- --6, and that will tell the whole story, I hope.
- Or in microcosm, it will tell the story.
- I'll be talking with you, Fred Baum, Steffi Steinberg Winters.
- To search the grounds around the monument
- to pick up a chip of that stone and couldn't find one that I
- was sure was part of that.
- But I did snip off a piece of the barbed wire, which
- I have at home.
- Oh, good.
- And which I will keep forever.
- I think what we'll do here is half the interview.
- You're going to have that as the background, right?
- I see your diploma--
- You diploma in the background.
- Oh, OK.
- Everybody ribs me about the disorder here.
- I don't want to ruin too much of the spontaneity
- when we meet in Oswego.
- So I'll save most of the Oswego questions for up there.
- Sure.
- We'll just play it by ear.
- Are you ready?
- Mm, hmm.
- Rolling.
- OK.
- Why don't you first just tell me about what
- your life was like in Europe prior
- to boarding the Henry Gibbins.
- Were you running from the Nazis?
- Were you in concentration camps?
- Yes.
- But even before that, it was a very peaceful existence
- in Belgium.
- My parents had emigrated from Poland, settled in Antwerp.
- And I lived there and grew up in Antwerp happy,
- contented youngster, leading a normal life
- until, I think, the invasion of Poland,
- which caught us during a vacation time in 1938,
- I believe it was.
- And so my father literally in an emotional breakdown,
- because his parents and my mother's parents were in Poland
- and were caught in the vise of the German juggernaut,
- and I remember beginning to become aware of what
- that Nazi danger was all about.
- My parents never saw their parents again.
- And, of course, things became very hot politically
- and otherwise after that.
- And it became apparent that at some point,
- we might have to leave our homes too,
- although we try to keep that in the distance
- of our consciousness.
- And of course, on May 9, 1940, when
- Germany invaded Belgium, France, and Luxembourg,
- that's when we picked up and never saw my home again
- until many years later when I returned on my honeymoon
- with my wife.
- So that began the Holocaust period for me in May 1940.
- And you stayed on the run for quite a while?
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Tell me about that trek over the Alps.
- Funny you should ask.
- A book was just reviewed in The New York Times,
- which I purchased yesterday.
- Can I mention names?
- Sure.
- It is called The Holocaust and the Italians.
- And it is a book that describes the German occupation of Italy
- and the political and social and so on climate.
- And in it read really for the first time mention
- of the little village in the southern portion of France
- where my family and I were interned
- under the Italian occupied powers.
- It was a little corner of France that they
- had gotten as a bounty for having attacked France
- on the last days before they were
- to surrender to the Germans.
- And with the abdication of Mussolini in September 1943,
- I believe it was, that occupation ceased.
- The Germans, we knew, would suck up the vacuum.
- And having prepared a route in advance,
- we undertook the trek to cross the Alps into Italy,
- having heard a false rumor that the Allies had landed in Genoa.
- They didn't.
- But that's what we hoped to do.
- We would meet the Allies, and we would at last be free.
- And it was a harrowing trek, several days duration.
- Can you imagine 1,000 people trying to worm their way up?
- We looked like little ants in the distance
- with whatever possessions they could carry,
- babies, pregnant women.
- Rabbi carried a Torah.
- A man threw away his crutches because he couldn't
- manipulate things with them.
- And yet this sort of had become part of our destiny
- at that time-- to pick up and run and seek shelter and refuge
- and save ourselves.
- And that was one of the episodes.
- And what happened when you got to the crest
- and came down on the Italian side?
- Well, we were greeted by the Italian patrols who
- still had not heard the total picture about Mussolini's
- abdication.
- They were still in the army.
- And they must have observed us for hours
- as we were worming our way up the mountain and helped us up.
- And there was a military detachment there.
- Whether it was a company or smaller than that
- I don't know-- with barracks at the top of the mountain
- overseeing both the valley into France and the other side
- into Italy.
- They helped us out and gave us quarters, but then
- subsequently proceeded the next day when we were on our way
- into Italy to rob most people, who trusted them
- with their possessions and loaded them on the mules,
- proceeded to disappear with the possessions
- and never to be seen again.
- And as soon as we arrived in Italy, my family
- and I were fortunate, my father had
- fought on the Italian front in World War I.
- And so his military booklet had some Italian translations
- of his service.
- And wherever he needed to show his papers,
- he was automatically permitted to go through
- as other people were herded into a camp.
- And panic started all over again.
- Fortunately, the camp was abandoned by the Italian troops
- the next day.
- And they simply dispersed and left.
- And what many of us did is we sought shelter again.
- Some stayed up in the mountains with the partisans and so on.
- And that book tells the story of the little villages.
- Until eventually, we got to a slightly larger village,
- Borgo San Dalmazzo, where we stayed for a couple of nights.
- The Germans began to move up.
- An SS detachment came into town, spotted
- a line in the morning of people waiting for bread.
- As soon as the people in line saw the Germans--
- they happened to be the Jewish refugees who had crossed
- the Alps--
- started to run.
- They caught one, blurted out the story the next day,
- placards all over the town and surrounding villages
- that all the Jews subsequently changed
- to all foreigners recently arrived in this area
- must report to Gestapo headquarters, et cetera.
- They caught a large number of people.
- They were eventually deported from what I hear.
- And very few, if any, returned.
- We instead chose to go up into the mountains to hide.
- And when it was safe, we sent my brother to Turin
- to explore possibilities.
- Eventually, worked our way into Milan, into Turin,
- into Florence, and eventually Rome.
- And this is as far as we could go and went underground
- with the help of the church.
- That's a hell of a way for a young teenager to grow up.
- Yes, it was.
- It's an overnight growth.
- You see, you become-- go from boyhood to manhood overnight,
- mostly because of anxiety and fear.
- You must have been afraid--
- Terribly.
- --an awful lot.
- Terribly.
- We knew, contrary to what the conception is,
- we knew what happened and what happens to Jews.
- We knew about the crematoria.
- We knew about the ovens.
- We knew about Auschwitz and Dachau and Auschwitz--
- and some of the assorted other camps.
- That's what we were running from.
- So--
- And you finally meandered your way into Italy.
- Into Rome.
- And somehow-- we arrived in Rome just about the time
- when the SS found the synagogue in Rome.
- I don't know whether you know that part of the story.
- There was a bounty exacted from the Jewish community,
- 50 pounds of gold.
- We arrived on the day when that whole story
- was beginning to unfold and tried to find shelter.
- Eventually, we made some contact with a priest
- by the name of Padre Benedetto, who
- had been very active in France, in Marseilles,
- with Jewish refugees--
- Pierre-Marie-- Pere Marie-Benoit,
- now Padre Benedetto.
- And he provided shelter.
- The Vatican had apparently opened up certain institutions
- and asked them to take in Jews and refugees.
- And we found shelter--
- my mother in a convent, my father
- in the caretaker of a monastery-like structure,
- and I in a school, a boarding school run by Marist brothers.
- And I was in hiding there with several other Jewish people,
- including some, I found out later,
- Italian officials and English flyers and God knows who else,
- all dressed in the appropriate clergy outfits.
- A lot of luck, a little cunning.
- Most of it luck.
- Most of it serendipity.
- I remember, for example, one time
- playing soccer in the courtyard in Rome with the kids.
- And I remember one of the priests who kicked
- the ball a little too high.
- And I was perturbed by the fact that he
- had a pair of striped trousers rolled up.
- And I knew that priests don't wear that.
- They wear short length Black trousers.
- And it wasn't until Rome was liberated
- that I found out who he was and why he left
- every day with a violin case.
- The violin case had no violin in it,
- but had a machine gun and hand grenades.
- And he was some sort of underground Italian soldier,
- who found shelter there and was continuing
- his activities throughout his hiding days there.
- Wow.
- So you get to, at that point, liberated Italy.
- Yeah.
- Rome was liberated on, I believe, D-Day plus 1,
- if my history serves me right.
- It was just after the-- or just the day
- before the invasion of Normandy or the day after.
- And how do you hear about the possibility
- of going to the United States?
- That was through the military government
- in Rome, the occupation authorities in Rome.
- We had heard and had seen a reprint, which I still
- have at home, that the United States is
- interested in bringing a group of refugees
- to be selected from among those who suffered most
- during the war, whatever, at this point,
- bring them over to the United States for the duration
- of the war and then to be brought back
- to their respective countries.
- We presented ourselves because my mother
- was extremely ill with a thyroid condition, which
- necessitated an operation.
- There were no antibiotics in those days.
- There was no food.
- Surgical facilities must have been relatively nonexistent.
- And her thyroid was choking her literally.
- And so our reason for presenting ourselves
- was so that mother could be helped.
- And we were selected and were brought to Fort Ontario,
- Oswego, New York.
- That's how we got here.
- You all signed-- let me ask you this first.
- Is it accurate to say that you and the other refugees
- were saved or rescued?
- You were already in pretty good shape in liberated Italy.
- Good shape.
- Well, that, of course, is a relative term.
- If you had seen us now the way we looked then,
- you wouldn't think we were in good shape.
- We were all emaciated, torn clothing.
- We looked like we had been through a hell of some sort.
- But at that point we were free.
- And that was the essential ingredient.
- Yeah, we were OK at that point.
- All of you signed the waiver form
- in Italy, which was pretty explicit saying
- at the end of the war you would have to be repatriated
- to your homelands.
- Yes.
- Despite the fact that these homelands
- had kicked out all the Jews--
- Yes Yeah.
- There was no confusion over that--
- Oh, at that point, I think, in order for us,
- for those of us who wanted to go to America,
- in order for those of us to be able to do that, we would
- have signed almost anything.
- And some of us couldn't believe that the United
- States would stick to that.
- We felt it must be some sort of pro forma statement
- that we were signing.
- And Europe was devastated at that point.
- Just a small portion of it was liberated.
- But we knew what the rest of it must look like, where
- the battle was yet to come.
- No food, no shelter, no clothing.
- And we decided anything must be better,
- even for a year or two or three--
- we didn't know when the war would end--
- than to stay in that hellhole.
- At that point, I couldn't tolerate Europe anymore.
- I had survived.
- But I wanted no part of it.
- And you are how old at this time?
- About 17, I would say.
- And your family somehow is still together?
- Yes.
- My family, consisting of my parents and my brother, younger
- brother, 3 years younger than I am, and myself, yeah.
- On the Henry Gibbins, or as you boarded,
- you talked a little about how you looked.
- Tell me more, and tell me how everybody else--
- physical condition and emotional condition.
- On the boat?
- As you boarded.
- Just before--
- As we boarded, well, we spent a number of days
- in Aversa, which is near Naples, sort of waiting either
- for the boat to be readied or for us to be processed.
- We looked like a motley crew.
- We looked like we had survived some sort of hell.
- Our clothes, our-- we were ill fed.
- We looked like refugees, like the typical pictures
- of refugees.
- Some people even were wearing some
- of their concentration camp uniforms, striped uniforms.
- I think there's a picture of some of us on the boat.
- And you can see in the background someone's standing
- there with their striped outfit.
- Despite the-- I'm sorry.
- Go ahead.
- But we were smiling, you know, on the other hand.
- We had survived a cataclysm.
- We came out relatively unscathed.
- Things were going to be OK from now on in, so we thought.
- Despite your harrowing trek over the Alps,
- you were among the best off though?
- Oh, yes.
- In comparison to--
- Oh, sure.
- --some of the others.
- Oh, sure.
- I mean when I compare my survival to some of my friends,
- for example, who were part of the death march in Auschwitz,
- mine was a picnic.
- Yet I can't really define it as a picnic.
- But in comparison to that, it was nothing.
- Yet I suffered my own private hell, and they did theirs.
- Yet the two experiences are not comparable in any way.
- On board the Henry Gibbins, there
- was a considerable fighting among the various ethnic groups
- of you refugees.
- Yes.
- Not fist fighting.
- No--
- Verbal--
- --verbal fighting.
- Right.
- Despite the fact that most of you were Jews, and all of you
- had the common experience of fleeing the Nazi terror.
- Yes.
- I think it had to do with residual tensions.
- All we had known at that point was
- four years worth of fighting.
- I mean, everybody was fighting everybody.
- And you become part of the fighting system,
- territorial imperative--
- We were first of all living like rats in too small space.
- We were confined to the tip of that boat.
- And if you see pictures of it there
- are close to 1,000 people confined
- to a space that shouldn't hold more than 40 or 50.
- The close quarters I think provided part of the anger too,
- caused some of the anger because the quarters were too close.
- So everybody was violating everybody else's
- territorial imperatives.
- We weren't feeling well.
- The sea was rough.
- The voyage was long.
- The food was-- well, most of us couldn't touch it
- because we couldn't eat.
- So conditions were not terribly favorable.
- Some of it continued, spilled over, to Fort Ontario too.
- But eventually, I think that ironed out.
- During that two-week sea voyage, some pretty harrowing
- experiences--
- Oh, yes.
- --of its own, dodging planes and subs.
- Oh, yes.
- Oh, yes.
- There were two distinct episodes.
- One was planes, and one was submarines.
- And I remember clearly the two episodes
- where the convoy halted.
- We were part of a very large military convoy.
- And we were smack in the middle of it,
- I think strategically placed in the middle
- together with other boats that contained prisoners of war
- in order to protect us and the sick GIs, the wounded GIs that
- were on board.
- And we were surrounded with other naval vessels.
- It was a huge convoy coming back.
- Now what happened that night of the bombers?
- Well, they threw some smokescreens around the boats.
- And gas chambers and gas and smoke
- get confused in moments of panic.
- And people panicked.
- They wondered what was happening.
- Everything stopped.
- We were asked to keep quiet.
- We couldn't go on board--
- on top of the deck.
- We were confined downstairs in the sleeping quarters.
- And the Germans were at us again.
- I mean, we had just escaped them,
- and here they were once again.
- You just-- there was no running away from them.
- --
- Fine.
- How are we doing on tape time too?
- Just about done.
- To get you up in Oswego because that's
- the real juice of the questions.
- OK, any time.
- Any time.
- Of course, the camp no longer looks like what it did then.
- Right.
- What I want to do up there is I want to walk around with you.
- And we'll shoot from distance.
- We'll put wireless mics on us.
- Sure.
- And we'll walk around.
- And I'll have you describe what was there.
- Sure.
- This time I'm bringing a pair of my own pliers.
- OK.
- The only way I got a piece of that barbed wire fence is I
- borrowed a plier from the crew.
- Oh, great.
- And I asked the caretaker to turn around.
- It's government property.
- And he did.
- And I went and slipped a piece.
- Sure.
- OK.
- Because you were fluent in a couple of languages,
- you played an interesting role on board.
- The one time they must have gotten a message on board
- about the bombing of Berlin, you read the news
- over the loudspeakers, is that right?
- Yes.
- I assume because I spoke several languages, seven or eight
- at that point, English the least,
- that I was asked to broadcast translate over
- the public address system the news of the war
- in the various languages.
- And that's what I did.
- So they gave me a communique, which
- I think was written in English.
- And I translated it into Yiddish, into German,
- into Italian, into French so that everybody would
- hear the good news.
- And I felt so great because they were applauding.
- I could hear them out there.
- And part of it, I felt, was applause for me.
- But it was really how well the war was going
- that they were applauding.
- But at the age of 17, it was quite a thing, quite
- an achievement to be asked.
- There must have been mixed emotions
- there too, and not only pleasure at the bombing of Berlin, which
- means the war is going well, but people
- lived there who were on board.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Any good news about the war, any news that
- entailed the defeat of Germany and Nazism
- was superb news because even when that kind of news
- was happening during the occupation, we, of course,
- were never told about it.
- The Germans were always winning.
- They were always defeating the Allies.
- And that's what we had come to believe.
- We had come to despair that the war would ever end
- and that if it ended, it would be a disaster once again,
- that they would have conquered the world.
- Their propaganda was phenomenal.
- At first, the 1,000 refugees and the 1,000 wounded soldiers
- from Anzio and Cassino were separated.
- And fraternization was frowned upon.
- But soon, that broke down.
- It broke down.
- Some of the ambulatory soldiers came to the tip of the boat,
- and sort of stuck their heads through the doorways,
- and eventually stepped inside the part where we were.
- But it had been broken, too, because my mother
- became quite ill on board ship and had to be hospitalized.
- And so she was in the ship's hospital.
- And we were allowed to go visit her.
- So there were some severely wounded soldiers
- in these three bunks.
- And my mother was in this one and so on.
- So I had access to that part of the ship.
- What kind of reaction did they have toward you
- and the other refugees?
- It's so hard for me to remain objective and judge
- their reactions to me, when my reaction to them
- was one of awe as a 17-year-old.
- Those were the conquering heroes who had given their blood
- to liberate us and so on.
- So I can talk about my reaction.
- I don't think I can be objective in terms of judging theirs.
- We must have been some strange-looking people to them.
- Was there resentment when the subs and planes
- came by those incidents, that that was done because there
- were these 900 Jews on board?
- I don't think we rationalized it that way.
- I think we were too afraid of anything happening to even
- argue without logically.
- When it was over, it was over, and that was it.
- At the time it was happening, we were all scared.
- I was scared.
- I was petrified.
- So after two weeks on board, you come here
- to your new home, what has since become your home.
- Take that ship through New York Harbor past the Statue
- of Liberty.
- Tell me about that.
- Indescribable, indescribable.
- Again, there's a picture in the book Haven
- of all of us looking at the Statue of Liberty.
- Some of us didn't know what the Statue of Liberty
- was, the adults did, that had become the symbol
- of the United States.
- But all of us knew we were in the United States
- at this point.
- And that was the significance of passing that statue on the way
- to wherever we were going.
- I don't think anyone on that boat--
- there wasn't anyone who did not have a deep emotional reaction.
- The voyage was coming to an end.
- And it signified the beginning of another trek.
- But that part of us was behind us.
- It signified the beginning of who knows what?
- Exactly.
- We did not know, absolutely right.
- We did not know.
- And it was freedom.
- But what kind of freedom, for how long,
- what would we have to do in return for that
- was all unknown.
- It was an unknown entity.
- You stayed on board that night and looking at the--
- It was awful.
- It was awful.
- One of us, I learned, subsequently,
- managed to be smuggled out by a sailor
- and did the town, Times Square.
- We could sort of see the lights of it.
- It was an indescribable experience
- to be sitting in that harbor with all the New York
- lights and all that that meant at that time.
- Don't forget, we came from a Europe
- that had been in the dark at night for four years.
- Here it was, life, pulsating city.
- And we couldn't go.
- It was tempting.
- But there was nothing we could do.
- But it almost didn't matter.
- This was the United States.
- And we were there.
- We had reached haven.
- We had reached safe.
- The next day or so you were ferried over to Hoboken.
- Yeah.
- And from there by train.
- There was a delousing or DDT spraying there.
- Do you remember that?
- I don't remember that one.
- I only remember the delousing in Aversa,
- in the camp over there, which was a terrible experience,
- everybody parading nude-- men, women the soldiers gawking,
- and so on.
- I do not remember the delousing procedure there.
- And I have very little memory of the train ride up to Oswego.
- I remember arriving there, but I don't remember
- much of the train ride.
- It was an overnight trek.
- There's a chance you probably slept through most of it.
- Probably right, all the tension, finally.
- And at this point, how is your mother?
- Weak, very emaciated looking, the typical look
- of the hyperthyroid patient whose hair is falling out,
- whose eyes are exophthalmic, whose breathing
- is heavy because of the throat being impinged on, but happy
- to be here.
- And she made the trip on the train as well?
- Yes, yeah.
- Was that train ride difficult for some, if not you,
- because of all the symbolism of a train ride to you
- don't know where?
- Yeah.
- Some people, apparently the older ones,
- must have experienced this with a great deal
- more anxiety than the young ones.
- To the young ones, this was a new adventure.
- To the older people, train rides,
- having had train rides in the past that led to catastrophe,
- I think they boarded that train with greater trepidation.
- And some of them, when they arrived in the camp,
- finally, and saw that the camp was encircled with a wire
- fence, atop of which was some barbed wire and the barracks,
- became acutely anxious.
- In fact, some of these people's memories
- are that that fence was electrocuted--
- it was electrically wired.
- Nonsense.
- That all of it was barbed wire-- nonsense.
- That it was designed to keep us in-- nonsense.
- The fence was there long before we
- got there to keep other people from coming into the camp,
- rather than whoever was inside the camp to go out.
- But we came all too ready to believe that, once
- again, catastrophe had hit.
- And this was it again.
- And we were tagged.
- And we couldn't go out.
- And we were quarantined, all for good reason, probably.
- A dehumanizing experience, though.
- Very much so.
- Very much so.
- And even the tags you wore said, you were baggage.
- Baggage.
- I have not been able to put my hand again on one of those.
- I'm sure we threw them out, most of us,
- because I don't know of anyone who has one of those.
- But apparently, yes, it said baggage.
- And we had become excess baggage in a very real way.
- People didn't want us.
- We were excess.
- We were to be disposed of.
- At least, that was our experience for several years
- during the occupation.
- Of course, you didn't know it then,
- and most people still don't know it today,
- of the absolutely atrocious--
- I'll opinionize hear-- the atrocious record
- of the United States government in terms of rescue.
- Most people are familiar with the turning away of the St.
- Louis in 1938, the fact that we knew
- what was going on as early as 1942
- and didn't do a damn thing.
- Now, what does that do to you?
- It makes me sad, very sad.
- And I've expressed myself on that topic many, many times,
- whenever given the opportunity.
- It makes me very sad that a country like the United States,
- the tremendous power, couldn't see
- fit, A, to get in into the rescue issue
- much earlier on a much larger scale
- and to, even after the war was finished,
- to bring more people over here than they did.
- We were literally a token group designed
- to induce others to do the major portion of rescue
- and sheltering.
- I didn't know it at the time.
- I wouldn't have believed it if I had known the facts.
- I would not have believed that the United States knew
- and could have bombed some of those concentration camps
- into oblivion, at least the railroad leading to them,
- and created havoc that they refused to do so.
- I would not have believed it had someone told me that.
- This is how ready I was to believe
- that they could do no wrong.
- And you were personal guests of President Roosevelt.
- Yes.
- And much has come to light since about what President
- Roosevelt knew, and didn't know, and what he did and didn't do.
- Right, right, right.
- Your feelings then and your feelings now about FDR?
- Changed, changed, and very much so.
- I now know, for example, that Dulles
- was sitting in Switzerland and received firsthand reports.
- They probably knew every time someone was killed in a camp.
- They knew exactly what was happening.
- And all of that information--
- some of it, they sat on.
- Some of it that trickled through into this country
- was stopped at this end by assorted people who did not
- want to stir things up by making this known to the public
- and so on.
- On board the Henry Gibbons, you met a soldier, evidently,
- who took a liking to you and gave you a dime or something.
- And that comes to play later.
- Yes.
- Let me ask this question twice, here and up in Oswego.
- Sure.
- Tell me about that experience and follow it through for me.
- I don't know why that has sort of remained with me as a very
- poignant memory.
- But indeed, one of the few possessions I had,
- aside from my shorts, and some socks that were torn,
- and a handkerchief that was more holes than substance,
- this soldier had given me a silver dime with a picture
- of Roosevelt on it.
- And I treasured it.
- And I had it in my pocket when we arrived in Fort Ontario.
- And after a quick round of the ground site, the campsite,
- I discovered that it was a recreation hall
- and that there was some ping-pong tables, and paddles,
- and nets, but no ping-pong balls.
- And I was an avid player.
- I several times put my life in jeopardy in Turin and in Rome
- to go play ping-pong.
- I loved the game.
- Somebody forgot to buy some balls.
- So I quickly went to the fence.
- This was within the first day or so, where the Oswegonians were
- standing on one side, gawking at whoever
- it was on the other side of that fence.
- And since I spoke English, usually, a cluster
- formed around me because I was able to communicate
- and translate.
- And there's this nice, young man about my age,
- who seemed so interested in what we were about.
- And I suddenly remembered the dime and the fact
- that I wanted to play ping-pong.
- Jim, I think, was his name, if I recall correctly.
- I said, Jim, can you get ping-pong balls here?
- In Europe, they were unavailable.
- They made out of casein and so on.
- Oh, sure.
- And I dug into my pocket.
- And I pull it out, said, can you get a ball for that?
- And he said, oh, sure, I'll get you several.
- I gave him the dime.
- And he hopped on his bike.
- And I continued to talk.
- And he came back a few minutes later with a brown paper
- bag, tossed over the fence.
- I picked it up, I opened it up, and there are three brand
- new, shiny ping-pong balls.
- And I was so overwhelmed by that and by his gesture
- that I thanked him.
- Thank you very much.
- You are a big ass.
- And I noticed that the expressions on the other people
- watching and hearing this on the other side
- changed all of a sudden, from friendly smiling people
- to this grim, foreboding look.
- And I knew I must have done something wrong.
- And Jim was a bright young man.
- He said, what do you mean?
- And I said, you're an ass.
- Tell me what you mean.
- I said, you know, during the war,
- the man that flies a plane, shoot down the enemy,
- he's an ass.
- Oh, you mean an ace.
- I said, yeah, an ace.
- It was only afterwards that I realized
- what I had said to this man.
- But that's the story of the ping-pong balls
- and my attempt at English.
- You are a big ass.
- I love it.
- Let me skip to the end here.
- Sure.
- And we'll talk some about Oswego when we meet up there.
- But here it is now, 40-some-odd years later.
- God, yes.
- Yes.
- And the refugees, by and large, have made tremendous successes
- of themselves.
- Here you are, the director of psychological services
- at a big New York hospital-- businessmen, doctors,
- engineers, musicians.
- What does that say?
- What meaning can we take from that?
- I can only supply my private meaning.
- And that is how many millions more
- if we had rescued them, if they had survived,
- would have contributed to society in a meaningful way,
- whether as bricklayers or as doctors,
- whether as train conductors or professors doesn't matter.
- But they could have become productive members of society.
- Instead, they're fertilizing fields somewhere.
- How should history judge the Oswego experience--
- as a triumph for 1,000 people or as a failure for what could
- have been done and was not?
- I think a bit of each has to be included in that.
- I think a great deal more could have been done now,
- retrospectively looking at it.
- A great deal more should have been done.
- It was a token.
- Those of us who were rescued and were part of that experience
- are grateful.
- I am.
- But it's not enough.
- Let me go back to an earlier issue.
- You still use the word rescue and save.
- You believe you were rescued and saved?
- In those days, I probably would have referred to it
- as liberated.
- Had things gone on the way they were,
- and that's probably why I used the word saved,
- we would have all died.
- It was a matter of time and a matter of luck.
- Because every day, more and more people we knew
- were being caught, arrested on the street,
- their documents not accepted.
- And they were deported, little by little.
- And if time had gone on--
- Even from liberated Italy?
- No, no, during the occupation.
- During the occupation.
- I mean, that you were rescued and saved
- from when you were taken aboard the Henry Gibbons.
- I don't know that I refer to it, that component, as saved.
- I thought you meant the liberation of Rome
- and my being rescued from.
- I'm not sure that I would refer to it as that,
- as saved at that point.
- Although my mother's life probably was.
- That's almost symptomatic, though, of what
- the US government's role was.
- I mean, they saved the saved.
- They saved folks who were already doing
- OK, comparatively.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Now, I don't know that we, or I, would
- have had the opportunities that I had
- having come to this country.
- I don't know, for example, that I would have had ever studied.
- I could afford to study because I went into the army
- and was drafted from New York as soon as I got here.
- I got a GI Bill of Rights, which permitted me to study.
- I don't know whether if I had stayed in Europe
- I would have gone the route that I went, having
- come to the United States.
- Let me just check over and make sure I'm not
- going to miss anything here that I should.
- Well, inasmuch as we're in New York,
- you are kind of legendary in the folklore up there.
- I mean, everybody seems to know that that fence did certainly
- not keep you in and that you made a trip or two down
- here to New York.
- Several trips, right.
- New York was too much of a lure.
- And that kind of freedom was too much of an enticement for me
- to want to stay behind barbed wires,
- but mostly, because I felt convinced that, even if caught,
- nothing terrible would have happened to me.
- And so I we dared.
- We went.
- And we came to New York and had a ball.
- Excuse me.
- Is it amazing, interesting, what?
- How would you characterize it that no one did take off?
- Where would we go?
- And for how long could we have disappeared in this country
- without papers and so on?
- Besides, I think by the time we were settled in Fort Ontario,
- we did not feel that it was a prison.
- We felt that, at some point, things would change.
- And I don't think there was a necessity to escape it
- from that point of view.
- On board the Henry Gibbons, Ruth Gruber and someone else
- also gave English lessons.
- Yes.
- There's a funny story about that too, about the name of the ship
- is a secret.
- We come from the North Pole or something.
- I don't remember that.
- Yeah, OK, that's Ruth's story.
- Yeah, sure.
- But I can tell you about the distortion of her arrival
- in the Bay of Naples, which you probably know too.
- Tell me.
- People could swear today that they saw her land on a plane
- on the ship.
- If you looked at the ship, you'd know
- that no plane and not even a helicopter
- could land on that thing.
- But that was the legend.
- She was the angel that was deposited on that boat
- by a plane to come and accompany us to the United States.
- That wasn't at all how she arrived there.
- But that's the legend.
- OK.
- I got to change the battery and the tape now.
- OK.
- --could be released from the camp.
- I don't remember that other document because I never
- saw it firsthand.
- Sure.
- You were too young, but--
- And--
- --too old.
- Right.
- Right.
- That whole experience was such a--
- seems like such a tantalizing one, so close to freedom,
- yet so far.
- You could see it, feel it, taste it, but not enjoy it.
- That must have been--
- it must have just been out there tantalizing you.
- It was.
- It was.
- In fact, I wrote in a very broken English
- a story that was printed in the camp newspaper
- an analogy to a bird that is given all the wonderful care
- in the world and is put in a gilded cage
- and once in a while inside the closed apartment
- is given the opportunity to spread its wings.
- But it still has to look outside the window.
- And it sees the rest of the world
- out there that it can't reach.
- That was the analogy to our experience in the camp--
- that we gained certain freedoms.
- The cage was gilded.
- We had food.
- We had medical attention.
- But there was a whole other world out there
- that was not really accessible to us.
- And that's the one we hungered for.
- And you won first prize for that.
- I did?
- Oh, OK.
- I have it--
- I have it, and I'll tip my hand.
- You're going to read that when you get to-- before Ontario.
- I'll tell you it does not deserve.
- The English in it is so broken and so stilted
- that it doesn't deserve a prize.
- But the reviews and the--
- to me, I was amazed at someone writing
- not in his native tongue to get that message across.
- I'll tell you I may have been the only submission then too--
- No were weren't--
- So the prize was awarded by default.
- --because Stefanie won third place.
- Oh, she did?
- Yes.
- I didn't remember that.
- I have it all.
- I have almost every copy of the entire chronicle.
- You do?
- I do.
- Oh, that's fascinating.
- And they are a wonderful source of information
- on what was going on.
- You know who turned me on to art was the cartoonist, Mr. Zipser,
- who did all the cartoons.
- He's the one I took my first art lessons from.
- And I think he inspired me to go on with it
- some 30 or 40 years later.
- Oh, great.
- Yeah.
- Well, good.
- Let's just get some cutaways now, Steve.
- And we'll save the rest for--
- I want to ask you about things that went on.
- And we'll take it almost chronologically.
- Sure.
- And--
- Are we still on at this point?
- No, we're just going to take some two-shots.
- And I also want you to play psychologist, if you will,
- about the emotional roller coaster that was there,
- the initial burst of joy, the freedom, and then
- the harsh winter, and the suicide and--
- Yeah.
- --expectations.
- And it must have been hell for the older folks.
- Yes.
- Do you remember things like Eleanor Roosevelt's visit?
- Oh, distinctly.
- In fact, I don't know-- no, I just lent the book today.
- There's a picture in Haven of Eleanor Roosevelt coming out
- of a kitchen or something and a row of people
- standing on both sides.
- It was Joseph smart talking to Eleanor Roosevelt.
- But my father is on one side.
- And the top of my head is on the other side.
- You can't see my face.
- But that was a miracle.
- It was like Moses came.
- [AUDIO OUT]
- [BACKGROUND NOISES]
- Want to see it.
- [BACKGROUND NOISES]
- When you get a high-powered Hollywood agent,
- tell them to call me.
- All right.
- What's the possibility of getting
- 10% of the tape we shot?
- Fair.
- Or the finished tape?
- A finish tape, for sure.
- I will film it, but just in case.
- No, the best-- the easiest way to do it
- is to make sure you that [? you bring your own ?]
- recorder, one of theirs.
- OK.
- [TECHNICAL REMARKS]
- Oh, good.
- Yeah.
- I will try and get my own if I can.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- We can certainly send you one.
- Just tape you guys talking.
- It don't bother me.
- Don't mind me.
- Where are you going from here now?
- Catch your breath.
- Go back to the hotel and--
- Where you staying?
- At the 10th Avenue Best Western.
- Oh, yeah.
- It's nice.
- Not too far.
- 2 dollars and a half --
- That's not [INAUDIBLE]
- Beats the hell out of $15 a night--
- How did you come up here?
- By cab?
- No.
- We took a car.
- Set?
- We took a rental car.
- Are you all set?
- [INAUDIBLE]
- You're not going to use this audio, are you?
- It's almost [INAUDIBLE].
- Good.
- And maybe we can meet for dinner that Wednesday
- night, unless you have--
- Well, no.
- The problem Wednesday night will be that [BACKGROUND NOISE]
- Oh, I mean the Tuesday night.
- A possibility.
- I will be at the {BACKGROUND NOISE]
- We'll talk.
- [? We'll have a drink. ?]
- Sure.
- Like to.
- See you there.
- See you.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Adam Munz
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of WXXI-TV
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Genre/Form
- Documentary films.
- Extent
-
3 videocassettes (U-Matic) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- Restrictions on use. Excerpts of the interviews may be used for all on-site not-for-profit purposes to the extent of fair-use. Permission must be granted by the interviewees for any uses beyond fair-use including, but not limited to, performance in a public program, an off-site exhibition; transmission, display, or performance on the internet; and any reproduction or distribution for third party use.
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives. Holocaust survivors--United States.
- Personal Name
- Munz, Adam.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The interview with Adam Munz was conducted by Paul Lewis for WXXI's documentary Safe Haven. The film documents the stories of some of the 982 Holocaust survivors, from 18 countries, who were interned at the Fort Ontario Army Camp in Oswego, NY, for 18 months from August 1944 to December 1946. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the extant copies of the interview in July 1991.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:09:18
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn512579
Additional Resources
Transcripts (3)
Download & Licensing
- Request Copy
- See Rights and Restrictions
- Terms of Use
- This record is digitized but cannot be downloaded online.
In-Person Research
- Available for Research
- Plan a Research Visit
Contact Us
Also in Oral histories from the WXXI, Channel 21 (Rochester) collection
The interviews document the stories of some of the 982 Holocaust survivors, from 18 countries, whom were interned at the Fort Ontario Army Camp in Oswego, NY for 18 months from August 1944 to December 1946.
Oral history interview with Fred Baum
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ralph Faust
Oral History
Images from the ship Henry Gibbins
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ruth Gruber
Oral History
Oral history interview with Leon Levitch
Oral History
Oral history interview with Manya
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sharon Lowenstein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rolf Manfred
Oral History
Oral history interview with Max Perlman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Joe Smart
Oral History
Oral history interview with Elie Wiesel
Oral History
Oral history interview with Steffi Winters
Oral History
Oral history interview with David Wyman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ruth Gruber
Oral History
Oral history interview with Adam Munz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Steffi Winters
Oral History
WXXI-TV: "Safe Haven" B-Roll Footage
Oral History