll give it away.
- He reached in his pocket and counted out $2,000.
- Then, one week later, I see an ad
- in a Hungarian paper, a store for sale in Astoria,
- which was a better neighborhood than I was in.
- I went over, looked around, no merchandise in the store.
- I went to the back room.
- They had there a place where to put up, down, and stuff.
- He had a door and a window in the back room.
- I said that's what I needed, first thing.
- All right.
- I agreed to buy this for $1,200.
- I had a few dollars left for going for the merchandise.
- I had a customer come in, and I recognized that she
- is Czech from her accent.
- We had quite a bit in common.
- About three or four weeks later, I went to the temple
- on Rosh Hashanah, coming out of the temple
- and she's right beside me.
- She said are you Jewish?
- I said yes.
- But are you Jewish?
- What are you doing here?
- So she said, well, I didn't know that you are Jewish.
- I didn't want to tell you how come you bought that store.
- There were 13 or 14 owners in the last few months
- and nobody can make a living.
- You'll lose all your money.
- So that didn't bother me too much
- because this was my own money.
- If I lose it, that's it.
- I lose my own money.
- But in no time, I had people standing
- in line for my merchandise.
- In fact, I started to sell because it was mostly
- Hungarian people, Jewish people neighborhood.
- I found a very fine Hungarian bakery,
- and I sold a tremendous amount of strudels.
- In other words, it was like a grocery.
- It was a grocery, but I started to sell these bakery items.
- I think we have to wrap up very, very shortly.
- After that, after about five years, I sold that store.
- I did very good.
- I bought a store in Glendale.
- In Glendale, the people are very anti-Semitic.
- I had many problems with them because they all
- came out something against the Jewish people, against Israel,
- and I had to fight with them.
- But in time, turned out to be all right.
- They came to accept me and take advice from me
- and talking about their own religion, about my religion.
- Except that one lady was there who
- will try to convert me all the time
- and when I found out what really her religion is and I talked
- to her about her religion, she kept away
- and she left me alone because I pointed out
- some items that just doesn't agree, are contradictory.
- You maintained that store until last year?
- I retired last year in '83, in March 15.
- I bought a condominium in Elmhurst.
- Now I'm traveling mostly, but when I'm home,
- I'm doing my gardening in Philadelphia.
- Can you tell me what contact do you have with other survivors?
- You were part of a unit that traveled together
- for many years?
- Most of them are dead.
- They died.
- They are coming an age.
- Last year, the first time, I was able to attend the Holocaust
- survivors in Washington.
- There were 20,000 people there.
- I met many friends.
- You did not go to Jerusalem for the Holocaust?
- No, I didn't go there because I still
- had the store at that time.
- I gave all my names, all my sisters' names
- in the computers.
- Of course, nothing came out.
- Then last year I was again in Washington for the museum,
- because they have a new museum for the cornerstone.
- I'm doing best to live my life.
- Now I have to tell one more story about my brother.
- When I came home to my city after the war, a friend of mine
- called me up and said I have to tell you something.
- Come over to my home.
- Went over, he was very reluctant to talk about it.
- So finally, I get it out of him that he was with my brother,
- captured by the Russian army.
- They were in a concentration camp.
- One night the Russian army poured gasoline around the camp
- and put the camp on fire.
- There were thousands of people, inmates, there.
- He says I was crawling with your brother
- through the fire to try to get away.
- I got away, but your brother was shot there
- on the [INAUDIBLE], spot.
- All these years I didn't talk about it to anybody.
- I said to myself, well, maybe it just
- couldn't happen that something like this
- will happen in Russia.
- Finally, I had a chance this spring
- to attend a gathering of the people from my city.
- They have a get together every year.
- This is the first time you attended?
- The first time I got inc contact with these people.
- One of the families invited me, why don't you come and see us.
- They live in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
- I was there two weeks ago on a Sunday.
- They invited their brother who lives
- on the east side in New York.
- They came over, the wife and children.
- We talk about our times.
- He says any of you brothers survived.
- I say I don't know about my older brother.
- I just heard from my sisters that he was also
- in the labor camp.
- He got leave from the camp to come and say goodbye
- to his family because they were taken to Auschwitz.
- They insisted he should stay.
- But he said no, I'm going where my family goes.
- He went with them, and he didn't come back.
- I said my other brother, Philip, died in Russia.
- He says, I know.
- We marched by that camp in [NON-ENGLISH]..
- There were people who were in that camp.
- They told me that he was burned at that camp
- and he tried to get away.
- So you had the original story confirmed.
- So I have confirmed the original story.
- Then he said I was with 3,000 people who
- were picked up on the streets after the war
- from the concentration camp.
- We were taken to Russia into the camp.
- After six months, from the 3,000, only 600 survived.
- All the other ones died from starvation.
- Mr. Weinberg, you've never married?
- No.
- Do you maintain contact with your family in Israel?
- I go mostly nearly every year to Israel.
- I have to show that was my sister who died after the war
- and after these operations.
- OK.
- Are there any dates or holidays that evoke certain memories
- for you?
- The only holidays that I had a chance to say Kaddish,
- because we didn't know when my family dies,
- on Shavuot, I go to the temple and say Kaddish.
- Then I go, of course, on the other holidays.
- But we are very close.
- With my sister, they come over here to see me.
- I intended to go over to Israel after I retired,
- and somehow it worked out that situation isn't settled yet
- there.
- So I'm here for a while yet.
- But you plan maybe someday to go to Israel?
- Yes.
- OK.
- I want to thank you very much for participating.
- It's a rather remarkable story.
- I'm very sorry.
- There are many other things that I wanted to talk about,
- the Jewish population in Europe and other thing what happened.
- But I know that time is limited for it, can't tell everything.
- Maybe we can spend some time outside.
- OK.
- But they'll be using this room.
- Thank you very much.
- OK.
- Oh.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Harry Weinberg
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
2 videocassettes (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives.
- Personal Name
- Weinberg, Harry, 1916-
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a copy of the interview from Harry Weinberg in 1995.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:11:47
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn512174
Additional Resources
Transcripts (2)
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