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Oral history interview with Wolf Finkelman

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1995.A.1195 | RG Number: RG-50.170.0001

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    Oral history interview with Wolf Finkelman
    Transcript
    When you're ready.
    Begin rolling.
    So when we hear the knock on the door,
    we'll know that the tape is rolling.
    They're rolling.
    OK.
    OK.
    Begin.
    My name is Lidya Osadchey, and I'm here
    at Rice Media Center at Rice University
    to take a Holocaust testimony from the Holocaust survivor Wolf
    Finkelman.
    It's December 3, 1990.
    My name is Helen Cohen, and I'm here as a second interviewer.
    Again, I'm Wolf Finkelman.
    I'm we would call maybe the victim.
    Anyway, I'm glad to be here, sitting in front
    of two beautiful young ladies.
    Thank you.
    This is tape one.
    OK.
    I was born in a small town in Poland
    near which is Sawin, which is a little typical Jewish community,
    what they call a shtetl.
    And we were near Chelm, which is in the Lublin Gubernia.
    I was one of seven children.
    I don't remember much about my young age,
    because when I was three or four years old,
    my family moved to a town Glogów, which is near Rzeszów,
    which is in the Lwów Gubernia.
    From then on, I do remember certain things,
    but I don't remember all.
    Of course, I don't remember a lot of the things.
    We lived there.
    And one time I remember going back to the town
    that I was born in, and I remember
    meeting a lot of my relatives.
    And the relatives of the town, the whole entire town
    practically was composed of most of them, my relatives,
    because the town was so intermarried.
    First of all, my father, there were 13 children
    on my father's side.
    And my mother, I don't even know.
    But I think there were about seven children
    from my mother's side.
    And a lot of those people within that town or even nearby towns,
    they're all married to each other.
    So everybody was more or less related.
    So I remember spending some time with them and we went out.
    We slept one night in a garden where they had fruit,
    and we went.
    And there was a big storm at night.
    And I remember hiding in a garden and so forth.
    My uncle had a mikvah, what is I mean a Jewish mikvah.
    And I remember one time when he was hiding some fruit in it.
    And I remember going into the place through a window
    and to steal some of the fruit, and I was caught.
    I don't remember exactly the outcome,
    but I was still, more or less at that time,
    I was about seven or eight years old, and so forth.
    And I remember spending some time in the haystacks
    and so forth.
    I had a very nice, interesting time while visiting them.
    We were living in Glogów, which was
    a little town similar to Sawin, except it was
    a little bit bigger than Sawin.
    Also a typical shtetl, there was a lot
    of Jewish people intermingled with each other.
    Except I didn't have any more relatives on my side.
    But we had a lot of friends and so forth
    in this little town, which was in Glogów.
    We lived there.
    And I remember going to school.
    I remember going to cheder.
    I also had to report, and the rabbi was always tough.
    And I had to learn.
    And I had to really obey.
    And my parents were very strict with us and so forth.
    My parents were actually, I would
    say, what we would consider here Orthodox.
    But everybody in Poland was more or less Orthodox.
    There was no such thing as reform.
    If you were reform, you were actually
    like an outcast, or an outlaw, or something like that.
    So I even had to wear one of those little hats.
    And I had to wear payes and so forth like that.
    But every once in a while, we as boys,
    we would cheat a little bit, and we
    would do things that the parents were not
    supposed to know or find out.
    And so we would go, we have to go to school,
    of course, every Friday night.
    And Saturday, there was no such thing.
    We had to do all these things.
    And on Friday night, we went to services.
    I remember going up to services, especially
    during the high holidays, because my father was a kohen.
    I had to duchen.
    So I learned to duchen.
    He was taking me in with a tallit over my head
    and so forth.
    And so I remember having to duchen.
    And I was told the stories that we looked up while-- if you're
    not duchening, and if you looked up,
    and somebody with not supposed to look at you.
    If you looked up, they get blind, and so forth like this.
    And of course, as a kohen you had to either go duchen
    or you had to exit the building.
    You couldn't stay.
    Could you explain the term duchen?
    Duchen means to say--
    to bless the people in the synagogue.
    The kohens were always given that extra--
    what they call it, an extra--
    Honor.
    Honor.
    And when you finished with the duchening,
    you would always go down and people
    would be so ever so thankful to you and so forth like that.
    The Levis had to wash our hands.
    And we of course, they had to take off our shoes,
    and so forth.
    This was I as a child yet.
    Because I was at that time, I was about 9 or 10 years old.
    But these are some of the things that I would still remember.
    We had actually two shuls.
    One was a shul, and the other one
    were next to each other practically.
    And I don't know the real difference between the two
    of them.
    I honestly still at the present time
    I've not been able to decide what
    was the difference between the two,
    except certain people belonged here,
    and certain people belonged here.
    And I don't know why this was the case.
    But that's be it as it may.
    And anyway, we went over there.
    And of course, on Shabbos, you couldn't carry nothing with you.
    And there was all this relative to being religious.
    And we were going to synagogue on Yom Kippur, and Rosh
    Hashanah, and everything like that.
    And of course, we were like an average family.
    I had three brothers and three sisters.
    My father was a shoemaker.
    He had employed also some non-Jews as helpers.
    And during the war, when the war broke out,
    we expected to have those people that we had employed,
    they would help us.
    Some of them did.
    And some of them didn't.
    And I may go a little bit ahead of myself, but that's fine.
    Anyway, so I was coming up to the war,
    when the war was going to break out.
    Everybody was standing and listening to the radio.
    And then we heard the announcement.
    The war broke out in our little town.
    They were putting up defenses.
    The Polish army was putting up defenses.
    They started to dig tunnels for the lines, communications,
    underground.
    And I came to find out later on all of it was sabotaged
    because the Germans had entered Poland,
    and a lot of internal work.
    And they were sabotaging the lines,
    so it didn't mean anything.
    But anyway, they put up their defenses,
    and once the war was declared, the whole family, left
    the little town and we went out of town
    maybe about 10 miles into the forest
    and into where there were the farms and so forth.
    And we were hiding there.
    Soon the Germans walked in, came into the town
    within like within one day or two days, right after the war
    started, and we were already with the Germans.
    And my brother, my oldest brother
    took off right before that.
    And he left us because he was trying
    to advance farther away, because he was in an age group
    where it was subject to go to the army,
    or they may be drafted, and so forth like that.
    So I don't know why, but he actually
    left with some of his friends.
    By the way, my brother also was active in some sort
    of organizations where there was an Israeli organization
    or a Palestinian at that time.
    I really don't know.
    But my brother and my older sister
    were active in those organizations.
    And they had sometimes meetings in my house.
    I had sometimes stuff like that.
    And as soon as the Germans came in, we went back to the house.
    And immediately, practically, they
    had issued proclamations what we could do, what we couldn't do,
    what we should do.
    They demanded so many people to come to work for them.
    But it was for building highways, or tearing down
    forests, or whatever it was.
    And they made themselves known.
    And there was not any reluctance on their part
    to take out the gun, shoot anybody or beat up anybody.
    And they demanded from the city, through the city government,
    the various proclamations what they wanted from us.
    Every day, they issued practically new proclamations.
    So when they demanded a certain number of people to go
    do that, the community had to supply them.
    And through them, they made themselves known.
    And if the community didn't do something,
    they would not necessarily come in to the community,
    but they would demand, and demand through the council.
    And if they didn't perform, they would shoot them,
    or would kill them, or they would maim them or whatever.
    They would be done.
    So therefore, they had that entrance through them
    in making themselves, their demands known.
    They demanded for example, to supply for this morning
    so many and so many workers.
    Well, when you talk about community,
    are you talking about demands on the Jews,
    or just all community of Glogów?
    The demand was made mostly on the Jews.
    Glogów, as far as we were concerned, for example,
    we did not know--
    I didn't exactly know whether they were
    doing any else to the non-Jews.
    The only thing I knew that the non-Jews
    were helping the Germans.
    For example, at one time I went out with my mother
    and I think my mother and my older sister
    to a farm to bring in some food.
    And the Poles would attack us and would
    beat us up, and something like that, because they
    were watching for us.
    They were actually helping the Germans doing that.
    And we didn't have seen that, of course,
    even in school when I was still going to school, that
    was nothing for the Poles to attack us or calling us,
    Jew or Jew or something like that.
    And they would attack us, the individuals.
    So we always knew that we didn't have any friends with the Poles.
    And we were in Glogów.
    And they would actually, they would pick more
    on the religious Jews.
    They would take the guys from the street
    and they would cut off their beards
    or would hit them or maim.
    And they would sometimes, they take like three or four people
    or 10 people out about five miles from the town
    was a big forest.
    And they would take him out and shoot them there.
    And we came to find out the next day
    that that's what that they took him over there to shoot him.
    And at night, they would invade our houses, and beat us up,
    and all that.
    Being a youngster at the time, I would sometimes hide.
    And as soon as they would knock at the door,
    my parents would try to protect the younger ones.
    And they would throw us into the cellar
    that they wouldn't be able to find.
    And of course, they didn't make such a thorough search
    of the house because these were just Germans on the loose.
    And they would beat up on our parents,
    they would beat up on my sisters, my older
    sister, and my older brother, and so forth.
    In the house, every so often, I would sometimes
    hide on the top on the roof.
    And then I would pull up the ladder.
    And the ladder would not be able--
    so there would be no way to get to the roof
    without hidden the ladder.
    And there would be no ladder there,
    so they wouldn't be able to see you.
    And a lot of times I would go out.
    And I would even sit on the top of tall trees,
    and watch what was going on in town.
    And the trees would protect me.
    And as you can see from my conversation
    here, that I was not a timid young fella.
    I was really a doer.
    I was trying to do everything, even though I
    was just about 10 years old.
    But nevertheless, I was doing a lot of different things.
    And I would even go out, and I would ride a bicycle
    and try to smuggle in food to us,
    bring in different stuff for the family, and so forth.
    I would learn how to ride a bicycle
    and cover up my stuff that I was carrying,
    so that I wouldn't be seen that I carried some things with me,
    and so forth.
    But things were getting progressively worse.
    And the Germans came in and they,
    especially during of course the holidays,
    no one would dare to assemble already in the synagogues.
    And we would assemble in some private houses.
    They came in.
    They burned up the synagogue.
    They burned up the Torahs, and everything like that.
    And we had constantly tried to help.
    And so we would, one day, and so we
    take some of the good looking young Jewish girls,
    and we send them as delegation to the Germans to talk to them.
    Because we knew if we send anybody else,
    they wouldn't even entertain them.
    So we would try to get the best foot forward and trying
    to compromise something.
    What is it that you want?
    What is it that we want?
    What can we do together?
    But anyway, all of this really didn't help much the case.
    Subsequently, we were told, as a matter of fact,
    sometimes I would go to work as a substitute,
    because if my father was called to go
    to work, in a part of that quota situation,
    and since my father had to stay to make a living,
    I would then substitute and go out to work in the highways
    or something like that.
    And it was nothing for the Germans to come by and whip us
    or to hit us during the work hours, or do anything
    that they wouldn't mind even taking out a gun
    and shooting anybody, just for nothing.
    But subsequently, we were asked, we
    were told that we had to move.
    The whole city had to move to Jets.
    When was it?
    Rzeszów, That was in 1940 41.
    Rzeszów was a big city with a big Jewish population
    and we had to move to Rzeszów.
    And in Rzeszów, we had to move in to a ghetto.
    And we were living in the ghetto in Rzeszów.
    Eventually, they had what they call everybody
    had to come up to a plac.
    And remember, if you live in Rzeszów,
    we didn't have much food to eat.
    We didn't have much to cook with.
    So we even cut down some of the rafters from the ceiling.
    So the ceiling would almost hang on practically nothing
    because we needed the wood so we can cook,
    so we can heat ourselves in the ghetto.
    Well, before you tell us more about the ghetto life,
    can we go back just to clear something?
    You lived under German occupation for two years
    in Glogów from 1939 to 1942--
    '41.
    '41.
    That was the end of '41, right.
    Did you hear anything about your brother?
    At some time in that particular period, my brother came back.
    We didn't have no communications.
    But during that period, he came back and he rejoined us.
    I don't remember exactly all the circumstances, exactly
    even where he was, because I don't remember exactly
    hearing it, where he was, or how he came back,
    or why he came back.
    But he came back like three or four months right after he left.
    And he evidently went to visit, because he
    was going up more towards Russia, towards the East.
    And so he went to visit more some of my relatives,
    because I remember vaguely something about being referred
    to the fact that he came back.
    So when we moved actually to Rzeszów, already when we moved,
    we didn't move-- and I don't really
    remember exactly how the transportation that we
    took from Glogów to Rzeszów.
    I really have been trying to remember that.
    How did we ever get to Rzeszów and what mode of transportation?
    Because it was like 12 kilometers.
    I remember though going to Rzeszów many times on a bicycle,
    bringing in food from there, or going out
    communicating all by myself.
    Because we had some friends in Rzeszów.
    So when we came there to Rzeszów, of course,
    during the war even, a lot of people were trying to escape.
    And I remember them passing through the town,
    seeking directions or wanting to know where they could go.
    Sometimes they would spend the night in the town,
    because everybody was always moving someplace, moving where.
    They didn't know where they were moving.
    They were trying to go here.
    They were trying to go there.
    But no one really had a definite plan
    as to where they were going, why they were going,
    where they were escaping to.
    But that was a common thing for people,
    for strangers to show up in town, moving someplace.
    They didn't know where they were going.
    Well, you said that you went to Rzeszów many times
    during your German occupation for food.
    Did you know that the ghetto was there?
    No, it wasn't the ghetto then.
    There was no ghetto then at that time,
    because the ghetto was just organized
    as they were moving us into it.
    So they moved everybody, the Rzeszów people
    and the small communities into that ghetto.
    The ghetto was at that time a large size part of Rzeszów.
    And it was built around with--
    it was taken all they did is just
    blocked off some of the streets at the time
    with some wooden fences.
    And they had the ghetto was actually
    controlled by the Jewish policemen,
    supervised by the German Gestapo, or the German police.
    And we were in that ghetto for only a short time when
    they called us in to the plac.
    The plac was an assembly place where they
    would take X number of people.
    And resend them out.
    Umschlagplatz.
    OK, right.
    And then we send them out.
    And we didn't know where they were sending.
    They told us this was the reshuffling
    because this is to occupy this, and it
    was because they were not long.
    Because we had such little room for us,
    we lived like the whole family in one room.
    We were seven, nine people in one room.
    And we had to practically live off nothing.
    And I remember food was very short supply.
    And clothing was short supply, because we couldn't bring
    all the stuff that we had.
    We had to leave a lot of it in the town that we were living in.
    So actually, when they assembled us,
    they told us they're going to resettle us.
    We thought that could be possibly true,
    because after all, we were in a small community.
    They were going to send us where they need more labor for us
    and so forth like that.
    Anyway, we ended up escaping away,
    or not being part of that reshuffling of the people.
    We ended up still being in the ghetto.
    They shortened up the ghetto somewhat.
    And they took the people that were
    left to go into the parts that were left unattended.
    And we had to work, there and pick up
    all the stuff that was left from the other Jewish people,
    and pack it up, and send it out on trains and on wagons,
    and on trucks, so forth like that.
    Were you assigned a place to live
    or did you find your own apartment?
    We were assigned a place to live.
    In my case, my whole family was not.
    My case was my older brother, who was as we progressed,
    my older brother was always a doer.
    He became very important in the community in the form
    that he was working for the community or for the Germans,
    and going in and out of the ghetto, and bringing in the food
    legally.
    And his position was that he was going out of the ghetto,
    bringing in the food and supplies, everything so forth
    like this.
    And thus, he had an important position in the ghetto.
    He was able to grab us and shuffle us
    into a place which was not an official residence,
    but we were living right under the cellar
    where the Germans had their headquarters was on top of us.
    So we were more or less when they went out
    to look for people or anything like that,
    they would never think of the fact
    that right in their own building was a family living there.
    So we were like a little bit hidden away from attack.
    See, when I meet people and they usually ask me, he says,
    how did I survive?
    It's amazing the many different things that happened to us,
    and many little small things and big things that
    happened during the time, and how it happened,
    and where it happened, and when it happened,
    little things like living in that little area that did help.
    But anyway, so we were on in the ghetto at that stage.
    And excuse me, do you remember anything about your brothers
    and sisters in that period?
    Very little.
    I mean, very, very little.
    I remember my sister getting sick in Glogów.
    She had-- catching some sort of a very serious disease.
    But she recovered.
    And I don't remember much about my brothers
    and my sisters and my whole family, as a matter of fact,
    except little things, like my father
    being strict and my mother always protecting me,
    and the children, just like a typical Jewish family,
    European family.
    But we were very close.
    And we were always very-- the whole family was a close family.
    In fact, as in Europe, the families
    are much closer, in especially their own families.
    But I don't remember a lot of the details, of what I remember
    going out on Saturday afternoon with my older sister,
    and to the forests, but not really that deep.
    I don't ever remember, for example,
    that they would help me with my schoolwork
    or I would help them or anything.
    I would help my older brothers.
    I don't remember this type of thing.
    I remember more the important, not important in a way,
    but the things that I did during the war, or throughout war
    just to survive, and helping getting in and out
    of the ghettos and so forth.
    So we were in the ghetto then.
    And I would get out of the ghetto, jump over the fence,
    and go out to the outside, try to bring in some food.
    We would normally try to barter away for food, or for supplies,
    or something like that.
    We barter with whatever we had, whether we
    had an extra coat, or an extra piece of jewelry or something
    like that.
    Was the ghetto guarded?
    The ghetto was guarded by police, by the Jewish police,
    but the fences were not.
    I mean, there was a high wooden fence.
    And if you were ever caught outside of it,
    you were automatically like dead.
    There was no question to that.
    So if the Gestapo or somebody turned you in,
    and it was very easy because the Poles were really taking some
    of the Jews and turned them in.
    So we were actually in this type of a position.
    But we could climb over the fence.
    The ghetto was always open except during the time
    when the Germans came in for an assembly.
    At that time, we knew immediately,
    as soon as they surrounded the ghetto,
    we knew that something was going to come up
    and was going to be a terrible situation.
    So whenever they would assemble, the German police
    or the German Gestapo, German SS.
    Actually the Gestapo was only the few,
    but the German SS would come in and surround the ghetto.
    So we knew at that stage that something was going to go on.
    And as we go on, my family was made to assemble again,
    the next time into the ghetto.
    And my whole family was taken, picked.
    My older brother was not assembled because he
    was working on the outside.
    My family was picked to be exported, or taken away
    to the side.
    Me and my younger brother at the time,
    we escaped from that group.
    And as we were escaping, they were shooting after us,
    but they didn't hit us, neither one of us.
    And we managed to get back to my older brother.
    And at that time, I never saw the rest of my family anymore.
    And I never knew what happened to them,
    or where they went, or anything like that.
    That was my first break up.
    So when people even today, they ask, how come you didn't fight?
    How come you didn't do anything?
    You see, it was very difficult as a family
    and you had to make a decision whether or not if you
    wanted to break from them.
    Because otherwise we were so close,
    if you were going to join the partisans or anything like that,
    remember this.
    All this time as I'm talking to you, I'm only 11 years old.
    I'm only like 11 and 1/2 years old.
    I'm 12 years old at that stage.
    So I'm just really a little boy.
    But yet, I had to assume a very important 11-year-old
    as a 20-year-old.
    In the ghetto, before your family was taken away,
    were you able to in secrecy, celebrate holidays, Passover,
    other holidays?
    Oh, we were able to do that type of thing.
    But it was difficult. I mean, of course, we
    had assembled at that time, for the religious activities.
    But during that time, if I remember it right,
    I believe that the Jews were beginning
    to lose their faith more into the Jewishness.
    Because what we saw even Glogów at that stage already,
    we saw already that the good Jews, the rabbis, the Hasidic,
    the real ones, they were the first ones
    to be executed, the first ones to be shot at.
    So I believe in strictly in my memory,
    which is I'm not saying that that's what it was,
    but I think that during that time, even
    in the ghetto already, we were beginning
    to lose more or less the faith.
    Because we saw a lot of the people, the toughies,
    the bad guys, that they were succeeding.
    Whereas the religious ones, the real good guys, the Hasidim,
    they were not.
    So we began to lose the hold on it.
    What about school?
    Was there any kind of--
    No, there was no school.
    There was no school in the ghetto.
    There was no school in the ghetto.
    You were lucky, more or less, to survive.
    To begin with, there were not many children left anymore
    because the children were automatically
    practically in the ghetto.
    So they were already taken away slowly but surely.
    The only way that they weren't taken away is by some miracles.
    And so there were no schools.
    What did you do during the day to occupy yourself?
    First of all, I worked.
    I had to work.
    And I have to also insert here that although I was 11 or 12
    years old, but I looked like a 15 or 16 or 17-year-old,
    because I had a very nice build and good cheeks and stuff like
    this.
    So I actually had to work in the ghetto.
    So we were working in the ghetto.
    We were cleaning up.
    Again, we were cleaning up the outside of the ghetto.
    And came one time a German, he was not even a Gestapo uniform,
    but they had a lot of Germans with the ranks
    as if they were working for the Gestapo,
    or some secret private police.
    We knew him because they even never wear a uniform.
    But we knew who they were.
    And they would come.
    They came in.
    So I was working for the clean-up situation.
    One evening, without any cause or provocation or whatever,
    we assembled to go to--
    It was time to go back to the house.
    The guy comes out and takes out his pistol and shoots
    into the crowd.
    And there's a number of people get killed.
    And I got hit on my foot, on my left foot.
    I didn't know what happened, but I felt
    something got wet in my foot.
    And I was walking and I said something was uncomfortable.
    I was wearing at that time long boots, leather boots.
    And I was feeling on my ankle something was wet,
    but I managed to get home.
    My older brother, they took off my boots.
    My brother was going out at that time with a girl.
    They were going pretty steady.
    And they took off my boot.
    And we saw there was a bullet wound.
    It was bleeding.
    Because of the position that my brother occupied,
    he was able to take me out of the ghetto, into a hospital,
    and to take out my bullet.
    The hospitals at the time were prohibited from doing anything
    to help anybody that's been shot or that's been
    hit or something like that.
    That was a no-no, in the hospital could have been
    fined or killed or whatever.
    But he was able to do that.
    And at that stage already, I was not working anymore.
    And he was protecting me as far as not having to work.
    And I was recuperating from my wound.
    And my younger brother was being more or less like the runner
    to get food in and all that.
    And he was supplying us with food from the kitchen
    and from whatever he was able to and so forth.
    And I at that stage, there was a lot, I contracted typhus.
    And I was very, very sick on typhus fever.
    But because of the typhus, the heat from the typhus,
    they told me, was helping my foot
    because it drained out the pus from my--
    I am not no doctor, but that's what I was told.
    And thus it helped my foot because again, the doctor
    could no longer attend to me while I was my foot was healing.
    And during that same period, while we were in the ghetto,
    they had one or two more assemblies,
    but I knew I couldn't get to the assemblies.
    And so my younger brother, if we went to the assemblies,
    we would have been shipped or sent out.
    So one time we were hiding and we
    were living in an apartment building like about four
    or five stories high.
    And they had like about maybe 50 or 60 toilets, separations.
    And I was hiding in one of them.
    And the Germans, after a while, the people had assembled.
    There was nobody supposed to be left in the rooms.
    And I was hiding in one of them.
    And I was just staying.
    And the Germans came there with dogs,
    but the dogs couldn't smell because from the toilet,
    the dog's scent was taken away.
    So they couldn't follow us.
    And by some miracle, even though they opened up
    almost all the toilets there was, and they didn't find us.
    And I was laying with my brother together.
    Were were in a blanket covered.
    And we were thinking, gee, that's maybe the end of it,
    right there.
    And we were also hearing people getting caught and shot,
    and pleaded for mercy, and children
    being beaten and all that while we were still in the hiding.
    But that was fine for one time.
    But then we couldn't hide there for the rest of the time.
    So we went out and while the whole ghetto
    had to go to work, and during the daytime,
    we were hiding in a roof.
    It's difficult to describe.
    But it was like a--
    Attic?
    Was it an attic?
    An attic, more yeah, attic would more describe it.
    That was completely out.
    It wasn't enclosed.
    And we had to go through into the attic from the next building
    through again through a hole in the toilet
    to get through into the attic.
    And we were hiding there in that attic with about maybe 15
    or 20 people.
    But we had to get some food.
    So some people went outside of this attic place to get food.
    And they start cooking food.
    So the Germans noticed the chimney was on.
    So they came over there.
    They caught them.
    They couldn't run back to us.
    And they caught them.
    There was with some family members that listened
    and the family members were pleading with them
    for their own life.
    And they were right outside from us.
    They were shooting them, and we heard their screams.
    And some of the family members, we
    had to retain them, refrain them from screaming themselves
    and give us up, out.
    So like that, and this was on for some time in the ghetto.
    But then they finally decided to liquidate the entire ghetto.
    And because of my brother again, we were taken to a camp.
    Me and my younger brother and my older brother
    were taken to this camp, Szebnie.
    And Szebnie was a work camp.
    It was surrounded by wires.
    And every day it was nothing for the Germans
    to put up their dogs with whips and all that, and hit people
    or send dogs on us too.
    But in that camp, we had the women
    were living on one side of the camp
    and the men were living on the other side of the camp.
    But we still had connection with the women.
    I didn't, because my parents were already gone at that time.
    And I was in that camp for about maybe about six months or so.
    And one time, a couple of people escaped from the camp.
    And the Germans came in and they hung six or eight people.
    And when they hang him, they didn't hang him by their throat,
    they hung him by the hands and the back of their hands,
    like this, like this in the back.
    And their feet were like this far from the ground.
    And those people were like suffocating the whole time.
    They were begging for mercy from us.
    And we had to stay on and look on and look on,
    and we couldn't do nothing.
    And they hung like about six or eight people
    even after you went back already to the barracks,
    those people were still hanging and screaming,
    and begging for some mercy.
    We couldn't do nothing for them or help them
    in any form whatsoever.
    And they did that at any given time for any given reason.
    So one time I remember one of the people
    in the camp spit on a German.
    And they came in, and did that to them.
    Because if they did anything to a German,
    they would come in with all kinds of revenge
    or all kinds of subsequent action
    that they took to do that.
    Once, for one reason or another, they
    came in into this Szebnie camp, and they lined up.
    The people were lined up in this in the square,
    and they went through and they picked every 10th person,
    and laid him down right in front of us and took out the machine
    guns and just mowed them down with machine guns.
    And I remember still standing there, just the scene always
    stays in front of me that the blood was still
    spraying in my face, even they say
    little chips of bones from the people
    was really spitting in my face.
    And so I always remember.
    So fortunately none of me or my brother
    were part of this every tenth person.
    And we were in this camp working.
    We were working, building barracks outside the camp.
    And we were also working in the fields.
    And at that time, I remember something
    about talking to a friend of mine
    at that stage of some plans of maybe
    how to escape from the camp.
    And we were laying plans.
    We figured we could escape this way,
    or we could escape this way.
    Then we said, where are we going to escape to?
    Where are we going to go once we escaped?
    Sure, we can hide in a farm where we can't hide too long,
    or maybe we go to--
    but how can we live whatever it is?
    Where are we going to go?
    Anyway, this was just an idea.
    I don't ever remember what became of it.
    We didn't escape.
    And we just kept on going there.
    What happened to your older brother?
    He was with us in that camp too.
    And the younger brother too?
    My older brother and my younger brother
    was still in that camp with us, with me at that Szebnie.
    We were all together.
    My older brother, again, was working in the kitchen
    or some sort of a facility.
    What were their names?
    That was Heniek and Szymon, and Simon, or Steven or whatever.
    Anyway, so we were working, and they were walking there.
    There were rumors in the camp that the partisans were
    going to liberate the camp.
    And the Germans came in, and they
    started to liquidate the camp.
    We were taken out of the camp.
    We were assembled in front, and everybody
    knew that we were going to be moved out of the camp.
    So I was standing there in the assembly place.
    My elder brother came over to me and gave me
    some bread, and some food, and I put it in my pocket some food.
    And we were made to walk out from the camp.
    And of course, in the camp, we were
    made to walk right next to us, were
    the Germans walking with bayonets, fixed bayonets.
    And on the side, an entire side of the road
    were Germans standing like every 10 feet was
    another German with that fixed bayonet, with a gun,
    with a machine gun, and everything like that.
    And as we were walking, they would take the bayonets
    and just move us up and shuffle us
    with the bayonets, fixed bayonets, and just like punched
    us with the bayonets.
    Some people were bleeding from it.
    Some people were dying right there.
    And then we came up to an embankment
    in front of a rail yard.
    And they start screaming to us with dogs barking
    and screams, undress, undress, undress.
    You must undress.
    Completely undress yourself.
    And we had to get into the rail cars.
    I didn't undress, and for some reason or another,
    a German was going to go up and stick me with the bayonet.
    And this other gentleman told them, just leave him alone.
    He's but a boy.
    So this is a small incident that I remember from the Germans.
    And these Germans, by the way, that
    were walking with us were the regular German army,
    were not from the SS, but they were
    from the regular German army.
    But they always whenever they had any kind of a liquidation,
    they always assembled a tremendous number
    of German soldiers to guard us.
    So there would be no chance of any kind of uprising or anything
    like that.
    And we were pushed into the rail car, me and my younger brother.
    My older brother remained in camp.
    There were about 75 to 100 people remained in camp.
    They were told to clean up the camp.
    That's what they were going to do.
    And we were shuffled into that rail car.
    And in the rail car, they closed the door.
    And there was little holes that you could possibly look out.
    And everybody started complaining, and screaming,
    and begging.
    What's going to happen?
    Where are we going?
    No one knows where we're going.
    We have no idea.
    The cars keep on going, and somebody says,
    I think we're going towards Germany.
    I think somebody says we're going towards Czechoslovakia.
    Somebody says we're going towards Russia.
    And there's arguments.
    People scream at each other and yell at each other.
    No facilities, no place where to eat, nothing where to go.
    If you needed to go or anything like that, and locked up
    for about two days.
    Can you estimate how many people were in the car?
    Oh, I couldn't estimate how many people,
    but there were no room in the car.
    I mean, it was we were laying on top of each other, practically,
    just shuffled in like cattle, and just
    there wasn't even hardly any room to lay down.
    And we had to lay on top of each other.
    And there were women, and men, and anything over there.
    And you just driving for two days without any food.
    They didn't give us any food, didn't give us anything at all.
    And we were just on the move.
    What time of the year was it?
    That was about September.
    September, I think September or something like that, August
    or September, of the year.
    '42?
    In '42, yeah, that was the end of '42.
    And we were coming in and all of a sudden, at early dawn,
    we arrived at an embankment, and we look out
    and we see this is screaming again with the Germans,
    with whips and dogs, and yelling and screaming, raus, raus, raus!
    And we get out of the train with all kinds of-- line up.
    And we lined up.
    And the Germans standing there, three or four Germans
    with their whips and all that, and they start dividing.
    You go to the right and you go to the left.
    And at that stage, I was already in Auschwitz.
    And I didn't know, of course when I took back today,
    it may have been what's his name.
    The doctor, the famous doctor.
    Mengele.
    Mengele, I don't know.
    I couldn't really tell you today whether it
    was him or anybody else.
    But from the descriptions that I have read or heard,
    it may have been him.
    And he lined us up.
    You go to the right and you go to the left.
    They put my brother out to go to the right, me to go to the left.
    I didn't know.
    I tried to get to him.
    He tried to get to me.
    And we never could get to each other
    because the Germans were standing there with the whips,
    and would hit us and would just move us.
    We had to go there.
    And so we were taken into a barrack.
    We were given numbers, tattooed numbers.
    And I was given a number 161073 on my left arm.
    And they told us to undress.
    And as we were in that barrack, we
    were told at least it was very well known,
    that the other people were going to the crematorium
    or to the gas chamber.
    And as we looked out, we could see the gas chamber
    was practically next to us.
    And we could smell the scent from the burning bodies
    right next to us in the camp.
    And that's when I knew that was my brother went in
    with this group.
    And I would never see him again, of course.
    And we were in this Auschwitz at that stage.
    And we were given out these uniforms, with the stripes.
    We were given some wooden shoes.
    And we had to struggle, whenever they would
    get the standard treatment.
    Actually it was Birkenau that I was taken to, not Auschwitz
    because Birkenau was the side camp from Auschwitz.
    I was in the camp for a little while,
    maybe about three weeks, two or three weeks,
    having to work outside to dig back stones, or ditches,
    or something like that.
    And again, I don't remember too much.
    But we were in that camp for about three weeks, came
    a German commander.
    And he wanted somebody in addition to the fact
    to replace their people, which they
    did every so often as the people were in their sub-camps.
    Auschwitz had so many satellite camps.
    Each camp had a certain mission, a certain project on there
    for them.
    One of them was building airplanes.
    The other one was building factories.
    The other was coal.
    Every one of them had a certain kind of mission.
    So this commander came, and he specifically made a request.
    He was looking for a runner, a young fellow that
    could be a runner for them.
    By the way, when I arrived in Auschwitz,
    they asked us to identify ourselves,
    and we had to tell them, your age, your profession.
    And they would tell you at that time,
    I attribute today the reason why I was picked,
    even though I was only like 13 at the time,
    and I told them I was 17 and I was a mechanic, I was actually--
    I didn't know mechanics, but I knew
    how to fix bicycles and something like that.
    So I said, OK, I'm a mechanic.
    So because I also--
    since I didn't undress at the time which I told you before,
    and I also had some food with me where the others didn't, so
    maybe I looked so much better than the rest of the people
    that I was picked to go to this one.
    So anyway, as this commander requested somebody like this,
    I was picked for that job.
    I came to, and then they took us from Birkenau into Auschwitz.
    We had to take again, we had to shower.
    They gave us a shower.
    They changed up the clothes and all that.
    And as I'm about to leave, go there,
    not the commander but the chief of them, from Auschwitz,
    again, like a Doctor Mengele position, he comes to me
    and says, what are you going to do with this young fellow?
    What is this?
    So this German Gestapo, he interceded,
    and he said to the guy, there was a specific request
    from this commander that he needs somebody like that.
    So here I am being taken to this other camp, which
    was Schwientochlowitz.
    Schwientochlowitz was a camp set up, their main target,
    we were working for Krupp factories
    and building anti-aircraft guns for the Germans.
    And I was given the position as the runner.
    As the runner, I was first of all, I was already recognized.
    The kapos couldn't do nothing to me,
    because if they hit me or anything like that, that
    would be off limits to them.
    And if the Germans wouldn't like that.
    And the fact also that I was able to take
    some of the leftovers from the Germans,
    from the food that they have thrown out,
    I had to make their beds.
    I had to clean up the room.
    I had to put light up the ovens and so forth like that.
    And I had all kinds of extra work
    in the office that was guarding the camp, because it
    was the front gate.
    I would open, whenever the people would come in and go out
    from the camp, I had to open up the gates.
    And they would let them out and let them in, and so forth.
    That was my job.
    And so I was really recognized as somebody
    with authority, but yet no authority.
    But I had it real good compared to the rest of the people.
    And of course, having been there,
    I also had the opportunity to bring some food back
    to some other people in the camps.
    I was also given by them, they loved me.
    They care for me.
    Because I was somebody that helped them live.
    And also, I remember in the camp, they had the wires.
    There were two sets of wires about 6 feet apart, which were
    electric wires on both sides.
    And if somebody did something that they didn't like,
    they would put them into between those two wires
    to stay there for two days or three days
    without any food or anything like that.
    And since I was right near by there,
    I would sometimes just risk my own life
    and just throw something at them, food to eat.
    So they would survive.
    Of course, a lot of these people I have never seen after,
    or I don't even know what happened to them.
    And of course, the same situation would go on.
    I mean, with the Germans, if you did something,
    there would be revenge all the time.
    They would line up X number of people
    and shoot them, or hang them, or something like that.
    And it was always that type of situation.
    And a lot of people would just be dying just from starvation
    or couldn't take continuously the abuse and so forth.
    But anyway, I was in that camp working
    for this for the Germans.
    And I was getting--
    I was year older.
    And as the Germans, they always somehow now they
    surprised me that they always, there
    were so many people that they put into the gas chamber.
    Yet on one person it would be so much to them an issue.
    The commander of the Auschwitz camp
    came to our camp to visit for inspections.
    And he came to me and made an issue.
    I said, why would he leave?
    I mean, the commander for this camp,
    why would he leave me doing such minimal work when such work is
    required from the other people?
    And so one time the commander sort of hid me and let me
    get by with it.
    The next time he hid me again.
    The third time and when this guy was coming,
    he felt he doesn't want to take any more chances.
    So he took somebody, an older person,
    and put him in the same type of-- somebody
    that put him in the same position
    that I was, and sent me to work in the factory.
    In the factories, I was working in a factory making these guns.
    And I remember always conversations
    about sabotaging the things.
    Because if your gun, the thing that shoots the anti-aircraft,
    if you made it just one not even an inch but 1/10 of an inch
    the size different it could misfire.
    So we always were trying to work something that would not work.
    In this camp, by the way, they also
    brought in a lot of Russian prisoners to this camp.
    And we were together with the Russian prisoners
    working side by side with us in the same camp.
    One time I think there was some sort of either uprising
    or something, of again, the Germans
    decided we're going to have to amend for it.
    And they laid us down on the ground for about a whole day.
    You couldn't get up.
    You couldn't raise your head, anything like that.
    Just laid there, just like you were a dead person.
    And it was cold at the time too.
    And I remember something about it.
    It must have been like October, November, or something
    like in that month.
    But anyway, we finally okayed, and we went back to camp.
    The Russian army was approaching the camp from the other side,
    from Poland, and we were in Auschwitz.
    And we could even hear the shootings yet.
    So again, they assembled us, and we were made to walk again,
    to a cattle car, put into the cattle car.
    And at that stage, the things were very loose.
    We could have escaped.
    Again, we have no clothes.
    We have no uniforms.
    But we were talking about we could escape.
    Some people escaped even though, with the camp clothing.
    And we felt that because of the hearing the shooting,
    we could walk up towards the front line
    and maybe be able to be saved.
    But anyway, some people did escape, because it was not
    so well-organized anymore.
    And that was in December of 1944.
    We have just a couple of minutes left on this tape.
    Let's stop here.
    If you wish.
    And while you're working on putting the second tape,
    because this is a major transition.
    Yeah, I need to stop.
    And I've been doing all the talking.
    That's what you're here for.
    Yeah, I know that.
    But that's not--
    Phil, we have color bars.
    OK, So somebody has the microphone, just identify.
    OK, tape 2.
    December 3, 1990, interviewing Wolf Finkelman,
    Holocaust survivor.
    Hold on.
    And again.
    It's the end of 1944.
    You were interned in Schwientochlowitz.
    Yeah, we were taken in Schwientochlowitz.
    We were put on the trains, on the rail cars.
    And even though we were hearing all kinds of shootings
    going on in the outside from a distance,
    but we were contemplating maybe to escape.
    But anyway, some people did.
    But the camp was very much disorganized at that stage.
    I understood some people were left hiding in camp
    and they eventually were liberated by the Russians,
    even though they didn't clean up as good a job on the clean up.
    I'm talking about the Germans.
    By the way, across from our camp,
    there were other camps there.
    But there were work camps from the French people were there.
    They were not guarded like we were, or anything like that.
    But they had these supplying staff and people
    to work for the German factories.
    So we were in Koenigssee, which is
    the big concentration of all the German factories were there.
    The Krupp factories were there.
    But we were then taken into the train
    and we were transported again in the same conditions,
    like the previous cattle car, except that it was not
    so difficult, because it only lasted
    like a day or less than a day.
    And we were made to get out.
    And of course, we didn't know, but we came to Mauthausen.
    In Mauthausen, we walked up from the rail embankment.
    And we walked into the camp.
    And the sign normally with the big camps, with the big cars,
    "Arbeit macht dem Leben süss" and always that welcome deal,
    and how are you going to be doing here.
    And we want you to do this, and we want you to do this,
    and you're going to do this.
    And with the whips, if you don't, or don't
    mind displaying them.
    And there we were.
    And we were taken in to shower.
    And we had a shower.
    And we were taken outside, and right outside,
    right next to the shower we see that that's
    where the crematorium is.
    That's where the gas chamber is.
    But we also see a wall where we see where
    people get shot over there.
    And we are standing there completely
    in the nude for about six to eight hours,
    and the weather was, it was December.
    It was cold and icy practically.
    And we were staying there like nothing happened.
    And we managed to survive.
    And we were in this camp.
    And they take us into the barracks and with whips.
    And there was no room, not enough room to sleep on.
    Everybody lines up in the line.
    And one head goes this way, the other head
    goes this way, in between sardines, whipped down
    on the floor.
    And then there's also three or four bunkers on top of one
    and you can sleep.
    You don't have a choice where they put you,
    where you're going to be sleeping,
    this row, or this row and this row,
    three rows from the top to the bottom.
    And again, you have to sleep your feet
    and somebody else's head meet each other
    and something like that.
    And we were in this camp and we were taken every morning.
    We were taken to work.
    Again, we were going outside in Mauthausen
    where they had this big digging, these big, big bricks
    and stones, and in the--
    A quarry?
    Pardon me?
    A quarry?
    Well, it was like the mountains or something like that.
    And we were taken there for a while.
    And at that stage, the war, you hear some more things,
    because you hear some planes, more airplanes flying over you.
    You see more alarms.
    And it's like that.
    And anyway, we get to that camp and we see this thing.
    So we were beginning to smell something is going on.
    Of course, as I mentioned to you before,
    that we actually didn't know what
    was going on in the outside.
    We didn't have no idea what was happening.
    We had no idea other than to hear rumors
    or to hear when they were shooting
    was going on, that this was maybe
    the Russians were coming in from the other side,
    maybe the Americans.
    We don't know what's happening.
    We don't know anything about what's the world is like.
    We were more or less living like animals and living.
    The will to survive was there.
    But we don't know why.
    We don't know how.
    And we don't know anything about anybody else.
    We don't know what happened to the rest of the families, what
    happened to the rest of the people, where anything is.
    So we're in this camp.
    And the camp as the war was coming to a close,
    and the Germans were moving all the outside camps
    into inland, which Mauthausen being part of Austria,
    was an inland type of more inland,
    and they camp get so overcrowded that they
    built an outside camp which they called the Zeltlager, which is--
    Zelt is like plastic or a temporary camp.
    And we were put it into that camp.
    They're bringing in so many people from everywhere,
    from Romania, from Hungary, all the people from Hungary.
    And the fact is the Hungarian Jews, they're coming in.
    And they're telling us, hey, I don't think that we're
    going to be here long.
    This is just a temporary place for us.
    We laugh at them, because we know
    this is a concentration camp.
    This is where it really is.
    But bodies you see dying already now, every day.
    We see a lot of dead people laying there, being stacked up,
    and being taken away, and all that.
    So we've seen a different type of a situation.
    And one time I do remember that we had some bombings
    and was hit.
    Part of the camp was hit.
    I think there were some people killed.
    So the other people were going around eating
    their food, their meat, like cannibals.
    Of course, eating anything in camp was acceptable.
    You could eat grass.
    Could do that.
    But there was a normalcy to accept that.
    And the camp is getting overcrowded.
    So the Germans come in and they start us on a long march.
    We're going, leaving the camp now.
    We're leaving our Mauthausen.
    And we're starting to walk.
    It was about March or so in 1945.
    And we're starting to walk, and again, guarded by the Germans,
    and with the bayonets, and with fixed bayonets,
    and hit me with the bayonet, or hit me
    with the gun was well acceptable.
    That's the way they were operating.
    And the German people in Austria,
    they're looking at us like we were some sort of criminals.
    And they don't give us any help whatsoever.
    The Germans don't mind killing anybody right
    in front of this civilian population, which we were
    walking through those towns.
    And we walk and it's a forced march.
    It's about, I'd say about 40 miles from there.
    And we end up in a camp that isn't even finished.
    It's in a forest.
    And they're building it yet.
    And we come into this camp.
    The barracks are not finished.
    So many people, such a crowd, we have no place to sleep.
    We climb up on the rafters to go to sleep.
    The sleeping with people, dead people underneath us.
    They didn't give us much food at all.
    That was disorganized.
    They didn't know what was going on.
    And at that time, I think the Red Cross
    was beginning to step in.
    They brought in some food for us.
    But again it didn't get to the people.
    And there was always something.
    And there was no place to sleep, no place.
    Dead people are everywhere.
    Everywhere there a lot of dead bodies.
    Did that camp have a name?
    Gunskirchen.
    We were then in Gunskirchen, which
    is the name of the town which was the camp there.
    And the barracks are surrounded with wires and German
    guarding it.
    We realized, I realized, come to the realization that we cannot
    sleep inside the barracks because we sleeping on dead
    people, dead people underneath us, on top of us.
    And people were sleeping.
    People were screaming.
    Of course, in these conditions, and people sleeping still
    on the rafters.
    We were occupying the rafters.
    Sometimes we go out.
    And I'm going out, and I sleep now on the outside the barracks,
    on the ground, and the ground is wet.
    It's March, April, in months.
    And the ground is wet.
    I soon catch some sort of a--
    my body beginning to rot away.
    It's beginning to get like this.
    But there's no blankets.
    We cuddle up against each other--
    talking about some of my friends,
    I get together a few of my younger friends,
    and we cuddle up against each other.
    And we managed to go to sleep.
    The food is very, very bad.
    Maybe we get some soup or once a day or something like that.
    And things are very, very bad.
    And people like maybe 5,000 or 10,000 people a day,
    you see dead, dead people.
    And one day, the Germans just picked up and left.
    That was one evening.
    The people were running towards the kitchen,
    stampeding each other, and grabbing food.
    I saw it.
    And this is some of the things I remember
    people walking with a handful of butter in their hand
    and eating it.
    And the other people, of course, stampeding against them,
    trying to grab them.
    And they're fighting with each other,
    and they're killing each other practically,
    because the people were so weak.
    They couldn't stand even being pushed.
    And I decided that I wasn't going to run to the kitchen.
    We were going to stay.
    So I went outside the camp.
    And I went into the German barracks.
    We slept the night in the German barracks, covered with blanket.
    And in the morning, we walked out from the camp.
    Well, the camp was right at the edge.
    And as we were walking out the camp,
    the American soldiers were driving by with the tanks.
    And they were-- everybody was so happy to see them.
    People were still dying.
    A lot of people from excitement were
    dying just from the excitement or from overeating
    or from whatever.
    You see a lot of people after the liberation, a lot of people
    died.
    And we walked out.
    The American soldiers were throwing
    candy at us and, and food, and everything like that.
    And we didn't know our stomachs were not
    used to such rich foods.
    Again, that was a bad thing in a way.
    And hey, I went to a farm.
    What month was this?
    That was on May 5, 1945.
    I went to a farm, had them cook up some milk, some hot milk,
    and cooked it up, and drank some milk,
    and started slowly to adjust to it.
    The Americans set up field hospitals,
    and they started to treat us from whatever we needed.
    And so I remember meeting an American soldier
    from Saint Louis.
    And he gave me his name and everything like that,
    but I lost it after.
    But then they was healing I think some of the more sicker
    people, they especially the youngsters,
    they sent to Sweden and Switzerland,
    and all the other countries.
    And they set up these various food centers and stuff
    like that.
    And they started immediately set up houses or were little camps,
    more like where the Germans used to occupy, something like that.
    And we were taken and put into one of these little camps, which
    was operated pretty freely, and so forth like that.
    And we began to adjust to a new--
    we meet people and we see.
    Of course, when we went out from camp,
    a lot of the people that were in camp,
    they were starting to chase down the German soldiers.
    And they were beating them up and all that.
    I didn't take that type of a situation.
    I looked like, let justice take its own course.
    Of course, I don't know what I would have done had I met
    a German that I personally knew that did something to me or that
    I saw him, but I didn't.
    And we were in this, near Linz, Austria.
    We were in this little camp.
    Soon, the Americans haven't been influenced by the Germans,
    by the Austrian girlfriends and all that.
    They decided they would liquidate this camp
    that we were in.
    So we organized secretly a march to the American headquarters.
    And of course, we were not permitted to do that,
    because that was against the rules.
    And we were having all kinds of problems with the occupation,
    with the American occupation, because we were
    given rules and regulations.
    You couldn't go here.
    You couldn't go do this, because we
    were in the displaced persons.
    So we organized this march.
    I was a participant in this.
    And I took a big part in this march
    against the American forces in Austria.
    By liquidation, what do you mean?
    What would they have done?
    They would have made us move from this place
    to someplace else.
    I mean, I'm talking about now the Americans.
    Yes, I understand.
    So we went and we marched there, and there
    were a lot of American soldiers, Jewish soldiers.
    And they heard our cries, and they in turn
    wrote into the American papers, or into the New York Times.
    To make it short, we were not moved at that stage.
    But later on, we were moved to a big displaced persons
    camp in Bindermichl.
    Bindermichl was formerly a very large, large, like an apartment
    project.
    And we were there in that situation.
    We were playing games, ping pong, football, soccer.
    We didn't really have no work.
    We were given identity cards, to get the rations.
    And the UNRRA was taken care of a lot of the food supplies.
    We were then in this displaced persons camp.
    What was the purpose of you being there?
    Just on a temporary basis until they find
    someplace where we would go.
    A lot of people were moving from there.
    It was just like a displaced persons camp
    and it was constantly on replacement situations.
    So we were actually, I remember even before we get to the camp,
    that I was approached by the Israeli underground forces
    at the time to move to Israel.
    Some of my friends went there.
    I was not sure.
    I don't even remember that I made a specific decision or not
    decision at all.
    But I didn't go.
    So most of my friends left with the underground or the Israeli.
    Haganah?
    Was it the Haganah?
    Well, I don't remember what it was exactly,
    the Haganah or somebody else, but they left with the Israelis
    and for Israel.
    I didn't.
    And by no reason at all, I just remember
    that I was supposed to have some relatives in the United States.
    And I didn't know where or what or how.
    So came along the situation, I said,
    I'll register to go to the United States.
    And since I was an orphan under 18,
    there was a committee, a US committee
    Care for European Children.
    We were given top priority to go to the United States.
    In the meantime, in the displaced persons camp,
    I find a friend of mine that I was with him in Rzeszów yet.
    He went with us to Szebnie.
    And he escaped from Szebnie.
    And he at that stage tells me that he definitely knows
    that my brother was killed.
    He was a very good friend, not of me,
    but he was a very good friend of my brother.
    Which brother?
    My oldest brother at the time.
    So he was-- so he at that stage tells me
    that this is what he knows.
    And we stayed together.
    We lived together.
    And when I exit, when I leave for the United States,
    he remains in Austria in this displaced persons camp.
    And I move on.
    I get from Austria, that take us away,
    and we say nice goodbyes and everybody is so envious of us.
    And we leave.
    And we come to Munich, Germany.
    And in Munich, we go through all kinds of processing situations
    with the doctors, with what if we qualify,
    what if we don't qualify, what's this, and all that.
    And we get through examinations for who we are, what we are,
    what's right and wrong.
    And that's-- then we come.
    And we're leaving now.
    From Munich we go to Bremerhaven.
    There is a strike going on with the American ships.
    And we are detained there from about June or July
    till about November and early December.
    We finally get--
    In '46?
    In '46.
    We finally get on the ship, USS Moline,
    and we get on the ship to go to the United States.
    We are a group of 18 kids.
    I think there were two girls and 16 boys.
    We were all under the same deal.
    We were all under age.
    We were all under orphans.
    We were all on the US Committee Care of European Children.
    And we get on the ship and we end up going,
    and we land New York.
    We come into New York.
    I didn't have anything, no money.
    Of course, I didn't speak the language.
    We come into New York.
    I didn't smoke, so I sold my cigarettes to somebody else.
    And they gave me like $2 in American money.
    And that's all I landed here, I had $2 in my pocket.
    I always repeat that story because that's
    what I had when I came here.
    And we came here and they took us into the Bronx at the time.
    And of course, it was unusual.
    We walk outside.
    They gave us.
    We could go get some ice cream.
    That is a prize, what a living.
    And we are now in the Bronx.
    We were there for about 10 days.
    From there, we were sent to Cleveland, Ohio.
    And in Cleveland, we were interrogated for all--
    Who sent you to Cleveland?
    The US Committee Care of European Children.
    We're there in Cleveland, and we were
    being interviewed I don't remember the name of the people
    there.
    But anyway, since my background is religious,
    the religious community approaches me.
    I should become a Chasid.
    I should be doing this.
    I should do daven, and I should do--
    OK.
    And they take me out to dinner.
    They take me out to dinner and all that stuff.
    But I turned it down.
    And we're in Cleveland.
    And they take us from Cleveland, Ohio,
    and they send us all over the United States.
    They take two of us to Chicago, two to Detroit, two to Boston,
    all over the United States.
    In the meantime, by the way, when I arrived in New York,
    I tried to contact anybody with Finkelman name
    and try to tell everybody, hey, I'm looking for relatives.
    I'm looking for relatives.
    Some other friends of mine have found some relatives.
    Somebody else got names, and they
    called our friends, or whatever it
    was, and a lot of these type of activities.
    But I am now in Cleveland, and they send us to Houston, Texas.
    I come to Houston.
    I'm met in Houston by the Wolff Home which at that time
    was run by Jerry Mayer, a very nice gentleman,
    an excellent person, and also the Jewish Family Service
    that takes over us.
    And we have the normal differences of opinion
    that you have at any organization.
    And it's till today, I'm still wondering to myself, how do they
    even operate?
    How do they exist?
    But that's another story.
    We're put in the Wolff Home, and the Jewish family Service
    takes care of us and they take us out to buy clothes and food.
    And we're given an allowance.
    And we could start going to school.
    We are in the school now that was after the war,
    they had a school here in Houston, Sam Houston High
    School, which was the veterans that came back
    from war that didn't go through schooling,
    they went through with them.
    And we went with them, put together
    in the same classification, the same group.
    And as you finished a subject, you went to the teacher,
    you told the teacher.
    I am finished with the subject.
    They gave you a test.
    You passed it, you passed on, and passed on.
    And about a year, a year and a half
    later, we went to summer school, and I graduated here
    from Sam Houston High School.
    While I was still going to school,
    I went and I worked for on Saturdays in a local dry goods,
    in a clothing store.
    At that time I worked for a manufacturer of pants.
    And soon I got a job.
    At that time I was getting 3 and 1/2 dollars a Saturday.
    I got an offer for $5 from Oshman's.
    I took the job at Oshman's to work on Saturdays.
    As soon as Christmas was over, they told me
    they didn't need me anymore.
    I learned my lesson.
    I says, dollars don't always go.
    It doesn't depend how much you pay.
    But more important is the reliability
    or the subsequent situation.
    But anyway, I finished high school
    and I'm going out into the marketplace looking for a job.
    I still feel like I'm a little bit mechanically inclined.
    I'm going to look here for like a used tool company
    and I apply for a job.
    And I don't get it.
    And I'm looking for a job too, because the Jewish Family
    Services was sending me out, and getting me some leads.
    And I go to look at Zindler's.
    I'm staying there, maybe wait for the guy for about eight
    hours, and he doesn't show up.
    I mean, I didn't have an appointment,
    but he didn't come out.
    But finally I decide to leave and go someplace else.
    So the story is if I'd gotten the job with Zindler's, if he
    had come back, if I had waited maybe another half an hour,
    I would have been doing something completely different.
    That is the story.
    Anyway, I ended up getting a job with Leff Brothers Dry Goods
    Company.
    Leff Brothers is a wholesale distributor of dry goods.
    And I'm getting a job working inside
    in the company as a stock clerk, making $15 a week,
    and living on it.
    And of course, by the way, I was not staying all the time
    at the Wolff Home anymore.
    They settled me down in a private housing, which
    the Jewish Family Service was paying them,
    I think was $60 a month.
    And I think it was something like that.
    And I was getting an allowance for it, like $10 a month
    or something.
    I don't remember exactly how much it was at the time.
    And I'm working now for Leff Brothers,
    and I'm inside working as a stock clerk.
    One day, one of the salesmen got sick, and they needed somebody.
    So they sent me out to go see this guy.
    So I go out to see him, and I knew the inventory
    better than the salesman knew.
    I sold a lot of goods.
    So the next day, the boss says to me, why don't you go out
    again and see what you can do.
    I went out again and I did very well.
    So they made me a salesman.
    And I was a salesman.
    And I was working for them for some time.
    And then the army came along.
    And I was drafted to go to Korea, not to Korea,
    it was during the Korean War.
    It wasn't necessarily-- I'm drafted and I'm going.
    On the second go round, they discover my leg,
    where I was shot in my leg.
    And they say, no.
    In the meantime, they had already hired another salesman
    to the territory that I was in.
    And this guy had a family.
    I said to Leff Brothers at the time,
    I said, look, don't worry about me.
    I'll get another job.
    I know this guy needs the living more than I.
    No, no, no.
    We'll create it another territory for you.
    I says, fine.
    So I took with them a job with Leff Brothers
    again, in another completely new territory.
    And I went out there.
    And I worked there.
    And soon I realized that this is only a local situation.
    I needed to do something bigger and more.
    So I went on a national scale and I
    went to work representing a national company,
    national manufacturer.
    I worked for some with them, and then
    this thing changed, because there were lines changed,
    my situation changed.
    I went out into the market.
    And I was representing an import company, import forwarding.
    And here, due to technicalities beyond anybody's understanding,
    they were not exactly working with me or with the salesmen
    in the right way, real honest.
    And I decided I'm going to go on my own business.
    So I joined up with another two guys in Houston,
    and we went into the import forwarding company.
    And we started off from Houston at the beginning.
    I worked very, very hard.
    I was still representing some other companies
    at the same time.
    We had temporary part help, and we
    occupied part of an office, in part of a building,
    and so forth.
    And this business continued to go on.
    And we developed the business to the point
    where we are now one of the very large wholesale companies
    in the United States, import companies, in the United States.
    We have salesmen all over the United States.
    We have 20 some odd salesmen.
    We have offices in many of the foreign countries,
    in different countries where we have our own staffs and offices.
    Of course, I got married to an American girl
    from Brooklyn that I met when I was first
    traveling in the country.
    And she was working as a secretary
    in one of the companies that I represented.
    And so I met with her and we got married.
    She then left to visit her sister in California,
    and we got married in California.
    And we then had three children, three sons.
    And the rest is pretty well, that's where I'm at.
    I've got four grandsons, three sons, four grandsons.
    What are their names?
    Two of my sons are married.
    The other one is not.
    My sons' names are Steven, Alan, and Ronald.
    And my grandsons are David, Joshua, and Jonathan,
    and Jordan.
    Jordan is from Steven, and the other three
    is from Alan, which is my middle son.
    Steven is the eldest son.
    When you were in DP camps back in Europe,
    in Austria, did you make efforts to locate
    the rest of your family?
    We always made efforts.
    In all the DP camps, we always made efforts
    to locate the families.
    We were registered in many, many any type of deal we registered.
    And in speaking about that, there's
    another situation, which I also wanted to--
    I'm glad you asked the question.
    Because I didn't find any of my relatives till about 10 years
    after I was here.
    I found some uncles and aunt in Boston,
    but they actually found me through the HIAS that
    was looking, in other words, somebody else
    was reading the paper in the HIAS paper.
    And they told my uncle, hey, by the way,
    this guy comes from the same little town.
    And I think he may be a relative.
    So they contacted me and of course, was
    very happy to hear them.
    At that time, I had two uncles and an aunt and some cousins,
    and we maintained relationships.
    A lot of our people, by the way, that came here, I mean,
    friends of mine that I knew that came
    here, they have since as soon as they came here,
    we expected a lot different treatment that we did get.
    Because after all, here I am.
    I survived.
    I'm the only one left from the whole family.
    And what are you going to do for me?
    And they said, well, you're here.
    We'll see, maybe go get a job and make some living, working,
    and we had to work ourselves pretty hard to get where we are.
    So this created a lot of problems
    within our own survivors and the relatives.
    Of course, it was also a case where we didn't talk
    about anything was going on.
    It was very difficult to talk.
    It took me a long time too.
    But somehow or another, I've learned to talk about it.
    And as you may know, I go to schools,
    and I talk about it there.
    It took me a long time to learn to deliver
    my speeches without really getting emotional about it.
    Even as I was sitting here, you may think, oh wait, look,
    what about my emotion?
    It's not easy.
    I had to learn.
    I had to learn.
    It's just like a training period.
    You go over, and you have to learn
    to talk about it without getting emotional.
    Because I would probably be sitting here
    and would probably be crying maybe sometimes.
    One time or another, this thing was getting to me too.
    I don't know if you noticed it.
    But it was getting to me.
    And I was beginning to feel this thing getting to me.
    But, sometimes you have to learn in life,
    you've got to do what you have to do.
    So you have to forgo, and you have
    to train yourself to do just that, just
    to be able to talk about it.
    I sometimes still get a lot of times I get dreams.
    In my dreams, it's in my dreams sometimes have two forms.
    One of them is in my dreams, I would dream back
    about my family.
    And that would be the good part of it.
    And then sometimes I would dream in my dreams
    and I would get that the Germans are chasing me
    or I'm running away from it and all that.
    By the way, during the war in Glogów,
    when I was still in Glogów, the family operated the mikvah.
    A strange coincidence, but I was also
    working near and learning about how many times I get together
    with people that don't believe me, that I tell them,
    that I was watching because the women would go to a Friday night
    to the mikvah.
    And you'll be maybe the mikvah, you should know about the mikvah
    anyway.
    Ritual baths.
    Yeah.
    Anyway, so I would watch, the women go to the mikvahs
    on Friday night.
    I'd have to put up the--
    I would have to heat the water, and to make it hot
    and make the whole thing.
    Yeah.
    I just would watch to make sure that they're
    kosher and all that stuff.
    I had so many experiences that it's so difficult to really
    to recall all these things that I did or didn't do.
    So I'll tell you some.
    Four or five years is a long, long time
    if you really get down to it.
    But we did that.
    I remember hiding on the top of a roof,
    to that roof with a little hole in the roof,
    and hiding on top of a roof behind the chimneys,
    so that the Germans wouldn't see me.
    There's so many little things that I actually it's
    impossible to remember all these things that
    really happened in all this time,
    running away, and doing things.
    Many people after the war tried to go back to their cities
    where they came from to see if any of their relatives
    came back.
    Yeah, a lot of people tried to get back to the cities.
    I went back to Poland, not to the cities,
    to see whether the relatives came back, because I
    knew he didn't come back.
    I went back, first of all, I was on business.
    And we were doing business with Poland.
    And I remember the first time I went to the Polish embassy
    to ask for a visa.
    And I walked into the office.
    And I saw the pictures with the soldiers, with the bayonets,
    with the guns, with all the--
    I immediately sort of got cold.
    I got shook up.
    Once I got over that, I had no problem.
    No problem after going to Poland.
    The only thing I do is when I come into Poland
    and they look at my passport and knowing what Poland was like.
    And they look at my passport and see born in Poland.
    They asked me, they start talking to me in Polish.
    And I say to him, even though I do speak a little Polish,
    still speak Polish, but I tell them, no, I don't speak Polish.
    I just tell them I talk English.
    And that's what I do.
    But I went back to the town.
    To begin with, the town that I was born in--
    Sawin.
    Sawin, I had a different image than what really was there.
    I had imagined because from memory,
    I thought that the church was over here
    and the synagogue was over here.
    And my grandmother's house was over here.
    And this is where I was in the haystack.
    And this is where something else.
    It completely turned around.
    I couldn't match up anything that matched my memory at all.
    I didn't.
    And I went back.
    I have a cousin now in New York that is from the same town,
    from my cousin, and we discussed that.
    And he updated me a little bit more.
    And when I went back on the second time already,
    I had a little bit more knowledge of what was.
    Because his parents were also the same parents
    that had the mikvah there.
    And he was telling me where it was.
    When I went back there, it was completely ground, no more.
    The mikvah was completely covered with ground.
    And I talked to some people there.
    And yet, and they remembered this family
    that was my cousin's family.
    He also went back there.
    Was he a survivor as well?
    Yeah, he was.
    But he was in Russia.
    And he came from Sawin.
    He was still in Sawin, and then they ran away and all that.
    I found him about the same time that I found my other relatives,
    although my other relatives are from my father's side.
    He's the only one from my mother's side.
    I found since then, through him or his sister, another cousin
    from another cousin that he was actually in Poland.
    And he was shot and killed.
    They buried them.
    He uncovered himself from the ground.
    And he ran away.
    And he went and ended up in Russia.
    He married a Russian, Jewish Russian woman.
    They have three daughters.
    They managed to get away.
    And they came to Australia.
    They lived in Australia for about maybe two years
    or three years before they found some other--
    before they found us.
    And then I had one year, about two years ago,
    I brought them here to visit us.
    And since then, his wife died.
    But the sisters, one sister lives in Australia,
    and the other two sisters are married to Russian Jews,
    and their families live in Russia.
    And they can't get away from there,
    because they don't want to split up with the family.
    But now I understand things are so bad in Russia
    that they want to emigrate maybe too.
    So this is the other two.
    When you went back to Poland, you're
    talking about returning many years after the war.
    Yeah.
    Did you find your home, the house that you grew up?
    OK.
    I'm sorry.
    I got sidetracked by something else.
    So anyway, this was in Sawin.
    But since I don't remember where I lived in Sawin,
    I had no idea where I was, even though I was born in Sawin,
    because I never really knew.
    But I knew the town where something should be,
    where something shouldn't be.
    And anyway, I never could really locate except the fact
    that I talked to my cousin.
    But one time, I think I was going there back with my wife.
    And we went back to Poland.
    And I took her one time to Majdanek,
    which is a concentration camp, and showed all her
    what was there in the camp.
    And I went back to Poland and I went to Glogów.
    I never did go to Rzeszów because I took the whole one
    day with a taxi, and I just didn't
    have enough time to go back.
    I went to Glogów.
    Came into Glogów, and as soon as I stopped, people,
    nobody wanted to talk to me.
    I finally stopped one guy, older guy.
    And I said to him, do you remember my family?
    He says, no, I don't remember them.
    He says, yeah, there was a guy that he
    knew that he was the goalkeeper in the soccer.
    In Europe they play soccer, the football game.
    He was a goalkeeper, but he was different.
    He was not like the rest of the Jews, he says to me.
    I says, what was his name?
    Heniek, which was my brother.
    I said, that was my brother.
    He said, oh shocked up.
    He says, as far as he knew, this was the guy from Glogów.
    He said to me, he says he doesn't know.
    And there was another Jew that came
    through the town that was the only survivor as far as I know.
    I only know that I am the only survivor from the whole town
    from this Glogów.
    And Glogów was a nice, Jewish community.
    Because after all, we had two big shuls,
    and so I don't know how many people there were.
    There must have been about 2,000 Jews or something like that
    in the town.
    So I continued my conversation with him.
    He told us how the Germans came in,
    how they lined up all the rest of the people, how they shot
    them here, how the synagogues were completely demolished,
    or the Germans made out from them a stable for the horses.
    And anyway, I part with him.
    And I was going to go back.
    Since then, it's been about two years ago or three years ago.
    I was going to go back since then to Poland,
    but I never had the chance.
    But I may go back again to reestablish or to find out
    more what really happened to build up--
    I'm trying to find out the holes in my memory, what
    happened that time, what happened that time.
    And if I talk to some of the people,
    I may be able to ascertain some of the things that were.
    Because I was still more or less like a boy.
    And I never went back to Rzeszów, which was the ghetto.
    But Rzeszów, I will not remember too much, because I was only
    in the ghetto.
    By the way, Rzeszów, also the ghetto
    was divided at that time between two ghettos.
    They had the east ghetto, East Rzeszów and West Rzeszów.
    And I was in the west.
    The west was always considered the one
    that they can spare that.
    They was going to liquidate it before they
    liquidated the east ghetto.
    But anyway, I was over there.
    Just for the record, would you tell us the names of your family
    and the age of your children, the brothers and sisters?
    I had three brothers and three sisters.
    I was right in the middle.
    I had my older brother Henry, or Heniek.
    In Polish.
    I told the sisters, Malka and Hanah.
    I have a younger sister, Masza.
    I have a younger brother, Steven and Chil.
    Chil was named after my grandfather.
    And Steven of course, he is named after my brother Steven,
    which is my son Steven.
    And my father's name was Josef.
    My father had a beard.
    And my mother's name was Masza.
    And Heniek was the one who was in Rzeszów, your older brother
    taking care of the family?
    Right.
    He was the one.
    And I have a picture of him, by some coincidence.
    It's the only picture that I ever
    got after the war from my cousins in Boston.
    They had for one reason or another.
    It's the only picture I have from the whole family.
    I don't have any pictures whatsoever from my family.
    And Szymon, Steven was the one that you went to Auschwitz with?
    Yeah, right.
    That was my younger brother.
    The rest of the family you didn't see since Rzeszów?
    No.
    Were any of your brothers or sisters married before the war?
    No, none of them were married.
    My elder brother was started to go steady with this girl
    from Glogów, but they continued on the relationship.
    In Rzeszów, they asked if they were married already.
    Because they were so close to each other.
    Do you know anything what happened to that woman?
    No, I have no idea what happened to that woman at all.
    I have nothing whatsoever, actually by the way,
    I lost contact with my friend after I was writing to him
    in Belgium for some time.
    I lost contact with him for about 15 years.
    I went everywhere to look for him.
    And I couldn't find him.
    I contacted the Belgian embassy.
    I contacted everybody I could, the Jewish community.
    I was looking every which way.
    I went to Belgium myself to look for him.
    I couldn't find him.
    The last time there was supposed to be, we went on a UJA mission,
    and I came there and I had pictures of him.
    And I went there.
    Everywhere I went, I showed the pictures of this friend of mine.
    And one guy says to me, maybe I have some idea.
    His name is Lieberman.
    So he said, maybe I have some idea.
    So then that next day we went to Antwerp.
    I was in Brussels.
    I went to Antwerp.
    I come back to the telephone was ringing.
    And as I walked into the door, There
    was a lot of messages laying on the floor.
    And I ran to the telephone and it was him on the telephone
    and he didn't believe it.
    And he just jumped and he started to scream.
    And then he says, just stay there.
    I'll be there.
    And about after 10 or 15 minutes, and he
    comes running up.
    I recognized him immediately.
    He's a nice, good looking fellow.
    And he started crying and screaming
    because we have not seen him.
    He's only one that's left from the whole
    from the whole friends.
    He starts screaming, I'm actually now
    in correspondence with him.
    I call him.
    We went to visit him.
    So again, since I left there, and so we
    have this relationship.
    Where did you make friends with him?
    We were-- he was a friend of my brother in Rzeszów,
    in the ghetto.
    He's from Kraków.
    And he was actually I re-established relationship
    with him after the war in Bindermichl,
    which was a displaced persons camp.
    So we lived together in the same complex after the war,
    until I went to the United States,
    before he went to Belgium.
    He decided, he married a girl from Belgium,
    and he moved to Belgium.
    Because right after the war, all of our people
    tried to get someplace where to emigrate.
    Some of us tried to leave much sooner or much later,
    much earlier, and went to different places.
    Some of them went to Australia.
    Some found relatives or distant relatives.
    Somebody went with a friend that had a relative or all kinds.
    A lot of them went to Israel, because they
    didn't have any place and they ended up going there.
    And it took a long time, as I was saying, that when we first
    went to Israel for the convention,
    that's when we first started to really open up more and talk
    about it.
    At that stage, we also started to figure that we
    are pretty well getting older.
    And unless we tell the world what happened,
    the world may not know.
    Or if they did know, because even though we were not
    told in so many words in any language,
    be it Polish, or German, or Jewish, remember us.
    But the dying people they more or less as they were marching
    us, they were being taken away.
    They more or less told us, hey, do remember us.
    And this is one of the things that we're
    trying to make up for it today is to try to talk about it.
    So we can remember in some form or another,
    we can remember them, that we are remembering.
    Thank you.
    Thank you.
    You want to be in the video.
    Give me a kiss?
    Sure.
    See that?
    OK.
    Is there any other questions?
    Anything else you want to--
    No, I mean I've done all the talking.
    You all haven't earned your money yet.
    You haven't asked me much questions.
    Can I ask a question, just off the record?
    Yeah, sure.
    I'm just interested in, you must have
    seen a lot of these TV documentaries
    and shows that deal with this subject.
    Yes.
    Are there any that you particularly
    find useful or do you find them all somehow miss the mark?
    I'll tell you the truth.
    You ask the question about the TV commercials--
    I mean the TV, right.
    OK.
    The first thing you have to remember
    is there's no TV in any form, nor my being here,
    can in any form describe what really happened.
    And they are doing as good a job as they can.
    I'm doing as good a job as I can,
    but it is not possible for the human mind
    to be able to digest it, what really happened.
    I personally was there.
    I don't believe it.
    I honestly question myself.
    Sometimes I says, how can I expect you to believe it?
    I was there.
    I don't think this happened.
    Did this really happened?
    Was I part of a family of seven brothers and sisters,
    and all were killed?
    Is that really the truth?
    I mean, I'm wondering myself.
    But then I say to myself, it is the truth.
    How can I expect anybody else to really comprehend
    it and understand it?
    Because the magnitude, and you have to also go back
    to the fact, if it happens in, say, in Vietnam,
    those people are not the Germans.
    This is a civilized country.
    This is a modern country.
    You can accept the tortures, the marches, the inhuman behavior.
    I've seen mothers, the children being grabbed away
    from their mother and stamped on it, and then stepped on it,
    and people getting taken by force,
    and cut up, and taken they cut off their hair,
    and making fun out of them.
    I mean, this is a brother.
    Brother, this is humanity?
    Where is this humanity?
    Man's inhumanity to man.
    So when you asked the question about the television what
    you said, OK, well, fine.
    I see it.
    I watched them.
    I watched all the segments, which
    was this and this and this.
    And yet I said to myself, my God, my God.
    And I look back, of course, and I cannot really believe some
    of these incidents, or some of these happenings.
    Or how did I even survive?
    I can't believe.
    Am I really here, or am I in a second world?
    Am I in a different world.
    Am I really here?
    Am I Wolf Finkelman, the son of Josef Finkelman,
    one of seven children?
    Am I really here right now sitting here,
    or is this some kind of a make believe?
    Because maybe it is a make believe.
    And unfortunately, it is the truth.
    This is what life is.
    And this is what we had to live, and this is what we saw,
    and this is what we witnessed.
    And today, there are people that say to us, this didn't happen.
    I mean, there are people, intelligent people,
    I mean, there are people that go in, professors and doctors,
    and they say, hey, these people are making up all these stories.
    There was no Holocaust.
    There was no-- darned if even if they didn't say there's a war.
    So you wonder to yourself, here I am in person, seen it all,
    witnessed it all.
    And yet, is it really true?
    I wake up sometimes.
    I say, oh my God.
    What really is really?
    And that's what it is.
    It's unfortunately, but that's what it is.
    Now, the big question again is can it happen again?
    And my answer to everybody is, yes, because we
    it doesn't matter.
    --tape?
    It's going.
    Yeah, it doesn't matter.
    It can happen again.
    Now, when I talk to the kids in school and I
    tell them, unless we are more vigilant,
    unless we are more careful, because these things can happen.
    And as we are talking today, look
    at what's happening in other countries and other places.
    People are being tortured.
    People are being maimed.
    People are being killed.
    What are we doing?
    What is the world doing?
    Are we going to be concerned?
    What's going to happen?
    They say, for example, at one time or another,
    what was happening in Russia?
    What was happening in Vietnam, or what was happening in China?
    Are we the people really going to put out
    so much efforts to prevent it?
    When Bush speaks up against Saddam
    and everybody is saying, hey, wait a minute, what do we have?
    Let's wait.
    Are we giving them the backing that things like that
    don't happen?
    Are we willing to sacrifice?
    That's what life is.
    Unfortunately, I think we have to understand
    that the world is really what it is, it sometimes is not.
    That's what life that's what it is.
    But you had a very good question.
    Well, I mean, obviously, because I'm involved in doing this,
    and I've seen many films on concentration camps
    and many documentaries.
    Yeah.
    But there's no way that they can really show you everything,
    to give you a total concept is almost
    an impossibility for somebody, for anybody to even understand.
    Look, there were so many places things were happening.
    There were so many towns, little towns.
    A town was completely razed to the ground
    and people were taken out from town 20 miles away
    and told to dig your own grave, and mass murders,
    shooting with machine guns, and all that stuff.
    I mean, can anybody believe while this was going on here,
    five other things were going on here?
    These 10 other things were going on here.
    There's all kinds of things were happening in this.
    Well, people were thrown into the gas chambers
    by the thousands and told, you're
    going into a picnic, deceived by what, and for what?
    So, that's where we are, unfortunately.
    That's history.
    I mean, you seem such a cheerful person.
    Well, as I said to you, I have to.
    Because if I wasn't, if we were to live with this,
    if we were to live with this memory
    and stay continually on in it, we couldn't survive.
    We couldn't live.
    And we had to make our own lifestyle.
    And what I said, actually, and I tried
    to tell you at the ending is, despite it all,
    I managed to recapture myself coming here with $2,
    not speaking the language and all that.
    I built a nice business, have nice children, have raised them
    the right way, sent them to college.
    They're very well educated.
    They're nice.
    They're part of the community.
    They lead a community life.
    They help the community.
    This is what is a necessity in life.
    You also go back to the fact what
    I told you is I used to-- when I stayed to 10 degrees
    below zero in Mauthausen in the nude, I didn't catch a cold.
    Here, I go out in a coat and I catch a cold.
    I was living with the dead.
    I was sleeping with the dead.
    Here I go to the hospital, I'm shaking to touch the door.
    But people adapt themselves to whatever is necessary.
    People have got a lot more in them than really than they are.
    But we have to adapt ourselves to a lifestyle, whatever
    we have.
    So despite it all, a lot of the people that survived,
    I'm talking about us, the survivors, have made very big,
    nice successes out of themselves,
    not only out of themselves.
    Because we asked our kids, what we were deprived of,
    of the real life, we tried to give it
    to our kids better and more.
    Because I didn't have any schooling.
    On the contrary, our kids have become doctors and lawyers,
    and in a lot of the survivors, children
    have become doctors and lawyers, and professionals.
    And some of them are in Congress.
    Some of them are there.
    So we have seen that transformation
    into the plus side, rather than the negative side.
    There's very few of us that really have not made success,
    and some of them that haven't even we
    ourselves are trying to help them because not everybody can
    be 100% successful.
    So we try to take care of some of the poorer ones.
    But most of them, I say 75% to 80% of the survivors
    have become very successful in this country.
    Some of us, of course, still have these
    after effects from the camps, whether they
    have, bad livers, or bad not mental problems as much
    as physical problems.
    Because they have whatever it is, diabetes, or lung problems,
    or respiratory problems.
    But most of us have been trying to really
    adjust to a new lifestyle, to a new living,
    and trying to even though you constantly know what happened,
    remember what happened.
    But life must go on.
    And you try to be as the next guy.
    When I walk on the street, or when I talk to people,
    or when I do business, no one even
    knows the fact that I am a survivor
    or I have been in concentration camp, and so like that.
    And we certainly don't go around and advertise it.
    Listen, by the way, I've been in concentration camp.
    I'm a survivor, and all that.
    We just don't-- that's not the type of thing I practice.
    I have not seen it from anybody.
    I've not seen it from anybody.
    I'm talking about from the survivors.
    Most of the times we don't even talk to each other about it
    anymore.
    We have never talked to each other about it.
    I was talking to this lady this morning
    that we don't even talk to each other about it.
    There may be people in Houston even that were in the same camps
    that I was in.
    And we just we don't know about it.
    Excuse me.
    Do you want to change to another tape?
    No.
    You want to--
    I don't have anything else.
    They don't have any questions.
    And unless you want to--
    No, I--
    What?
    All right, but it's up to you.
    But it's about time.
    Any second, it's going to be time to change the tape.
    We can finish it.
    OK.
    Well, I don't know whether it's going or not, but I mean,
    it sounds like it would seem kind of logical
    that there's sort of a comradeship amongst--
    Tremendous comradeship.
    Was there during the time when you were in the camps?
    Absolutely.
    We were dying for each other.
    There was continuously with the families, with comradeship,
    we were protecting.
    There was nothing to give a life one for another.
    This was absolutely accepted.
    I mean, if you had to give a life for one or another,
    we do that continuously.
    There was always that feeling.
    We have tremendous feelings for each other today.
    The people that survived, I mean,
    there's a tremendous closeness, but it is not necessary--
    it's just like I said, about the fact when
    the people were going to the death,
    they didn't talk about it.
    But believe me, when today, if one of us,
    if I wanted to go and say, for example, any amount of money
    from friends that have it, they'll give it to you
    without any questions.
    They don't say that.
    I don't say that.
    But I know it's there and they know it's there.
    OK.
    This is the type of relationship we have.
    We have a tremendous closeness in our feelings because we feel,
    the survivors, we have survived and we are really
    very, very close to each other.
    But during the time when we were actually incarcerated
    during the war, I mean, you described at the end
    when people were fighting one another to get the food.
    Obviously, that's a very extreme moment.
    Yeah.
    But don't forget that people fight for survival.
    I mean, it didn't make any difference the friendship
    at that stage already.
    It doesn't matter.
    Because don't forget, they don't even
    know each other at that time.
    But the people, I mean, if you hadn't eaten for five days
    and suddenly you see somebody else has a piece of bread,
    you'd do anything to get it.
    Because you want to save your life.
    It's a different type of a deal than, of course, your friendship
    because you're actually fighting to fighting to survive.
    It's your death.
    It's your life.
    If you could hang on, if you can say,
    for example, if you know their knives are hanging on there.
    But in order to survive, you would grab a knife.
    I mean, a knife Don't make a difference how it will cut you,
    but at least your life will be spared.
    So this is the same thing.
    So anyway, that's not the judgment situation for them.
    [AUDIO OUT]

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Wolf Finkelman
    Date
    interview:  1990 December 03

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
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    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Finkelman, Wolf.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a copy of the interview from Wolf Finkelman in 1995.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:21:18
    This page:
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