- OK, Sandra.
- I would say in about five seconds you can start it out.
- OK.
- I'm Sandra Bendayan.
- I'm here with Paul Benko doing an interview
- for the Oral History Project in San Francisco.
- Today is December the 12th, 1990.
- Paul, would you please introduce yourself and give your date
- and place of birth, and your name,
- who was different than Paul Benko.
- Yeah.
- Well, actually my name is Paul Benko,
- but there are two dots over the O.
- In Hungarian it's pronounced Ben-koo.
- But no one can pronounce that, so I'm
- Paul Benko, since I got my American passport.
- That was in 1945.
- But I was born in a town in Transylvania,
- which is the Western province of Romania, called Cluj, in 1929--
- August the 11th, 1929.
- And I lived in that town till 1944.
- In early '40s, 1941, I believe, the Hungarians
- marched into this part of Romania.
- So I lived in two countries.
- We lived a middle-class life.
- My father was an executive in a large shoe and leather factory.
- And I went to public schools in Romania.
- What were your parents' names?
- My father's name was Rudolf Benko,
- and my mother's name was Ilus Benko.
- My father was born in Budapest, and my grandmother
- was born and raised in Vienna.
- And the reason I say that is because I spoke Hungarian,
- Romanian, and German at home.
- So by the time I was four, I spoke Hungarian and German.
- And then, when I went to school, I learned Romanian.
- Did your family speak Yiddish also?
- No, we didn't speak Yiddish.
- The reason we didn't speak Yiddish
- is because my grandmother was a German teacher.
- And you know what German teachers felt about Yiddish.
- The Yiddish that I learned was mostly
- in informal conversations and in jokes.
- I actually learned more Yiddish in college in the United States
- than I knew in Eastern Europe, because there
- was this association that really, they
- looked upon Yiddish as fractured German.
- And my grandmother, being a German teacher,
- was particularly critical of Yiddish.
- But--
- Was this your maternal or your paternal
- My paternal grandmother.
- I never met my maternal grandparents.
- They had both passed away.
- They had died, in fact.
- My mother was an orphan.
- There were three girls in the family, and one son.
- And the three girls--
- essentially, she was born in a village near a town called
- Turda, which still exists today, in a town called
- Gyéres in Hungarian.
- It's spelled G-Y-E-R-E-S with an accent aigu on the first E.
- And what was her maiden name, then?
- Her name was Salamon.
- Salamon.
- My mother's name was Salamon.
- And she had two sisters, one called Martha and the other one
- called Irma.
- Martha immigrated in '28 to the United States.
- And my mother and her sisters were very close,
- and her brother particularly, since they lost their parents,
- and they were literally on their own for a part of their lives,
- when my youngest aunt was still a teenager.
- So they kept in touch all through.
- And they were really in close contact.
- My Aunt Martha made great efforts
- to get my mother to come to the United States.
- My parents were divorced when I was about four.
- And that's an unusual event in Europe.
- And so I first stayed with my mother, and later on I
- stayed with my father.
- Are you an only child?
- Yes.
- But that was not an unusual event in Europe.
- It's much more unusual here, but--
- You mean for an only-- to be--
- For to be an only child.
- And there were a lot--
- I know I had a lot of friends who were essentially
- only children.
- So you were raised at first with your mother,
- then, after the divorce.
- Right.
- I was raised with my mother.
- And my mother was a dress designer and dressmaker.
- And that's not an exaggeration, trying to upgrade.
- She really was a trained designer.
- She could look at what someone wore and draw the pattern.
- And people would come to our house,
- and she would draw patterns for them.
- And she made the clothes also.
- My mother was also a very good chess player.
- And she practiced that.
- She belonged to a chess club.
- And my father was an economist.
- He was involved in buying and selling
- foreign currency for the factory that he worked for.
- And small countries had very, very strict currency controls.
- I mean, people in the United States are unaware of that,
- that someone else can tell you how
- you can spend your own money.
- But in small countries, currency controls are very strict.
- And he worked for a factory where
- he had to buy such things as English thread and materials
- from Argentina--
- tanning material.
- It's called quebracho.
- And so he had to go to London at times, or to other places,
- and buy currency, and transact business that way.
- He had gone to a commercial type of gymnasium.
- And he actually had some business college training.
- And he had gone.
- He lived in a small village.
- My paternal grandfather was--
- it's called an ungraduate graduated engineer,
- and it's an Austro-Hungarian title.
- It means that someone who, by skill and by apprenticeship,
- reached a state where they take an engineering exam.
- So they're called an ungraduated engineer-- that is,
- an engineer who can practice as an engineer,
- but doesn't have a college degree.
- Mm-hmm.
- Didn't go on the usual route.
- Right, right.
- And he became the mechanical superintendent of a sawmill
- in a small town called Cuca.
- And this is where my father grew up, and had a great influence
- on his life, because in Cuca, there was a local poet.
- And this guy was a renowned poet,
- and attracted a lot of artists near him.
- So my father heard music from early days on.
- And he became a very proficient piano player.
- My father could read music before he
- could read words or letters.
- And there was no other entertainment.
- My grandfather was enormously fond of music,
- but grew up in a family too poor to train him in any music.
- So I basked in my father's rich musical talent,
- because when he went to school, he went to school
- in the nearby town.
- And in order to make money, he played in silent movies.
- So he learned silent movie scores.
- And I thought everybody had a father that you went home,
- you asked for a song, he plays it-- and play it on the piano.
- [LAUGHS] And just as I thought that everybody's mother
- could make a suit or knit a sweater,
- or all of those things.
- And that's how I grew up.
- So did your father remain an active force in your life
- even after the divorce?
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah.
- We were very close.
- I stayed with my mother during the week,
- and I visited my father on the weekends.
- And I learned a great deal from my father.
- Both of my parents contributed to my survival
- very significantly.
- My father's contribution was that he
- stressed language learning.
- So I got French lessons.
- Well, I got those in school too, but he taught me French too.
- He bought books in French that had no Hungarian, German,
- or Romanian words in them.
- They were only pictures and words.
- And so I learned the language without translating,
- which is really the best way to learn languages.
- And then, when I was about 12 and a half or so,
- he hired, when I was living with him,
- he hired an English painter who had
- been caught by the war in Romania, whose name was
- Mr. Galloway.
- And he looks exactly like Jan Christian Smuts,
- if you remember, the head of South Africa,
- with the white goatee.
- He looked exactly like him.
- And he had tobacco-stained very long teeth.
- And he never opened his mouth when he talk.
- So I learned English--
- the King's English-- first.
- He spoke German, but my father forbade
- any other language but English.
- So our lessons consisted of walking.
- And I was allowed to write down words after a couple of months
- only.
- But otherwise, we walked and we talked
- and we walked and we talked.
- And then there used to be parties of kids about my age
- who all were taking English lessons.
- And if you went to the party, you could only speak English.
- If you didn't speak English, somebody would open the door.
- Well, you know, teenagers would rather jump out the window
- than leave a party.
- And so we were really motivated to learn English.
- But the principal reason for my father insisting
- on learning English is because he did
- see the storm coming, though he thought he could weather it.
- But he said that if we lost everything,
- and they would paint the walls brown or red,
- people who speak languages would be,
- and would always find a place where
- to work where they could earn their living.
- And his entire approach was to sort of prepare me
- for survival.
- As I said, the reason he didn't leave
- is because he thought he could weather the storm, that he
- had been there long enough.
- He had enough connections.
- He had enough wit and such that he could survive.
- And of course, he didn't.
- When was it that he started to teach you
- these languages in preparation?
- Beginning in 1942.
- I see.
- So that was--
- Yeah.
- He's already moved along.
- Oh, yeah.
- For us, the war started much earlier than it started here.
- And the stringency that came later on
- was not entirely unexpected.
- We went in the late '30s, in the early '40s,
- we went to the train station.
- We used to stay at train stations
- and wait for trains of refugees, because we would hear
- that a refugee train coming.
- And then we'd be waiting there with food, and sometimes
- blankets.
- And sometimes the information was accurate.
- Sometimes we just waited for days and nothing came.
- Could you listen to the radio?
- Oh, yes.
- Yeah.
- We had a radio.
- We had two radios.
- We had an official radio, you know, the registered radio.
- And then we had a huge Philips set.
- The Philips radio-- and they made very good radios.
- Because we listened to the Yokohama
- Symphony regularly on weekends in Romania,
- and listened to the radio.
- And going around the world was the way many of us
- learned geography, and with stamps and so on.
- And we used to listen to this.
- And when the Germans marched into Hungary,
- and the Hungarians began registering radios,
- then they insisted that Jews have their radios sealed.
- In other words, you could only listen to one station--
- one official station.
- So we took our little Mickey Mouse mock radio,
- and had that sealed.
- Then we had another radio that really-- the Philips radio
- with which.
- And we used to listen to Voice of America.
- And mostly, through the BBC--
- The BBC had more frequent broadcasts
- than the Voice of America.
- And then they would come on on the same band.
- Unfortunately, they had a very bad call signal,
- and it was the victory sign of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
- And this carries through walls like mad.
- I mean, if anybody ever wants to operate an underground radio,
- they shouldn't put boom-boom-boom on that.
- But we used to greet each other with the opening bars.
- So if you met somebody on the street,
- especially during the war, the secret police's task.
- And if they see more than two people together,
- they'll pull them apart and ask them
- what they're talking about.
- So people would meet, and they tell each other what
- they're going to talk about.
- But when they first greeted each other,
- they sometimes would go "da-da-da-DOM."
- You prepared for the police.
- Right.
- Right.
- Well, it led to a mentality where virtually all government
- acts are distrusted.
- And that's really not new for Eastern Europe,
- because most governments were really atrocious.
- They forced people to buy bonds, for example,
- at the end of the First World War.
- And I remember my father lighting fires with the bonds
- that he was forced to buy, deducted from his salary.
- And most people had a very cynical view
- about what these bonds would amount.
- It was forced taxation that wasn't called taxation, really.
- The food supplies were very restricted.
- Well, let me say, I went to school in--
- as I entered gymnasium, I'm still under the Romanians.
- And I went through, first, gymnasium under the Romanians.
- And then the next regime took over--
- that is, the Hungarians marched in.
- Now the Hungarians were much better Nazis
- than the Romanians were.
- The Romanians are-- the ones who we dealt
- with were very laissez-faire.
- No rule was absolutely a rule.
- As a matter of fact, my father, the way
- I got into school, in elementary school,
- my father thought I was ready to go to school at six,
- and the official age is seven.
- And so he went to the Ministry of Education
- on one of his business trips and asked how
- he could get me into school.
- And via business connections, he found out what the bribe is,
- and how much the price is, and which of their secretary
- gets it.
- And that's how people got things done in Romania.
- It was a land where almost anything
- could be done with money.
- And it was a country that was fairly young,
- because they really only came into being after the First
- World War.
- They're very strongly influenced by the French-- most
- of the writers, authors, the intellectuals;
- most of the people in the high-end government
- had been trained in France, and France sort of
- sponsored the country.
- You probably saw that after the recent debacle
- with the French who went there first,
- because of their preexisting relationships.
- And French was taught in schools.
- But the Romanians, as I said, were also under the gun.
- They had a sort of a palace coup with a Antonescu, a Nazi,
- taking over.
- But he wasn't quite as good a Nazi as the Hungarians were.
- And the official historic decision
- is called the Belvedere decision,
- because it was at the Belvedere Castle
- where they decided to cut Transylvania in two,
- and give the northern part to Hungary,
- and let the Romanian keep the southern part.
- The border was a few miles from my house.
- And at the very beginning, the consensus of opinion
- was that Hungary would be a safer place
- to be during the war than Romania.
- Why was this?
- Because they felt that the Hungarians would be more civil.
- And on the surface, the Hungarians
- did look more civil, and probably more reliable,
- and probably safer, and so on.
- And part of it as well, let's take for example
- the Jews in Budapest.
- The Jews in Budapest were never deported in mass.
- I don't know if you've interviewed
- any others who were-- they were never deported in mass.
- From the rural part of Hungary, they
- were deported, but not in Budapest, because people--
- some people who were still very influential in the Horthy
- government did protect the Jews.
- They couldn't protect those in the provinces.
- But Hungary's a great land of contrast,
- because you have an airplane factory, for example,
- next to essentially a feudal landlord's holdings.
- And feudalism exists in Eastern Europe,
- and existed up to the Second World War.
- When I came to school in this country,
- I always wonder why they spent so much time
- explaining there was something so obvious that existed,
- and they kept talking about it as if it
- was hundreds of years ago.
- But that was--
- Mm.
- It was very common.
- Yeah.
- Were you raised in a religious family?
- No, my grandmother was religious.
- Well, let me explain what we meant by observant
- and not observant.
- When my parents were married, they
- did observe kashrut, mainly because my father insisted
- on it, although my father ate non-kosher food
- outside the home.
- And we had one set of non-kosher dishes
- for if he brought non-kosher food home.
- My mother did not have a kosher home once she was divorced.
- My mother was not religious.
- And she was religious up to the point when her parents died.
- And that was a great crisis of faith
- for her, when she lost her parents.
- And she lost-- first her mother died.
- And then her dad remarried.
- She never liked her stepmother.
- And from what I've heard, it was not a pleasant match.
- And then her father died.
- And then her stepmother died also.
- And she told me.
- And interestingly enough, when I met my aunt in this country,
- she told me exactly the same story,
- that she went through a great crisis of faith,
- and she did not.
- I was bar mitzvahed in Cluj in the summer of 1942.
- And it's-- it was a [SOBBING] very touching ceremony,
- because in order to have a bar mitzvah,
- everybody had to save for a half a year.
- So--
- A great sacrifice.
- --everything-- it was an enormous sacrifice.
- And you had to literally scheme to get eggs.
- And I did have the bar mitzvah.
- And I belonged to a congregation that's called Neologs--
- a reform congregation by European standards.
- And by American standards we--
- conservative.
- And I know recently my cousin found a book of-- a rabbi
- wrote a book about the community in Cluj.
- And the rabbi survived the war, and he did go back.
- And they restarted the Jewish high school, and so on.
- Did you have a personal religious point of view?
- I mean, a belief in God, or following the rituals
- as you were growing up?
- Well, I did follow the rituals.
- I was not--
- I was not terribly, terribly religious ever.
- And I was puzzled mostly by the early religious training
- that I had.
- I understood the holidays, and I enjoyed those very much.
- But I didn't go to cheder either.
- My parents rebelled against the notion
- of memorizing enormous amounts.
- And so they never even brought up the subject.
- And I know some of the kids did go.
- I learned to appreciate Judaism both intellectually
- and emotionally in some family celebration.
- But they were always tainted with some bitterness,
- because my parents were separated.
- And I was not particularly happy at those times.
- But the positive side was that the rabbi who ran the Sunday--
- well, let me preface that by saying that when attending--
- and when I attended the lyceum, or the gymnasium,
- they required that you get religious education.
- So I didn't have to attend any other faiths
- as a religious class, which is taught as a matter of course.
- But I did have to attend mine.
- So when I lived with my mother, then on weekends
- I would go to my father.
- And the religious classes would of course be Sunday morning.
- And I cut a lot of religious classes,
- because I'd rather be with my father than go to Sunday.
- But I did attend a few.
- And then, when I lived with my father,
- when I was going to gymnasium, by then they--
- I went to a Catholic gymnasium because I got in.
- They had a-- under the Hungarians,
- for example they passed a system that-- you know,
- of numerus clausus.
- And no more than 6% of the students could be Jewish.
- Well, actually hardly 2% were Jew in there.
- There were four Jews among--
- there wasn't even 1%.
- There were four Jews amongst 600 students.
- And it-- the Hungarian, as I said,
- insisted on the religious education.
- And the Catholic school that I went to was
- presided over by an ordained priest of the Piarist order.
- It was a Piarist school.
- And the Piarists are not known in the United States.
- They are teaching order.
- They have been a long-term teaching order.
- And they really brought education to the masses,
- so to speak in Hungary, after the Reformation.
- It was a sort of a counter-reformation movement
- in Hungary.
- And the school was presided over by a priest
- by name of Karl János.
- And he was a remarkable man, because when he interviewed
- me to go into school, he told me the story which
- now everybody's heard.
- On Monday they asked for the Catholics,
- on Tuesday, and then--
- first they asked for the Jews, and I
- didn't say anything, and so on.
- I heard that first from his lips.
- It's not exactly those words, but essentially,
- sooner or later, they're going to get me if they get you.
- And he was a remarkable man.
- In 1943, I remember the--
- and 1943 is the height of the war.
- The Germans are not doing well.
- The propaganda machine is spewing venom left and right.
- He got up in front of the assembled crowd at graduation
- with the German officer who commanded the town,
- sitting in front of him.
- And there were the assembled German flags
- on one side and the church flags on the other side.
- And then he made a speech in which he asked the graduates
- to dedicate their lives for the timeless principals
- of Christianity and love of mankind,
- and not for the hate and violence that others represent.
- I thought he was going to be arrested on the spot.
- And he--
- Why wasn't he?
- I don't know.
- I don't know.
- I don't know whether they--
- and they thought it was just another speech that
- wouldn't make much difference, or whether they
- didn't dare touch the church.
- And there were no church arrests.
- But the church was split.
- I mean, my teachers were split right down
- the middle all the young ones were Hungarian patriots.
- And they thought by joining the Nazi cause,
- they were going to get a great, independent Hungary, that--
- well, they were an independent country.
- I don't know what other kind of independence they wanted.
- But there are some language problems here,
- because in Hungarian the word "freedom" and "independence"
- is the identical word.
- It's called szabadság.
- And it implies "freedom from" and "freedom to" both together.
- So it's a very muddied concept.
- They have absolutely no concept of civil rights.
- I remember how shocked I was when I found out
- something about civil rights when I came to this country.
- Let me say that in Europe, inalienable rights are
- held only if you have a title--
- in Eastern Europe-- or you're incredibly rich,
- you dominate everything, and you've
- lived there for a long time.
- Those are the inalienable rights--
- not civil rights the way we understand it.
- Only be hierarchy.
- By hierarchy.
- Exactly.
- All those legal rights, they're all written down and all that.
- When really push comes to shove people, look not for a lawyer,
- but for an influential lawyer, a lawyer who's
- connected to the family, or a lawyer who's
- connected to the government, or a lawyer who's
- connected to, because otherwise the system doesn't work.
- Growing up, how was it for you to be a Jewish person
- in your town, in that school?
- Well, the first day I went to school, first day
- in elementary school, the town is 100,000 people, 20,000 Jews.
- But people know each other really quite well.
- There's not such a huge influx and outflux as there was here.
- Most everybody knew whose son you were.
- And of course, if you misbehave, it's reported at home.
- There are no telephones, but the tom-toms work faster
- than the telephones, I'm sure.
- Well, as a child, I had both Jewish friends
- and non-Jewish friends.
- And we had Jewish friends and non-Jewish friends
- in our social life.
- I think we felt closer to many of our Jewish friends.
- But we had some non-Jewish friends
- who we felt very close to also, and some of whom
- took risks to bring us food.
- There were other people who were also very close to us,
- whose homes we went to, and came to our homes.
- We went to New Year's parties.
- We went to funerals and weddings and such.
- And when we were being deported, they
- would show up at our house a week
- or two before, before we even knew that something
- was going to happen.
- They'd say why don't you give me your books and your furniture,
- because you're not going to use it again.
- And for me, that was a very dramatic cut from the society
- that I grew in.
- So I really didn't know what homesickness was.
- I mean, I wanted to be free as a prisoner,
- but I did not know homesickness, in the sense
- of having an attachment to the people and the place.
- I was, after these events, I was probably
- more attached to the place than the people.
- And so I didn't miss it.
- It's true I was also very young at the time.
- But there were some, certainly, who brought us
- food when we had very strict curfews, for example,
- and when some things were very, very hard to get.
- They did bring us some.
- But that was maybe two people, and we knew hundreds.
- My father had lived in Cluj since 1916.
- During the First World War he was not
- drafted, because he was declared essential for the factory
- that he worked for.
- And he went around, and he bought--
- this was a shoe and leather factory--
- he went around, and he bought supplies in the countryside
- for them.
- Shoes are made with little wooden pegs in Europe.
- The leather is nailed together with little wooden pegs.
- And they didn't have good thread, or very little thread.
- And the factory made shoes for the army.
- So he traveled all around Czechoslovakia,
- and parts of Poland, and down in Yugoslavia, and so on.
- That was his job.
- And so having been there for such a long period of time,
- he knew an awful lot of people in town.
- And he had helped a tremendous number of people.
- It was not unusual--
- on Sunday morning there would be 8 or 10 people
- sitting in his study who had various kinds of problems,
- whether they wanted to write an appeal to the government,
- a petition to the government, or whether they
- had some other thing.
- And he would arrange it.
- And he worked for the shoe and leather factory.
- And if he gave his card with a little initial on it,
- they could get a discount on shoes.
- And he knew an awful lot of them.
- In fact, I used to joke that he knew so many bums.
- It's because he had worked as a piano player in a lot of bars.
- In Europe, it's a very formal society.
- And somebody who is dressed like a homeless person
- would never address you by your first name
- without calling you Mister, or something like that,
- on the German equivalent of Herr, in Hungarian is Ur.
- In the title, right?
- And the title.
- Oh, yes, and always the title.
- And these people called him Rudi,
- which is a nickname, which is literally unheard of.
- And I said, how come you know so many bums?
- And he would tell me that he knew them
- when they were not bums, when they were just
- coming in the bar.
- Mm-hmm.
- I'd like to know, did you have one synagogue or more?
- Oh, no, we had quite a number of synagogues.
- We had the Neolog-- there were quite a number
- of conservative congregations.
- There was a cheder.
- There were several cheders.
- There was a rabbinical training center.
- What's the-- oh!
- I forgot the-- maybe you should cut it a minute, because all
- I'm doing is wasting your film.
- OK.
- Starting.
- We can go ahead.
- Yeah there were quite a number of Jewish--
- 20,000 Jews.
- And there was, eventually, there was a Jewish council
- during the years.
- There was a Jewish hospital in my hometown.
- And then they organized a Jewish gymnasium,
- because Jews weren't allowed to go
- to school with the Hungarians.
- The Hungarians passed a law.
- See, that's how I went to the Catholic school.
- And my father, the reason he sent me to the Catholic school
- was-- and he said that the Jewish gymnasium is wonderful,
- but it's not life-like.
- That's not what life is like.
- And that I should learn how I can get along.
- You asked me about how I was treated by others.
- I was treated like anybody else.
- As I grew up, as the '30s fade out, an d
- in the beginning of the '40s, there
- was the continuing and ever increasing drumbeat
- of antisemitism in all the official press.
- We got the German films, and films
- like you'd Jud Süss and various others which
- caused tremendous atrocities.
- But there was the official drumbeat, that everything
- in the world that was wrong--
- You said the films caused tremendous atrocities?
- Yeah.
- Jews were attacked on the street.
- And there are parts of town where a lot of Jews lived.
- It wasn't strictly a ghetto.
- It once was a ghetto, but now it was a less-defined ghetto.
- But there were attacks.
- And there were a lot of very, very observant Jews
- with payos and the kaftans and the hats who lived there.
- And they were attacked on the street.
- There were protests about it--
- excuse me.
- Were there killings too?
- No, they were just beatings at that time.
- When my mother was growing--
- not-- well, my mother-- when my mother was a young woman--
- not when she was growing up, she, as I said,
- she had moved to Cluj, there was a seminary
- of Romanian Orthodox.
- This is like Greek Orthodox, except a Romanian version
- of the Greek Orthodox.
- And those students went on a riot in the Jewish section.
- And they raped and pillaged.
- And I think there were people killed then.
- Nobody was ever convicted, of course, of anything.
- But there were a lot of beatings and exclusions
- and humiliations.
- And people wouldn't talk to them,
- and people wouldn't wait on others in the stores--
- in food stores and in restaurants and so on.
- That kind of thing became a very daily occurrence.
- So you learned what were safe restaurants, what
- were safe stores, what were safe pharmacies.
- And so there was this duality in dealing with the world.
- There were safe and unsafe places.
- Would you consider there was an institutional antisemitism
- as you were growing up?
- Yes, yes.
- I'm going back to I mentioned that the first day that I went
- to school I got into a fight.
- And I got into a fight because there
- was a gypsy boy in the class, and I.
- And the other kids all picked on us.
- And we got into a fight.
- And this is before the teacher even walked in the class.
- Then teachers are absolute powers in Europe.
- And one goes to school well primed for that.
- There's no disciplinary problem of the scope that exists here.
- So we sat down.
- But there is a 10 o'clock break.
- And we got into a fight during the 10 o'clock break.
- And one of the boys--
- not the gypsy boy; he and I were side by side--
- we got into a fight.
- And I felt my life threatened in that fight to this day.
- And I bit.
- After fighting, I bit.
- And that's crossing over a line supposedly.
- But I tore his jacket from biting him from the elbow
- down here.
- And so we were sentenced that, and I
- got to see the principal the first day.
- And he sent us home.
- And I was supposed to take this boy with me home with me,
- and show what I had done.
- So I did.
- And this time I was living with my mother.
- And my mother looked at it.
- And she taking material from the bottom of the back of the suit.
- She rewove this for him.
- And she didn't say--
- I expected to be reprimanded for fighting in school.
- And as she was weaving, and she said, well, what happened?
- And she's working on this.
- And I said, well, he called me a dirty Jew.
- And she said, well, do you feel like a dirty Jew?
- I said, no.
- She says, then good.
- You stood up for what you believed in.
- And the kid who came with me, he was
- so worried about being beaten.
- I'm not sure whether he heard that.
- But gradually, he did hear it, later on,
- that it was not just misbehavior.
- We never became close friends or anything,
- but he never came near me either.
- He had a respect for you then.
- Yeah.
- And then I learned something, that schools
- have certain behavior patterns of rat packs.
- People gang up and then they pick on somebody else.
- And then we moved from one place to another.
- So I changed schools.
- I remember in second grade.
- And in second grade I went to school with some anxiety.
- It was a new school.
- And I remember the principal's name literally translated
- meant Trojan War.
- His name was Troian Razboi, which
- in Romanian means Trojan War.
- And [LAUGHS] I always wondered, who would ever name--
- --comforting, yeah.
- --who would name his son-- but I didn't have any problems there.
- There were kids who were very antisemitic.
- And one learned to avoid them.
- In Europe, children do carry knives.
- And they-- yeah.
- And did you ever get ID cards at that time from the police?
- Oh, no, not until the Hungarians came in.
- Yes.
- When Hungarians came in, we got ID cards.
- You're right.
- And then the "Jew" was on it?
- Oh, yes, yes.
- Sure.
- Always.
- Always.
- Even sometimes-- I'm trying to remember whether it was
- on the food stamp card or not.
- I don't remember now.
- But the identification was there.
- They didn't give you a number, did they?
- Identification number?
- No, no.
- No.
- On the card there was a number.
- Yeah, but not a Jew.
- No.
- The identification, because the Germans had that.
- So I wondered if the Hungarians went that far to give
- a Jew an identification number.
- No, I got a number in the camps only.
- But not before-- no, no, not then.
- Did you suffer any for being the child of divorced parents?
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
- There were a whole lot of people who shunned me.
- And-- but those were both Jews and non-Jews.
- And they couldn't handle the situation, and I see that now.
- I was puzzled by it.
- Our social interaction, however, it was very different
- than in the contemporary context,
- because European schools really do give a hell of a lot
- more homework than people have here.
- So during the school year, the order of antisemites
- was dampened by the fact that they had
- to show up with the homework.
- So there wasn't that much time to roam around and get
- into mischief.
- During the war, there was very little of going over
- to somebody's home.
- We couldn't join the soccer teams.
- We couldn't join the--
- there literally existed a Jewish soccer league.
- And I remember there was a Jewish soccer
- team in my hometown that kept winning,
- and the sportswriters were always
- trying to explain why the Jews won this time.
- [LAUGHTER]
- But they had a sort of internal league, and played there.
- One of the effects of the war was that
- the kind of pickup game which occurs with kids just
- living along the same street playing soccer together.
- And they said, no, we don't want to play with the Jews.
- And I remember being very shocked at that,
- that these were kids I had played
- with since I was a small kid.
- In the town of Cluj, were you living in the Jewish section,
- more or less--
- No.
- --or ghetto?
- No, I wasn't.
- We were living in a part of town quite away from it.
- And we lived in an apartment house.
- And the apartment houses there have gardens.
- They have a courtyard, and they have a garden.
- And it's not unusual for people to have a plot of land
- and raise flowers.
- And they're in the courtyard.
- And that's where a lot of social interaction occurs.
- People sit around in these kind of deckchairs in the summer.
- And there was that drawing away, that they weren't talking,
- and that they wouldn't interact.
- And we used to have a maid.
- And a maid here are an enormous luxury.
- But in Europe, virtually all of the young women
- from the country would come to the city to raise their dowry.
- So they would work in the city two or three years,
- and then they would raise enough money for their dowry,
- and then go back home.
- And the maids, first the other people even shunned our maid.
- And I remember the maid was surprised by this also.
- And then the government forbade Jews from hiring others.
- And then we couldn't have a maid.
- And maids actually preferred Jewish employers,
- because they had highly regulated hours.
- And Jews hired maids mainly to do things on Saturday.
- I mean, they certainly worked the rest of the week.
- But they worked Saturday, and then
- they always got off on Sunday.
- Legally speaking, in those days, you only
- had to give a half a day a week off.
- Was this in the second town you moved to?
- You said in the second grade you moved to another town.
- No, I moved to another school, not another town.
- I just moved from--
- not another town.
- Just another school-- same--
- right.
- It's just a different school district.
- And I moved to right near-- there's a Unitarian gymnasium
- in my home town.
- I mean, I lived just behind.
- In fact, the Unitarian church owned the apartment house
- that we lived in, my mother and I.
- While there wasn't an official ghetto,
- it sounds that there was a kind of a Jewish section.
- Yeah, there was a Jewish sector in town.
- But a great many Jews lived all over.
- Mostly those who were less observant,
- mostly people who were in business and such.
- And they literally were scattered all over.
- Did you have other relatives--
- aunts, uncles?
- Yes, I had one.
- One of my, I guess, a great uncle lived not far from us.
- And my mother's uncle also lived in town.
- And he was a very wealthy man.
- He had the alcohol concession.
- And he had another factory.
- His name was Samuel Solomon.
- And he had two sons.
- And when his first son got to be 18, he went to his father
- and said, I'm going to Israel.
- And his father said, all my life I worked for my kids.
- Everything I have, I've done for you.
- And I don't want you to go to Israel.
- And he said, it's all arranged.
- They did go to summer training sessions run by--
- let me see.
- I want to say the Histadrut, but it isn't the Histadrut.
- There was a Jewish movement that supported
- summer camps, in which kids were really
- trained to do agricultural work and such.
- And the kids did go to those camps.
- And as I said, when he was 18, his oldest son, whose name
- was Hugo, told his father.
- And his father literally disowned him.
- And family gatherings were very bitter,
- because you couldn't say the name of Hugo.
- [LAUGHS]
- And actually it's his wife, whose name was Peppi
- that I was related to.
- And a wonderful lady.
- A very, very kind person.
- And she was crushed, because she felt she was losing her son.
- In those days, people could not get into Palestine legally.
- So going to Palestine meant that they were smuggled
- across the border, either to Turkey or to Yugoslavia,
- and then to Bulgaria, and then to Turkey, or directly
- into Bulgaria, and then bribed somebody on a boat, and so on.
- So getting there was a really arduous task full of risks.
- About what year was that?
- In 1936, '37.
- Was he going because he had some sense of the foreboding
- of the future?
- No, I think he was going because he felt that even if nothing
- would have happened in Europe, Europe was not
- a place for Jews, period.
- And his brother, sure enough, he became 18, and he went.
- And so their house was very empty.
- And, of course, they perished in the Holocaust.
- There were other relatives who did get out also, gradually.
- I mentioned to you when Hungary and Romania were separated,
- generally those who remained in Romania
- survived much better than those who were in Hungary.
- They were not deported as thoroughly or as efficiently
- as the Hungarians did.
- As a matter of fact, we found out after the war,
- although we had heard rumors, that the Germans did not
- want the Jews anymore by 1944, because the camps were full.
- Their facilities were full.
- And it is the Hungarians who insisted
- that they take the Jews out.
- So it was on their insistence that we were deported,
- not because the Germans asked for it.
- During the '30s, how was it that you began to get a sense
- of this impending German--
- Well, the German propaganda machine was very effective.
- The German Bund and the Turnvereins
- were all going like gangbusters all over here.
- And they were recruiting people.
- They put out a lot of antisemitic propaganda.
- We had relatives in Vienna.
- We heard from them.
- Things were bad.
- We had relatives in Czechoslovakia.
- They were overrun.
- They were on the run, so to speak.
- So we knew things were going on.
- There was an exodus of Jews.
- And many people got exit visas of one kind or another.
- And as a matter of fact, my mother
- was supposed to come to the 1940 World's Fair in New York.
- And my father wouldn't let me go.
- He was afraid he'd never see me again.
- He was right.
- He wouldn't have.
- So my mother decided to go.
- And then she got as far as the Yugoslav border.
- And she turned around and came back.
- She told me that the border was closed and all that.
- But a lot of people could have gotten out.
- I think she couldn't bring herself to go.
- Neither of your parents were married?
- No.
- And you said that you used to go and wait for refugees.
- Were people coming into--
- They were-- I'm talking about now
- in the late '30s, early '40s, even up to '41 or so,
- refugees from Poland, from Czechoslovakia, from Austria,
- or from anywhere else, who would sort find their way through,
- and then they would be coming through in train loads.
- And I remember staying up all night
- in the railway station waiting.
- And we packaged the food so that we could hand it
- to them very quickly.
- Were any of these refugees telling you
- what it was like where they came from,
- or were any of those had been released from camps?
- No, we didn't know of people released from camps.
- What we did know was that they cried.
- And we were not with them very long.
- They were terribly upset and terribly frightened.
- I'd never seen anybody so frightened in my life.
- But that's all the time we had with them.
- What we did know about was that people who
- were political refugees--
- the government-- all European governments
- are very oppressive.
- And they believe that any association of people
- is only there for the purpose of overthrowing the government.
- My mother was suspected of being a subversive,
- because in the late '30s, she and some of her friends tried
- to organize an orphanage.
- And they thought that this would admit that they're not
- taking care of orphans.
- And there was enormous harassment.
- And also the Hungarians were of the same kind.
- Writers used to come to our house, and poets.
- And we would literally meet on the sly,
- because if they saw a gathering of people, then
- they'd investigate why are they meeting.
- Were you experiencing difficulties
- in getting any food or other kinds of food lines?
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
- First of all, the rationing system in Hungary was a farce.
- By the time they issued the ration tickets,
- all there was is paper left.
- There was no food left.
- But luckily, both my parents were informed.
- Like my father, for example, started buying cigarettes
- in 1939, because he knew that during the First World War
- the only way you could buy food is to go to a farmer
- and offer them cigarettes.
- And then you always got food.
- The currency was no good, but cigarettes always were.
- He was a non-smoker.
- My mother was a smoker.
- But she saved a thing, or she did
- things like put up a preserves.
- It's against the law to hoard sugar.
- That's a capital offense.
- So what she did was she boiled sugar syrup,
- because it's not against the law to store syrup.
- So I think we probably had a two-
- or three-year supply of syrup on hand in the storage room.
- With the food storage room, we had these sort of things,
- and sacks of dry beans, and things like that.
- But those were pretty well used up.
- And I know that one year, from '42 to '43,
- we went a whole year without eating any meat.
- And my grandmother saved the breastbone of a duck.
- And it was dried out.
- And she would make these concoctions
- with ground potatoes and whatnot,
- and sort of pack it on top of this silly duck breast.
- And then we would cut it and pretend.
- [LAUGHS] And it was our form of fake meat.
- Actually, it's a kind of hamburger or meatloaf
- is made like this, and then packed on top
- under normal times.
- And we did that.
- No, food was in very short supply.
- And sometimes I would go and put on my raincoat.
- And we had these slings under the raincoat,
- so I could carry two 10-kilo loaves of bread.
- 10 kilos is 22 pounds.
- So when I was, I guess, about 13 or so--
- and I was always a small kid.
- I'm not a big kid, but I learned to smuggle bread and things
- like that.
- Where did you get the bread.
- From a baker that we knew.
- My father once invested in a bakery,
- and he had a friend who was a baker, and helped him.
- And so if we went to the bakery late at night,
- and we used the back streets so we wouldn't get picked up
- by the police, and choose bad weather, of course,
- then we would get some bread.
- But it was very difficult getting food.
- We all almost always had to get it on the black market.
- And it was very vulnerable, because dealing in black market
- was a crime.
- We bought food stamps--
- not food stamps-- food tickets and the ration tickets
- from Gypsies, as the Gypsies traveled all over.
- And they could have seven addresses and so on.
- And they didn't depend on the food ration cards anyhow.
- But you could only exchange that in certain stores,
- because if they really knew you well,
- and they said they would know that isn't yours.
- So it was always--
- food, it became a terrible problem.
- And even potatoes were being rationed.
- Did your parents' income get affected during this period
- too?
- Well, no.
- My father worked until shortly before we were deported.
- And my mother had her alimony payments.
- And she was still working, because people
- had their clothes redone.
- They couldn't buy new clothes, so they had the clothes re-cut
- in a different fashion.
- And there was an awful lot of that that went on at that time.
- It was difficult to find thread and things
- like that, and certain kinds of ribbons and stuff
- that she needed.
- So her income wasn't cut as badly.
- People who were in business for themselves suffered terribly,
- because the businesses, they were forbidden
- to own their businesses.
- So they had to take on a partner.
- And sometimes the partner was officially
- called a straw man, because the partner really didn't own it.
- It was an employee who was a friend.
- But in other cases, they lost their businesses,
- and they lost virtually everything they had.
- You had mentioned before that your father contributed
- with the languages, and that your mother also
- contributed to your survival.
- Yeah, well my mother contributed in the other way.
- The massive drumbeat of Jews being inferior
- would have been very, very devastating.
- And my mother kept insisting, because liars tell a lie
- very often, it isn't true.
- And she was much more concerned with the education
- of character, and of resilience.
- And I'm sure, given a chance, she
- would have been literally fighting.
- My mother was very much ahead of her time.
- Although she only had an eighth-grade formal education,
- she had read an enormous amount.
- She strongly believed in what is now termed women's rights,
- but she believed it in terms of human rights.
- And she felt that because, for example, when she was married,
- she couldn't really run a shop.
- And she wanted to have her own shop, and her own business,
- and such.
- And I think that was a major problem in my parents
- disagreement, because my father felt that here he was.
- He finally made it, and he was a very respected man.
- And now suddenly his wife goes to work.
- It would be taken that he is not a good provider.
- And that would be a terrible affront to him.
- And in fact, he wanted me to become an engineer,
- for example.
- And so I went through apprentice training during the summer,
- because you can't get into the best European engineering
- school without having passed the first apprentice exam, which
- involves manual skills, and pretty high manual skills.
- You have to know exactly how to cut metal, wood,
- and to shape it to a degree.
- And you have to actually cut a thread on a bolt.
- And it's a crude bolt, but you have
- to do it-- not with a machine, but freehand.
- And that was part of a first apprentice exam.
- And so he wanted me to get out of Europe
- and go to Switzerland.
- Well, his orientation was in this direction.
- And so, when I went to work as an apprentice--
- during the summer, people saw me in this apprentice costume.
- And he got phone calls at work.
- And friends called up and said, if you're in dire straits,
- we can lend you some money.
- And he kept saying, no, no, that's not why.
- But even that, it did bother him a bit,
- that people would take him as incapable of supporting
- his family.
- And I can see how he felt about it.
- You didn't go to Switzerland, though.
- No, the war game.
- No.
- He had a friend in Switzerland, and he thought about it.
- But he thought he could weather the storm,
- that he knew enough people in the various groups
- and various political groups and such.
- He knew Hungarians.
- He knew Romanians.
- He knew German, and he spoke German very fluently.
- And his first executive job was in charge of correspondence.
- So he dictated letters in French, German and--
- not in English.
- That came much later.
- But in Hungarian, Romanian, German, and French.
- But like so many, many others, he
- underestimated what it was going to be like.
- Yes.
- Yes, he did.
- He had a very close friend there.
- They worked in the same place.
- And this man one day decided that this was not
- the place for them.
- He took everything he owned.
- His name was Arthur Lazar.
- He passed away.
- He lived in Los Angeles.
- I saw that his widow--
- And yeah, he sold everything he owned in order
- to take something out of the country.
- He couldn't take dollars.
- You could take only a very few dollars out of Romania.
- He bought hand-made peasant blouses and Leica cameras.
- And they came to the United States
- with something like $5 in their pockets,
- and landed in New York, and he did some work.
- And then he moved to Los Angeles and established a business
- there.
- And literally, the founding of their family
- was some Leica cameras and these hand-stitched blouses.
- When did they leave?
- They left in '38.
- Uh-huh.
- And your mother, did she ever entertain thoughts of leaving?
- Yeah, when she was thinking of going.
- In 1940, when she was thinking of coming.
- She was going to--
- Yeah, yeah.
- I'm sure.
- But you needed money, didn't you?
- Yes, yes.
- You needed money to leave.
- And you needed also connections to leave.
- Not everybody could have left.
- There were long waiting lines for visas.
- And another way of leaving was to do it by literally
- crossing borders illegally.
- And hindsight is always 20/20.
- If we would have utilized the Gypsies' routes, we could have.
- But we had no idea that we could.
- And there were very few counsels.
- Every counsel with a stamp could have saved a life.
- Every consular officer who had a stamp in his hand
- could have saved a life.
- And if the consulates of the world would have said, no,
- and just opened their gates, and the people go inside,
- the Germans did respect the consular doors.
- And, well, [SIGHS] as I said, hindsight is 20/20.
- Mm.
- So when did it start to get really bad?
- By 1941 we began.
- And by 1942 we were wearing yellow armbands--
- first only on the weekends--
- not on weekends.
- What I mean is Saturday.
- Saturday was a day when one did military training.
- And when the other students were getting military training
- I had to wear a yellow armband and sort of
- clean the hallways in school.
- It didn't bother me much, because I didn't enjoy
- stomping around in the snow.
- But we got the idea that we were to be humiliated.
- And the distance between me-- there
- was another fellow who was in the same grade
- that I was in, whose name was George Kraus.
- And we had been born in the same month.
- His father was an attorney, and he and I
- were friends, because we had gone
- to the same elementary school together.
- And during a period of time, he had an appendectomy.
- And the appendectomy operations were handled
- like major disasters in Europe.
- Kids were out two or three months
- because of an appendectomy.
- So I'm the one who brought him his homework.
- And so we became fairly close.
- And he went to the same school that I
- went to; the same gymnasium.
- And you must have been at an age where you're simultaneously
- preparing for bar mitzvah.
- Yes.
- So--
- But I don't know where he had his bar
- mitzvah, come to think of it.
- I don't know if he had his bar mitzvah.
- But we didn't go to the same lesson.
- We had individual bar mitzvah teachers.
- So there weren't restrictions about those kinds of things?
- Did you have to do that underground?
- No.
- No, no, there was no restriction on going there.
- The restrictions were mostly when
- you could be on the street, when you could not
- be on the street, and on food, on jobs, and all the teachers.
- And you couldn't have any Jewish teachers.
- And then, after a while, Jewish doctors
- could only have Jewish patients.
- And this went on and on and on.
- And then Jewish lawyers couldn't practice,
- and all this sort of thing.
- Could you go into restaurants?
- Or were there signs up there?
- Yes, in some restaurants there were.
- Well, let me say, I did not see the sign.
- I heard about Jews not being welcome in certain restaurants.
- And I did not specifically-- it's just
- that you weren't waited on.
- There were other restaurants that one was.
- So I remember, for a birthday during the war,
- my birthday present was that my father was
- going to take me to a restaurant,
- and I could eat all I want.
- So we went to the quote "black market" part of the restaurant.
- That's in the back.
- And then you can eat all you wanted.
- And that's one of the few restaurants.
- I don't remember another restaurant.
- We didn't eat much in restaurants,
- because the amount of spying that went on people
- was tremendous.
- And-- excuse me-- we used to have a New Year's party,
- for example, at my mother's house.
- And people would come before it was dark.
- And everyone would bring something.
- And you knew that they had to stay till next day,
- till 7 o'clock, till the curfew broke.
- And ironically, it turned out to be
- some of the most memorable parties I ever attended,
- because everybody brought not only food, but something
- to entertain with.
- And there was a textile engineer, for example,
- was an opera singer.
- And one of the leading actors on this--
- leading Shakespearean actors put on a performance
- of Edmond Rostand's play called L'Aiglon,
- which is Napoleon's son.
- And what I remembered about it, I was in college,
- and I was reading this.
- And I say, I've seen this.
- And the truth is, I have never seen this play.
- But I heard the play.
- And this actor set the scene simply
- with his voice in a darkened living room.
- He lit a candle, and he said, this is the Schonbrunn Palace.
- This is Metternich's palace.
- And this is a grenadier stepping from the shadows telling
- Napoleon's son about this.
- And I could swear that I had actually seen the image.
- And people read their poetry, and they read their plays.
- And so it was a very entertaining evening.
- And we all--
- How resourceful.
- Pardon?
- How resourceful.
- Yeah, it was.
- And we saw the first of the theater
- without the elaborate stage settings,
- because we simply didn't have it.
- So people were having fun, even though it was kind of intense.
- Oh, yes, yes, they did.
- And they passed along literature and news.
- And there was ardent speculation about what the after-war era
- would be like.
- And many of the people were very hopeful
- of a much more socially just society.
- There was no doubt that the Allies were going to win.
- The amazing thing is that we really didn't have doubts
- during the war.
- And that positiveness that this will end was there.
- There were many dark moments when
- it seemed we might not last, but we
- didn't doubt what the outcome of the war would be.
- Why did you doubt you might not last?
- Because we knew people were killed.
- You heard that from the people coming on the train?
- We heard that from people.
- We got it from letters.
- We heard it from--
- a lot of Jews were picked up and taken in labor battalions--
- mostly men--
- to pick mines in the Ukraine.
- And some of our friends that had happened to-- and we
- were in touch with them, because the Hungarians
- who guarded with them operated a big racket.
- You would pay them a lot of money,
- and then they would get a little more food, and so on.
- And they would send letters back that were uncensored.
- And we knew that things were not going well with the front.
- And we listened to the radio also.
- What we doubted was our ability to last.
- But we didn't doubt what the ultimate outcome was.
- And we could see their bombings were occurring more frequently.
- The supply planes that supplied the Yugoslavs
- from Russian territories flew over Cluj,
- because they didn't stop and bomb.
- And these were pretty big flights.
- So we finally got the idea that that's where they're heading.
- And the frequency of announced bombing attacks
- kept increasing.
- The radio would announce which cities
- are going to be bombed, because they were so confident by then
- that they had air superiority, they
- were going to bomb them no matter what.
- Could you prepare in any way?
- Oh, no.
- We would cheer when the bombers would come through.
- They bombed a railroad station in my hometown.
- They bombed part of the factory area.
- There were not many civilian casualties there.
- All the time that I was in the camps, I kept waiting.
- Why in the heck don't you bomb this real quick?
- But there weren't many bombings at where I was.
- Did you get to the place of there
- being a ghetto in your city?
- No, there was not a ghetto in the sense
- of people living there.
- But when the Hungarians collected all the Jews
- in my hometown, mostly from the Jewish section
- and other section, they were placed actually
- on the territory of a brick factory.
- I don't know if you've ever seen a brick factory.
- It has open sheds, and then some manufacturing plant.
- But it's mostly open sheds.
- And so families that were housed in open sheds
- without adequate facilities and such.
- And that's where-- and from there,
- they were shipped off to the concentration camps.
- And the brick factory always has railroad siding there.
- And that's where they were sent from.
- Now I didn't go with that shipment.
- I lived in the other part of town.
- And my father for a while was considered,
- quote, "essential" to the, quote, "war effort"--
- which wasn't true.
- But a friend of his helped.
- So we went about three weeks later
- than the rest of the town.
- And your mother, was she exempt up to that point too?
- No, no.
- She lived in another part, and she was deported.
- So by the time I got to Auschwitz, which was--
- I was deported from my hometown.
- We were first taken in a house of detention,
- in the major house of detention.
- From there we were sent to a Hungarian camp in northwestern
- Hungary, and from there to Birkenau, actually.
- And as I said, that leg was about between three and four
- weeks.
- By that time, my mother had died.
- I didn't know that until after the war.
- When I got to Birkenau, my aunt, who
- was with my mother, the only person
- I saw that I knew from my hometown, who didn't
- travel in the same shipment.
- And she saw me.
- But she didn't tell me that my mother had died.
- And she died too.
- [SOB] So it wasn't until after the war
- that I found out that my mother had died.
- What year are we in now.
- We're in 1944.
- Oh, '44.
- We weren't deported till the very last.
- Was there a gradual tightening?
- Did you have rumors of being transported out?
- Do you--
- Oh, no.
- The first, when they sent--
- when people went in the--
- we heard rumors from 1942 on.
- But war breeds so many rumors that learned to discount them.
- When we were shipped from my hometown
- to the Hungarian concentration camp, we stopped in Budapest.
- The train took us to Budapest.
- So my first sight of Budapest was from a cattle car.
- And they took us off the train, and they took us
- into the house of detention in Budapest.
- And a representative from the Joint came.
- And he tried everything that he could to rescue us in any way.
- He got us food-- very good food.
- I mean, this was the best food we'd had in months.
- And then he said, is there anybody sick?
- He said, I think you're all sick.
- Let's see if we can get a medical certificate, then.
- So there were all kinds of pretexts.
- And he tried and he tried and tried.
- Couldn't budge them.
- But we heard from other people about Wallerstein.
- We heard that there was a Swedish guy going
- around giving passports.
- And I didn't believe it.
- I thought that this was-- there were always some stories,
- and it was always a modern-day messiah coming out
- of the woodwork.
- And it's great to build the spirit,
- but I didn't really believe it, that anybody was doing that.
- Up to the time that we went in the camps,
- we did listen to the radio, and we knew
- that the Allies were moving.
- And we knew that on the Russian front,
- Rostov was the first place that I remember
- that Germans got thrown back.
- We knew about the landings in Africa.
- We knew about the landings in Italy.
- The factory where my father worked
- got a magazine which is called the Schweizer Illustrierte
- Zeitung, which is a sort of a Life magazine type book.
- And the censor takes a brush--
- literally-- to each copy, and brushes out things
- that the censor doesn't want you to see, in sort of a heavy ink.
- And I accidentally spilled a little bit of rubbing alcohol,
- and I noticed that it dissolved the edge.
- And so we used to take cotton and wash it off.
- So we knew that Stalingrad had not fallen.
- And the Germans claimed that they captured Stalingrad.
- I mean, the amount of lies that they told were incredible.
- And there was a picture of the German general von
- Paulus being interviewed by the Russian general.
- And that was a major turning point in the war.
- And more and more German--
- not German prisoner, but German wounded
- were sent to my hometown.
- In my hometown there was a small teachers college.
- And they put high fence around it.
- And we discovered why there was a high fence around it--
- or rather a--
- they blocked out the fence so you couldn't see through it.
- And there had been a regular wrought-iron fence there.
- And the reason they had done it was because these
- were quadriplegics.
- And the entire hospital was filled with people
- without arms or legs.
- The--
- They were Germans.
- Yes.
- And there were German prisoners all over.
- At one point, in 1942, I think, there
- was a German officer quartered.
- They used to quarter officers in there.
- And we were terrified, because they could
- get drunk and shoot us all.
- And no one would--
- And this man--
- I think it was around Pesach time--
- he got terribly drunk one night, and he
- cried and cried and cried.
- And he said, all he wanted to do was go home to his family.
- He hated the war, he hated the killing, he hated that.
- And then he begged us not to tell anybody.
- And we were scared stiff that he would make sure
- that we won't tell anybody.
- But the German soldier, toward--
- by '44, all the German soldiers that were on leave
- were getting drunk out of their skulls.
- They were depressed.
- They saw what was coming.
- Did they talk with any of the civilians about--
- Only when they were drunk.
- When they were drunk, they would come up,
- and they would cry and talk about the terrible things
- they had seen, and how terrible the war is.
- And they would-- and I was with my father when they'd come up.
- And they offered to sell their Luger pistol.
- Being seen with it was enough to be executed at that time.
- Was there a lot of brutality against Jews
- just in general, up to '44?
- Yes, yes.
- There were sweeps on the streets.
- The sweeps on the streets were really
- to pick up warm clothing.
- And of course, they took Jews first.
- But later on, they took other peoples.
- And if you wore a fur coat, they'd take away your fur coat,
- and they'd give you a receipt.
- Well, everybody knows that the receipt was worthless.
- The Russian winter got them.
- Did you have to turn in personal property and-- or--
- No, we didn't have to turn in.
- We had to make sure that we didn't have any contraband.
- We spent days burning books and such.
- But people who owned businesses did there.
- Then they were taken over.
- Did you have to wear the yellow star eventually
- more than on Saturday?
- Exactly.
- We started first with a yellow armband,
- and then we had to wear the yellow star.
- And then we had to wear it all the time.
- And that was a certain dimensions and such.
- And when we wore the--
- even before that, we were set aside.
- But the yellow star really did it.
- And then stores would shun you, and everybody would shun you.
- It was a way of dehumanizing people.
- Was there ever a committee, like the Judenrat?
- Yeah, there was a committee.
- My father served on it.
- They essentially provided for the welfare
- of the Jewish community.
- And they taxed themselves for it.
- And my father would come home sometimes
- and say, oh, what-and-such is complaining so much.
- He says, what are you complaining about?
- You still got the money to give.
- What's to complain?
- You should complain when you don't have any money to give.
- The Jewish community drew together very well.
- They were very compassionate in the operation of the hospital,
- and in making sure that people had things.
- I had never seen that before the war.
- Yeah.
- Did the Germans actually enter your homes?
- Did they search for people?
- No.
- The Hungarians usually came around.
- Not the Germans.
- We didn't get house-to-house searches.
- But the reason we didn't get house-to-house searches
- is because we were very well informed.
- We knew why they were searching house to house.
- They were searching for people who had escaped,
- who were politically underground people.
- They were mostly leftists.
- And there were people also who were smuggling information.
- And I carried information, but I made
- sure I didn't know what the information was.
- A lot of kids had been captured.
- And the most terrifying thing for a child
- was that you'd inform on your parents.
- And for me, at least, that was--
- the fear of being tortured and informing on your parents
- was a devastating fear.
- And it made me look on the world.
- I had to make a quick assessment,
- very fast assessment, on whether I could trust somebody or not.
- And I knew I couldn't make any errors.
- You had to hone your instincts.
- Yeah.
- When I came to this country, I could tell policemen
- to this day I--
- We're going again.
- Let's see.
- Oh, can you--
- Sorry.
- My family will tease me, but that's OK.
- I was talking with Sandra outside,
- about some context to this.
- And she suggested that I ask you a question if it's OK with you.
- Certainly.
- I'm trying to sort of get a sense of the continuity
- of your childhood.
- It sounded like you had sort of some different kinds of living
- situations.
- Basically, you were living with both parents.
- And then you were living with your mother.
- And also at times you were living with your father.
- And there were a couple of different school situations
- in there.
- I was wondering if you could just
- go back to sort of the very beginning of your life,
- and just tell kind of a personal history of what
- your childhood was like, and go through those periods,
- and give us some detail about your living
- environment and your situation in those periods.
- The geography phase, the most detail possible,
- even if you think it's too much.
- OK.
- Well, let me say that between the ages of zero and two,
- about, we lived in a house, in an individual house,
- on the edge of town.
- It was a very nice orchard behind us.
- Part of it was a cherry orchard.
- And I revisited it.
- I don't remember that.
- I have a pretty good memory from the time I was three and a half
- on, but before that I don't have much of a memory.
- And they then moved into town, into an apartment house.
- And I'll bring the pictures in one time,
- and perhaps you can photograph them then.
- And you'll see what that looks like, at least on the inside.
- We lived a middle-class life at that time.
- My father went to work, and my mother stayed home.
- The barber would come early in the morning and shave them.
- And that was not unusual in those days.
- And I remember that my aunt was married in our house.
- And my father's barber's name was Mr. Sonnenshein.
- So the rabbi came, and I looked at him, and I said,
- we'd better call Mr. Sonnenshein to shave his beard.
- [LAUGHTER] That was one of my early memories.
- I went to kindergarten, at the Neolog kindergarten.
- And they operated a very nice kindergarten.
- And, well, we did the kind of kindergarten things kids
- do now.
- And they had small furniture and small toys
- and that sort of thing.
- And when I was in kindergarten is
- when my parents were separated and then divorced.
- Was that hard for you?
- Oh, yes.
- Very.
- I never approved of it, of course.
- No children do.
- But I did live then with my mother.
- And my mother lived essentially with her sister
- and her husband, who had no children.
- And right across the street from the elementary school,
- where I went to--
- You all lived together?
- Yeah.
- It was a spacious apartment.
- And again, the apartments are not really
- scrunched little apartments.
- They're quite spacious.
- And they have a large yard and a garden.
- And this was sort of a duplex.
- And in the front of the house lived my aunt's sister-in-law,
- and her husband, and her children.
- And they had children about my age.
- So we played in the garden.
- It was a very convenient existence.
- And uncles would come into town.
- And uncles always round up the kids,
- and take them to the Konditorei, and stuff us with--
- What's the Konditorei?
- Konditorei is a big--
- well, it's actually a bakery that
- serves the baked goods on the premises.
- And they serve excellent coffee and cakes and ice cream
- during the summer months.
- And that was a kind of entertainment.
- There's a big public swimming area.
- It's not only a swimming pool, but a park around it,
- where we went swimming summers.
- We sometimes went.
- And there's some salt-water lakes near us, where people
- that take the cure.
- And there's nothing to cure.
- I mean you just go there and soak in the salt water.
- The kids love it because they can float in it.
- You didn't have to be able to swim.
- It's like the Salt Lake in Utah.
- Did you have a good relationship with your aunt and uncle
- you lived with?
- Oh, yes, yes.
- They were very nice.
- They were very different people from my parents.
- He was a bookkeeper and an accountant,
- I guess, for a firm.
- And they then moved away from my hometown.
- And when they moved away, they moved
- to a smaller town that was near lumber
- towns, because they don't transport lumber by trucks.
- It comes down the rivers.
- And then they made insulation out of this,
- that the lumber is literally shredded.
- And they made an insulation.
- They manufactured trucks.
- So I used to spend my summers with my aunt between the ages
- of about 6 and 10.
- My--
- That was fun?
- Oh, yeah.
- It was very enjoyable.
- I saw what rural life was like.
- We took a lot of bicycle trips.
- I got a bicycle when I was about--
- I learned to ride when I was about six.
- But I didn't get a bicycle till I was about 12 or 13.
- Well, it was 13, because I made an agreement with my father
- that I would study for the bar mitzvah,
- that I would take classes.
- And I not only took classes as an apprentice,
- as I mentioned to you before, but I took classes
- in shorthand, because he thought that if you were really
- going to go on, it's silly to write in the way people usually
- do in school.
- You ought to learn shorthand.
- And so if I did all of these things,
- and everything came out OK, then I would get a bicycle.
- So once I got a bicycle, we could ride around
- in the countryside very safely on a bicycle.
- And during the mean time, you and your mother lived alone?
- Yes.
- After my aunt moved to this town,
- my mother and I lived alone.
- And then I moved when I was about 11, as I said.
- I moved to my father's.
- Did your mother have any boyfriends along the way?
- Yes.
- Yes.
- I didn't regard them as boyfriends,
- in the sense they were a group of people who
- used to play chess together.
- They read books together.
- They would discuss the recent plays.
- They would discuss poetry.
- And they had a lot of friends who
- were in the Spanish Civil War.
- A tremendous number of European students from universities
- went to the Spanish Civil War and fought
- on the loyalist side.
- And we got to know them because my mother rented
- rooms to college students.
- And I knew them before and after.
- And there were quite a number of women too, by the way.
- There was a higher proportion of women
- than people think here, going to school.
- And many of our doctors were women, and not men.
- And you could always tell professional women,
- because they were a men's watch.
- That was the designation.
- And I know women lawyers and women doctors were.
- And as I said, there were women.
- And I remember one in particular who went to the war in Spain,
- and came back wounded.
- And she had been burned.
- And it's the first time I had seen anyone with a burn wound.
- She had been burned extensively on her body.
- So your mother had students as another form of income?
- Yes.
- Yes.
- And so through them, and through others
- we met, and various people--
- they were not live-in boyfriends.
- But I think she was particularly fond
- of some that I can think of.
- But she didn't have a romance in the male-female-- whatever--
- during this time?
- Well, not in my presence.
- I suspect she did, because there was also a girl who helped her.
- And she went out at night.
- And it was not unusual for parents to go out at night.
- In normal middle-class people in their 30s,
- going out five days a week was not unusual.
- They would go to the theater, or they would go to a nightclub,
- or they would go to people's houses for dinner.
- People don't work as intensively as they
- do in the United States.
- So that would not have been unusual.
- But as I said, it wasn't a live-in boyfriend.
- They were all politically interested,
- and they were interested in pretty radical changes.
- And they organized the, essentially,
- underground railroads for people who are on the run.
- We learned to not know too much.
- Because again, we were afraid of being arrested.
- I'm talking now about 1940, '41, '42, '43.
- We knew that people were arrested at random at times.
- They would simply take you and arrest you.
- And you disappear for a couple of days.
- And people were beaten and tortured to inform
- on other people.
- Now the information may be whether they smuggled out
- money, or where they hid money, or whether they
- were getting information to the enemy, whatever that was.
- Now, obviously, some information did go through,
- because the first time they bombed the factory
- that my father worked in, they only bombed the right parts,
- and they didn't bomb any of the empty warehouses.
- But the general tenor of life was such
- that it got more and more stringent.
- You had to be more aware of what you said to whom, and how.
- And simply getting enough food became a huge problem.
- On that issue, you say there was an underground railroad.
- Was your mother involved in this?
- Sure.
- Yes.
- From when was she involved, do you remember?
- Oh, from 1940 on.
- People came in the country illegally,
- and they had to leave illegally.
- And they had to have papers made.
- But they were taken from one house to another house.
- And you didn't ask their name.
- You didn't ask the name of the house that you went to.
- Preferably, they tell you, it's the third house
- from the corner.
- So you wouldn't know the address as such.
- So if you got caught, you wouldn't.
- What was your mother's role?
- My mother gave me the message, and I would take the people
- over there.
- Well, she would say take so-and-so to the third house
- on the--
- And she would say take these people to the third house--
- this corner after that, and after that,
- take them to the third house.
- That was the only information you got?
- That's the only information, yeah.
- And I asked her, why is it that we can't know?
- The reason is because if they catch you, you don't know.
- Did she explain to you what was going on,
- why she was asking you to do these things,
- and about the underground railroad?
- Not in so many words.
- You knew after a while that these are
- people running for their lives.
- What other kind of information did you carry?
- We knew where you could buy things.
- And that was something you weren't supposed to know.
- We knew where valuables were hidden.
- We knew what books we had that we weren't supposed to have.
- Personal books?
- Yeah, personal books.
- You know The Good Soldier Svejk?
- Now that was a highly forbidden book.
- And there are many other books that were absolutely forbidden.
- We would go to the--
- we would never get a book from a lending library--
- never-- because those were always checked by the-- they'd
- know what you read.
- And even by the pattern of your reading they would know.
- So we would go.
- Bookstores there always operate lending libraries.
- And you go to the lending library.
- And there would be an official lending library,
- where you took out a book that was official;
- and there was an unofficial lending library.
- And you got the book.
- And you got a book from the official lending library,
- where they wrote down what you borrowed; and then
- you would get a book from the other side of the library,
- where they wouldn't know.
- So as a teenager, you were doing that?
- Yes.
- And your mother also?
- Yes.
- Was your father involved in this?
- Yes.
- Not in the same group, but he had other groups.
- So everybody had their own group.
- We all got books that were, quote, "unapproved" books.
- I keep threatening my students nowadays
- that I wish they'd put a guard in front
- of the library, everybody sneaking in the back door.
- And then they'd use the library more often.
- But we got books this way.
- And we got new books written that--
- they even objected to popular novels.
- And there are popular novels here, though--
- Sinclair Lewis's novels.
- No, that they permitted.
- But I remember-- I just ran across it a couple of days ago,
- and I can't remember it now.
- It was a bona fide novel, but the authorities
- decreed that this was against the popular creed.
- Your parents, it sounds like they had
- very similar political views.
- Yes, they did.
- They did.
- And you said one quarrel they had was your mother wanted--
- Yeah, my mother wanted to be much more independent.
- And I don't think my father could stand that.
- And I think that was very strong clash among them.
- And I think my grandmother probably
- didn't help matters much, because she was, naturally,
- on her son's side.
- Did you have any kind of relationship
- with that grandmother?
- Yes-- not a very good one, but I did
- have a relationship with her.
- She tended to denigrate my mother's efforts.
- And I became old enough to see what really bothered her.
- And after that, it didn't bother me so much how she reacted.
- You began to see the qualities in your mother
- that your grandmother disapproved of?
- No, I began to see that my grandmother wanted
- very rigid control of my father, because she had had three
- children, two of whom died.
- My father was her only child.
- She lost her husband.
- And this was somebody she wanted to control very much.
- And that was really at the heart of it.
- And there was no woman that was going to take that place.
- She believed in a kind of Victorian propriety
- that put so much effort on the description of the exterior,
- and on the maintenance of this exterior.
- Formalities.
- Yeah.
- This propriety without content, and formalities
- without content.
- But you know, I couldn't expect somebody 72
- to change very much.
- Well, did your father have aspects like that in him too?
- Yes and no.
- He had certain proprieties yet, although he
- was much more informal.
- He was very unconventional by his standards.
- My father got a job fresh out of school.
- And in most cases, people there, if they get a job
- with a, quote, "good" company, they
- die working for that good company.
- And he lasted there about, I think, a year or so.
- And this was being a bookkeeper for a match company.
- And he walked in.
- He says, you're going to get a machine to replace me.
- This is stupid work.
- So he quit that job.
- And then he went to work for a bank.
- And he went to work for a bank.
- And when he saw that their job became so terribly routine,
- he quit that.
- Then he went to work for this new company that was just
- organized by my two brothers.
- And they became a large concern.
- They had 3,000 workers, and they exported to 27 countries.
- Do you have a sense of how your parents met, or where?
- Yes.
- Yes, they met on a picnic.
- And my mother made very good ham sandwiches.
- My father loved them.
- [LAUGHING] And it became a joke, because she
- slipped the ham sandwich in his pocket when they parted.
- And then he found the ham sandwich,
- and the romance continued.
- My mother was living with her two sisters at the time.
- And then one sister immigrated to the United States.
- And then she got married.
- And then her younger sister lived with us
- in my early years.
- And there was a great battle between my father
- and my mother, because her younger sister got TB.
- And you know, what's happening in the United States
- now with AIDS is exactly what happened then if people had TB.
- Families denied it, and hid it, and they shipped them out
- of town and all this.
- Well, he was afraid that I would be exposed
- and so on, and not really--
- the treatments for TB were primitive at the time.
- But my aunt, finally, she went to a sanitarium,
- and she did come back with the TB arrested.
- But she--
- The argument was that he didn't want her to be in the home.
- In the house, right, because he was afraid
- that I would get the TB at the time.
- And meanwhile, she met somebody.
- And they were married.
- And they were married in our home.
- I do remember that.
- And that was the first wedding that I remember.
- And I remember another wedding, when I was four years old,
- when my uncle--
- my mother's brother-- got married.
- And that's the first time that I met the extended family,
- and I realized I had such an extended family.
- And I didn't have grandparents, but I had great-grandparents.
- Great-grandparents.
- Yeah, I met one of the great-grandfather.
- And his name was Wolf Salamon.
- And he was quite a character.
- He was known as a practical joker
- all his life, which I didn't know at the time.
- And he was a very jolly and good-natured person.
- This was a country wedding.
- And I, running outside, I fell in a puddle
- in a white sailor suit.
- To my mother's everlasting credit, she had anticipated.
- She had brought a blue sailor suit along.
- [LAUGHS] So I was the only kid at the wedding whom--
- all the other kids had white sailor suits.
- I had a blue sailor suit.
- [LAUGHS]
- Did these great-grandparents live far?
- No, only on the great-grandfather.
- Yeah he lived, oh, about, half day's travel away
- in the country.
- And that's the only time I saw him.
- He passed away shortly after, in his 90s--
- way in his 90s.
- How did your parents get on after the divorce?
- They didn't.
- They never spoke.
- And they did come to the bar mitzvah.
- And when there was something to be discussed,
- my uncle, my mother's sister's husband,
- is the one who spoke to my father there.
- Your parents, they were talking about your doings or--
- No.
- No.
- No, they didn't.
- As you detect, in many respects they
- were very similar in the various topics
- that came up in our discussion.
- We did talk a lot, and I learned a great deal of world history
- from my father.
- I learned a great deal about how things
- are made, from my mother.
- I didn't go to college without knowing how to cook.
- I mean, I knew how to cook by the time I came
- to this country, because whenever I was with my mother,
- she always showed me how to do things,
- and she showed me how to sew.
- I just wish that I had kept those skills at the time I
- came to this country.
- But I hadn't.
- They both valued books and education very much.
- How did you come to--
- I think you said you were around 11, that you
- went to live with your father.
- Yes, I didn't get along with my mother.
- I fought a great deal with my mother.
- And she realized that this is an area where boys really begin
- to approach a rambunctious age, and anticipating that growth
- spurt, I guess, just before puberty.
- And I guess I went through that.
- And I went to my father's house.
- And I did get along much better with him.
- And then, when I lived at my father's,
- and visited my mother on the weekends,
- we got along very well.
- And I began to understand why she
- did some of the things she did much better than before that.
- Before that, I just felt aggrieved
- that she wasn't paying attention to me.
- So that was one of the main points of argument,
- was that she--
- Oh, no.
- No one says that.
- It takes years of looking back and saying, why did I do that?
- But that was one of the things, that there were other things
- that she was interested in besides just
- being the standard mother role.
- I see.
- So you-- was it your decision to move to your father's?
- Yeah, I wanted to.
- And then she agreed.
- And I think my aunt encouraged her then,
- that this is a time when I'd be better off there.
- And we did have very good times when we came back--
- when I used to visit her that is.
- And I understood more her need for very direct social action.
- I think if she had been fortunate enough
- to come to this country, she would have been a wild success,
- because all the barriers that existed
- there didn't exist here--
- not that there aren't any barriers here.
- But judging by the parallel--
- In fact the couple I referred to you about,
- the Lazars, who moved to Los Angeles, what really happened
- was that he had been an official in a shoe and leather factory,
- and she also knew dress design.
- And so she established herself by opening a slack shop
- on Wilshire Avenue, which later on turned out
- to be the Miracle Mile.
- But it wasn't a Miracle Mile when she started it.
- But it's with her skills, and she suddenly blossomed.
- And she couldn't have ever done that back there.
- What do you mean by direct social action?
- Well, she was interested in an orphanage.
- She was interested in changing things from the way they were.
- She didn't like the way maids were treated,
- or how maids lived.
- Those were strong concerns of hers.
- So she had a real social conscience--
- Very, yeah.
- As well as her business.
- Yeah.
- So was your father living alone after the--
- No, my father lived with his mother.
- She ran the house and so on.
- And did he ever have any women friends?
- Yes, he did.
- He did too.
- But never remarried.
- No.
- So after you moved in with your father,
- you felt things went more smoothly.
- Yes.
- You were about 11 and a half.
- Yeah, I was about 11-- no--
- 11 at the end of summer that I was 11.
- And then the Hungarians came in.
- And that made things touchy.
- The Hungarians were much more stringent.
- There was more control.
- There were places you couldn't go to.
- They began applying for identity cards.
- Pretty soon it was food rationing.
- Jews couldn't go to the public schools.
- And then, gradually, businesses were taken over.
- It went from bad to worse under the Hungarians.
- How was your grandmother faring through all this?
- And you were living with her then too.
- Yeah.
- Well, my grandmother just sort of stuck to her role
- as a housewife.
- I think she didn't mind the orderliness.
- And she was not well informed enough
- to see the prospects in the future.
- She got alarmed when some relatives
- on her side of the family from Breslau wrote,
- and they were deported.
- And then there were some who wound up in Theresienstadt.
- And Theresienstadt was touted as a very safe, very nice place.
- It's sort of a go there for your own safety.
- And I kept wondering who are these people safe from?
- But they always kept referring to them as for their own safety
- and so on, as if there would be a mass uprising against them.
- And then her relatives in Vienna wrote
- that things went very bad after the Germans took
- over-- well, after the Putsch, when
- the Nazis were taking over.
- And so we could see the clouds gathering.
- The question was where should we go or what should we do?
- And as I said, my father was very
- confident that he could survive it, having been there so long,
- and having had connections.
- Were you still running messages, or taking
- people in the underground after you moved to your father?
- Yes, on weekends.
- My father wasn't directly involved in that.
- My mother was involved in that.
- My father was involved when he knew somebody was coming to--
- and somebody needed something.
- Somehow we would get it, whether it was medicine, for example,
- or who can get hold of passports, and such and such,
- or who can get hold of a doctor, or who
- can get hold of whatever was necessary-- or drugs.
- I don't mean recreational drugs.
- I mean-- and usually it's prontosil,
- which is the equivalent of sulfa drugs,
- for people with infections.
- So your father was able to get hold of these things.
- Yes.
- And I assume that had he been caught,
- as you say, he might have been tortured, or--
- Yes.
- He would find out where things are available,
- and he would tell people.
- And he would give them the little cards so they
- could buy shoes cheaper.
- But after a while, once shoe rationing was there,
- there's nothing you could do.
- And then the price was fixed, and no card would do anything.
- Were you involved in these underground activities
- in any other way, besides taking a person to a certain--
- No, I sometimes carried messages or documents
- that were disguised.
- But I didn't look at the documents.
- And as I said, we tried to as little--
- I knew where all of--
- my father had Maria Theresa gold coins.
- Virtually everybody in Europe had those,
- because that's what people who expect to become refugees
- can carry.
- They're very small, and you can carry a lot.
- And they're a small denomination.
- And the people who expect to run have
- to carry small denominations.
- Otherwise, they lose their large denominations,
- because they can't get change.
- They can't get change in the kind of currency
- which they can use.
- So if you carried the small ones,
- then you can buy something.
- Well, you know glass of water may be $20.
- But if you carry $100 pieces, it's $100.
- So this is why.
- And he had things like that.
- And I know where it was hidden.
- Was he educating you in all these things of how did he--
- Well, he was telling me that in case he got
- killed I'd know where it was.
- And I knew it.
- And he would tell me where the cigarettes are hidden, which
- was just like gold at the time.
- And he would tell me where the papers are hidden,
- and something that he had an interest in, in some business.
- So it would prove it.
- Where would he hide those kinds of things?
- Oh, in the house.
- But I mean, like--
- Well, we removed boards, that had boards in front of them.
- So people can pick it up, they don't see anything behind it.
- And then there are things he gave to certain people
- to keep for him.
- And I knew who those people were.
- Those we hoped were reliable people.
- That's the one thing you can hope for.
- Yes, you talked about his wide range of friends.
- Yeah.
- But I had the feeling that they didn't all come through
- as he would have expected.
- No, no.
- They didn't.
- The people that he gave his goods
- to are people he expected help from, or food, how did that go?
- They brought it.
- I don't know whether he paid for it or not.
- I wasn't there for that.
- I think he probably did.
- But they did volunteer to this.
- In other words, they came up with the food,
- the two people I spoke about.
- One of them was his girlfriend.
- I mean, I assume it was his girlfriend.
- I think he was very fond of her.
- And the other one was a woman who
- he had trained as a secretary when he was a young guy.
- And after the war, the only thing that I did get back
- is a gold watch, which he got from his employees
- when he got married.
- And that was the only thing that I ever saw in this country
- which I had also seen in Europe.
- Everything else was new.
- How was it that it was saved throughout the war?
- She saved it.
- She stayed there.
- And she saved it.
- And my uncle was there during the war.
- My uncle wound up on the Romanian side of this border.
- And in fact, my mother was arrested,
- because she tried to help my uncle come
- to the Hungarian side.
- But anyhow, my uncle went back after the war,
- and went to the woman.
- She gave it to him, because she knew I was alive.
- And he sent it to me.
- So you have it still.
- No, it was stolen from me, as a matter
- of fact, when I was a student.
- I don't have.
- The most worthwhile things that I
- have are the pictures of my parents, shortly before
- and after they were married; and some pictures of me
- when I was a small child that my mother had
- sent to my aunt in New York.
- Do you know why it was your parents never remarried?
- They apparently had people they could have remarried.
- Oh, I don't know.
- I really don't know.
- I don't think I was at an age where I thought--
- divorce was strange enough, and remarriage
- was really unheard of.
- Let me say that families where men had mistresses and women
- had boyfriends were not unheard of.
- And people didn't talk about it blatantly.
- They only talked about it if--
- What was not approved of is if a person did not
- support their family.
- Now that was the major crime.
- If there-- or if they flaunted their relationship
- in front of others in an act to humiliate the other persons,
- whether it's one party or the other.
- That was felt-- that was cause for social ostracism.
- I wondered why your parents maybe
- didn't simply quietly separate.
- Was that something that would have been done in the times?
- I don't know.
- I was so young at the time.
- I don't know.
- It might have been, but I don't know that they--
- all those, my development came much later in life.
- But--
- It sounds like a brave thing they did in a way
- almost to get the divorce.
- Oh, yeah, yeah, that was very different from what
- other people did.
- Later on, more and more people were divorced.
- But in most classes, I was the only child
- whose parents were divorced.
- In fact, one of my surprises when I came to this country
- was that in most classes there were a lot of kids,
- even when I was going to high school, whose parents had
- divorced.
- Anyhow I went to the gymnasium.
- By the time I entered gymnasium, the--
- which was when I was--
- let's see, 6, 10, 11 years old, 1940, I went to--
- the Romanians it lyceum and the Hungarians called it gymnasium.
- But the organization is identical.
- And the subjects that are taught are substantial
- and the work is very substantial.
- Judging by that, I have a fifth grader now,
- and she's a very good student, but the substance
- of the material they're getting is not the same as what I got,
- I'm sorry to say.
- And we did have a lot of work.
- And the schoolwork was very, very taxing,
- even for very good--
- First of all, you take an entrance exam to go to school.
- So the summer before you take the entrance exam you
- spend boning up for the entrance exam.
- Then you take the entrance exam.
- If you don't score on that, then you
- can kiss your career goodbye.
- There is no alternate route up.
- There's only--
- Age 10 or 11, that's it.
- At age 11, you take the exam in the summer.
- And if you don't pass that exam, you
- can only go to the industrial school.
- Excuse me.
- Were you still spending summers with your aunt and uncle
- after you moved with your father?
- No.
- No, not by that time.
- That was before that.
- And then I went to--
- so I spent the summer, literally,
- going through one of these cram courses
- where five kids and a teacher sit in a room
- and go through everything you want to have learned.
- And you take an examination.
- And I remember the entrance examination
- has an interesting math problem on it
- about the how streets meet and how much area
- is devoted to the center of the street and all this.
- And anyhow, I passed the exam.
- And I was admitted to the school that I wanted to go to.
- But the Romanian governments were changing.
- And the Romania became a one-party government.
- Everybody had to take a loyalty oath.
- And so I began to understand that
- what these political machinations had
- to do with because all my mother's friends had already
- talked about the prospects of a one-party government.
- So the Romanian-- meanwhile, in Romania, there were upheavals.
- The king went into exile, or rather was
- chased out of the country.
- And a Nazi general took over, a guy
- by the name of General Antonescu.
- There were pogroms in Bucharest.
- Not in my hometown, but there were pogroms in Bucharest.
- And this guy obviously was the leader of the Iron Guard.
- The Iron Guard is the code name--
- is the local popular name for the Romanian fascist party.
- Things were getting tighter.
- Teachers began to wear uniforms to school
- to prove how loyal they were to the system and all
- this sort of things.
- So we knew that something was amiss.
- We just didn't know what it was at the time.
- So the Romanians were not brutalizing the Jews even
- as you're saying in Budapest?
- No.
- The Hungarians didn't-- in Hungary,
- they weren't deported from Budapest largely.
- Most of the people were not deported.
- In Romania, there were labor battalions.
- But they were not sent to concentration camps directly.
- I mean, there were some people may have been.
- But the vast majority were not.
- Did you ever roundups for the labor battalions?
- How were people selected?
- Oh.
- They're called-- the Romanian labor battalions I don't know.
- But the local authorities construct lists, usually
- by age.
- Now, some people manage to have enough influence
- to have their names removed from that.
- Officially, there were always some kind of an influence,
- like they had TB or they had an injured leg.
- Or I had a distant cousin who had polio,
- so he was excused from this.
- So there were various reasons for why
- some people were excused.
- But still a great many went.
- And these were--
- Were they rounded up in the streets or--
- No, you got to notice, and you had to report.
- Or they come and get you.
- There are no alternatives.
- One of the things that you have to know
- about a country in which there is really a police state
- is if you move from one town to another,
- you have to tell that to the prefect of police of the town
- that you're leaving from and tell it
- to the prefect of police that you go to.
- Now, you can go to visits in good times without any IDs.
- But the moment things are a little upset,
- you always have to carry your identification.
- As a kid, we used to go swimming.
- And we used to carry the ID and stick the ID in the shoe.
- And you could be challenged by police
- anywhere about who you are.
- In a police state, the control is so complete
- that they know where you're going.
- So you can't just pick up and go.
- You'd be recognized or our neighbors would tell.
- Yes, neighbors would always tell.
- Did you experience that a lot?
- Neighbors betraying people.
- Yes.
- The neighbors tended to tattle on each other
- because they view as a government as really
- omnipotent, that there is no line that they can draw.
- My first practical lesson in civil rights
- occurred after I arrived in this country
- and after I met my aunt.
- I'll tell you about that in a moment how I got here.
- I was in my aunt's house in New York.
- The first day that I arrived in New York,
- she had picked me up at the train.
- And this was an apartment on East 88th Street
- and with a long hallway in the front.
- And there was a knock on the door.
- And she went to open it.
- And there was a big, burly New York cop in the door.
- He was so big, he darkened the hallway.
- I can see his shadow casting.
- And I said, oh, what now?
- And in those days, you'd call it paranoid behavior here.
- But I've been a prisoner.
- And I knew I wasn't going to be a prisoner again.
- If a cop showed up at one end of the hall,
- I would look at the other end of the hall.
- Which one is the nearest window?
- And I was ready to flee literally.
- And my aunt, who was about 5 foot zero,
- looked at this 6 foot cop, who was this wide and darkened
- the doorstep.
- And she said, yes?
- And he said, may I come in?
- She looked at him and says, what's
- the matter with your hat?
- And I was frightened out of my mind.
- I thought we'd be both be killed on the spot.
- And this big, burly cop took his hat off.
- And he said, can I come in?
- And she said, no.
- She said, do you have a warrant?
- He says, no?
- It turns out he was inquiring about somebody down the hall.
- This 5 foot nothing brought the whole machinery
- to a screeching halt. It's an unbelievable concept in Europe.
- Maybe it happened in France, though I doubt it.
- And I've been in France.
- Maybe it happens in England.
- And I haven't been in England.
- But it didn't happen in the rest of Europe, not in the '30s,
- not in the '40s.
- Well, I can appreciate your parents' political point
- of view in the face of that.
- Yeah.
- There was just an--
- the state had unlimited powers in every way.
- So some of the people that your father hoped
- to rely on in the early '40s, I guess,
- was disappointed very much.
- Yes.
- He also had a Swiss friend whom he thought was a good friend.
- But-- and he wanted to establish-- he actually
- did have an account, a bank account in Switzerland
- through his friend.
- And then the friend wrote him a letter
- that they have to take his money out
- because the government forbade these kinds of accounts.
- And he said, jeez, I thought he was a friend.
- Were there are some people who really came through?
- Yes, there were.
- Who were they?
- As I said, those were the two people who brought us food.
- And I said one was his girlfriend,
- and the one was a woman who was--
- they were both women who did.
- Were they Jewish?
- No.
- Neither one?
- Neither.
- No, they couldn't have been.
- They would have been under the same restrictions.
- But they had obviously access to food
- even though times were tough.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- One was the wife of a big executive.
- He met her when she was a secretary.
- Now she was a wife of a big executive.
- And the other one was his girlfriend.
- So now through-- this is around 1941 when you first want to--
- Well, yeah, 1941 was a year of change
- because the Hungarians came in also.
- And then I went from the Romanian school
- to the Hungarian gymnasium.
- Now, as I entered the--
- it's called the Piarista gymnasium, or the Piarist
- school.
- And it's a very old school.
- The walls are as thick as your doors are wide.
- And it's been there.
- And by the way, I never had more than 24 kids
- in a class in gymnasium, never.
- In fact, in elementary school, I didn't
- have as many kids in my class as they are
- in my daughter's classes today.
- It's interesting.
- Yeah.
- Did you already speak Hungarian well?
- Well, I spoke Hungarian--
- my mother tongue is really Hungarian,
- although I hardly speak it now.
- And then I learned German because of my grandmother.
- And the Kinderfraulein who took care of me spoke German.
- She was a Swabian woman.
- And then I learned Romanian when I went to elementary school.
- And beginning in first year gymnasium,
- I officially learned French in school.
- But meanwhile, my father would always bring home these books,
- picture books in French.
- And he would speak French to me.
- So the French went along.
- So by the time I started in Romanian gymnasium,
- we had French.
- I remember my teacher's name was Madame Rousseau.
- And she was a Romanian woman who had gone to study in France.
- And her husband was French.
- And so we took a great deal of French.
- Under the Hungarians, we took German.
- And so I knew German already.
- In fact, my German teacher, ironically, was very anti-Nazi.
- And my Hungarian teacher was very pro-Nazi in fact.
- He was a priest and he was a member of the--
- he was an informant for the Gestapo
- because we followed them to the Gestapo headquarters
- a couple of times, so we knew.
- People don't go to the Gestapo headquarters for afternoon tea.
- Was there any trouble amongst the children in the school
- about telling or betraying?
- Well, no, by the time I went to school, in the Romanian school,
- there wasn't a problem yet.
- In the Hungarian school, the distance
- between me and my colleagues to begin with
- was great because I came in as the kid who
- everybody knew I was Jewish.
- The number of fights, the ostracism,
- became sharper and sharper as time went on.
- During Christmastime, it would relax.
- And during Easter time it would get worse also.
- Because Christmas time is a very joyous thing in Christmastime.
- In Easter time, the old myths would come out of the woodwork,
- you know, the stories about the Jews and Passover.
- I don't know whether-- you know there
- was a famous trial in Czechoslovakia
- in the '20s where Jews were accused
- of using Christian blood for making matzos for Passover.
- And things were on the verge of a riot.
- And Thomas Masaryk himself separated the rioters,
- you know, the president, first president of Czechoslovakia.
- But the myth is a very strong myth.
- And it was reinforced by a lot of Greek Orthodox priests.
- They preach that sort of thing.
- Among Catholics, it was a myth.
- And the priests tried to discredit it, at least those
- that I knew.
- But they were also antisemitic priests who simply stood silent
- when people would mention this.
- And by the time you're getting into 1942--
- Well, by 1942, the Germans were all over Romania--
- I'm sorry, Hungary.
- They came in massive numbers.
- First, they were only going to take through a few train loads.
- And then life became more and more stringent
- because there was less and less food.
- There were fewer and fewer places
- where you can get food because we're running short
- on supplies.
- What would have been a normal daily ration food for you?
- Well, you would have had coffee in the morning.
- Children do drink coffee there at this age.
- Real coffee?
- No.
- This is-- this a good point.
- This is a coffee that's made mostly out of chicory.
- And you save the grounds of good coffee.
- And I can't tell you how many cups of coffee
- we made from reused coffee.
- You mix the chicory and coffee and use that.
- And then there's also some tea.
- We did have more tea than coffee actually.
- We used a lot of chamomile tea because that was officially--
- that was a Nazis treatment by the way for infections,
- chamomile tea.
- And it's wonderful to taste.
- But don't ever depend upon chamomile tea
- to cure any infections.
- It's only for if you don't have anything else.
- We would have a slice of bread for breakfast
- and a cup of coffee.
- At 10:00 snack, we would have a little slice of bread,
- sometimes with some--
- either lard on it in school or if it was at home,
- some chicken fat or duck fat, which we render and use.
- At 1:00, you'd have the major meal
- of the day, which often consisted of soup or of pasta
- made with potato flour.
- We ate a tremendous amount of potatoes.
- And sometimes shells or something in there,
- they're stuffed with another variety of potatoes,
- or chopped onions or chopped cabbage or something like that.
- For dinner you would have some tea and some bread,
- not an awful lot.
- But occasionally, we'd get lucky and get a little bit of meat,
- chicken usually, and sometimes, very, very rarely,
- and beef because it was hard to get
- kosherly and butchered beef.
- And my grandmother wouldn't need anything else but.
- Sometimes my father would bring home
- cold cuts he got from some black market place.
- And then he and I would have that.
- And he would bring cheese from my grandmother.
- And she could eat that, the Emmentaler
- cheese, Swiss cheese.
- Did they own their own home or you had an apartment?
- No, we had an apartment in an apartment house.
- And, no, we didn't own our own home.
- I think-- I don't know why they didn't--
- an awful lot of people there live
- in the city living in apartments and they don't own homes.
- Home ownership isn't as standard as it is here.
- So the three of you were living in it?
- Yes.
- I assume, of course, your father was not traveling?
- Oh, no, no, he was working strictly there.
- And most of their business was transacted by telephone.
- Let's see, we had-- let me see, how many rooms did we have?
- One, two, three-- we had three bedrooms and a living room.
- But we restricted-- my father and I shared a bedroom
- because we want to limit the heating.
- And my grandmother had a separate bedroom.
- And then people were quartered.
- I mentioned to you the German officer
- was quartered in our house for a while.
- That was '43.
- And then we had people quartered there
- for short periods of time.
- But I remember him in particular because he got drunk.
- And he told him--
- Do you remember his name?
- No, I never knew his name.
- How was that to have a German officer in your home?
- Terrifying.
- Terrifying.
- He wanted to do something nice for us I remember one weekend.
- And he brought this dressed pig, a piglet.
- And we tried to explain to them that it's very hard to cook it
- because we don't have a pot to cook it in.
- And my grandmother can't eat it.
- But we finally gave it to various people.
- And my father and I ate some.
- And then we swapped it for some other food.
- So my grandmother could get some because naturally she
- wouldn't eat it.
- Well, here was one act of kindness.
- But it sounds like you were--
- Oh, we were afraid of him because he--
- we-- he had confided in us, if we
- would have gone to the German command
- and told him what he told us, he would be sent to the front
- immediately.
- If he felt threatened, he could have killed us.
- But he didn't.
- But he could have.
- And was this was person who so miserable--
- Yeah.
- You know, alcoholics are really not very predictable.
- We knew that much about alcoholics.
- And he was an alcoholic.
- And so we felt that he could easily do away with us.
- Did he have duties during the day that he had to be away?
- Oh, yeah.
- He would come back in the evening.
- And it was sometimes he would stay there and sleep in his bed
- and so on.
- Or he'd come out and he'd demand breakfast
- and we had to fix him--
- You had to feed him too?
- Yes, we had to feed him--
- not legally, because there is no legal barrier.
- You see, they had to--
- he is the guy who decides what you have to do.
- He doesn't bring food for himself.
- Sometimes he did.
- But at other times he didn't.
- So you had your small rations handed to him?
- Right.
- Plus, live in fear of him.
- Yes.
- That was the main thing that he'd come home one day--
- and he had the submachine gun in his room.
- And he could have shot us all.
- And there's no way we can say no to this.
- Did you feel he was a good person or--
- Oh, I think he was probably a good guy.
- He worked in some auto factory.
- And he was the manager of some office in an auto factory.
- And he was probably as lost and frightened as--
- not quite as frightened as we were because our prospects
- were less.
- But he was probably lost and lonely and felt terrible.
- But I'm not-- at the time, he was
- such an overwhelming threat.
- There were-- people disappeared.
- I can't tell you how-- people would say,
- have you seen so-and-so?
- So you know, who do know at the police prefecture?
- And then the line would start.
- And one person would go to the other.
- And there are no telephones.
- I mean there are telephones.
- But we don't have telephones at this time.
- So it's everything goes by word of mouth.
- And people go from home to home to home.
- Well, who knows who is a guard at this place?
- Who did they bring in?
- And it takes two days to find out
- where somebody is because you can't get them out
- until you know exactly where they are because all officers'
- mouths are shut.
- And they don't have to disclose anything.
- So I remember kids who were arrested.
- I was arrested once.
- And they just threw me in jail.
- How did you get arrested?
- On a bicycle.
- I still don't know what I did.
- They just suspected and that was enough.
- And I saw-- you know, my father's face was--
- it was like bleached with fear.
- I've never seen a man so terrorized.
- And I saw him just before he saw me.
- And then the relief in his face that I was alive.
- It was-- people would get together.
- And they would ask, is everybody OK?
- Or is so-and-so?
- And they were afraid to ask whether somebody
- has disappeared.
- How long were you arrested before he found you?
- Just one day.
- Did you ever find out what process
- he went through to find you?
- No.
- No.
- I was sure that he called this person and a person
- called this person.
- And this person then they called the guard.
- And somebody knew somebody else, and then they found.
- I told you, my mother was arrested.
- My mother was arrested because she hired a man
- to guide my uncle and his family from the other side
- of the border, because they're literally something
- like 10 miles apart, to take them
- through a surreptitious route and bring them
- over the border to our house.
- And, you know, she thought she was saving his life
- because the Nazis were going very strong on the Romanian
- side at the time.
- And the Hungarians had just come in.
- And she felt they would be more civil.
- And there was a guy who, for a certain amount of money,
- would take him.
- Well, it turns out that the guy was an informer and a guide.
- Both--
- And a guide?
- And a guide.
- Well, he played both sides of the fence.
- And so he informed on her.
- And she was arrested.
- And at this time, I was staying with my father.
- And I was in school.
- And I had a big fight at school because somebody
- said that my mother was a felon because there
- was a little article appeared, about two inches
- square, about Mrs. Benko was being tried for--
- their usually activities against the state.
- Or it's always a term that makes misdemeanors
- sound like mass murder or high treason.
- And treason was very foremost in their mind at the time.
- And it turned out that what my mother-- that's what
- my mother was trying to do.
- Well, my mother was arrested.
- And she disappeared for three months.
- And I-- well, every weekend, for three months,
- we hope-- and we couldn't find where she was.
- So through connections and lawyers and such,
- we found that she had been taken to Budapest
- to this house of detention, that I eventually
- wound up in myself.
- You too?
- Yeah, but it was just a shipment.
- We stopped there once.
- And then she was released.
- And she was released to arrive on day
- after New Year's of 1943.
- I think it was 1943.
- And it was unbelievable.
- And she was arrested at my birthday party.
- They're sitting around the table.
- And she had made this cake.
- She must have saved a year.
- And they arrested her.
- And she was packing.
- And I saw that she was taking rolls of cotton.
- And it was known that if you get arrested,
- and you have time to take rolls of cotton.
- Because if you bleed, you'll need it.
- And they took her away in such a rough and demeaning manner.
- It was wantonly cruel.
- And then, as I said, for three months,
- we didn't know where she was.
- And I would see my aunt and uncle.
- And they worked enormously hard--
- and my father did to--
- to find out where.
- And I don't know who got the lead.
- But I know they got it.
- And so they found that she was in [PLACE NAME]..
- And then I don't know whether the charges were dropped
- or something messed up happened, but she was released,
- as I said, the day after New Year's.
- Because I remember taking-- we saved things at the new year's
- party for her.
- So that when she came back she would have some nice things.
- And I got-- I remember we saved sardines for her.
- She liked sardines.
- But we saved-- we had a can of sardines.
- I thought we'd save that till she came home.
- And we went to the railroad station to see her.
- And she arrived.
- And she was drawn and thin.
- And we were so happy to see her.
- And that was year 1943.
- That was the beginning of year 1943.
- Did she talk about her experiences?
- No.
- No.
- All she said was that she met great people in jail.
- That she was inspired by their courage and their dignity.
- And that nobody informed there.
- But-- and you found out that she'd been tortured.
- Sometimes we knew when people had informed
- because they got arrested and then
- other people would get arrested.
- So that was '44, '43.
- She came back in '44.
- By June of 1944, we went--
- Excuse me, maybe we should stop now.
- OK.
- We're all set.
- Anytime.
- OK.
- I would like to introduce you.
- Oh, Evelyn Fielden is here as a second.
- And you have some questions you would like to ask.
- Yeah, during this interview we had with you,
- I noticed that you never mentioned the word Gestapo.
- And maybe you can explain that.
- I never met the Gestapo face to face.
- The Hungarians did their dirty work for them.
- There was a Gestapo headquarters, of course,
- in my hometown.
- We followed this teacher.
- His name was Gabor Miko, M-I-K-O.
- And we followed him to the door.
- He went in.
- And he was a particularly nasty antisemitic teacher.
- And I had other teachers in the--
- in the Catholic gymnasium, I had a music teacher
- who was very antisemitic.
- But it was understandable.
- His antisemitic stemmed from the fact
- that the choir of the synagogue was better than his choir.
- And he couldn't understand why.
- But that was his antisemitism.
- But this other guy was a priest.
- And he was very, very blatantly antisemitic.
- He told me that no matter what work I did, the best I could do
- was pass his course with the lowest passing grade.
- And he constantly made very, very derogatory remarks
- about Jewish, Jewish writers, and so on.
- But I was amazed that for a guy who
- said so many derogatory remarks, he
- had actually read their books.
- And I kept wondering, if they're all so lousy,
- why he spent his time on this.
- But my mother's training was that made
- me look at things that way.
- And it was my mother's contribution
- that I didn't let him rob me of what I think was
- worthwhile by denigrating Jews.
- I just categorized him as one more of those liars.
- As far as the Gestapo, as I said,
- I never met them face to face.
- At the end of the war, I worked in a war criminals camp
- in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
- That's when I met Gestapo people.
- But they were on the other side of the fence.
- But you had heard the word Gestapo.
- Oh, yes, yes, sure.
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah, we knew about Gestapo--
- Had they stopped you--
- Yeah, no, we knew about the Gestapo.
- We knew-- the Hungarians are--
- they have the equivalent of the Iron Guard.
- It's called the Nyilas Party, which were the Archers.
- And a kereszt nyilas means a cross and an arrow party.
- But, yeah, we had heard of the Gestapo certainly.
- And they were around town.
- And their numbers increased as time went on.
- I have one more question.
- What did you hear about Wallenberg at the time?
- You're right, Wallenberg.
- I called him Wallenstein.
- What I heard that he gave out passports--
- visas, rather, visas, to people to go to Sweden.
- That's what I heard.
- And that he did this all over the Jewish community
- in Budapest.
- And he did this not only from people from Budapest,
- but for itinerants.
- A lot of people were literally itinerants.
- They went to Budapest in order to get somewhere
- because consulates were there.
- Embassies were there.
- People with connections were there.
- So it's not unusual that they gravitated.
- Plus, there were no major sweeps that I can recall,
- that I know of, in Budapest.
- You wouldn't have been picked off the streets so rapidly.
- There was a greater diversity.
- In a town like Cluj, they know anybody who's out of town
- pretty fast.
- While in Budapest, if I would have been on the lam,
- I would have picked Budapest over Cluj
- because you could blend.
- In relation to Budapest, where is Cluj, south, west, east?
- East, almost directly-- you look in the center of Transylvania,
- it's called Cluj Klausenburg.
- And it is also called Kolozsvár in Hungarian.
- Now, at the moment it's called Cluj-Napoca.
- Napoca is the old Roman outpost that was at the site of Cluj,
- and that's why.
- Did they have a German settlement at the time in Cluj.
- Yes.
- Sure.
- A lot of Saxons and Swabians were
- bought into the Transylvania because following
- the devastations of wars there was nobody there.
- And they were good farmers.
- So they were brought in from the parts
- of central and southern Transylvania
- where there are a lot of Swabians and Saxons.
- And these, of course, became great places
- with the Hitlerjugend used to spend their summer there.
- They were all deported since.
- That's another thing--
- After the war--
- We can talk about next time.
- Sure.
- Well, thank you very, very much.
- You're welcome.
- And--
- Anytime, Sandra.
- I'm Sandra Bendayan.
- And I'm here interviewing Paul Benko for the Oral History
- Project in San Francisco.
- Today is March the 21st.
- And this is Interview, Part 2.
- And I'm here with the second, Denise Leiteel.
- And we left off with the year 1943,
- your mother has been jailed, and just about at the point where
- she is released from jail.
- My mother was released from jail just early in the new year.
- We went to the station.
- By we, I mean my Aunt Irma, and my Uncle Eugene,
- and myself, we and some other friends.
- And it was an incredibly joyous occasion.
- Because I had not seen my mother since my birthday.
- And she had been arrested on my birthday.
- And this is January 1943 that we're talking about.
- No, actually, that's a correction.
- That's wrong.
- In 1943, I was 14 years old.
- And this happened when I was 12.
- This happened when I was 12.
- So it was the year before my bar mitzvah.
- Anyhow, she arrived.
- And we were overjoyed.
- And we had saved food various ways to greet her
- and to make a party for her when she arrived.
- And she was very thin and very good
- spirits then that she was released.
- And I was never told by her what happened.
- But I know that she had been beaten severely.
- And my aunt told me that inadvertently.
- But at least she was released.
- And things during the war were going very badly at that time.
- A great shortage of food, increasing repression
- by the authorities, Jews could hold fewer and fewer jobs,
- could do fewer things.
- The Jewish community, as I think I mentioned before,
- organized in the sense of helping each other.
- A lot of people were thrown out of work.
- They tried to find other sources of income, other jobs,
- other kinds of businesses, which is very, very
- difficult in wartime.
- And the community literally taxed itself.
- The community has no tax collection power, though.
- So what came in was really generous.
- Because everybody felt the squeeze
- due to the inflation during the war, and so on.
- And I know my father was involved
- with the Jewish community, and involved with the tax planning,
- and how much people should give, and so on.
- Although he wasn't much involved before the war,
- he did participate in this.
- And there was also a great many rumors flying around
- about what was happening to our relatives.
- We had relatives in Czechoslovakia.
- We had relatives in Vienna.
- We had relatives in Budapest on my father's side of the family,
- mostly.
- My mother's side of the family was mostly in Transylvania.
- I mentioned that Transylvania was divided
- into the northern part, what belonged to Hungary,
- and the Southern part was retained by Romania.
- We lived just a few miles from the border.
- And my uncle lived on the other side.
- And occasionally, we got smuggled letters.
- There was no way of writing directly,
- certainly not about things that mattered to the family.
- I'm not sure if I talked about my mother's smuggling attempt.
- It doesn't matter.
- OK.
- If it's in there.
- During this period of time, everybody
- was trying to guess whether it would be better for Jews
- to be on the Hungarian side or on the Romanian side.
- And the general consensus of opinion
- was that the Hungarians were more civilized,
- that they would probably be less savage than the Romanians who
- were considered, quote, less civilized.
- And ironically, everybody was wrong.
- The facts were that the degree of organized repression
- was much greater on the Hungarian side
- than on the Romanian side.
- And the anti-Jewish laws were much more extensive.
- The enforcement was much more thorough.
- The Romanians, whatever else happened since,
- were a rather easygoing lot.
- They were a place where things were very corrupt,
- but virtually nothing was impossible,
- including getting people out of the country.
- You know that even under the horrible Ceausescu regime,
- they sold people out, but they didn't kill people.
- The Hungarians didn't sell them.
- They killed them.
- And that's what happened.
- So my mother, whose older brother lived in a town
- called [PLACE NAME] which is near a town called
- Turda in Romania.
- That's where they were born and raised.
- Well, he remained there to operate
- what had been the family store.
- And at one time, they had a mill.
- He still lived there with his wife and two daughters.
- And my mother made arrangements for a guy
- to guide the family across the border.
- There were people who were being smuggled back and forth.
- It's not an unusual event in Europe
- for people to be smuggled.
- And then there are always the Gypsies.
- The Gypsies crossed European borders
- without the benefit of passports, or visas,
- or other documentation for centuries.
- Well, this man was not a gypsy, but it turned out
- that this man was an informer.
- And so my mother was arrested and accused.
- And she was fined.
- And all she was really trying to do was rescue her brother.
- And I didn't know anything about it.
- Let me say that as the war starts,
- people begin to be very wary in police
- states about how much information you
- give to other people.
- Because if they are arrested, they all
- know they're going to be tortured sooner or later--
- and they're all going to be.
- And so there's a limited amount of information
- given, because you can't give them information
- that you don't have.
- So I really didn't even know that my mother
- had been arrested.
- I was living with my father at the time.
- I think I told you that when the Hungarians started,
- I moved to my father's.
- And then I went to school one day, and one of my classmates
- taunted me that my mother was a felon.
- And we got in the usual fight.
- And we got in front of the principal and all that,
- as you might expect.
- And then I thought that he was lying
- and he was just baiting me.
- And it turned out that it was true.
- She was not convicted as a felon.
- It was some misdemeanor.
- She paid a fine.
- But we were terrified.
- Because during wartime, any minor offense
- could lead to incarceration, and so on.
- What was the charge that she was charged with?
- Smuggling, smuggling.
- And I think the lawyer managed to convince him
- that they were smuggling some goods and not this, of course.
- But there weren't goods involved.
- And I sort of came at my mother very, very righteously,
- as 12-year-olds are apt to be.
- And then she told me.
- And I must say, I was very ashamed that I did that.
- Our life during these years, as I mentioned,
- became increasingly restricted.
- At this time, I was going to a Catholic school
- run by the Piarist order.
- I think I mentioned it in the other tape.
- And half the faculty was pro-Nazi.
- Younger priests were pro-Nazi, and the older priests
- tend to be anti-Nazi.
- And the principal was definitely anti-Nazi.
- And 1943 was our worst year in the sense
- that we went for a year without meat, from Pesach to Pesach.
- I remember my grandmother saved this breast of a duck.
- I mean, it hung dried in the corner, wrapped in something.
- And she used to make these fake meats and fake things
- and pat it on.
- It was kind of a fake hamburger mounted
- on the breast of this duck, which got served and reserved
- and reserved.
- And all the coffee was always used many times.
- And part of the reason we survived
- was because my father was wise enough to buy cigarettes.
- Because he had gone through the First World War.
- And after the First World War, when all the currencies
- blew up, you could go out in the countryside with cigarettes,
- buy all that you wanted.
- And as I said, 1943 was the worst.
- By end of 1943, by early 1944, every aspect of the war
- made its mark on us.
- There were bombings.
- There were constant overflights.
- The supplies to the partisans in Yugoslavia, flights
- went through Romania.
- There were, sometimes, just single or a couple
- of planes going through.
- And I don't know whether they were reconnaissance missions
- or whatever, and then bombings started seriously.
- They bombed the railway station.
- And they bombed other industrial sites.
- And the bombing, by and large, was confined
- to the industrial district.
- It was not in the populated districts.
- And we listened to the radio in Europe.
- Most Americans don't know.
- But they used to announce the bombing runs in advance.
- They used to say, if you can, leave the following towns.
- They're on the scorecard.
- And then we used to say, well, how can you leave?
- But some people could leave.
- We couldn't leave.
- But it was announced.
- How could these people leave?
- Did they have relatives?
- Yeah, if they went to the countryside to relatives.
- And you know, European visits to relatives
- are not specific affairs.
- People come and stay a while, and they move on.
- And it's very much more of an easygoing life.
- And in country homes, especially,
- if it's more like a compound rather than one little house,
- it's not unusual for people to come, and so on.
- Some people had hard times in the '30s.
- Another family would move in.
- And they'd be around a while.
- It didn't happen to us, but it happened a lot of people
- that I knew.
- So it wasn't so unusual for them to go.
- The difficulty was to get a permit to leave.
- Now if you were not Jewish, it wasn't a problem.
- If you were Jewish, that was another problem.
- Then you had to find a friendly policeman who
- would recommend you.
- Or what really this boils down to
- is you find the guy who accepts the bribe.
- And there's always a guy who accepts the bribe.
- Eastern Europeans take very cynical views of government
- because most of the government that they're exposed to
- is totally, utterly corrupt.
- Everything goes by bribes.
- It goes by family relationships.
- It goes by influence.
- There are no such things as hard and fast rules.
- They do have lawyers.
- But the lawyer's power depends not only on the lawyer's skill,
- but the lawyer's connections.
- So it's a very, very different aspect of government
- that you see.
- If you have a store, you'll need a permit
- for every time you turn around.
- And the permit may or may not be granted.
- And they are very, very arbitrary.
- And the store can be closed because you
- didn't sweep your front porch a couple of times.
- Every storekeeper is responsible for cleaning
- in front of their stores.
- There is no street sweeping, per se, of the whole sidewalk.
- And if they don't, then the policeman can issue a ticket
- or the policeman can close it.
- Now you have to appeal and go to court to get that closing off.
- So it's a situation that's fraught with--
- it's an invitation to bribery and corruption.
- Is this one of the differences between Hungary and Romania?
- No, they both do it.
- The Romanians do it openly.
- The Hungarians do it hiddenly.
- Mhm.
- Well, you were saying how the Romanians were [CROSS TALK]
- But the Romanians--
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Yeah, the Romanians, in all of my experience,
- they made life possible.
- Even if there was an impossible rule, they made life possible.
- The Hungarians would pass an impossible rule.
- And even if it tripped them, and worked against them,
- they would enforce it.
- They were idiotic rules.
- For example, under the Nazis, you
- weren't supposed to use certain medicines.
- And a good doctor, and they would audit the prescriptions,
- would prescribe chamomile tea for infections, and all this.
- Well, you know chamomile tea is wonderful to put you to sleep,
- make you feel better, and all this.
- But if you have a serious infection,
- and you expect on chamomile tea, you better take up residence
- in a good hospital where they can give you
- emergency care fast.
- So what the physicians would do is write out
- a prescription for two things, one,
- a prescription for the real drug which
- you would take to a pharmacy that they dealt
- with confidentially, and another prescription, a front pharmacy,
- which dealt in these fake Nazi drugs.
- And so that there was a record that he visited, he treated,
- he wrote a prescription, and that fulfilled them.
- But the real thing went on through the other drugstore.
- And this kind of subterfuge went on at every level,
- people were given a certain amount of ration of food.
- But they couldn't possibly live on the ration of food.
- And so the black market was in existence.
- I mean, I was utterly surprised when I came to New York in 1945
- and they were just the last ends.
- I guess rationing really went out.
- But there was some few restrictions.
- And people described their hardships over here,
- and it was amusing to see what they called a hardship.
- I mean, their ration of butter was 10 times ours
- and their ration of meat were ridiculously high.
- And as you know, it was--
- Do you remember what your rations were?
- Oh, no, I don't remember now.
- But I remember at one time that we
- got a chunk of butter that's equivalent to about an 1/8
- of a pound for two weeks.
- But most of the time, the butter wasn't there.
- The failure of the rationing system
- is that the moment they gave you the ration,
- the commodity disappeared.
- And if you ever read The Good Soldier Svejk,
- there is a wonderful story in Good Soldier Svejk where
- they arrive at an Italian train station
- where they were told they were going to receive
- a ration of Swiss cheese.
- And instead of it, they got a propaganda booklet.
- [LAUGHTER]
- Well, that's about it.
- And that characterizes the distribution system.
- The whole wartime distribution system existed mainly by people
- knowing each other and long established relationships
- and not by any proper governmental organization.
- Well, in the beginning of the war,
- we all bought as much food as we possibly can,
- canned food of various kinds and dried food.
- And we couldn't have lived on the rations, ever.
- There was still a lot of food left when we were deported.
- Well, in the spring of 1944, I was now
- in the fifth year of gymnasium.
- And I was going to the Catholic school.
- The process which I described of things getting rougher on Jews
- increases.
- There are anti-Jewish movies, for example.
- There is a famous movie called Jude Suss,
- which was a German anti-Jewish propaganda movie.
- And many others are going on.
- I was never quite fully accepted by my playmates
- in the Catholic school.
- Because I did come in, unusually,
- in the middle of the fall when I first went there.
- And you know, half the teachers were very nice.
- And the other half were very, very rough
- and very discriminatory.
- But it's not quite as obvious as it might seem.
- Because the classrooms in Europe are so rigidly run,
- there is relatively little time for kids to interact.
- They have the break between classes.
- And the morning break between, let's say, 10 and 10:15 and so.
- And then school is over at 1 o'clock,
- and then you go home, at latest, at 2 o'clock.
- Then you eat lunch at home.
- So there wasn't a great deal of interaction in school
- except incidental to-- there was no free time
- and the formality of the classroom is such.
- But around Christmastime, I remember the Christmas of 1943.
- I was very touched because there was a class Christmas
- party in school.
- It's the first party, I think, that we had.
- The previous Christmas we didn't have a party.
- And it was the only time at that Christmas party
- that I felt I was a member of the class.
- And everybody was friendly and very pleasant.
- And there wasn't this exclusion in any way.
- But after Christmas, things went back to the previous way.
- There were pick up soccer games, for example,
- in the neighborhood with kids that I
- had played with for years.
- And I wasn't invited anymore.
- And there was a shunning on the streets
- or if we'd meet in a store.
- We were all distanced.
- And this was also--
- wearing yellow armbands or star started in '42, actually.
- First we had to wear a yellow armband on Saturdays.
- And during the military training period-- and kids
- go to school six days a week there, not five.
- And so on Saturday was the pre-military training.
- And so other kids went on pre-military training.
- We who were regarded politically unreliable,
- they didn't call us that, but then
- they had some other term for us, that we
- were supposed to do useful work like sweeping
- the hallways and such.
- But we weren't supposed to be in the classroom.
- Because they were warm and the hallways were cold.
- So we were out there.
- And then, on break, we would go into the classrooms.
- But we had to wear the yellow armbands.
- And wearing the yellow armbands immediately set you aside,
- even with people who knew you all the time.
- And that experiment that was done at Stanford,
- really, this was the beginning of that.
- It does work.
- So later on the yellow armband during the day
- was replaced with the yellow star for everybody.
- And then came the restricted hours.
- And then you couldn't go to certain places.
- And mostly, the restrictions on the hours
- made it very difficult to get food.
- Because all food sources involve food lines,
- and you couldn't be caught out.
- And previously what we would do is go at night to people.
- Like, my father knew a baker.
- In fact, he owned part of a bakery.
- And then we would go to this baker,
- and we could get some extra bread.
- And I would wear a big raincoat and have
- straps under the raincoat.
- And I would go with the maid.
- But the maid wouldn't carry the bread, because then they
- would see, and they'd ask her, do
- you have the tickets for that bread, and so on.
- But they probably wouldn't examine me.
- So at first I went and later on, we had no maid.
- I went by myself.
- And these are large loaves of bread.
- They're 10, 15 pounds loaves of breads.
- And we just made straps.
- And they held it under my big rubber raincoat
- and smuggled it in.
- Well, if you have a curfew of 7:00, you can't do that.
- So we'd go by back roads sometimes and still get it.
- How did this fit in with the ration system, though?
- It didn't.
- This is bread that was unrationed.
- In other words, what bakers do is
- that they have an allotment based on the number of coupons
- they collect.
- Then they go to Gypsies, and they buy the Gypsies' coupons.
- Because Gypsies not only can't read the coupons,
- but they don't deal with the coupons.
- So they get extra flour.
- And then they skim some off the [INAUDIBLE]..
- So they-- in all black markets that happens.
- What people do is they skim.
- And with that skim, they bake bread.
- And that bread is 10 times the price, or 100 times the price
- of the other bread.
- And you pay the price, and you get the bread.
- It's very difficult. And part of it
- was that the Jewish community collected money
- so poor Jews could also get bread.
- Were you getting official ration cards at that time at all?
- Yes.
- No, we didn't get ration cards.
- We got ration sheets by commodity.
- That was one of the other stupid things.
- Then you'd have one for potatoes, and one for bread,
- and one for this, and one for meat, and for that.
- And they would say, oh, this is good for so many things.
- But everybody knew that unless you knew the butcher,
- you would only smell meat.
- You wouldn't get any meat.
- And there were also a great many problems.
- Because some people would only get kosher meat.
- So how can you get kosher meat when the kosher
- meat was very restricted?
- So there were a great many difficulties.
- There were a great many difficulties
- with the Jewish hospital running.
- There was a Jewish hospital in my hometown.
- And the Jewish hospital was built
- because of the questionable care in the other hospital.
- And there were a lot of non-Jews who preferred
- to go to the Jewish hospital.
- Because they knew that one was watched.
- But under the anti-Jewish laws, they couldn't.
- That was one of the interesting things,
- is that people complain that they couldn't
- go to where they wanted to.
- But the political repression was such
- that they didn't respond to that.
- As I mentioned, 1944, also I should tell you
- that we had a radio.
- It was a Philips radio which my father bought
- at the beginning of the war, which
- was the best radio of its kind.
- And it had a very advanced design.
- I mean, we listened to Yokohama Symphony
- all the time on the shortwave.
- Every Sunday, I remember, they used to have a concert.
- And we could listen to other stations.
- We certainly heard the British Broadcasting System,
- the British and the Voice of America broadcasts,
- through the British stations.
- So we got updates on what was happening in the war.
- The headlines would say one thing
- and we knew what was coming through there.
- And we would listen and, you know, huddle in a room and put
- pillows around the radio so people couldn't hear.
- They unfortunately had a very recognizable call signal.
- It was the opening of the Fifth Symphony, that da da da dum.
- And that goes through walls, like, man.
- You know, somebody who's a little security sensitive
- ought to have told them to use "Over The Rainbow"
- or something for a theme song.
- But we did hear.
- And I don't know if I told you about that incident.
- I had a German teacher at this Catholic school.
- And he couldn't find the wavelength of the station.
- So he sent me to his room to get something.
- And he said, by the way, he says,
- I've been trying to listen to Radio London.
- He says, where do you get it now?
- Sometimes they would move the wavelength
- because they jammed too much.
- And where do you get it?
- I said, I don't know anything about Radio London.
- And he says, I know you don't know anything
- about Radio London.
- I have a book in my room.
- My radio is on.
- And you go bring me my book.
- And if I should find Radio London after you're gone,
- I won't be mad.
- [LAUGHTER]
- So I went to his room.
- And I put it on the station.
- And I went away.
- And that way there are no witnesses
- that I know where Radio London is.
- Well, as I said, the spring of 1944, things were getting bad.
- We knew that Stalingrad had not fallen
- and that the German army around Stalingrad.
- We knew that by then.
- And we also knew that the Russians were counterattacking.
- We knew from the paper we got.
- It's called the Schweizer Illustrierte
- and it was very crudely censored.
- I don't know if I mentioned this before?
- You said something.
- But tell me anyway.
- Tell more.
- Really, the censorship is enormously
- thorough in terms of items.
- But it's very clumsy.
- So, for example, they claim they sunk--
- the Royal Oak was a famous warship, a British warship.
- And they sunk it three times.
- [LAUGHTER]
- So the coordination in the propaganda divisions
- wasn't too good.
- So we knew by then that somebody was lying.
- And there used to be a joke about in the war in Africa,
- which says what's the difference between a clock and Rommel.
- A clock goes forward and says tick tock,
- and Rommel goes backward and it says tock tick.
- [LAUGHTER]
- This is sort of the humor, the gallows, that was coming out.
- But we could still listen to the radio
- and hear what was going on.
- And we knew things were going badly on the Russian front.
- Rostov was another place where the Russians, or the Germans,
- were stopped.
- We noticed that the German commanders were replaced.
- And we were smart enough to know that it wasn't old age
- that you replace commanders for.
- And they always praise them.
- But nevertheless, they were removed.
- The rationing increased.
- The number of German wounded in town increased.
- The Germans had often kept their wounded in occupied countries,
- rather than bringing them back to Germany to break the morale.
- Of course, it broke the morale of the Hungarians, seeing--
- and then there was a teaching hospital in my hometown
- that's surrounded by a high, iron picket fence, which
- is traditional, high, kind of fence
- since the Austro-Hungarians.
- And they put sheets around this fence
- so you couldn't see in through this fence and all.
- And naturally, as kids are apt to do, if there's a fence
- and it's got posts on it, first thing you cover something up,
- the kids climb up and take a look.
- And that's when we knew.
- We looked in and that's the first time we saw people
- without arms or legs.
- And then we realized that this was a quadruple amputee
- hospital.
- And in '44, my father was getting very worried.
- Because there was literally less and less for him to do.
- The factory designated him as an economically important Jew.
- The Germans had a description called [GERMAN]..
- And the Hungarians followed the same script.
- And he had been involved in mostly buying supplies
- overseas.
- He was involved in import and export aspects of the factory
- before the war.
- And he had to buy not only leather,
- this was a shoe and leather factory,
- he not only had to buy shoe and leather,
- but the materials for tanning.
- Now the leather tanning materials
- that came in the '30s from Argentina, there
- is a tree called the quebracho tree whose
- bark is very rich in tannins, and that's
- what they use for making it.
- And then the other kind of tanning,
- which is with chromium, is another kind.
- But it's not usable for all purposes.
- It's a quebracho that you need.
- So the Germans found a brush in North Africa that
- was supposed to replace this quebracho, which none of it
- could get in Europe because of the Allied blockade.
- So my father came home one day and announced
- that he had concluded his most significant business
- deal in an entire lifetime.
- I mean, before he had bought maybe a shipload of something
- or other.
- But this was an entire convoy of small boats,
- but nevertheless, in terms of amount,
- it was a huge amount of money.
- And this was going to come from North Africa to Southern Italy.
- And he said laughingly, and I won't see a drop of it.
- I said, what do you mean?
- He says, oh, he says, I am sure.
- He didn't tell me why.
- But he was absolutely sure that after concluding this deal,
- they're going to let them sail all the way to Italy
- because they'll use up their fuel,
- and then they'll bomb it in the Italian harbor.
- And that's exactly what happened.
- Well, before that, the chief engineer of the factory
- had been sent to the Russian front for picking mines.
- The chief engineer of the factory was Jewish.
- And they used to pick up people in random raids
- and pick them up and ship them off
- to pick mines in front of troops.
- But he was captured by the Russians early.
- And we suspect that that's why when the Allied raids came,
- they didn't bomb any empty warehouses.
- They only bombed the full ones.
- And they didn't bomb the unused parts of the factory.
- They only bombed the used parts of the factory.
- So they were informed.
- And I don't know whether by these people, to look out,
- what to look out for.
- I don't know whether it was serendipity or not.
- But they waited.
- And the Allies waited.
- And the boats came from Africa, went to Italy, Southern Italy,
- and they bombed the ships in the harbor.
- And of course, when the ship sank,
- the shrub could not be recovered because the seawater leached
- out all the materials that are used for tanning.
- And in the spring of 1944, the factory
- had a big celebration for, quote, "old time employees."
- Unquote.
- And one of those people honored was my father.
- And we went to this big celebration.
- And there were marches and speeches and all that.
- And about, oh, maybe three weeks later.
- He came home ashen-faced that day and said,
- I don't have my job anymore.
- So I think that he was protected by one of the people
- in effect who was now running the factory on behalf
- of the government.
- And I think the pressure came on the guy,
- didn't want to protect him anymore,
- or couldn't take the chance.
- And so said we're going to be deported.
- Was that automatic that one was deported?
- I should tell you that in the summer of 1944,
- early spring of 1944, the population of Cluj was herded--
- not in early spring, in the early summer, very early
- summer--
- well, May, end of April, May--
- they herded the population of Cluj into the brick factory.
- There is a brick factory in Cluj.
- And a brick factory has a lot of sheds where
- bricks are allowed to dry.
- So these are open sheds.
- And they're open on four sides.
- All they have is a cover on top.
- And this was a huge yard.
- But Jews got notices that whatever you can carry,
- you can carry.
- And that was literally enforced.
- That is you could not carry somebody else's.
- A child had to carry its own.
- An old woman had to carry her own.
- And in some cases, they had to walk a long distance
- just to get to the truck, or bus, or--
- not carriage, but one of these wagons to carry their stuff.
- And it was unspeakable cruelty.
- And nobody protested.
- Nobody raised a finger, no policeman, no man, woman,
- or child.
- As soon as those announcements came,
- people started appearing at our door
- and say, why don't give me your books that are in your library?
- You won't have any use for it.
- What were the punishments for not carrying your own wares,
- or breaking those rules?
- They just take it away.
- They just literally take it away and throw it away,
- right on the spot.
- So if you picked up somebody else's, they'd
- say give it back.
- And we went later.
- And the only thing that my father
- could arrange that a guy in a horse-driven carriage came.
- It was one of these open things.
- So my grandmother carried it only from our door
- to the carriage and to us going down.
- And she carried her things.
- When my father got fired, he had a nervous breakdown.
- He couldn't function.
- And so I started organizing the house.
- And we had certain kinds of warm clothing,
- and we had certain boots.
- We had boots with hob nails on it.
- Because it saves wearing on the sole.
- And we had good, warm clothing.
- And I even got my--
- my father's father was once in the Austro-Hungarian navy.
- And he had a sailor's knife, but a small version
- of a sailor's knife.
- It's called a britola.
- And I carried that knife with me.
- And it was wonderful.
- Because eventually, I sold it for two loaves of bread.
- I tried to figure out what is it that you carry.
- And people do become irrational under these.
- You know, my grandmother wanted to carry all her pictures.
- Well, there's no point in taking pictures.
- And she wanted to carry the linen she had embroidered
- as a young woman.
- [CRYING] And instead, we needed blankets.
- And we needed clothes that would last.
- And choose the best shoes and scuff them
- up so they won't look new.
- We always did that during the war.
- Because if German soldiers walked by
- and saw a new pair of shoes, they'd say I want that.
- And that would be it.
- So the whole burden is on you in the household?
- Yeah.
- And I essentially organized that.
- There were some people who helped us,
- who brought food to the house.
- They didn't say anything.
- They just came.
- We opened the door.
- They'd hand something in our hands.
- And they would go away.
- One of them was my father's girlfriend, one of them
- was a woman who had worked for him when
- he was head of the correspondence section,
- and one other old lady who was a family friend.
- They came.
- The bell would ring.
- We would open the door.
- They would just hand it to us and run away.
- The shocking thing was that neighbors and people that we
- knew, whose weddings and funerals
- we were at, and whom we thought of as friends,
- and we would have Sunday afternoon get-togethers would
- come and say, hey, why don't you give me your desk?
- You'll never need that credenza.
- I like those books.
- And how about that painting?
- And I couldn't believe.
- None of them ever said, oh, there
- wasn't a compassionate word on their lips.
- They all turned the other way.
- We lived in an apartment house that's L-shaped.
- And we lived on the second floor in the corner apartment,
- where the small and long legs of the L meet.
- And there was a walkway both ways.
- And people used to be in this courtyard.
- And there was a garden behind this.
- And there'd usually be people out there.
- And the police came.
- And every door was closed.
- Every window was shuttered.
- Every curtain was down.
- And there was a local policeman and
- a gendarme, Hungarian gendarme.
- And they took us to the house of detention.
- By this time, by the time we were arrested, most--
- not most, but all of the people in the brick factory
- had already been sent.
- So this was after they had left that we were arrested and sent.
- Did you know about where they were going
- and what the conditions were, the ones in the brick factory?
- What had you known?
- Oh, we heard rumors about concentration camps before.
- We knew.
- We had some relatives from Czechoslovakia
- who were sent to Theresienstadt.
- For a period of time, we went every day to the train station.
- Because we had heard that there were trainloads of Jews
- who were trying to get out of Czechoslovakia and Poland.
- And we didn't know when they would come.
- So we would stay there day after day, 24 hour day.
- There were shifts, people in shifts would wait by.
- And if the train arrived, we'd look around.
- And if there were refugee Jews in it,
- they got the food and bedding.
- Because some of them ran, literally caught the train
- with the clothes on their back.
- But we never found our relatives.
- We had one communication that they were coming through.
- And we went for about two or three weeks.
- Were you harassed by government officials
- for going to the train station?
- No.
- They just looked askance.
- But they didn't interfere too much.
- They just said, well, why do you want to do
- that, and that sort of thing.
- But then they'd go away.
- They didn't make a big issue out of it.
- But we knew, we had heard about the concentration camps.
- We had heard rumors about gassing.
- We wouldn't believe it.
- We didn't want to believe it.
- We had heard about pogroms.
- There was a pogrom in Romania a couple of years
- before when the Iron Guard, which
- was the Romanian Nazi party, took over.
- There were pogroms in Romania.
- And these were described by Shirer in his book, by the way.
- And they ran amok.
- And they hung Jews on meat hooks in the slaughterhouse
- in Bucharest.
- But after that, things subsided.
- We did not get a sense, though, that anybody
- was concerned in our area with what happened to us.
- And in a way, I think it's because
- of that that at the end of the war, I wasn't homesick.
- And I lost that, the sense of homesickness,
- until years later.
- I lived in Berkeley.
- And then I enlisted in the Army.
- And when I was in the army, the army
- was bussing us across the Bay Bridge.
- And I looked over.
- And I discovered that I was homesick.
- And I can't say that I was--
- I was homesick for friends.
- I was homesick for the feeling of a sense of belonging.
- But I was not homesick for my hometown.
- Mhm.
- I can see why.
- Well, we went to this house of detention.
- And there was there a number of families.
- There was a very polyglot lot.
- One was a chemical engineer from the factory
- where my father worked.
- His name was Grunwald.
- And his daughter's name was Betty.
- And she was my first girlfriend.
- And in the house of detention, men and women were separated.
- This house of detention is like a county jail
- where they hold people before trial.
- And we flooded their facilities.
- There were maybe 20 families altogether.
- And among these was one guy who was
- a waiter, who was not married.
- And he had been a waiter.
- And he had been a boxer.
- And he had done various things in his life,
- which is very atypical to the other kind of life that we had.
- And this guy was the great organizer.
- He knew how to deal with jail keepers.
- He knew how you traded.
- He knew how if you wanted, for example, some water,
- and you didn't have water, well, a naive person would
- say that, I have some money.
- Get me some water.
- And then they would hand the money over to get the water.
- He says, huh uh.
- What you do is you get the water first.
- Then you hand the money over.
- Yes.
- And there were all kinds of little tricks,
- from how to make a comfortable bed when
- there is no bed, how to operate in the underworld,
- in other words,
- Can you elaborate more on those tricks?
- Well, he would show us how to make beds
- with very little material.
- He would show us how, when eventually they
- took our socks away, when we were in the camps,
- how to fold a sock so it doesn't rub your foot.
- There is an art to folding it up and over so that when you walk,
- you don't get a bad blister.
- And he would show us how to disable a cable or a wire
- so that you don't get electrocuted.
- You look for insulators of proper kind.
- I don't remember other tricks now.
- But there were parts of things of how a convict behaves.
- One of the things you learn is never to blab or to talk.
- And you never give more information than is asked for.
- You learn that, if you want something,
- where is it available, not by asking the head of whatever,
- but by somebody who you have some contact with.
- And we learned to write very small and conserve paper.
- And to conceal pencils, and things
- of this sort, which we never thought that anybody
- would ever take away.
- And so in those days--
- the other thing is that he just made jokes.
- And these are people who had never been near a jail
- in their lives.
- They've never been in these.
- And they were in tragic states because they had lost the power
- to care for their families.
- The men were just devastated.
- The women were in shock and very fearful.
- But the functioning of men was more impaired.
- Now I don't know whether the women dealt with their fears
- more before than the men did or not.
- It could be that there were more familiar
- with fear and with a lack of power over their situation.
- But the men, who prided themselves in being good
- providers, and makers of home, and reliable people--
- And protectors.
- --yeah, when they couldn't furnish
- food for their families, they felt personally devastated,
- regardless of what the conditions were.
- That was a devastating line.
- How did your father bear through all this?
- Same?
- Very badly, very badly, very badly.
- He was in shock.
- He managed to get to the detention center
- all right, though?
- Oh, yeah, we got there.
- But he wasn't doing very well.
- And part of it, that my father's skill in life
- was that he was a very good advance planner.
- His description of what would happen after the war turned out
- to be-- he didn't live to see it--
- but it turned out to be remarkably accurate.
- And ironically, I have a relative who still lives now.
- He's 93.
- He lives in Palm Springs.
- He's a retired barber for the Paramount Studios.
- And he has been there for many years.
- He came to visit us just around the time the depression
- started, before the--
- I'm sorry-- before the crash of the market he was visiting.
- And at dinner, my father said, he says, look,
- you'd better save your money.
- Put your money, whatever it is.
- Because that market's going to crash.
- And he was very angry.
- He was very surprised.
- And he brought me my baby clothes.
- So my mother was pregnant.
- So it was '29.
- And I think my father's tendency to look
- far into the future worked against him.
- And it works against all adults in situations like this,
- against their survival.
- Because the projection is darker.
- And the darker projection destroys hope.
- And destroying hope is counter to survival.
- So I think that didn't work.
- He saw negatives?
- Yeah, he saw that there was no way out of this.
- He couldn't see.
- In a long term sense, he was sure the Allies
- were going to win.
- He says, it is only a matter of time.
- But it didn't help boost him enough to survive.
- Well, he was born in 1896.
- So he was 49 in '45 when he died.
- So he was 48 years old when he went in the camps.
- But I was fortunate in that he and I were together
- and my grandmother was in on the women's side when we were here.
- My mother had already been deported.
- Because I told you, there were divorced.
- So my mother had been deported by the time
- we went to the camps.
- When was she deported?
- A month, six weeks before we were.
- Do you know what the situation was, whether she got deported?
- No, all Jews, all the Jews except those
- who were industrially excused.
- She didn't have an excuse?
- No, no, no, very few did.
- Do you know where she was deported to?
- Oh, yes, yes.
- Well, I'll come to that.
- We were in this house of detention.
- And we were beginning to wonder what
- will happen to us, whether we will
- go to a Hungarian camp, or a German camp, or such.
- We were there for about two weeks, two or three weeks
- or so.
- And they suddenly came one day and said--
- and the food wasn't bad.
- And we were not starved there.
- You know, it wasn't great, but there
- was adequate amount of food.
- And they told us to pack up all of our belongings.
- And we were taken and placed on a boxcar, on a train.
- We were put on a train.
- I'd guess one boxcar full of people.
- And at this time, there were probably
- about, maybe, 65, 70 people in one European boxcar.
- That's pretty tight.
- But that's the most luxurious boxcar ride I ever had.
- After that they're much more crowded.
- We were sent from there and we stopped in Budapest.
- Now this is 1944.
- In Budapest, we were taken off and then taken
- to the house of detention.
- It's called the [NON-ENGLISH].
- And at the house of detention, we
- were visited by a representative of the Joint group.
- And from him, we heard rumors about a Swedish guy who
- was giving passports all over.
- And I didn't believe it.
- I thought during the war, there are
- all kinds of rumors about Moshiach from the sky,
- and paratroopers who liberated all the Jews, and all of these.
- And they're wishful thinking.
- It helps to keep up the spirits.
- Because you retell the story and you feel a little better.
- But I didn't believe it existed.
- And of course, that was the famous Swedish businessman.
- Wallenberg.
- Wallenberg.
- Right.
- And it was Wallenberg.
- Well, the man from Joint tried to get us food.
- He tried to get us medicine.
- He tried to find reasons for us not to be deported.
- He tried to interview us on health,
- if we had other passports, if we had any access to visas,
- every kind of possible excuse.
- He tried his very best.
- And then we said goodbye to him.
- And we were placed on a train and moved to Northeastern
- Hungary, to a little town called [NON-ENGLISH]..
- There is another town that sounds like it,
- but Szombathely is a big city.
- And this is just a little town that had textile mills in it.
- And the camps were located in these abandoned textile mills.
- The textile mills are built with a sloping roof and then
- a very sharp roof.
- It's like the Bauhaus version of factories,
- where there are skylights in.
- Well these were set up.
- And next to our group was a fence.
- And on the other side of it were Yugoslav partisan families that
- were deported, I mean, men, women,
- and children on the other side of this fence.
- Because the Jews were in this side, and the Yugoslav
- partisans were on the other side.
- We found this out.
- Let me say that when we got there,
- there were a whole bunch of other people there also.
- So they were all Jews.
- And so it was obviously a collecting point.
- But the camp was guarded by Hungarians at that time.
- And so we thought this was a good sign.
- Maybe we're in the Hungarian camp.
- And maybe we'll stay there.
- Well, the setup, though, was actually
- the same as the German concentration
- camps in the sense that the three tiered bunks were.
- But men and women were together.
- Men and women were not separated at this time.
- And we were involved in work there.
- And we unloaded trains and did all kinds of work.
- And then we sabotaged the train.
- Well, what we did, we were supposed
- to carry sacks of flour.
- A sack of flour is 80 kilograms.
- That's 196 pounds.
- And so anybody who was male, could walk,
- was recruited for this.
- And we did it.
- And then we took razor blades.
- And we would pick up the sack and make a cut in the bottom
- and then carry it.
- And as we carried it, pretty soon we were walking in flour.
- And, well, they took a dim view of this
- and made an example of us.
- Tied us up and hung us by the arms and whatnot,
- that we all passed out.
- Of course, it didn't change anything.
- But we did other kinds of things afterwards.
- So in this place, our spirits were still good.
- And the exercise, the sabotage exercise
- certainly lifted our spirits.
- And I mentioned the Yugoslavs because in a camp,
- giving food is giving life.
- And it becomes abundantly clear pretty soon
- after you get there.
- And these people, there was somebody in the crowd,
- and I don't know who, spoke some Serbian
- or some Slavic language.
- We found out that these guys were Serbians.
- And they found out who we were.
- They had much more supply.
- They were agricultural workers, I guess.
- And they had a big bread-baking facility.
- And they would go, and they would throw breads
- over the fence.
- Well, for going near the fence, you can be shot.
- And for throwing something over the fence,
- you would have expected all the machine guns to open up.
- But they sit there and wait and wait till the guard
- looks the other way.
- And shoom, a loaf would come sailing over.
- And people shared the loaves.
- And that was another thing.
- This was not during the harder times.
- During the harder time, that probably
- wouldn't have happened.
- But we have to remember all of it.
- And they did share loaves of bread.
- We'd cut one loaf into three pieces
- so three families would get bread.
- Then I remember having a nightmare one day
- that the Germans are taking over.
- And sure as hell, next morning there were SS
- guards all around.
- How was your father doing from all this?
- He was doing much better by this time.
- I think he'd adapted better.
- The exercise helped.
- We were organized, more organized in the sense
- that we would help people who needed help.
- And there were some things to do,
- and there was work to do instead of just sitting
- around and waiting for something to happen.
- Did he carry these sacks also?
- Oh, yeah, yeah, he did.
- It was very, very hard.
- But he did carry them.
- And my father was a slight person.
- And well, I'm the tallest.
- I mean, he was probably about, maybe, 5' 1".
- And he was more slender in build than I.
- And I'm sure it was very, very hard for him.
- I was much smaller at that time, too.
- I grew a lot after the war.
- You must have been about 14 or something.
- Yeah, no, this is 1944.
- I was 15.
- This is just s my birthday's in August.
- So this is in June, June of 1944.
- We had heard the invasion had happened.
- And the official word was they were all drowned instantly.
- And we knew.
- We said, yes, next report we're going to hear
- is that they're drowning them around Paris.
- We had our own jokes.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Yes.
- Do you remember what your food rations were?
- That was under Hungarian control?
- Under the Hungarians, yeah, we had coffee and bread
- in the morning.
- We had a real heavy stew, usually, for lunch.
- And we got bread and some cold cut or something at night.
- I mean, they weren't generous.
- But a hell of a lot more than what
- they were under the Germans.
- We never had that dried vegetable soup
- that the Germans gave us.
- So when the SS took over, they came
- and there were guards on the roofs.
- And there were guards all over.
- And they fired at the camp nearby
- because somebody opened the door or something.
- So we knew that they were trigger happy and touchy.
- And then they herded us in the cattle cars.
- They told us to pick up our belongings.
- And they were extremely rough, extremely blue.
- And people were getting beaten bloody at any opportunity.
- And we got in the cattle cars.
- And we were really packed in, probably 80 or more
- in one cattle car.
- And it was very, very difficult.
- And then we started the journey to Auschwitz.
- We went-- I think it was three days from there to Auschwitz.
- It's not a great distance.
- But these are not high priority trains in wartime, and so on.
- And we stopped in Vienna.
- And I know it's Vienna because my father had been in Vienna.
- My grandmother was born in Vienna.
- And my father had been in Vienna many times.
- So you know, he lifted them up, and he looked out
- the barred window.
- He knew where we were.
- He knew which train station we were.
- And in Vienna, the train stopped.
- They cracked the doors open.
- The guards were gone.
- And this guy I mentioned to you, the ex-waiter,
- the guy who had been a boxer, the guy who had been--
- there was he.
- And there was another guy who had also been a waiter
- and been around.
- And he said, he and the other guy said to me, let's run.
- We looked and we looked.
- And the guards were all assembled on the other side.
- And the door was cracked.
- And I knew I couldn't run.
- And I'm glad I didn't.
- Because I couldn't have lived with the idea
- of leaving my father behind.
- But that's not just me.
- Almost everybody who ever had an opportunity to run
- felt they were abandoning their families.
- And that's why a lot of people didn't run.
- One person could have been saved but a group couldn't have.
- Only if you were solitary would you feel free to do it.
- Yeah, if you were solitary, you could feel free to run.
- Then you had no attachment.
- And my father wanted me to run.
- And my grandmother was already fading.
- She was having a very hard time.
- And the truth is I was not fond of my grandmother.
- My grandmother and my mother never got along.
- And she never had a kind thing to say.
- [CRYING]
- I thought that my father would be left with his mother dying
- and me abandoning him.
- So I didn't run.
- After Vienna, the next place we stopped was Auschwitz.
- And we came in the train station.
- It's exactly as depicted in the various documentaries.
- And we got off, and we were herded off by Nazis and the SS
- soldier, rather.
- And also, we met the first guy--
- have you heard the term Kanada kommando?
- The first Kanada kommandos were there.
- And I've heard of very cruel Kanada kommandos.
- And they were.
- They were somewhat terrible.
- And the Kanada kommandos, the ones
- that they were going through the material,
- and they would talk to us as they were
- going through the material.
- And they said, shut up.
- Don't make noise.
- Stand in line.
- Don't move.
- And if they come near you, just don't move.
- And whatever they give you, eat.
- Don't turn your nose up.
- Don't be a smartass.
- Eat whatever they give you.
- You won't live if you don't eat.
- You just won't live.
- So you're not going to get better food.
- The food smells awful.
- It tastes awful.
- It was very good advice.
- It was absolutely true.
- And people who didn't eat for two, three weeks, and then they
- died.
- Mhm.
- Why would the other Kanada people be cruel?
- What was the motivation?
- Oh, oh, I don't know why people are cruel.
- But some people are cruel because it's
- their way of distancing themselves from those
- who are about to die.
- I see.
- Although many Kanada kommandos were then put to death.
- You know, they didn't last all the way through.
- Maybe the last ones lasted.
- But periodically, they'd be picked up and sent away.
- So we got off the train and in a distance of maybe a good third
- of a good city block, maybe longer,
- maybe greater distance--
- I mean, really in the distance sat who
- I later on found to be Mengele.
- And he sat in a chair.
- And he went like this, or like this.
- As people approach him in a single file,
- like this, like this, you know.
- This is to the gas chamber.
- This is to survive.
- The guards walking along, I noticed
- that they tended to separate if they saw father and child.
- In other words, I mean, Mengele would select one this way
- and one this way if he thought it was father and child.
- Whereas if they were not, then he'd go by.
- And supposedly, they were selected
- for their ability to do work.
- And you're supposed to run up to a point and then stop.
- And the idea-- some people didn't
- run, thinking that they would be compassionate and give them
- a lighter duty or something.
- Well, it was just the opposite.
- If they didn't run fast enough, then they'd
- go to the other side.
- And the women and children were all going to that side.
- So I lucked out.
- The moment I saw that, I didn't stand close to my father.
- And all of our materials were left on the train.
- They said, oh, you'll come and get them later.
- But by that time, we knew.
- Later?
- There is no such a thing as later.
- They greeted with dogs also?
- Yeah, they had dogs.
- Yeah.
- But I didn't see them actually leave the handler's hands.
- There were dogs there, but not a huge number.
- And the Kanada people said you're going to Ziguenerlager.
- You probably will hear that term.
- It was called-- it was lager E in Birkenau.
- So it's called Ziguenerlager because Gypsies had been there.
- And then a lot of the Hungarian Jews were there.
- And all the Gypsies were gassed and then
- the others were gassed before.
- I mean, some went on, but most of them were gassed.
- And so we arrived at the camp in Birkenau.
- You passed, obviously, by Mengele, or with no clothes on,
- I presume.
- No, we had clothes on.
- No, no, when we got--
- the selection was done just as we came off the train.
- We still had our clothes on.
- And after that, we went to the showers.
- Excuse me.
- And well, you know, it was a relief.
- Because we'd been there three days without anything.
- We didn't know enough to be afraid of the showers.
- We saw the crematorium in the distance.
- And we heard rumors that that was-- we referred
- to it as a soap factory.
- So they took us to the showers and the mandatory haircutting.
- And I managed to save my knife, the britola.
- I held it in my hand.
- They searched us all over.
- But I just held it in my hand like this and we went through.
- They didn't see it?
- No.
- They didn't make you open your hands.
- You just have to go like this.
- I went like this.
- And I had that with me.
- And I also managed to keep my boots.
- I don't know whether we sidestepped at some point
- or whether they didn't give us shoes.
- I don't remember that.
- But I had good shoes for quite a while.
- And that was great savior there.
- Then we went through the showers.
- We got the striped pajama uniform,
- the rags for the socks.
- And this guy showed us.
- He didn't run away, by the way.
- He didn't?
- He didn't run away.
- And I don't know.
- I often wondered why he didn't run away.
- And I think he felt we depended on him.
- And we did.
- So I never even knew his last name.
- Such generosity.
- Yeah.
- And he had a great spirit that would just take you out
- of depression.
- Well, we got to--
- I said Auschwitz.
- The specific camp that I was in was really Birkenau.
- And Lager E is in Birkenau, which adjoins it.
- When we got there, shortly afterwards we
- learned the drill.
- Which was you wake up in the morning about 4:30
- or 5 o'clock.
- And you fall outside.
- I mean, you're chased outside in the barracks.
- The barracks that I slept in didn't
- have the three-tiered arrangement in Auschwitz.
- They were all bare.
- They actually were a stable.
- They were cavalry stables.
- Because they had a lower channel in the center
- where you step down where they used to sweep
- out the stuff from the stables.
- And we slept literally on the floor.
- And they gave us one blanket.
- I think we got one blanket each.
- And we were packed so tight that we all slept on one side.
- Then in the middle of the night, one or two people would get up.
- And they would first tell the guard they're getting up.
- And they would get up.
- And then everybody would turn on their other side,
- you know, like spoons, and then lie down again.
- There was really not very much to do.
- We went on various kinds of work details.
- And we tried to make inquiries about who is there
- and who is not there.
- And I got a note, the only written piece
- of paper I ever got during the camp,
- that my aunt would meet me at a certain spot.
- And I went there.
- And my aunt was there, my mother's sister Irma.
- I have her picture here.
- She was, at that time, alive.
- And she seemed OK.
- What I found out later that by that time, my mother was dead.
- Already?
- Yeah.
- My mother died in there shortly after they got to Auschwitz.
- And my aunt never told me.
- And I think the reason she didn't tell
- me was not to destroy my hope.
- Yeah.
- And I never saw her again.
- She had been there long enough that her hair was
- beginning to grow out.
- And my aunt had kinky hair.
- [CRYING]
- I remember her with that kinky hair.
- She was a very beautiful woman.
- She looked like this Swedish movie star, oh, Ingrid Bergman.
- She looked like Ingrid Bergman with kinky hair.
- Oh, yeah.
- She was the youngest of the sisters.
- How did she manage to get that note to you?
- It went from people to people.
- And people talked to each other.
- You didn't have to bribe somebody?
- No, no, it was probably thrown across.
- And she probably saw somebody in a camp whom she knew.
- And then attached the note to a rock
- and threw it across the barbed wire.
- And then people pick it up.
- And we didn't have anything to bribe with anymore.
- The only thing I had left was the knife.
- Was your father with you there in Birkenau?
- Yes, my father was with me in Birkenau.
- And then this now is the fall of '44.
- We got there close to the high holidays.
- I think just after the high holidays.
- And we met the people who had cleaned up the Warsaw ghetto.
- So we heard the whole story of the Warsaw ghetto
- from those who returned.
- And we hadn't heard anything about it before.
- We learned some of the how you live in a camp.
- And you have to stand at attention because they
- count you twice a day.
- They line you up.
- If you bat an eyelash, you're killed.
- So you learn to--
- even after the war, my aunt used to remark
- that you don't bat your eyelashes very often, you know,
- blink.
- I said no.
- And I said, no, you can do this to me all you want.
- I don't blink when you do that.
- It's a reaction that you learn.
- Because they used to test you that way and then
- beat you to death for blinking while you were at attention.
- Hm.
- As I said, the work wasn't terrible.
- It was just make work, kind of.
- You carried sod from one place to another.
- There really wasn't very much going on.
- We heard that Buna was nearby.
- Buna is the artificial rubber factory.
- And that used up people like mad.
- Jon Steiner, whom you may know of,
- he worked at Buna at one time.
- Why do you think you had such light work release?
- I think they didn't know what to do with us.
- I think they were overloaded.
- The front was moving toward the West.
- We were deported from Hungary and we found out later on,
- on the insistence of the Hungarian Nazis.
- The Germans didn't know what to do with us.
- The camps were overfilled.
- When they taxed their facilities,
- they just didn't know.
- And frankly, convict labor is not a reliable source of labor,
- as they may have discovered.
- You have to watch everything they do.
- Because the moment that you don't watch, they'll sabotage.
- Mhm.
- Passively or actively, but they'll sabotage.
- And we did, too.
- I mean, if they laid out a road, that road never
- wound up the way it was laid out, you know.
- It was shifted, you know, a centimeter a day.
- But you have enough days, you move it.
- And nothing that was ever ordered
- was ever carried out the way it was intended to.
- We worked for a very short time in a little plant indoors.
- And we destroyed it.
- And we used to carry sand in our mouth.
- You take a piece of paper, and you put sand in it.
- And you roll it up and stick it in your mouth under the gums
- here.
- And they search you.
- They search you everywhere.
- And you open your mouth and you look.
- Well, it's pressed against the lip.
- Then when you're inside in the factory, you chew on that.
- And the sand mixes with your saliva,
- and then you spit in the bearing.
- You don't need a lot of sand to ruin a bearing.
- Mhm.
- And we had engineers with us.
- In our free time, all we ever did
- was plot how to ruin the place.
- And we learned, if we had narrow gauge railroads, sooner
- or later, if there was a curve, we'd
- dig out the ground on the curve and eventually do a pitch over.
- And if there was an exposed electrical line, sure enough,
- there'd be some water seeping there sooner or later.
- And whatever else we could do, we did.
- Were there reprisals for these things?
- Sometimes, if they caught you.
- But very often, they didn't catch you.
- And there weren't then.
- If they caught you, there certainly would be reprisals.
- But we didn't do it heroically.
- We didn't do it for a hero.
- We want to destroy it.
- We didn't want to leave traces.
- We were the innocents.
- But were you tattooed when you first--
- No, I'm not tattooed.
- I didn't get a number when I left Auschwitz.
- My reference number is in Dachau.
- And it's interesting.
- Well, anyhow, I was mentioning I was in Birkenau.
- From Birkenau, we were sent, in early October,
- to a camp in Bavaria.
- It was a four day trip.
- And then we got no food, no water for four days.
- There must have been big air raids.
- Because when we came to Munich, in the Munich train station
- there, we could smell the smoke in the air.
- We knew they'd had been bombed.
- And the only water we got was from the snow
- that we caught with our hands through the bars.
- There are people running all around.
- Years later, in '72, my wife and I were in Europe.
- And we had to take the train through the train station.
- And I remember the part that was missing then.
- And it's still missing.
- [LAUGHS]
- Well, when we were sent down, that was the worst trip
- that I ever took.
- There were hundreds of people who died.
- And they were in the car with us.
- There was no food.
- There was incredible conditions, terrible guards.
- And we got to a place in Bavaria called Kaufering.
- And Kaufering was one of these small work camps.
- And we slept in these huts.
- They're really not huts.
- They're dugouts.
- And then you only built a roof at ground level, a little roof.
- And you dig out the ground under it, and you step down.
- So they look almost like air raid shelters.
- And then there's a shell.
- Fortunately, during the winter, they're very warm.
- Because they insulated in the ground.
- I mean, not very warm, but warmer
- than being out in the absolute cold.
- And we worked around there for a while.
- And the guards were not particularly bad in this camp.
- But then we were sent to a camp nearby.
- The name of that was Kaufbeuren.
- And that is the worst labor camp I was ever in.
- We started with 800 people in November, or early November.
- And by Christmas time, there were only 200 left.
- I mean, the death rates were horrendous.
- The guards were incredibly brutal.
- There was a German prisoner kommandant as well as
- the guards.
- And they were incredibly cruel.
- They beat everybody at the drop of a hat.
- On Christmas Eve, they amused themselves
- by flooding a basement of their central building
- with cold water and having us take
- a bath in this ice cold water.
- A lot of people didn't survive that.
- We were in one great big barracks.
- And I remember they had a guy there who sang every night.
- He was a cantor.
- But he had a repertoire of other songs.
- And so this was the great amusement of the guards.
- And they killed him.
- You know, usually entertainers are such-- were safe.
- They were just incredibly inhuman.
- Killed him because he was singing?
- No, they just killed him for random killing.
- I saw people mentioned Muselmanns to you?
- Yes.
- But go ahead.
- That's where I saw more Muselmanns than ever
- before in my life or ever since.
- Muselmanns are people who have given up life.
- And you can see it in their face.
- And you know they're going to die.
- Mhm.
- That camp was horrendous.
- And my father was beaten there very severely
- because he took a cement sack and cut out armholes and neck
- holes.
- We all did that.
- I mean, I had one, too.
- But some guard saw him and decided that was terrible.
- And he was beaten black and blue.
- And when you're nutritionally deprived,
- the wounds don't heal.
- Mhm.
- And anyhow, Kaufbeuren was the worst.
- We heard rumors that they did so badly,
- that we didn't do any of our duties
- there, that we never built or did anything useful,
- that they were going to close the camp down.
- And supposedly the prisoner commander of the camp
- was executed for killing too many people too soon.
- But that's a rumor.
- I can't verify that.
- I don't know.
- We also knew that things were changing
- because a lot of the guards became
- crippled air force men and Heimwehr people, no SS anymore.
- Means they were running short of guards.
- And toward the end, and by this, I
- mean in January, late December, January of 1945,
- they got the same soup we got, except they got more of it.
- Let me say, the food that I got In the camps,
- I was never in one of the, quote, "good" camps.
- I've talked to people who were in camps where
- they got more food.
- But I never made it to a camp, I had never been in a camp
- where there was theater, or there was a poetry reading.
- Toward the end of the war, there weren't any.
- What was the food like in this camp?
- Well, the same as others.
- In the morning, you got up and you got sock soup,
- we used to call it.
- Because it looks like something you wash your socks in.
- And then, for lunch, you would get the dried der Gemüse,
- you see it's called.
- It's a dried vegetable soup.
- It's either dried cabbage or dried carrot soup.
- Occasionally, there are potatoes.
- I mean, those are things people fight to the death
- about, literally.
- And prisoners position themselves in a food line
- so that they would get the thicker soup.
- And they'd pick food servers on whether he's a mixer
- or non-mixer, meaning when he takes his ladle and mixes
- the food, or whether he doesn't.
- So you have to know all these delicate shadings in order
- to survive.
- And if you have a friend there, he'll
- give you a big chunk of potato.
- And if you don't have a friend, you just get the soup.
- So that's what we got.
- And at night, we got a piece of bread of varying thickness.
- And that was also luck of the draw, in a sense.
- And sometimes a piece of green meat, canned meat,
- about maybe an inch cube or something of that dimension,
- or the equivalent of a pat of butter.
- It was margarine.
- That was it.
- In caloric intake, it ran somewhere between 650 to 800
- calories.
- So that's what we estimated at that we'd get.
- Well, you were, I imagine, emaciated by then.
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
- When I was liberated, I was 65 pounds.
- And when I was liberated, I worked
- for the American military government as an interpreter.
- And I worked in the war criminals camp.
- Then I met my adopted parents.
- And by the time I met my adopted parents, that must have been,
- well, let's see.
- I was liberated May 1st.
- And I met them in July, so around early July.
- So in that period of time, I gained considerable weight.
- But they were with the USO show.
- And I remember my adopted mother giving me her shirts.
- And they fit perfectly.
- And two weeks later, I couldn't get into them.
- I literally couldn't even bring the buttons this far.
- So I gained weight fairly fast.
- What about the other conditions, like toilet and washing?
- The toilets?
- There are no toilets.
- In the camps, at best, you have holes
- cut in the ground, cement holes, and this.
- And the washing facilities are usually
- a pipe that's perforated.
- The only question is when you get to them.
- Sometimes they turn on the water.
- Sometimes they don't.
- And toilet paper becomes a treasured commodity.
- Because paper is very hard to find, very hard to get.
- Almost any ordinary thing, a pencil, a piece of paper,
- a rag is a treasured possession.
- And a knife is a treasured possession
- because sometimes the food given out, especially bread,
- is given out as one bread.
- And then you have to divide it.
- And I became good at cutting.
- Because other prisoners would bring their stuff over there.
- So I would cut it equally for two because I had a knife, too.
- But that really wasn't the reason.
- Prisoners get spoons officially issued.
- So the prisoners usually sit around
- and hone spoons to make a sharp edge on one.
- And everybody tries to have a utensil
- for getting the food in.
- But it's hard to keep one because other prisoners steal
- it.
- There are problems about living under these conditions.
- I imagine.
- What about organizing?
- There wasn't a great organization going there.
- After the war, there was organization.
- I mean, organizing as in it's used among the prisoners,
- of getting things.
- Oh, well, organizing is an individual enterprise.
- And it usually runs in groups.
- People get something, then they pass it on.
- When we occasionally worked for farmers, then
- we could dig potatoes, or get something like that.
- That occurred.
- But we really didn't have access to a great deal.
- I've known prisoners who were in different commands who
- were in better positions to get things.
- There are some people who do share very nicely.
- You know, the prisoner world is an accented exaggeration
- of the real world.
- There are people who share because they
- couldn't bear not to.
- And there are people who don't share
- because they won't share ever.
- They'll only share if their life depended on it--
- Mhm.
- --on sharing.
- And there are groups that imposed rules.
- And there is a rule among prisoners,
- is that stealing food is a capital crime.
- And I have been in places.
- They hang a little thread by the bed if they think you stole.
- And what you're supposed to do is hang yourself.
- Hm.
- I didn't see many of those.
- But I've seen some.
- Mhm.
- The older, wiser prisoners sometimes are
- kind to new prisoners and inform them.
- And there are other older and wiser prisoners
- who exploit them.
- But the most of the prisoners' survival,
- most of the survival that I've seen,
- is due to the action of others.
- But it's not evident.
- For example, when I finally got to Dachau--
- from this awful camp, they shipped us to Dachau
- on January 10th, 1945.
- My father was there.
- He was very weak.
- And we were sent to the showers.
- And this was after he had been beaten so severely.
- And we were in the showers.
- It was the only warm place I had experienced in months,
- physically warm.
- The only other warm place was when we crowded around
- in beds very, very tightly.
- And we were sitting on the floor of the shower.
- And he couldn't get up.
- He couldn't get up on his feet.
- His feet were swollen.
- And that's a great danger signal for prisoners.
- When you get edema, in most cases,
- now it's a reversible condition.
- But for prisoners, that was a mark
- that something is going wrong.
- And the tissue is essentially-- the water
- can't be moved out of the tissues.
- And it means heart failure is going
- to come pretty soon because you're pumping harder
- and harder and harder to supply a need that you can never
- supply.
- It means the kidneys aren't eliminating
- because the material is in the tissue
- and not in the blood circulation.
- And people have legs that are swollen huge.
- And you press in on it, and a hole is left in the leg.
- His wasn't quite as bad.
- But it was bad.
- And he couldn't stand up.
- He could not stand up.
- And I wasn't strong enough to hold him up.
- And they came with whips and chased us off.
- And that's the last time I saw my father.
- How bitter.
- Yeah.
- In a way, I think that survivors have a problem that they never
- buried their parents.
- Anyway, we were swept away with the whips.
- And we were taken to barracks in Dachau.
- And I became ill with typhoid.
- Not typhoid, actually, it's Fleck typhus,
- which is a viral disease.
- It's not the bacterial typhoid.
- And what saved me was is that you go in a coma,
- and you usually die of dehydration.
- But my other friends who I was with gave me water.
- So I survived.
- And they took my jacket and stood in line
- and drew my rations for me.
- So they could share the rations, and that was fine.
- But they brought me the water and that sock soup
- at morning and night.
- How did they get your rations with just your jacket?
- My number is on the jacket.
- They don't care if a body is in the jacket?
- No, no, no, you can go through the line twice,
- because they record the number.
- Ah.
- The same person can go through twice.
- It doesn't matter.
- As long as you have a different number, then
- you can go through again.
- Unless it's a very short line and they remember your face.
- Most of the time, they don't even look at your face.
- They just copy down the number.
- So I got my number with my father.
- And we stood apart from each other
- so that we wouldn't have sequential numbers.
- And I still have this total confusion.
- I don't know who's who.
- [CRYING]
- And the two numbers, the numbers are 112310 and 112114.
- And I still don't know which one is who.
- But we thought that if it was sequential,
- and they would see one old and one young,
- then they'd assume it's father and son.
- And then they would split us deliberately.
- They used to do things like that.
- An added torture.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Well, now if you go up to a family
- and then what they did is say, pick up the child
- you want saved.
- And the child goes on the train.
- And the other one doesn't.
- I mean, that was something they also did.
- I don't.
- Had there been any medical care anywhere along the way?
- Yes, there was.
- There was.
- But it was very difficult to get.
- And it was laying on the hands and chamomile tea and this sort
- of thing and very minimal care.
- There were some physicians with us.
- And some were very compassionate .
- And some were very gruff.
- But they really had nothing to give.
- When I got to Dachau, it did happen.
- And the ironic thing was there was a hospital in Dachau.
- As I said, with the Fleck typhus that I had,
- I didn't land in the hospital.
- When I got scabies, I landed in the hospital.
- Well, you know scabies is not exactly
- a life-threatening disease.
- But what I had was a prisoner's feared diseases,
- that I had diarrhea.
- Now the SS always took the sign of diarrhea
- as you're on your way out.
- So you had to conceal it.
- And it was my luck that I wound up on a ward
- where the orderly who took care of the ward
- was a French Moroccan.
- And this was a Black Moroccan who had
- been captured by the Germans.
- And he could speak French to me.
- Mhm.
- And so he helped me conceal the fact that I had diarrhea.
- And he smuggled me charcoal.
- And so I essentially was saved by that.
- The scabies went away.
- And then I landed in the hospital
- because I had a broken bone in my toe.
- My toe was swollen.
- I couldn't walk on it.
- So I couldn't conceal it anymore.
- People avoided hospitals.
- Because the chances were high that you
- don't come out of hospitals.
- Uh huh.
- How did you break the toe?
- I lost-- my shoes went to pot.
- And I got wooden shoes.
- My shoes go to--
- my shoes didn't.
- I think somebody wanted my shoes.
- I just realized now my shoes didn't go to pot.
- Anyhow, my shoes were taken away someplace along the line.
- I don't remember now when.
- I'll have to think about it.
- Because I had very good shoes.
- And it wasn't that long a time.
- But I was in these wooden shoes.
- And I had to run sometimes in wooden shoes.
- These wooden shoes don't have a hinge.
- It's one solid thing.
- And what happened is I broke a toe.
- And there was internal bleeding.
- And there was a huge bump on my foot.
- So they took me in the hospital.
- And I put my foot up on a chair.
- And no anesthetic, you know, there was a guy.
- And they cut the foot open and removed this lump.
- And later on, I did have it repaired
- in New York at Mount Sinai.
- But they operated.
- And I'm trying to remember whether they gave me anything
- to keep from screaming.
- And I don't know whether they did or not.
- But they operated on it.
- And so that was also done in the dispensary,
- in the infirmary at Dachau.
- And I should also say that in Dachau, I
- met Danish students who had been arrested because of the student
- riots.
- And they were the only people who shared food packages.
- Mhm.
- The Danish students, they were the most,
- the greatest reaffirmation that there is really
- a sane world out there.
- Because prisoners don't share packages.
- The survival is so precious.
- I mean, the French prisoners got packages.
- The Belgian prisoners got packages.
- And a lot of prisoners got packages.
- But those who were just there because they were Jews did not.
- Now if you were a French Jew arrested with the army,
- you were part of the army, and they didn't identify,
- then you would get the package.
- But if you were not, you would not get the package.
- And the French had a certain package.
- But the Danes had wonderful packages.
- But the Danes came.
- And whoever was around, they shared it with.
- And there was never a point, no matter how brutally they
- were treated, that they ever treated anybody else brutally.
- They could not be dehumanized.
- Why do you think that was?
- I don't know.
- I don't know.
- I think that their fundamental orientation--
- excuse me.
- [SNEEZES]
- All right.
- Any time.
- OK.
- OK.
- Just a question about your school,
- the Catholic gymnasium you went to.
- How many other Jewish students were there?
- Three.
- Oh.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- They instituted a numerus clausus under the Hungarians
- that only so many Jews could be admitted to schools.
- And I think it was 3%.
- But I'm not certain about that figure.
- At the time I went to the Catholic gymnasium,
- they were just organizing the Jewish gymnasium.
- This is under the Hungarians.
- The Hungarians took over part of Transylvania where I lived.
- And so my father debated it.
- And he thought that in a Jewish gymnasium
- I would see an all Jewish world.
- And I would not be prepared for a world that is not all Jewish.
- And so he wanted me to go to the Catholic gymnasium.
- The Catholic gymnasium was headed by a man
- by the name of Karl Janusz who was an ordained minister,
- a PhD in philosophy.
- He taught math and philosophy.
- And it's not really a high school, a gymnasium.
- So it covers the breadth of what would
- be covered from the fifth grade of school
- through junior college.
- That's what a gymnasium really covers.
- And in fact, Karl Janusz had gone
- to school in the United States.
- And he turned out to be a very, very courageous man
- of very high integrity.
- I think on the other part of the tape I told you
- that in front of the German authority
- and such at a graduation, he made a great speech appealing
- to the principals of Christianity
- and asking the students to dedicate themselves
- to the principals of Christianity.
- And when you look, there were a bunch
- of flags on one side, which were the church flags.
- And then there were the Nazi flags on the other side.
- And he was clearly looking.
- I thought he'd be shot on the spot.
- And he wasn't.
- But he was certainly a very principled man.
- Some of my teachers were very anti-Semitic.
- Some of my teachers were very supportive and very nice.
- Mostly the older ones were pro-Allies and such.
- The younger teachers were nationalistic Hungarians
- who had thrown in their life with the Nazis.
- And they thought this would lead to the greater
- glory of Hungary.
- Were there other Catholic students who stood by you?
- Or did most of them shun you after a certain amount of time?
- No, they'd shun me.
- It's the teachers where the division was clear.
- There wasn't much division among the students.
- Yeah.
- My other question was on the day that you
- were arrested and taken to the detention center,
- did you know that they were coming that day?
- They came a couple of days before and they said be ready.
- And then they came in the morning.
- And my father had made some arrangement that actually they
- hired this open carriage so we could get there, put our stuff
- in there, and take it in.
- I remember thinking that we did hear where we were going.
- And I knew that those people there would probably
- need some things.
- And I remember taking in coffee and taking extra sugar
- and taking other things because they were running low already
- and thinking in terms of blankets and warm clothes.
- And I remember making sure that we
- had sewing kits and all the silly things you need
- to survive, taking extra soap, which is always a hard to get
- commodity.
- And we took a Maria Theresa coin.
- Maria Theresa coins are little gold coins.
- They're used as a way of saving in Europe.
- Today, you go behind the Iron Curtain,
- you can buy Maria Theresa coins.
- They're small gold coins.
- Because that's how people withstood
- the tremendous currency fluctuations.
- And we took some of those.
- The other advantage is that they're not large coins.
- So you can, in other words, carry,
- you can buy things in small elements,
- which is very important.
- You can't exchange this.
- Nobody can give you change.
- You give one, you may be buying a loaf of bread for $200,
- or its equivalent there.
- I don't remember what the figure was.
- But that's the scope of the dimension
- of the costs between a loaf of bread
- and the value of a Maria Theresa coin.
- In actuality, I was thinking, how
- did you as a young boy know all of these details of soap
- and sewing and the necessities of a home
- that you would have to take with you?
- Well, I wasn't brought up all that sheltered.
- And I learned to cook from my mother.
- She liked to cook.
- She always taught me cooking.
- And my mother designed clothes.
- So I knew how to operate a sewing machine.
- Unfortunately, I forgot.
- And I didn't do it for so long.
- But I knew about the necessity.
- During the war, you learn a great deal
- about necessities of life.
- Because you're constantly looking for things
- that you ordinarily need and that you take for granted.
- It is a kind of education in what you really need,
- or what one needs to survive.
- And that's how we learned.
- And probably watching other refugees go by, they were
- always carrying blankets and clothes and that's--
- Maybe you discussed this on your other tape.
- Sorry.
- Did you ever discuss going into hiding?
- Did your father?
- Oh, yeah, but that was really a romantic notion.
- Because there was no place to hide.
- There was no supportive population to go to.
- The only existing underground that existed
- was for smuggling Jews out of the country to go to Israel.
- That was one underground.
- The other underground was the Red Underground.
- And that was destroyed.
- So there were no underground.
- So you could buy your way out of the country
- if you had the connections and so on.
- And we were too late for that--
- Mhm.
- --by that time.
- I think that's about it for now.
- [RUSTLING]
- OK, any time.
- When you were in one of the labor camps,
- you said you had a nightmare about the Germans coming in.
- And then they came in and--
- They sure were.
- Did you ever have any more kind of dreams
- like that or premonitions that you felt like--
- From time to time, I think we did.
- But it wasn't a dependable occurrence, let me put it
- that way.
- We all looked for these things.
- We thought that we'd have a hand.
- It was tried many times.
- I can't say.
- There are people who felt that through intense prayer,
- for example, they would lift themselves to a spiritual state
- where they would dissociate themselves
- from their immediate surroundings.
- And I don't know whether they succeeded or not.
- There are people who retained their faith and people who
- lost their faith, both.
- There's no unequivocal way of saying.
- It's very hard to predict how people
- will act under these situations long term,
- although we always like signs.
- As a prisoner, you begin to learn
- to estimate whether you're dealing with a killer or not.
- And that's an assessment that surviving prisoners probably
- made better than non-surviving prisoners.
- Mhm.
- But I don't have data on that.
- There are people who are the first glance telling
- you stay away from them.
- And I was with a group of survivors.
- We used to meet periodically.
- And I mentioned it once.
- And everybody had these knowing smiles on their faces.
- [LAUGHS]
- That you do learn the truth killers
- from those who are passing sadists.
- Yeah.
- Yes.
- Well, while we're speaking of that,
- I was going to ask how was it for you
- from a religious point of view?
- I was never very, very religious.
- Part of the reason being that my mother went
- through a great crisis of faith when her mother died.
- My grandfather, whom I never knew,
- he died before I was born, remarried then.
- And my mother was very, very close to her own birth mother
- and never got along for a day with my grandfather's
- second wife.
- And I think she took it as a personal affront of God
- to her that her mother died.
- And she could not make peace about it.
- I was bar mitzvahed.
- And she came to my bar mitzvah.
- And she was also very, very critical
- of people who professed faith and practiced none of it.
- Not in the sense of not keeping the rituals,
- but in their personal conduct.
- When she was orphaned eventually,
- she and two sisters and a brother
- were orphaned when my grandfather died.
- And I don't know.
- I think my grandmother died shortly before that or--
- and they had a younger sister, who
- was a teenager and the others.
- And apparently, the other people whom she sort of
- expected a great deal of support and help from
- were not forthcoming at all.
- And she was absolutely appalled that people were this way.
- So she was, in a sense, anti-religious.
- But she wasn't anti-religious in the sense
- that she wanted to keep all of religion from me.
- But she kept it in a limited region.
- Now her social conduct permeated her life, though.
- She was very active in causes of various kind.
- She got in trouble first because she was trying
- to organize an orphanage.
- And she was very socially conscious and very socially
- aware.
- And that part of Judaism she liked very much.
- But the ritual, she felt very distant from.
- My father was more observant in that sense.
- My grandmother actually kept a kosher household.
- She insisted on it.
- After my parents divorced, he lived with his mother.
- And so there was a kosher household in the house.
- But as not unusual in Europe, we also had certain treif dishes.
- So when he wanted some other things,
- we trotted out the treif dishes.
- That was.
- But in the camps, I did not have a crisis of faith.
- I didn't expect to be saved miraculously.
- I mean, I wished it.
- But I didn't expect it.
- So it didn't really make an enormous difference
- in your religious point of view?
- No, no, it didn't.
- It didn't.
- Occasionally, I used to joke about it,
- that if we had a revolt, can these guys
- stop davening while you get the guns?
- [LAUGHS]
- But that was part of our fantasy.
- Mhm.
- I wanted to ask you if you were sick at all other
- than your broken toe and then your illness in Dachau.
- Had you been sick anywhere along the way?
- Yeah, I had diarrhea from time to time.
- Everybody gets that.
- And then we ate charcoal and tried, the best we could,
- stay away from eating for a while, which was probably
- not wise.
- But after the war, I found out, after I was liberated,
- that I did have a spot on my lung.
- So I had TB.
- Well, I do have a spot on my lung.
- And then I had this toe that was repaired finally
- at Mount Sinai in New York.
- And I have some scars on my side from being kicked and rifle
- butted.
- That was the next thing I was going to ask you,
- whether you, too, were beaten.
- Yeah.
- That was many times.
- So many times that it doesn't stand out as a single event.
- I mean, when I was rifle butted and kicked, that was the worst.
- But otherwise, it was on and off.
- It was not an unusual phenomenon.
- After a while, you sort of tried not
- to stay at the edge of the crowd and things like that.
- It sounds like it was particularly
- brutal in that camp you were in.
- In Kaufbeuren it was.
- It was brutal.
- And these old guys who were the Heimwehr, who relieved the SS,
- they were trying to act tough.
- They were all 60-year-olds and such, rejects from the First
- World War.
- And they were particularly cruel.
- But they knew that they were losing the war.
- And we were their local victims.
- I kind of have a point of view.
- But I was wondering how you went forward
- as a person who joined with others in the camp situation
- to survive or took a position of being more alone.
- Well, as I said, at first, I was very lucky
- that I was always with my father until January.
- And then I was in a group.
- From the original group that came from my hometown,
- we were gradually diluted and dispersed.
- But I always had my father.
- And there were sometimes two or three others
- whom I knew slightly.
- So when I got to Kaufbeuren, I don't
- think I knew anybody there.
- But in Dachau, I met some people.
- And so when I--
- Anytime.
- Yes.
- You were speaking on being associated with a group
- or alone in the camps.
- There-- most of the time, as I said, I was with my father.
- And that was a great stimulating support for both of us,
- because we could talk about thousands of things.
- And, you know, prisoners spent a lot of time talking about food
- and talking what they did, but we talked
- about many other things, about what kind of world
- it was going to be like, or what are things worth doing,
- or what is significant in life.
- What is it that he would have liked to have done,
- and what it is that I would like to do.
- And we talked about history and politics and various things,
- art and music.
- He liked music very much.
- He played the piano, and occasionally he
- would hum tunes and remind me of things.
- We-- and that was wonderful.
- And as I said, most places I knew, one or two people
- moved in a group.
- Then when I was liberated, I was--
- I had been with a group of guys in Dachau who
- also came from Transylvania.
- Not exactly my hometown, but we all spoke the same language.
- And that was a supportive group.
- And I don't remember their names now.
- We were liberated together, and we traveled together because I
- spoke English and they didn't.
- And I translated for them.
- A number of them went back, and then we
- broke up because we went in different directions.
- And I got a job as an interpreter,
- and they wanted to go back.
- And I didn't want to go back.
- By that time, I knew my father died,
- and I heard from other prisoners that my mother died.
- And I decided not to go back.
- I figure, everything had been stolen.
- And they all thought that they wouldn't get back
- their family holdings.
- And I don't know whether they did or didn't, but I
- didn't go--
- want to go east, and I went west.
- I think you said you had a question.
- Yeah.
- What was your intuitive feeling about chances
- of survival in the camps?
- Children really don't think in those terms.
- I mean, even young teenagers.
- The advantage of being young is that you
- don't think of perpetual Monday, that Monday will always come,
- and the weekend will be over, and you're
- going to have to go to work and so on.
- The advantage of being young is that a negative event
- doesn't really change your basic optimistic outlook.
- And I think that contributes to survival a great deal.
- It's positive.
- People who are adults tend to see every negative act
- projected over time in the future,
- and that detracts from their ability to withstand hardship
- and to survive.
- I think that probably people who had very strong faith
- in some positive power, I think that does help them survive.
- Because they have an unshakeable positive attitude
- and optimistic attitude, and there
- is no doubt that an optimistic attitude is better survival
- than a pessimistic attitude.
- And that's sort of known, I think
- in my people work with others, except it's not formalized.
- You talked about different prisoner situations
- where people were kind and sharing
- in a terrible situation.
- Well, for example, when people-- when prisoners
- march in groups, in most groups that I was in,
- the weak ones marched in the middle.
- Because the two outside people can then pick them up.
- And everybody becomes weak, sooner or later.
- And picking people up, literally making
- them walk just a few steps sometimes
- means that they don't fall down at the last minute.
- A guard after them won't beat them to death or shoot them
- or whatever.
- And we did see those things.
- And when their corpses piled on each other
- and you see somebody moving, you pull them out.
- And they may survive.
- And that does happen.
- You just have to have enough people who are strong enough
- to do that, also.
- There are cruel things that happened.
- There is inconsiderate, to put it mildly,
- between prisoner to prisoner.
- And there are appeals to compassion.
- And they work, sometimes.
- They don't always work, but they certainly do work sometimes.
- Knowing there are some guards that if you
- scream when they beat you are encouraged by the scream.
- And there are other guards who will
- stop because of the scream.
- That's why you have to make an assessment about what
- kind of person is beating you.
- And it's a terrible judgment to make,
- but you have to make that judgment.
- That was one of the things that I
- wanted to ask you was whether you experienced kindness,
- in whatever form you want to define it,
- from guards or non-guards.
- Yeah, there were some guards who would give you a crust of bread
- or give you some leftovers and such,
- who would be nicer to kids, for example, than adults,
- and others who were not.
- Yeah, there were.
- I haven't seen guards rescuing prisoners.
- I've seen American guards, you know,
- of prisoners rescuing others.
- I've seen people who put themselves
- at least somewhat at risk to help somebody who's down,
- who's they're really guarding.
- But I didn't see that among the guards that I encountered.
- But I know other prisoners have, but it was not my experience.
- Well, perhaps we should just end here
- and begin next time with the move from Kaufering to Dachau.
- Mm-hmm.
- OK, sure.
- Well, again, thank you very much.
- Oh, you're welcome.
- Great.
- I just hope I'll get the tapes.
- You haven't gotten the first one yet?
- No.
- Oh.
- Formal introduction.
- I'd really like to have what you're saying on the tape.
- That's important.
- And we could even get some of that.
- Well, as far as talking about the Holocaust
- to people, when I first met American soldiers when
- I was liberated, there were some GIs
- who happened to have gone by a camp, or seen a camp,
- or liberated a camp.
- But the ones that I encountered mostly
- had been through military battles.
- And they were quite experienced.
- And also, there were some new ones
- who had never been in battle, who had just been sent over.
- But it didn't make any difference.
- They were so petrified with the horror
- of what went on that they were choked with emotion.
- And it was very difficult for the teller to watch the pain.
- And the people, when I met civilians,
- when I came to the United States,
- it was really harder on the listeners than the tellers,
- because the tellers knew that they were out of it.
- And for the listeners, it was reliving an experience which
- they feared in their minds.
- And there was an enormous amount of guilt in everybody
- who had never been in the camps.
- And I think it's a misfiring of some psychological mechanism.
- It's a misfiring of empathy, and of compassion,
- of a sense of duty, of a sense of community
- and belonging that Jews who came from Europe
- had because they lived in communities where
- there were strong ties.
- Even if they were distant ties--
- distant locations, they were still strong ties.
- And most came from fairly large families-- not unusual
- for them to have three, four brothers, and so on.
- And all families were decimated.
- So sitting around the table, they
- started counting who's not here.
- And it was very difficult for them to do that.
- And they lived with the knowledge--
- not even knowledge.
- I think they were convinced that had they done something more,
- we would be alive.
- So it was difficult to bring up these topics
- and talk about them.
- It was easier to talk to younger people, whose minds had never
- conjured these images.
- And to them, it was a horror.
- But it wasn't the horror that they
- carried in their hearts for years
- that they feared and then confronted
- with the reality of a survivor.
- And so a lot of people didn't talk about it.
- Or if you talked about it, you talked about it in the sense
- that oh, yes, I was in the camps, and not in detail--
- go into great detail about what happened and so on.
- And they knew so many people were lost.
- There was also a sense of suspicion among some
- that survivors survived because it was a kind of, quote,
- "survival of the fittest."
- And the feeling of survivors is the sense that why me?
- Because so many wonderful people died, you know, why me?
- And that was difficult to articulate.
- Some still do.
- And it was a very painful dilemma.
- There is also the fear of--
- let me say, going through a camp is not
- a trust-inspiring process.
- First of all, the ordinary relations that
- exist in what I would call healthy communities
- tend to form some relations, at least,
- that unquestionably fall in the trust category.
- And there are others that are more distant or more formal.
- And then there are those people that we, quote, "distrust."
- So the world goes from a trust and no trust category.
- And the effect of the concentration camp
- is that you have to make a fast decision whom you can trust
- and whom you can't ever trust.
- The chances are that the people you can't trust
- can really cost you your life in terms of another prisoner.
- Could be a prisoner who steals or a prisoner who will steal
- your food, or your clothing, or your mess kit-- you know,
- a pen--
- if you have a kit in which you don't have a mask.
- It's actually a bowl of some kind.
- And if you have that bowl to get your food
- and you don't have the bowl, you don't get food.
- So stealing a bowl is as good as stealing your life.
- And I'm sure you've heard convicts say that they don't
- have to see a policeman's badge to know that there's
- a policeman in their presence.
- And life in Eastern Europe tended
- to develop that kind of sensitivity.
- I know I remember riding a bus in New York
- and suddenly feeling uncomfortable.
- And I'd look around.
- And I knew who the cop was.
- Can you describe any details of what were clues for you?
- It is a very cold, appraising glance.
- It is very keen observation, never staring.
- It's not somebody who really stares.
- But they glance.
- And that this glance photographed you side and front
- and compared you.
- And it is a very cold and appraising glance.
- And it's not obvious.
- But nevertheless, it's there.
- And there are such things as eyes of killers.
- Now, I sometimes see those eyes.
- And I don't think they're killers.
- But these people are ruthless competitors.
- And part of survival is if you face these, you must act fast.
- And you must act rapidly--
- either get out of the way or be prepared for the worst.
- And survivors tend to estimate that very rapidly.
- You knew which guards were just murderers
- and which kapos were just murderers.
- And you didn't go near them, because they
- could explode at any time.
- What did you do when you ever ran into a fellow prisoner
- that you might feel is in that category?
- I put as much distance between that prisoner
- and myself, never turned my back on him.
- I never hid anything so he could see it.
- For example, prisoners would hang
- a piece of bread wrapped in something on a nail, on a wall.
- In some prison barracks, you can hang your whole bread ration
- there.
- Nobody will touch it.
- And other places, you don't.
- You just look around.
- And you get a sense of that.
- And they will steal food.
- And stealing food is the equivalent of stealing life.
- And there are places where they would
- leave just a string on somebody's bed,
- because they stole food.
- It meant they should go hang themselves.
- Did you ever have an instance where
- you had to defend yourself against somebody?
- Like, I mean, where you couldn't leave the situation.
- No.
- No, I was very lucky.
- I was mostly in places--
- I was lucky because until, as I mentioned to you, till January
- 10, 1945, I was with my father.
- So I was in there next to somebody
- whom I could trust completely.
- And we learned to cut bread very accurately.
- So we would both get the same amount.
- My father would always do it.
- And I kept telling him, I said, I
- don't want to live knowing that I took your bread.
- And often, prisoners who--
- if they'd issued a ration of bread to two prisoners,
- and they would want that bread cut,
- or they had transacted some business-- you know,
- people literally sell bread for a knife, or a cup,
- or whatever-- then they would come over.
- And we would cut the bread in two for them.
- Because I had that knife for a long time.
- That was my grandfather's knife--
- Yes.
- --I smuggled through.
- Were you were also trusted to be cutting fairly?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- What would happen in the instance of, say,
- the string is put, and the person doesn't kill themselves?
- They would usually be strangled at night.
- Someone was designated to do this?
- No, more than one person--
- two or three would.
- The prisoners were too weak.
- It took two or three?
- Yes.
- Did this imply some kind of even loose organization?
- Oh, yeah.
- It doesn't come about as a decision.
- It's an accepted rule that everybody's
- entitled to survive without taking
- advantage of the survival rights of others.
- And it's implied.
- And no one hands you a rulebook.
- Usually, when you get to a new camp, someone there will--
- they're telling someone who will tell you
- what things are going on.
- But again, in who you go to or who you ask,
- that's a big decision, because if you go to a killer,
- you're going to die.
- So that's part of survival.
- But the other part of survival-- and I want to emphasize that
- very strongly--
- is you'd be surprised how many people pick you up
- when you're falling down, without knowing you or caring.
- You know, I was talking to a class in a high school.
- And I remembered an event when we were first
- in the Hungarian concentration camp.
- And these Yugoslavs families had been repatriated down
- from Yugoslavia to northwestern Hungary.
- They just saw we were hungry.
- They didn't know where we came from.
- They didn't know anything.
- They just saw we were hungry.
- And there were kids, and adults, and so on.
- And they just started throwing bread over the fence.
- Nobody offered them money.
- Nobody offered them jewels.
- Nobody offered them wedding rings.
- Nobody offered them anything.
- And in remembering the horror, which was so horrendous,
- we also have to remember that there were others.
- In current discussions of Holocaust survivors,
- there's one school of thought which
- says that there is something terrible in all of us.
- And we must guard against this.
- And therefore, put it very prosaically
- that there is a Hitler in all of us.
- And we're all capable of being a Hitler and so on.
- I really don't believe that.
- And I'll tell you why I don't believe that.
- I think that there are people, certainly,
- who have these enormous drives at a greater or lesser degree
- to dominate others, increasingly.
- And the more dominant they are, the more dominant
- they want to be.
- So once you enter this, it's a self-propelled tendency.
- It's a self-stimulating tendency.
- But if you take a look at the troops
- during the Second World War, one of the best
- kept secrets about troops is that very few people fire
- their rifles.
- Then by the time the Korean War came along,
- the army did special studies.
- They would take a whole rifle company off the front lines
- and check who really fired their rifles.
- And it turns out that very few of them did.
- And difference, in fact, in modern armies and those armies
- are that these armies are converted into killers.
- Before, these were citizen armies.
- These were citizens who were armed,
- who would fire, essentially, in self-defense.
- But these were not programmed, massaged, manipulated,
- and deliberate killers.
- And that's what contemporary soldiers are trained to be.
- They just kill with a high efficiency.
- But they have to be converted to that.
- That's not something that they bring too.
- Now, if you take the situation in the concentration camps,
- there were many people who would not do some things.
- And they paid for it with their lives.
- And they knew they were going to pay for it with their lives.
- And there were many others who helped
- under the most dire of circumstances
- when it cost them.
- And when you're barely standing, and you
- help somebody else walk, you're barely walking.
- And you're on the edge of that precipice also.
- And they did it.
- And that told me something that this is not
- an even distribution of the tendency to dominate,
- because if all you are interested is in survival,
- then you don't help anybody.
- You save every bit of strength.
- You're helpful either for yourself and no one else.
- But that's not what happened.
- And if a group of people get together,
- even if they fight in private, when they're
- faced with a purpose, namely survival,
- you'll see them reaching toward each other.
- They may not be nice to each other or pleasant,
- but they reach toward each other.
- And I think we underestimate that tendency in men.
- That's a good point.
- I think just as, especially in contemporary life,
- one finds that criticism is better remembered by most
- people than legitimate praise.
- We suspect legitimate praise.
- We do not suspect legitimate criticism or what we
- consider legitimate criticism.
- Along those lines, I know in previous interviews,
- you talked about the inspiration of, I believe,
- the Danish people.
- Yeah.
- And of course, I know, obviously,
- a great sustenance to you was having your father with you--
- Yeah.
- --as long as you did.
- And I can see you have a very good sense of humor.
- I have to.
- So along those lines, was your sense of humor
- still functioning in the camps?
- Oh, yes.
- Yes, I'm sorry, I didn't tell you about that.
- Now, I remember an instance, for example,
- when we were in Bavaria.
- I think we were in Kaufering, in Kaufering camp.
- We went to work.
- And as we went to work, we crossed a little river.
- And there was a bridge on this river.
- And there was a railing on the bridge.
- And during lunch time, we were resting.
- And we were eating.
- One of the guards took his hat off.
- And the wind blew the guard's hat in the water.
- This caused a solid five hours of mirth.
- All you had to say, the hat, and 200 people would be laughing.
- There were all kinds of jokes.
- A lot of it is humor of the gallows.
- But certainly, humor survived.
- What kind of humor of the gallows?
- Well, I don't remember jokes very well.
- I remember.
- If you remember.
- If not, OK.
- I remember one joke.
- But actually, that comes from the era before.
- Oh, yes.
- The joke is that a very religious Jew
- is stopped on the street by Gestapo men
- and marched into this restaurant.
- And the guy orders a pork steak and a big dinner for him.
- He takes out his gun and points it to him and says, eat it.
- And the guy says I can't, you know.
- It's pork.
- He says, I've got a gun.
- He says, well, in that case, you know,
- it is permitted for me to eat.
- So he starts eating, of course.
- And this joke is told in the context
- that there hasn't been any food for three years.
- And he hasn't seen a piece of meat in probably four,
- and so, and so.
- He's eating away.
- And the SS man relaxes and puts the gun down.
- And he looks up.
- He says, would you mind holding the gun
- till I finish the plate?
- It's like that.
- Right, Jewish law.
- Yeah.
- That is cute.
- It must be observed.
- So in the positive realm, what other kinds of things
- sustained?
- Well, we had a lot of discussions about--
- endless talks about food.
- It's a terrible thing.
- The hungrier people get, the more they talk about food.
- Elaborate dinners, we planned.
- Elaborate dinners, we ate.
- Elaborate restaurants people had been to all around the world--
- I mean, it was a fairly mixed group.
- And my father had been in London.
- And he had been in Paris.
- And been in Vienna, Budapest, and a number of German cities.
- Though he didn't go to Germany very often--
- I think relatively little.
- I know he had a friend in Hamburg.
- But my father had an agreement with his boss
- that everybody considered English cooking
- on the continent to be abysmal.
- And so for every day he had to do business in London,
- he got a day in Paris to rectify the diet when he traveled
- for this company country.
- And so they'd go through the elaborate meals then.
- And he had eaten at Maxim's and other places.
- It was an awful lot of talk about this.
- There was also a lot of talk about what the world
- will be like after the war.
- And I remember him talking to me about that.
- And they had various debates about where
- the borders would be.
- And I must say that they guessed on the borders
- pretty well, except that they thought that Germany would
- be broken in individual states and that there would
- be a demilitarized zone through the center of Europe,
- because they felt that the Russians would never
- trust the West.
- The West would never trust the Russians.
- So there would be a demilitarized zone
- in between the two.
- And they thought that--
- I don't know if you recall the Morgenthau Plan.
- We knew about--
- Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau,
- was a proponent of this plan-- this was secretary of Treasury
- under Roosevelt, I believe.
- And this was very influential family.
- Morgenthau, his plan for Germany was to convert it
- into an agrarian country.
- And they'll never make another piece of steel.
- And every time they need a piece of steel,
- they'd have to buy it from somebody else--
- and essentially, destroy the German industry this way,
- and so, and so.
- Well, that didn't work out.
- And I don't know how realistic it was.
- But they thought that that's what the Allies would do.
- They didn't think that--
- they thought that all the small countries in the east
- would fall under Russian influence,
- just as it did happen.
- They thought that Western countries would tend to fuse,
- would tend to merge their currencies,
- because it would help reconstruction
- so much more there.
- It's amazing what visions.
- And these were-- some were engineers.
- And some were-- my father was an economist.
- They viewed a much more united Europe.
- And we thought that nobody could ever muster
- an army that was a draft army.
- You'd only have volunteer armies or armies of mercenaries,
- essentially, again, because after the Second World War,
- nobody was fool enough to go in the army
- unless they were highly paid.
- Those were the kind of fantasies that we discussed.
- Were there any fantasies of any sorts of vengeance or justice?
- Yes, yes.
- Certainly, there were.
- There were.
- But the truth is that there were reprisals in very early part
- after liberation.
- And in my personal experience, right after the end of the--
- after I was liberated, I went to work in a displaced persons
- camp.
- I don't know.
- We'll get there.
- You can.
- We're not on the chronology yet.
- So we haven't--
- OK
- --got there yet.
- OK.
- I went to work in the displaced persons camp.
- And in the displaced persons camp--
- this displaced persons camp was located in town
- called Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
- Garmisch-Partenkirchen was where the 1936 Olympics were held.
- It's a great resort.
- And it's a ski resort, summer resort,
- has casinos, and all that.
- And just outside it was a German military camp.
- And that's where the displaced person camp was placed.
- And the displaced person camp was later moved.
- And a war criminals camp was established at the same site.
- And I worked there, also, as an interpreter in both cases.
- Well, right when we were liberated,
- we were too weak, really, to really take
- reprisals, because in order to fire,
- a gun would have knocked our shoulder off.
- And we didn't have weapons for that matter.
- But by the time I'd been in this displaced persons camp
- for a while, and then there was the war criminals camp there,
- when we were interrogating people in the war criminals
- camp, I remember interrogating.
- The way the prisoners are handled here,
- the most difficult thing to do after a war
- is to identify that the person you think you have
- is the person that you have, because the tremendous amount
- of forged papers, forged identities.
- So each, we got a list of prisoners.
- And you have to identify.
- Are these the people we have?
- One of these a Wehrmacht general who was Hitler's Wehrmacht
- aide and all kinds of SS men.
- And Tito, who was the Quisling of Czechoslovakia,
- Tito was an ordained priest, Catholic priest.
- And he was relieved of his sacraments by a papal nuncio.
- And then the Americans removed his protection.
- And he was treated like other prisoners.
- But until then, he was an ordained priest, which
- was handled with kid gloves.
- Now, there, I interrogated prisoners.
- And sometimes, a prisoner--
- well, at this time, I should tell you
- that I was obviously an ex-concentration camp inmate.
- I didn't have a uniform on.
- I had civilian clothes on.
- My face was still pretty thin.
- And bones were still showing.
- Probably was 5 foot 3" and probably weighed
- about maybe 95 pounds or so.
- But I had recovered my ability to walk.
- And so you couldn't tell the walk.
- Usually you can an ex-prisoner by the shuffled walk,
- because it's only the tendons that hold everything together.
- And prisoners don't have a spring
- in their walk at all-- starving prisoners, that is.
- And I remember that this Hitler's adjutant told me
- that he doesn't want to talk to Jews.
- And I took a riding crop.
- And I hit him across the face.
- And I said, come with me.
- And I made them do what they used to do to us.
- And you stand at attention facing the sun.
- And it's an excruciating thing.
- And then he stood at attention there.
- He went to show what a good soldier you are.
- And I told him, you're going to stand there until you fall.
- And the American GIs gave me a rifle.
- He says, you want to shoot him, no one here
- is going to stop you.
- And I said, no, no.
- I don't want to live with the knowledge
- that I killed somebody.
- And I interrogated him again afterwards.
- And he gave me a snide remark and called me a dirty Jew.
- And I picked up a stick and I broke it on him.
- And I thought I would feel better at the end of it.
- And I didn't.
- And I realized that I couldn't get even ever.
- And at the end of the war, when I was liberated,
- if someone would have given me a machine gun,
- I probably would have fired without thinking.
- But that told me that I can't ever get.
- At the end of the war, I wanted my parents.
- And I had a lot of anger, a lot of hostility.
- I also knew that nothing, that absolutely nothing
- would bring them back.
- And there was no getting even.
- There was no satisfaction in it.
- So I think it was a beginning for me that helped
- me distance myself from Europe.
- As I think I've said before, I never regretted leaving.
- I was looking to leave right then.
- It's true that before the war, my father's idea
- was that I would become an engineer and go to Cyprus.
- It was very easy getting British citizenship by moving--
- not to Cyprus, to Malta.
- Malta is a malaria-infested colony.
- And the British used to use a lot of foreign engineers there
- who worked in Malta naval shipyards.
- And if you stayed in Malta, I think, for two years,
- you became a British citizen.
- Then you could go anywhere you wanted to go.
- And a lot of people got out of Europe that way,
- bypassing quota problems, and such.
- But how did you deal with your rage,
- even as you knew you weren't going to exact satisfaction?
- I think my rage--
- I think that helped me diffuse my rage.
- And time helped diffuse my rage.
- Yeah, I was in a rage at times when
- I was a teenager in New York.
- But my rage was because I felt like a fish out of water.
- I didn't belong to teenagers.
- And I really didn't relate to teenagers very well
- after my experiences.
- I mean, these teenagers, their problem
- was will they get a ticket to the next Frank Sinatra concert,
- or will they get a date, or will they get a new pair of shoes,
- or all the kind of things that teenagers
- worry about very legitimately.
- And it really affected my son very negatively,
- because I could not understand his concerns as a teenager.
- I couldn't understand that.
- I thought that he was living in a world that was incredibly
- secure, that he never had to worry
- about his food or his clothing.
- And I wanted that.
- I didn't bring him up with a sense of survival
- that I was brought up in, that be prepared for the worst
- and you won't be disappointed.
- But I thought that he somehow would automatically
- gain a depth of understanding of life and proportions,
- which is really irrational on my part.
- Teenagers don't have that and can't be expected to have that.
- But I certainly wasn't understanding of his problems,
- and his moodiness, and that.
- And I thought they were just trivial things.
- Well, you were robbed of your childhood in many ways.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- My experiences were-- well, let me say that my childhood wasn't
- so happy.
- I've never craved to be another age besides myself.
- I think the benefit of having grown up in Europe
- was that wrinkles aren't a sin.
- And I remember, as a young kid, looking at French movie
- stars who were wrinkled, as a matter of fact,
- and thinking that they were incredibly beautiful.
- So I didn't have this kind of background.
- And to me, my childhood, you know, my parents were divorced.
- And I went back and forth.
- It wasn't all that happy that I wanted to go back to it.
- I can't point.
- You know, some people say, well, I
- was happiest between 13 and 15 or 15 and 17, 18.
- And that certainly wasn't my experience.
- And so I didn't feel robbed in the sense.
- I felt robbed from the ties of friendship
- and belonging I did have a very hard time feeling part of.
- I didn't know where that started or stopped,
- because every time I was part of something when
- I was a teenager, then I was kicked out either because I
- was Jewish over there.
- And here, I obviously didn't fit in.
- And kids were, really, very nice when I came to this country.
- But I was, really, a weird duck for them.
- Well, one of the ways-- that's kind of what I was meaning is
- that you had to become an adult almost instantly,
- probably when you--
- Yeah.
- --were kicked out of your home and couldn't even
- finish your childhood in this whole process.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Well, I probably became more of an adult
- when my father had his nervous breakdown when he lost his job.
- And then we went to the camps.
- And then I knew that I had to protect him more,
- because there was no one else.
- And we certainly protected each other.
- And I'm sure it has a lot to do with my survival.
- Well, maybe there's more of the positive things,
- too, that we could land on as we go along.
- I was thinking from the terrible, negative ones too,
- of suicide, of insanity, of cannibalism, or the Muselmann.
- The Muselmanns, you learned.
- All those literary expressions marked
- by death or the light went out of their eyes
- are really true, that there are people
- who self-condemn themselves.
- Now, as far as suicides are concerned, actually,
- there were very, very few.
- There were very, very few.
- Now, I think I was protected by it because I was so young.
- And I didn't project to the future.
- I think my father was protected from it, because it wouldn't
- have occurred to him to abandon me any more than I would have
- abandoned him-- you know, in one transport,
- going from my hometown to the Hungarian camp,
- there was a point where they left the door open.
- The guards all went for some instruction.
- And there was a clear shot.
- And there was one guy in our group
- who had been this guy, who had been a price fighter
- and a waiter, who was sort of moving
- on the edge of the underworld, and a kind of a sort
- of semi-legitimate character.
- And he was absolutely an inspiring leader
- in our hours of need when all the legitimate members
- of society were really falling apart
- because their world fell apart.
- But he knew what to do.
- He knew how to bargain with a guard.
- He knew how to tie a rope well.
- He knew all kinds of things.
- And he says, oh, let's go.
- And he asked me first, because two people
- can boost their defenses higher than a single person.
- And I wasn't tall, but I was strong enough.
- And I couldn't even think of leaving my father,
- to abandon him.
- And I'm sure he felt the same way.
- I'm remembering now--
- There is good and bad in that, because it's very--
- my father's wisdom was that it matters how you survive.
- And it matters what you do.
- And that may be a positive aspect of a terrible encounter,
- that you face what a lot of people face in terms
- of life's crises is a resonating question that
- was present in their minds, probably since they
- were teenagers.
- And they never faced.
- And I was just forced to make an earlier decision
- In this regard, you talked about that terrible moment
- when, I think, you and your father were in the shower.
- Yeah.
- And I believe you said the guard had whipped your father.
- And he couldn't get up.
- My father had been beaten before that.
- And he was weak.
- And he couldn't get up.
- And they were coming with whips and drove us off.
- And I probably had never felt more powerless in my life.
- And I know I'm walking backward, because I didn't want
- to turn my back on my father.
- And the human terror of feeling that humiliation
- of being helpless, even though you know there
- was nothing that you could do--
- Yeah.
- --but still, you feel humiliated--
- Yeah.
- --in a strange way, it seems.
- Or even nothing.
- Well, let me say that to me, humiliation
- is to be found, one thing, in your deepest values
- by yourself.
- And in that sense, it was a humiliation.
- It wasn't the powerlessness, because I've never
- been particularly interested in power.
- I choose my jobs that way.
- When I was with boys at the end of the war who survived
- and I was the only one who spoke English,
- I suddenly had power over these kids.
- And to me, that power bought such a crushing responsibility,
- I felt their survival was in my hands.
- I made the bad decision, they wouldn't live.
- I'd live, but they wouldn't live.
- And that probably influenced me not to ever seek
- such a position again.
- What do you mean by that, you made a decision?
- If I asked for the wrong medicine for them,
- if I didn't see to it that they had blankets,
- if I didn't see to it that they had water, because I knew more.
- And one of the things that was instilled
- in me was that with knowledge comes obligation.
- And that the more you know, the more you're obliged to do.
- During the war, we helped people because we were
- in a position to help people.
- It was our duty to help people.
- And that was a very, very important value in my mind.
- So when my--
- I'm sure I believe the same thing when
- my father was lying on the floor and couldn't get up.
- I was humiliated because I couldn't find anybody
- to pick him up.
- And I wasn't strong enough to pick him up.
- I remember pulling on his arm.
- And I remember, my first thought when the war ended,
- when I met this American soldier who
- was listening to the radio--
- it was May 1st.
- And everybody thinks it's May 8th, actually.
- May 1st, most of the hostilities stopped.
- Officially in Europe, they signed it May 7th.
- Here, it's celebrated May 8th.
- The very first thought is where is my father?
- Well, we hadn't been together for so long.
- I told you that I--
- at that time, I thought my mother was still
- in the camp someplace.
- Later on, I found that she was dead by the time I
- got to Auschwitz.
- It's just that my aunt didn't tell me.
- I'll say that from time to time, I look at my daughter
- and I really resent the fact that my parents never
- got to see their grandchildren.
- I think they both would have enjoyed them very much.
- And vice versa?
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah.
- Oh, I'm sure that my father would have done OK here.
- And I'm sure my mother would have thrived here.
- And I have absolutely no doubt that she would be involved
- in 10,000 organizations.
- She would march in everything that you can imagine,
- and that she'd run 10 shops on the side.
- But I think that both my father and my mother
- would have liked it here more.
- And ironically, they were better adapted to this country
- because both, in their own way, had distanced themselves
- from the culture that they came from much more
- so than many other people who came here.
- And the sorrow that your children didn't enjoy them
- either.
- Yeah.
- And there was a time when-- ah, holidays were painful for me
- as a child, because I had to divide
- my attention between my father and my mother.
- And when I was going to college, I
- hated holidays, because all my friends would go home.
- And I didn't have a place to go.
- But when eventually, I had a family, I would look up.
- And I would say, where is the other part?
- My first wife had her parents.
- And they would come and visit on occasion.
- And my present wife's parents and two brothers
- are around, their families.
- I sort of feel like a one-winged bird.
- So that sense of a core belonging, that was--
- There was a sense, yeah.
- --a big part of your life thereafter?
- Yeah.
- That I didn't know which family I belonged in.
- And although my aunt's family was very nice,
- still, I did miss my parents.
- And there are those little holidays
- when my daughter has a concert, I
- do wish, then, that they would be there to enjoy her.
- I think that the loss of family is the most devastating loss.
- And it's strange to me that when children are taught history,
- they're so carefully taught to remove history from themselves,
- that it becomes ever so remote.
- It's as if it happened to someone else in a remote world.
- And I think that particularly the parts of history that focus
- on conflict-- wars and such--
- which unfortunately, turns out to be the way history
- is taught, about 90% of it--
- and didn't need to be that way--
- this is distance as if it's somebody else.
- Or when I was going to graduate school, and my son
- and I were living together in Davis,
- and he would turn on the TV, and as I
- was cooking in the afternoon, that's about the news hour,
- between 5:00 and 6:00.
- And they would show these.
- And then they would show the Viet Cong and others.
- And I used to turn around to him.
- And I used to say, those are mothers and fathers.
- Remember, those are mothers and fathers.
- And you know, as kids are apt to do,
- they're enthralled with the excitement of war.
- And I kept repeating, those are mothers and fathers.
- And I think that should be taught in history books.
- Very good point.
- The other that should be taught is
- that humans have done something else besides shoot
- and kill each other.
- All of my students in bacteriology I
- pulled up for the last 20 years, there
- was one student who knew the name of Weitzman.
- One in 20 years.
- And that was a relative of a Potok, Chaim Potok.
- She was taking my class.
- But the others didn't know who Weitzman was
- or what he contributed, besides his political contribution.
- Oh.
- Besides his political.
- Some may have known, but no one knew that he
- did something else also.
- And he's a strange person, because his scientific work
- and his political work were involved.
- But I regret that I can't look at human activities in a much
- more positive light.
- And you look at that history of great ideas,
- most of the long-term murderers aren't there.
- That's true.
- And I regret that children are taught this.
- And it happens to my daughter too.
- And it happen to my son and so on.
- And I think, if there is something
- that to arm people about such a thing as the goodness in man,
- it needs as much tending as their physical health.
- And it needs enriching.
- And there's a very strong tendency in the social
- sciences-- and I've become aware of it since I participated
- in a Holocaust course--
- to denigrate men.
- I think there's such a horribly efficient critique
- of every human activity that people forget that there were
- visionaries, that there were people who created
- the possibility of human survival
- under conditions no one ever imagined,
- and people who discovered fertilizer,
- made it possible for other people to live.
- People who talked about food preservations
- extended the life of societies.
- And people who discovered a nail made possible to build.
- And I've tried many times to find out
- who invented the nail and the board.
- The inventor cannot be named.
- Maybe it's so ancient ancient.
- Why is it that Babylonian kings names we know?
- And I bet they were glorified murderers--
- Right.
- --and incredible tax collectors, and all this.
- But I'd like to find out the name of the man who
- planned the first city.
- And what was in his mind or her mind?
- What went on in creation?
- Why is it that buildings are built the way they are built?
- And I think that would put children
- in a different frame of mind.
- I know my competitiveness and such.
- But why can't we compete in these ways?
- I hope you do that.
- Yeah.
- I hope so.
- That's all our interview.
- I'll do it.
- Yeah.
- Well, let's see.
- Do you want to take a break?
- At this moment, we-- well, we could--
- OK.
- --because now--
- As an individual and as a generic unit of that society--
- and I have a hard time dealing with this generic notion.
- But I must admit that there is some commonality in experience.
- I think that the long-term non-healing aspect, my opinion
- is that some of the long-term non-healing aspects
- are general to society as a whole
- and have little to do with the Holocaust.
- It's hard to separate those, because there's no good control
- data.
- We can't muster people, people who
- had trauma before the Holocaust, entered the Holocaust,
- and had less, or people who didn't have-- and came
- with very good backgrounds, and so on, and did
- very well afterwards.
- Well, in my opinion, as I said-- and this is a superficial
- opinion based on survivors that I've known and various
- discussions that I've had with them--
- I think that there are some problems which
- predated the Holocaust and followed after the Holocaust.
- There are many adaptations to life
- or our way of adapting to life--
- by our, meaning Holocaust survivors--
- changed partly because of our experience.
- But it was also influenced by my previous exposures.
- And the life's history, our genetics, our families,
- our environment, and the level of interaction
- with the world, all of which varied all over the landscape.
- I think that it influenced me personally, for example, that I
- chose certain kinds of jobs.
- I chose specialties.
- It never occurred to me, for example, to go into a field
- where I couldn't earn a living anywhere in the world.
- I didn't even seriously consider it.
- I mean, to me, for example, the idea--
- I'm interested in law, for example, as a way of reasoning
- or as an intellectual pursuit.
- But I wouldn't be a lawyer for 30 seconds,
- because I know that lawyers are made by laws.
- And the moment you cross a border,
- you're no longer a lawyer.
- I'm a food technologist anywhere in the world.
- I'm a bacteriologist anywhere in the world.
- I don't have to talk the language,
- and I can earn a living.
- And that is something that is true,
- my father started, but the Holocaust
- emphasized, that when you're left on your own,
- it's only what's between your ears that's going to carry you
- on and nothing else.
- I chose to work in food, probably
- because I was deprived of food.
- When I was giving alternatives and research projects,
- I never chose working on ornamental plants,
- because I know that people can live without ornamental plants.
- I have friends who are in microbiology, worked
- on ornamental plants, or some people
- who worked on other things that seemed.
- And I tended to go for something that is widely used.
- And some people view that as a sign of insecurity.
- And in their system, maybe it is.
- For me, its adaptiveness.
- I learned how to adapt.
- And I don't want to bet on systems that I really
- consider very temporary.
- So when I came to this country, I was always amused when people
- said, what do you want to be?
- As if there was a direct connection with what I want
- to be and what I'm going to be.
- Now, that exists much more so here.
- But somehow, it reminded me of a cork
- being tossed in an ocean, which is what I felt like.
- And they thought they were in a road in which they
- were guiding their own car.
- And I thought that it was a huge illusion
- that they were going to only go down roads that they choose.
- But I didn't want to confront them about it.
- But I didn't for a moment believe
- that I was master of my fate.
- As it turns out, I was probably more master of my fate
- than I estimated.
- But my experience was such of being tossed around like a cork
- that I wanted to make sure that this cork floats.
- Yes, yes.
- I'm sorry, what?
- No, I was-- go ahead.
- Yes, you want to--
- I was wondering, when you were talking
- about when you came back, and teenagers were worrying
- about what movie they were going to see, and so on,
- and the gulf between your experience and your reality
- there--
- and I was just wondering, how did you make that work for you?
- What or where didn't it work?
- Or where did you make it work?
- Well, I discovered when I went to high school in Los Angeles--
- I went to Fairfax High School from November '45--
- so end of November '45 till early February.
- So there was a Christmas vacation in there.
- And then I went back to school.
- And then I went to New York.
- So in that period of time--
- well, first of all, this was an era
- where the social life was the central role
- of the high school.
- And I couldn't believe that, because going
- to school in Europe--
- first of all, it's not fun.
- No one expects it to be fun.
- There's nothing.
- You expect to do an awful lot of hard work,
- because doing well in school meant the future.
- You don't go to gymnasium, you're
- going to be a ditch digger, unless you
- go into some business somehow.
- So your life is marked.
- And the other thing is that you carry a little book,
- in which they write every infraction, and every grade,
- and so on.
- And when you graduate, or when you take the baccalaureate exam
- from gymnasium, people look at it.
- And some crime you committed in what
- is the equivalent of fifth grade here or first year gymnasium
- there can keep you from a job, or a school, or so on.
- So school is much more in earnest than it is here.
- If I characterize the American system,
- I would say there are many accesses to goals in America,
- much more than people actually take advantage of.
- And in Europe, the access is very, very narrow,
- very limited.
- And I don't know how it is now.
- But at that time, it was if you didn't
- stay on the straight and narrow, you
- would never get back on the straight and narrow.
- So this notion of school being fun actually
- made me suspicious and alarming.
- Maybe this was not the real thing.
- This must be a joke.
- Then I noticed that I'd been out of school
- for about a year and a half, the equivalent
- of a year and a half.
- And I was ahead in math.
- I learned English by talking English and by hearing English.
- And I really didn't write English very well.
- So Romanian is a Romance language.
- And the spelling is very phonetic.
- And Hungarian is not quite as phonetic, but still more
- phonetic than English.
- And spelling enough is enough to drive you nuts--
- and other words.
- And there are some.
- Enough, actually, is like genug in German.
- But it's difficult. It was difficult for me
- to learn to write.
- And that was a little difficult. But as far
- as history and math was concerned,
- I kept wondering, where were these guys?
- I was afraid, when I was liberated,
- that I had forgotten to write.
- Because in all the time that I was in the camps,
- I never had pencil and paper.
- I got one note once from my aunt.
- And that was it.
- And scratched in the sand.
- And I discovered pretty soon that I could write.
- I hadn't forgotten how to write.
- But I was mostly an interpreter in terms of translating
- spoken words rapidly.
- That was my job both when I worked for the DP camp,
- and I worked for the military government, when I worked
- for the war criminals camp.
- So when I went from having been in Paris and all that,
- so here I was in a high school in LA.
- The girls were wearing men's white shirts, because they
- were very hard to get then.
- And they had to have a lot of signatures.
- And I didn't know what these signatures meant,
- or if they had any meaning at all.
- And there were all kinds of in-words and slang,
- which puzzled me.
- In my normal development, I was very interested
- in athletics as a kid.
- And I played soccer.
- And I was in gymnastics.
- Well, you know, gymnastics is not
- exactly big in this country.
- And at that time, soccer was unknown, or dead,
- or played by a few European teams of adults
- who were recent immigrants.
- And so there wasn't much interaction at this level.
- And in Europe, people my age talked politics.
- And nobody in America talked politics in 1945.
- I mean, there was no either local, state, or national.
- I mean, it's a very trivial kind of politics.
- So I didn't have much to talk about with other kids.
- So I kept quiet and went along sometimes.
- But I really felt like a fish out of water.
- Now, I didn't understand girls at all,
- because I was going out with girls in Paris who
- were going to college.
- And these were high school girls.
- And they were always dressed very dramatically
- and very provocatively.
- But they were obviously incredible innocents.
- And they're very, very confusing.
- And so I didn't have many friends,
- although people were very nice to me.
- And they invited me to their homes.
- And it's also true I didn't have a car.
- So my mobility was limited.
- But I did catch rides with others.
- And I would say-- and the kids were very accepting
- and very good-natured.
- And they went out of their way to show me things
- at that Fairfax High School.
- But their social life was seldom interrupted by study.
- And there was a dance every day at noon.
- The most difficult thing in high school
- was that every morning, when you got to school,
- you had to walk a mile and run a mile.
- In those days, physical education was very much
- emphasized in all California schools,
- which I'm sorry to say, it isn't.
- And you ought to take a look at the difference
- in physical performance.
- It was an absolute.
- You couldn't get out of it, no matter what.
- Well, unknown to me, at that time,
- I had a bone chip in my foot, which
- was later repaired at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
- Just I should make a mental note,
- I have to talk about that, because they were
- a model of compassion, a model.
- They were a hospital, what a hospital should be in the most
- modern sense of the word.
- Well, do you want to talk about that now,
- now that you're thinking of it?
- Oh, sure.
- When I got to New York, to my aunt's house,
- she discovered that, after walking a few blocks, I limped.
- My foot was sore.
- So I was going to high school then.
- This is Stuyvesant High School in New York.
- Stuyvesant is one of the three or four schools
- that you need to take an exam to get into.
- And I got there because the high school
- that I would have gone to, my neighborhood high school,
- my aunt told me, they're throwing the teacher
- out the window, second-story window, already.
- So this was, as I said, 1946.
- They had some problems.
- So I took the exam.
- And I was admitted to Stuyvesant High School.
- And they were also very understanding.
- Because on the exam, they gave inches and miles.
- And I just crossed it out.
- And I said, the international units
- recognized are the centimeter, and the second, and so on.
- And I said, as far as this problem is concerned,
- I said, one inch equals one centimeter.
- And they accepted my answers based on that.
- And I got in there.
- And the high school, it was an all boys high school,
- which we all regretted.
- But the teachers were incredibly well-trained.
- They all had master's degrees in their fields, not in education.
- And the best-known student in the school
- was a guy who solved a very difficult problem
- in mathematics and also one in physics.
- And the next best one was probably
- the head of the physics club, who had also
- gotten a prize in physics.
- The student that they would talk about,
- who came up with an original solution
- to a difficult homework problem--
- there were ordinary homework problems,
- and then there was always one or two killer problems.
- And whoever solved those, it would
- be known that that's the guy who solved it.
- And the school was aimed toward scientists and engineers.
- But the social sciences were extremely well-taught.
- And we had a year of history, one
- taught by an admitted strong leftist.
- And the other one was a strong rightist.
- And we sat in class according to political parties
- from left to right.
- The science was very well taught and not by rote at all.
- And they were enormously tolerant
- of individual students' idiosyncrasies.
- The same week that I got there, they
- were talking about the fundamental structure
- of the atom.
- And the instructor put down the old theory
- of the atom-- you know, a golf ball in the center
- and little circles around it.
- A student jumped up and went in a tirade
- at the top of his lungs, which he said,
- you think we're idiots.
- You have contempt for us.
- You think we don't know that what you just put on the board
- is wrong.
- And it is outdated.
- And you're insulting.
- I will not be insulted like this.
- And with that, he marched out and slammed the door.
- I thought that the class would be executed.
- We'd be hung by our thumbs outside the window,
- that we would never darken the door
- of another educational institution,
- because that's what would have happened in Europe.
- This is mass insurrection.
- And the teacher, who was known as the Undertaker
- among the students-- and I was told
- that the first day, because he always wore
- a black suit, a white shirt, and a black tie,
- and taught physics very well, though
- said, well, that's one opinion.
- The fact is that this is how we start off.
- Later on, we will go to the advanced one.
- And then he turned around and went on with the lecture.
- And I said, jeez, how tolerant.
- And they were tolerant.
- And there, they made every effort to help students learn.
- But they were very high standards of performance.
- So just doing your homework meant that you were just
- getting along.
- What they expected was that the homework was original,
- that you'd come up with an original question in class,
- that you read more than the textbook
- in both science and non-science courses,
- and that you were prepared to debate any issue that comes up.
- They had very little tolerance for disruption.
- You got one warning.
- Then if you disrupted the class, then you'd
- be sent back to your district school.
- The school had Blacks and Puerto Ricans in it.
- And I kept wondering why they talked about white schools,
- because this was not an all-white school.
- And this school is down in the lower--
- well, it's between 13th and 14th Street
- off First and Second Avenue.
- So it's close to the Lower East Side.
- A lot of the kids came out of the Lower East Side slums.
- And this was their way out.
- And they had a wonderful spirit of inquiry.
- And the least-known people were the football players.
- I mean, they had a football team,
- but it appeared once-- you know, the school's
- in the middle of a block.
- And the gym is subterranean, literally.
- And it has a running track, you know,
- that's elevated above the gym floor.
- So it was an atypical high school.
- After my experience in Los Angeles, it was very atypical.
- Anyhow, when I had this problem with my foot,
- I went to my advisor, and I said, I have to go.
- What I do about this sort of thing?
- He says, oh, we have a special fund.
- We match the first visit to the doctor from this fund.
- And I remember that.
- And this is 19--
- as I said, 1946.
- And a visit to the doctor at that time was $20.
- I earned $0.50 an hour working at a pharmacy around the corner
- from where I lived.
- And my aunt and uncle were not well-off.
- He was essentially disabled with asthma.
- And they had three kids.
- So they paid $10.
- And I paid $10.
- And we got to a very fancy Park Avenue specialist
- in orthopedic surgery.
- His name was Dr. Albert Shine, who took one look at my--
- actually, I went to another physician
- whom I knew from my hometown.
- His name was Dr. Frank Gruber.
- Dr. Frank Gruber, may he rest in peace,
- was from my hometown, came from a poor family.
- The community bought him a scholarship to go to college.
- And what the scholarship consisted of
- is that he stayed in one place and he
- ate different meals every day in different people's houses.
- Dr. Frank Gruber graduated from there,
- went to France to go to medical school.
- And he was a student of Madame Curie.
- Came back, established his office there,
- off the main square.
- And in his office, all people welcome,
- including poor people--
- you know, peasants, when they come in from the country,
- stink.
- And nice patients don't like that.
- And he said that didn't make any differences.
- In his office, everybody was well-treated.
- Eventually, when I went to New York,
- Dr. Frank Gruber was in New York.
- I went to him with my problem.
- My aunt took me to him to examine whether I was OK.
- He found a spot on my lung.
- You know, I had had tuberculosis.
- Apparently, that was arrested.
- And he also found this.
- And he said, I think this is called Friedberg's disease.
- Well, anyhow, when I went to the specialist, Dr. Albert Shine,
- and he said, that's remarkable.
- Most internists don't even know the disease exists.
- But he called it correctly.
- And what happened was is when I was wearing wooden shoes,
- I developed a bone chip.
- Well, actually, I knew something happened,
- because while I was at Dachau, I was in a hospital there.
- And they operated on it to remove a blood clot
- without anesthetic.
- So I knew something was there.
- Anyway, so he repaired it.
- And when I went to Mount Sinai Hospital here,
- my aunt was with limited income, and three kids of her own,
- and she took me on.
- They said-- the social worker interviewed me very, very
- sensitively and told me that I would
- be a patient in the hospital.
- And they had wards.
- Well, they had mostly fairly--
- it was an old-fashioned hospital.
- And if you look at the hospital, you'd
- think that they're ward patients.
- But the people, the way they were treated,
- they were not like people think of as ward patients.
- Everybody-- the nursing staff and the medical staff--
- were very good.
- And I was there for about a week,
- because they kept having emergencies.
- And my operation was scheduled.
- And then an emergency would come.
- And they'd take the emergency first.
- And I had first-grade care.
- And they repaired it.
- And I did very well.
- But it is the school that facilitated the whole process,
- because they knew all the social agencies that
- could take care of this.
- And I was not an exception.
- There were other kids who came from the slums.
- And they had this fund.
- And they didn't make any big deal out of it.
- And the Mount Sinai Hospital was--
- I happened to know about it because I
- have a distant relative who did a history of the hospital
- as part of a thesis in sociology.
- If you take a look at the American Nobel Prize winners,
- they were all invited to the staff seminars of Mount Sinai
- Hospital.
- And Dr. Béla Schick--
- there's a test for scarlet fever which has
- been called the Schick test.
- Well, Dr. Béla Schick practices at Mount Sinai Hospital.
- And they're very socially aware, very dedicated to their work.
- And they do first-rate science, in addition--
- really, first-rate science.
- And there are hospitals that do some of those things, but very
- few who do all three.
- An inspiration.
- Yeah, they were.
- So they were on the edge of Harlem then.
- They probably are in the middle of Harlem now.
- So they've had lots of poor patients and lots of--
- and I can say that they certainly
- didn't discriminate or ever treat the, quote,
- "paying and non-paying" patients differently.
- Well, maybe I'll start here to kind of introduce ourselves
- again and give the date, which is that I'm Sandra Bendayan,
- interviewing Paul Banko.
- This is tape number three.
- And did you introduce yourself, Ms. Serkin?
- I'm Antonia Serkin.
- OK.
- Is this tape number three or tape number two?
- It's tape number three, I do believe.
- OK.
- Yeah, three.
- OK, great.
- Some of the things you've been talking about
- may crop up again--
- Yeah.
- --if that's OK.
- Basically, in the chronology where we left off before was we
- we're going to start with you leaving Kaufbeuren.
- Let's start with that.
- OK.
- How did you come to Kaufbeuren?
- Kaufbeuren was the worst camp I had ever been in.
- We got to Kaufbeuren in October, by late October.
- That was 800 people got there.
- By the end of December, there were only 200 left.
- The guards were brutal.
- The work was terrible.
- And the camp commander was--
- both the German SS camp commander and the prisoner camp
- commander was incredibly brutal German felon,
- who killed a lot of people arbitrarily.
- That's where I saw more Muselmanns
- when I came than any others, any other camp
- that I've been in, including Auschwitz,
- and including Dachau.
- Did you see people being what you would consider insane?
- Although maybe you could say being a Muselmann
- is a little bit in that category or maybe a lot
- in that category.
- Being a Muselmann is more visible in action
- than in expression, in verbal expression.
- It is the appearance.
- They withdraw from life.
- They literally withdraw from life.
- And what-- perhaps it's the beginning
- of death in the camps.
- And that's how they appeared.
- There was a tremendous amount of number of people
- killed for any excuse possible.
- One incident I remember is that Christmas Eve,
- they flooded the basement of a building.
- And this is a bitter cold of the Bavarian winter.
- They flooded the basement of a building
- and had us take a bath in the cold for Christmas.
- And that killed dozens and dozens of people.
- They never got out of the cold water.
- And they had the habit of dragging
- when there was a guy there who was a cantor who had
- been there when we got there.
- We used to sing for the guards.
- And I remember listening to him singing to the guards.
- And his voice got weaker and weaker.
- And then he became a Muselmann.
- He went through the process?
- Yeah.
- It was sort of a daily event.
- A lot of people got frostbite.
- A lot of people were frozen.
- A tremendous number of people were killed going or coming
- from the job, falling down.
- But the guards didn't shoot, they clubbed people to death.
- There, it was the worst camp that I was in.
- And there was a doctor there, a prisoner doctor,
- who I don't know whether he was afraid or not,
- but doctors can issue a--
- it's called a schonung, a slip to spare you, so to speak.
- So you get a day of work off.
- And I guess he must have been afraid for his own life,
- rather, then.
- We felt that he could have issued more slips,
- because every day that you didn't work,
- you saved a day for your life.
- That was the worst camp, though.
- And then suddenly, they came and they closed the camp.
- And they shipped us off to Dachau.
- That was just after the new year.
- So we arrived in Dachau on January 10th.
- So it must have been January 8th,
- because this was a two-day journey, although it's not
- very far away.
- And that's when my father died.
- And I described that.
- Yes.
- He couldn't get up after the showers.
- And in Dachau, I was by myself.
- And in Dachau, we were placed in some barracks.
- Do you remember the trip?
- Oh, the trip was incredible.
- Most of the people couldn't stand anymore.
- But we were so thin that even though we were crowded,
- and we weren't as crowded as before,
- it didn't seem as crowded.
- We only had pajama tops and bottoms.
- And it was the Bavarian winter.
- And some people managed to have some blankets.
- And then some people died.
- And then the ones who lived took the blankets
- from those who died.
- Most everybody was scared, because we all had diarrhea.
- And I probably didn't tell you that if they detect
- you have diarrhea, the chances are pretty good that they'll
- kill you, because they think it's an irreversible process.
- And it's not always.
- Sometimes it is, but it's not always.
- So when we got to Dachau, we were all
- trying to conceal our diarrhea as much as possible.
- How is that possible to do with this one pair of pajamas?
- Well, that is you try to hold back
- until you get to a bathroom and to go to the bathroom
- when there is no guard there, or guard going by, or such.
- And the other thing is we dig out coals from the ashes,
- because we were under the impression
- that charcoal helps this process.
- Well, charcoal does, but not that kind of charcoal.
- But it had, probably, its effect in terms of a placebo effect.
- But when we got to Dachau, we were
- mixed in with other prisoners.
- Now, when we saw--
- not Germans, but that's when we met the Danes.
- And the Danish prisoners that I met in Dachau were wonderful.
- They were.
- And they shared their food.
- And they never shoved or stepped on anybody.
- Or no matter what, they just wouldn't be dehumanized.
- Were any of these Danes Jewish?
- Not that I know of.
- Not that I know of.
- If they were, they didn't identify them as such.
- But they were the most kind, compassionate people.
- They even shared their tobacco.
- And you know, prisoners don't share tobacco,
- because tobacco was currency.
- But they shared that also.
- What happened was is I did run into a German clergyman who
- had been there for many years.
- And I asked him to find out about my father,
- because he had been there so long,
- he knew people in the administration, and such.
- And he's the one who came back and told me
- that my father had died.
- And so in Dachau, I got typhus.
- Typhus is not the same as typhoid fever.
- Typhus is a louse-borne disease.
- And then the organism is carried by a louse
- that's called a rickettsia.
- But eventually, typhus is both an intestinal
- and a systemic disease.
- As a prisoner, what happens is that you pass out.
- You're in a coma for a while.
- And you become dehydrated.
- And if someone doesn't give you water, you die.
- So if you don't have friends who will give you preferably
- boiled water-- so my friends took my jacket,
- stood in line with my number, picked up my food.
- I couldn't chew, of course, when you're in a coma.
- But they gave me this food.
- And that's how I survived.
- And ironically, later on, I got scabies, which
- is a minor skin infection.
- And when they discovered that I had scabies,
- then they put me in the hospital in Dachau.
- Lucky for me, in the ward that I was in,
- there was a French Moroccan soldier who's Black.
- And he could talk to me.
- The others didn't speak French.
- So we became friends.
- And again, he literally saved my life because he helped me.
- I had diarrhea at the time.
- They discovered that you have diarrhea,
- you're dead in the hospital.
- So he essentially brought me gruel,
- and allowed me to go to the bathroom
- without telling the others, and even hid a night pot,
- a secret night pot.
- He moved me-- there are three tiers of beds in the hospital.
- So he moved me in an upper back bed,
- where they never checked and they
- thought there was nobody there.
- And so I recovered there.
- And the scabies was just some ointment.
- And it was silly.
- But that certainly helped a lot.
- And then I got back in the barracks.
- And by that time, it was end of March and beginning of April.
- And things were beginning.
- There were more bombing raids.
- There was an uneasy tension in the air.
- We heard various rumors from places
- that the fronts were going every which way.
- Germany was caving in.
- And then end of April, they suddenly took us
- and put us on trains.
- And the trains were on the station at Dachau.
- But these were not cattle cars.
- And this was the first time in all the time
- that I'd been in that we were in passenger cars--
- in fact, upholstered.
- They weren't even old passenger cars.
- They were ordinary passenger cars.
- And we couldn't believe this, because they would never
- let prisoners anywhere near it.
- Prisoners, quite frankly, stink, and they're dirty,
- and they don't have latrines, they
- have these huge buckets, which spill sewage
- all over and around.
- It's horrible conditions.
- But they put us on this train.
- And then we were issued one blanket each.
- And we thought that something is very strange here,
- because we'd never gotten one blanket each, at least not
- in my experience-- maybe two to one blanket,
- but never one blanket each.
- And then we were given 2/3 of a loaf of bread.
- And that's four times as much bread per person.
- 2/3 of a loaf of bread was--
- I can't tell you what wealth it was.
- So we knew that they were trying to get rid of rations.
- They also gave us some canned food later on.
- That came later.
- It's true that when you open the cans, the meat was green.
- But we ate it just the same.
- And some of the bread was moldy.
- But we ate it.
- So we knew things were strange.
- From this train, while we were sitting on the train,
- we saw a Red Cross.
- The train station itself is right across the street
- from the main entrance to the Dachau headquarters.
- We saw a Red Cross car pull up, go in.
- They were in there for a while.
- And then they drove off.
- After the war, I met a Red Cross nurse
- who was in this camp in Garmisch-Partenkirchen who
- was in that ligation.
- What they were negotiating about was that they
- were going to let the--
- they got an agreement from the Allies
- to let the SS come out unarmed.
- Their safe conduct would be guaranteed.
- They would go to a camp.
- But they would not be killed.
- And no one would shoot at them.
- And they refused it.
- And so we found out later that the American forces
- that came from the other side who
- hit the camps first and then the headquarters,
- they saw what happened in the camp.
- By that time, the SS were coming out with their hands in high.
- And they mowed them down because they had seen
- what happened in the camps.
- But anyhow, we were then sent to a little town
- called Seefeld in Bavaria.
- Seefeld is one of those picturesque towns
- in a little valley.
- And there's a river right next to Seefeld,
- not far from their downtown area then
- and that had a shallow bank of a river.
- So up on the high side of the bank, they set up machine guns.
- And we were in the desolate part of the river bank.
- It was kind of rocky.
- And there's snow now all over Bavaria,
- even though it's the end of April.
- They set up, as I said, these machine gun nests.
- And all of us were told to lie down there.
- And we were very apprehensive because we had so much.
- And then they set up in the machine gun nests.
- And they looked very businesslike.
- It was not a pro forma.
- And sometimes, people set up machine guns,
- and they're just machine guns.
- But when they put the belt in and then
- they load the machine gun, you have
- to pull it back and load the machine gun,
- we knew that then, they're getting ready to shoot.
- It's not just there for show.
- So we were told to lie down.
- And we lied down on this rough bank.
- And now, we each had an individual blanket.
- So we put two or three blankets below us to insulate us.
- And then we slept like spoons, you know, very tightly.
- And we had pulled blankets over our head.
- And we went to sleep.
- And then we woke up early in the morning,
- because there was distant artillery fire.
- And the artillery fire was approaching.
- So you know, artillery shoots--
- usually, they triangulate.
- They go one side, then the other.
- And then they hit the center.
- And we knew that they were probing in this area.
- But that was on the other side of the mountain from us.
- So we'd hear some closer shots, and some distance shots,
- and some closer shots, and some distant shots.
- So we looked up.
- And I'm not sure what I told you.
- The guards were carrying these side packs, obviously,
- with civilian clothes peeking out of them.
- Also, when they moved us through the town of Seefeld
- to the bank of the river, people were suddenly nice to us.
- Before that, if we were ever in town,
- people literally looked through you.
- They pretended you're not there.
- They pretended as if there was nothing on the street.
- And they brought out water.
- And they waved.
- And I don't remember them giving us food.
- But they were certainly very much friendlier
- than they had ever been.
- And then I said, next morning, the guards had run away.
- So when I saw the guards had run away,
- I was with a bunch of guys from my hometown,
- whose names, unfortunately, I now don't remember--
- six or seven of them.
- And I said, let's walk toward the gunfire,
- because that's where the Americans are.
- So we started walking on the highways.
- And we would hear noises of trucks, or tractors,
- or of tanks, and then we would get off
- the main road, because one thing all Europeans know
- is the most dangerous armies are retreating armies.
- They're the ones who rape, and pillage, and murder.
- And they'll do anything.
- So we didn't want to be on the main road,
- hitting retreating German armies.
- So in the hills in Bavaria, there
- are these little shacks, where sheep
- are taken in during snowstorms.
- So we would stay in these at night,
- and then again walk along the highway,
- And get off the highway if we heard any
- approaching tanks, or trucks, or such.
- Well, we were in one of these sheds
- when I looked out between the cracks
- and I saw a US tank go by.
- And I could recognize them, because they
- had a white star on it.
- And I think I told you that during the war,
- we used to get not a German, but a Swiss magazine called
- Schweitzer Illustrierte, which was censored.
- And I discovered how, with isopropyl alcohol,
- you can remove the censoring ink.
- And so we read about General Paulus,
- who surrendered at Stalingrad.
- See, in Germany, they said that he had committed suicide.
- Well, the films are still shown.
- I've seen it on KQED where he surrendered.
- So we knew what American tanks looked like from the pictures
- there, that they had a star on their side.
- And I knew the shape of American helmets
- and what they looked like.
- And I've seen said pictures of GIs, everything.
- So when I saw the American helmet,
- then we went down on the highway.
- We started walking along the highway.
- And the highway was pretty well-littered,
- because American troops would open one package of K-rations,
- take out the crackers, and throw away the whole thing,
- or take out the cigarettes, and throw away the rest.
- Well, the danger in this is that some of those rations
- are very rich.
- So at first, when we found the rations without any sign on it,
- I didn't want to pick them up, because I
- figured that the Germans were throwing out poisoned food.
- And they'd done all kinds of dirty tricks like that.
- But then we saw--
- They had done that already, thrown out poisoned food?
- No, the Germans, I felt they were capable of any deceptions,
- because they threw out, for example, toys that were bombs.
- And they did that in Poland.
- They were attractive little devices.
- And people would blow up.
- You mean, anywhere, just on a city street,
- they would do this?
- No, usually in the countryside, they
- would, in occupied countries.
- At least that's what I had heard,
- and that they were explosive devices that--
- don't fool with something you don't know about.
- So as we were walking along here,
- we ran into an American detachment.
- And I asked, you know, where--
- is there a camp?
- Or what's going?
- He says, just keep on going.
- He says, we're not allowed to talk to you, to help you.
- We've got to move on.
- And they moved on down the line.
- And that's when I ran into an American--
- a Black medical detachment.
- It was headed by a Black officer.
- He stopped.
- And he started talking to us.
- I spoke English.
- And I translated for the rest.
- And he took out the K-rations, all of them,
- and lined them up, and told us what to eat
- and what not to eat.
- K-rations have things like cheese and bacon.
- And it's wonderful for a soldier, because it's compact.
- And it's very high energy.
- And it's poison for us, because we
- hadn't had any frank fat of any kind in years,
- minimal margarine.
- Why is it difficult to digest that in starvation?
- The reason is that in starvation, the system
- digests itself.
- In starvation, the body shuts down the synthesis of many of--
- not all, but many of the normal digestive functions in order
- to preserve those as an energy source.
- So what had previously been something
- to be used to enable you to digest the food
- is now itself burned to carbon dioxide and water.
- So you have less of the enzymes.
- And when you eat less of the food,
- you make less of certain enzymes--
- not all, but certain enzymes.
- So this is why the longer you're on a low diet,
- the lower your entire metabolic level
- is-- because this is a body's way of responding
- to lack of demand.
- You don't provide extra energy when there's no demand for it.
- And that's what starvation signals to the body.
- So the enzymes, the fat, and the bile,
- frankly, which you also need, are
- at very low production levels.
- So eating high fat food means that you're
- going to lead to all kinds of difficulty.
- You can't digest it.
- Then the bacteria take over.
- And that causes enormous infections in the body.
- And the immune system is impaired,
- because you've been starved for so long.
- So a lot of prisoners died at the end
- of the war due to their overeating.
- But they weren't overeating in their terms,
- because they were just grabbing for food.
- So there were these packages of dry cereal in this.
- There were compressed oat flakes that all you have to do
- is throw in hot water.
- And it became sort of a gruel.
- And there were crackers there.
- And he told us we could eat those, and some powdered milk,
- and dilute powdered eggs.
- There were some-- excuse me--
- powdered eggs.
- And he was absolutely wonderful.
- Then his men--
- GIs get two blankets.
- You don't get infinite number of blankets.
- You get two blankets.
- And they gave one of their two blankets
- to us, wonderful wool blankets that
- saved our lives, absolutely.
- He didn't order them.
- He didn't ask them.
- The guys themselves went.
- And they each got a blanket, gave it to us.
- And I talked to him.
- And I was walking bent over because I had severe pains
- on the side of my chest.
- And he listened to my chest and says, you have pneumonia.
- And so I asked him for Prontosil.
- Prontosil is the European name for sulfa drugs.
- And he knew what I was talking about immediately.
- And he told them, he says, in America,
- we call them sulfa drugs.
- Here's some.
- And then he gave me instructions on how
- to take it, and drink water with it, and all the other things.
- And he was absolutely wonderful to us.
- So when we parted, and I asked him, what's your name?
- Someday, I'm going to look you up,
- because I knew I wasn't going to stay in Europe.
- And his answer was by the time you come to America,
- you won't want to talk to me.
- And I didn't know what he meant.
- It's only later on that I learned what he meant.
- So to this day, I don't know who my benefactor was.
- And we went.
- We were walking down the road here, and again, staying off
- the main roads.
- And then we hit a town called Mittenwald.
- Mittenwald is very famous.
- And they have famous violin-makers.
- And if you look in a German textbook,
- they always use Mittenwald as an illustration,
- because they have these frescoes on the outside of their houses.
- We got to Mittenwald.
- And the people in Mittenwald didn't
- know what to do with us, because they were afraid that here come
- the prisoners from one side, here
- come the retreating German soldiers from the other side.
- They were afraid that the prisoners would go on a rampage
- and tear the town apart, which was ridiculous,
- because one, look at these prisoners.
- They couldn't run.
- They could barely walk.
- But they did open up there, on the city gym.
- How many were there of you at this point?
- They were stragglers.
- They were mostly stragglers of prisoners.
- There were probably a couple of hundred.
- There were maybe 300 or 400 down at the bank of the river.
- But groups formed.
- And there were some prisoners who argued
- after the guards ran away.
- Some prisoners said, we shouldn't move.
- The guards just went away for breakfast.
- They're going to come back.
- And we shouldn't move or they'll shoot us.
- And I said, the guards are gone.
- I'm gone.
- Some of them were afraid to lose the security.
- They'd been prisoners for so long
- that they were prisoners of themselves.
- And that does occur in prison.
- But I wanted to get out there the moment we could.
- And there were other kids we knew who stayed.
- So it wasn't only a young and old division.
- Did it feel strange to make a decision to just get up and go?
- Not to me.
- Not to me.
- No.
- I really didn't.
- I never seriously considered staying.
- And the kids that I was with--
- but I was afraid that they would get hurt.
- And I felt overwhelmed with the responsibility of their safety.
- They were all young people, your age?
- Yeah.
- They all wanted to go home.
- And I was the only one didn't want to go home.
- I said, well, I want to find out about my mother.
- Then I found out about my mother, and no one was home.
- I was hoping that I'd find my mother in a camp,
- but I wasn't going to go home.
- When I was in my hometown, and people came to our house,
- and said, give me your furniture,
- and give me your books, you're not going to need them anymore,
- there was something in me that was cut.
- And once in a while, I think of taking my kids back
- to show where I grew up.
- But I don't have that sense of going next door
- and talking to the people that I knew or that.
- That was erased.
- First time I felt homesick is when I went in the army
- from Berkeley.
- I was riding an army bus across the Bay Bridge.
- And I said, gee, I miss Berkeley.
- But I didn't miss Cluj.
- I didn't.
- Or if I had an attachment, it was certainly severed.
- I just wanted to ask you a couple of things.
- What was daily life like in Dachau?
- Did you work?
- No.
- No, in Dachau, by the time I got there,
- we were in very crowded triple bunks,
- very, very tightly crowded.
- There was no work.
- There was just going in and out of the barracks.
- They'd march us in and out.
- But I never did a lick of work in Dachau.
- It was just a warehousing kind of situation.
- I met the first 15-year-old Russian antisemites--
- these were Russian partisans who had been picked up--
- and also some Poles.
- And they cursed us in Russian, and Zhid was
- one of the terms that came out.
- And it wasn't a friendly gesture.
- And I was amazed at that.
- To be in a concentration camp with Jews,
- in another concentration camp, and call you,
- I mean, some equivalent of a dirty Jew,
- I thought, oh, god, these Russians,
- after all this communism, they're
- no different than the rest.
- They weren't?
- Yeah.
- But there were a lot of nationalities.
- And there, they did distribute some packages.
- As I told you, the French and the Belgians got packages.
- And the conditions were very crowded.
- There was a lot of lice there and no disinfectant
- of any kind.
- In fact, there was more lice in Dachau
- than any camp I'd been in before at this stage, again.
- Were there any incidences of view to that camp
- or along the way of sexual abuse, abuse of the inmates,
- or children?
- Not where I was.
- I know of other people who were.
- There, they tend to pick a very youngish-looking boy
- for a laufer, a runner.
- But I wasn't attractive enough or I was maybe a little older.
- I was not among those chosen.
- I didn't see that.
- What I saw was an enormous amount of physical abuse.
- And there were occasional times when some dreaded
- SS would give half an apple to a laufer or throw it out there.
- And the prisoners would get it.
- And there were occasional things like this.
- But I didn't see the kinds of thing.
- Most of the things that I saw were
- people being beaten to a pulp, their arms deliberately broken,
- and they were deliberately gouged, and cheated
- in a way to deliberately cause pain and suffering.
- And there are people who enjoy watching other people in pain.
- And there are some who are incited
- by the pleas of a prisoner because they
- consider that cowardice.
- And in their code of honor, cowardice
- can only be rewarded with death.
- And on the other hand, there are others
- who are excited by the silent prisoner
- because they want to get him to the point
- that the prisoner will plead for his life.
- Is that something you could get a sensitivity to,
- as you said about murderous people?
- Well, that's what told me that there
- are such things as murderous people.
- And there are people who are so remote from their fellow men
- that they are quite capable of committing murder and walking
- away from it.
- I don't know how this works long-term.
- I've heard stories of eventually,
- guards of some of the worst camps going nuts and so on.
- And I don't know what happens afterwards.
- I suspect-- as I said, I don't know--
- I suspect that they eventually carry burdens
- because they carry a logical conflict if they grew up
- in any kind of civilization.
- But they also may have been so well prepared by the Nazis
- that once you dehumanize, you make this possible, you,
- at the same time, justify it.
- I don't know that.
- It is, unfortunately, possible to train people
- for an awful lot of things, including this.
- And I suspect that they have some selection process.
- And I don't know whether it's self-selection or not.
- But I think people preferred to believe that evil is something
- that is temporary, changeable, and not a human characteristic,
- but somehow, like a spirit that strikes someone
- occasionally and then moves on to some other territory.
- That I don't believe.
- What do you believe?
- I think there are such things as evil people.
- I think you have to recognize them.
- I think that we do have to take measures against them.
- I don't believe in capital punishment,
- but I do believe in incarceration without return.
- And when people step beyond, when
- people enter into physical violence,
- I consider them permanently dangerous.
- When they transgress beyond a certain level
- of physical violence, I consider them permanently dangerous.
- And then you put them away.
- I think it'd be wonderful if we had
- some way of controlling this.
- But in contemporary terms, I think
- that we are being denied an elementary human right of peace
- of mind when these people are not put away.
- And it is a very, very basic human right.
- I think women feel more at risk than men do.
- But anybody who's been a prisoner
- feels very much at physical risk in certain situations,
- a little sooner than most other people do.
- And I've been in all kinds of places.
- I've been in Marseille, and I've been
- in the worst parts of New York, and I've never had any trouble.
- But my warning system is a little more sensitive
- than most people's also.
- So I do look out.
- And I don't tempt fate, either.
- I don't walk perfectly secure.
- But there are places where I know I'm vulnerable
- and I don't go to without precaution.
- But I do think that, in terms of prison terms,
- once you transgress, then there is
- such a thing as losing your rights to inflict terror
- in others.
- And I'd unhesitatingly dismiss them from society.
- In the case of the German guards in the camps,
- there certainly has been intimation
- that there was lots of alcohol, drugs, other things that--
- I didn't see.
- Alcohol, yes.
- Yes, I've seen lots of alcohol, lots of alcohol, yes.
- But I didn't see drug use.
- But I was never intimately involved with the guards.
- I was never a laufer.
- I was never chosen for any special position.
- At the end of the war, I met an American couple.
- And that's how I came to this country.
- And they kept telling me, sit down and write a book.
- And I said, it's a dull book, because there
- are a couple of million people who have the same story.
- I say, who's going to buy this?
- And I thought that no one would be interested in this story,
- because so many of us had gone through this.
- And there was nothing unusually remarkable about my experience
- or other experiences.
- In fact, everyone does have their own experience
- and how they went through it.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- You do.
- But I thought that we'd have, what, two million stories
- of human abuse.
- And I didn't write.
- More than that.
- But you were talking before about the life
- in Dachau and no work.
- How did you spend the day?
- Yeah.
- Just mulled around, waiting for the food to be served.
- And we'd talk about how soon the war would end.
- We knew things were up, because there was a difference
- in the behavior of the guards.
- We noticed that the guards ate the same food we
- ate when we were in the last--
- in Kaufbeuren.
- The guards and we got the same food,
- except they got more of the potatoes
- and more of the vegetables.
- And we got more of the soupy part of that,
- the liquid part of the soup.
- But they were eating the same thing.
- So we knew that they were on very short rations.
- What were your rations then?
- Oh, the rations stayed pretty much the same.
- The quality of the bread changed.
- That was the only variable.
- In the morning, you got a--
- we used to call it sock soup, because it's the same color as
- if you rinse dirty socks out.
- And some people called it coffee.
- And some people called it tea.
- And we said, you don't have to worry.
- You can name it anything you want.
- It tastes the same.
- That was humor.
- And then they would serve dried veg.
- And it's called der Gemüse.
- It's dried vegetable soup.
- It's either carrot or cabbage.
- And sometimes, you got lucky, it'd be potato soup.
- And once in a blue moon, there'd be microscopic amounts
- of cooked meat in it and a slice of bread-- not always,
- but a slice of bread.
- Then at night, you'd get a slice of bread
- and a little bit of margarine about the size of margarine
- that's served here, you know, one
- of the little squares, about an inch and a quarter square,
- and about a half-inch thick.
- That was it-- or a piece of sausage
- that was a little thicker than that,
- about an inch and a half in diameter.
- Well, the only fresh food we ever got
- were potatoes, which we dug out of the ground
- when we worked for a farmer.
- And he beat us because of that.
- And we ate those potatoes raw.
- And that was it--
- and a little bit of food from the Danish students
- when we were in Dachau, canned food of some kind.
- I don't know what it was.
- Maybe it was spam-like.
- But I'm not certain.
- I don't remember that.
- I do remember him giving to us something
- like a cracker and a little tiny bit of chocolate
- from a chocolate bar, which was incredible.
- And we savored that chocolate.
- It's a good thing they didn't give us more,
- because we couldn't have handled more than a taste, either.
- But that was it.
- And every noon, they'd be jockeying for position.
- First, you had to estimate what kind of-- the guy who
- distributes the food, is he a top dipper or bottom dipper?
- If he's a bottom dipper, then you can go early.
- You'll still get quite a bit.
- But if you go just a little later,
- then you'll still get quite a bit of the bottom.
- But if he's a top dipper, then you go to the end of the line.
- And you stay out of the line as much as possible
- because you're going to get most of the food toward the end.
- So there were strategic plans of this kind.
- What about toilet facilities in Dachau?
- Oh, the toilets were long latrines.
- They're slabs of cement with a hole cut in.
- And you sort of squat on this.
- The toilet facilities were there.
- And the problem was to conceal whether you had diarrhea,
- because a kapo could go by.
- And then they start watching you and then picking you out
- if you had diarrhea.
- And we spent a lot of time--
- Picture a seam like this.
- You have to lift up the seam, and that's where the lice hide.
- In the clothing?
- Yeah.
- Not on your body?
- Well, they get on the body, too.
- And there is a very unusual sensation
- of a louse moving on your body.
- It's a very, very light sensation.
- And it's as if something is thrashing in a small spot.
- And that's what a louse movement feels like.
- And squashing the louse is usually
- how you get the disease.
- Because it's in the fecal matter of the louse.
- And you rub that in the skin, and that's how you get sick.
- Hmm.
- So animals groom each other.
- Well, prisoners sit around and groom their clothing this way.
- So you spent a lot of your day doing that, then?
- Yeah, doing that, and just walking around, and staying out
- of the way of guards and work details.
- When they come around for work details,
- you find something else to do, or you look as
- if you were on a work detail.
- Suddenly start pulling weeds or something
- so they think you're on somebody else's work detail.
- You avoid work like the plague.
- I thought that aspect was more relaxed there.
- Yes, yeah, but you know, this is,
- again, this is the end of the war.
- They don't know what to do.
- They've got no places to send you.
- There is no factory to send you to.
- The railroads are tied up or bombed.
- The system is now screeching to a halt.
- Did you have trouble with rats?
- No, no, I don't remember seeing rats there.
- I don't even remember seeing rat droppings there.
- I don't think there was enough food left.
- Were people dying rapidly at this point also?
- Yes.
- Well, every day we'd be taking bodies out.
- And yes, people would die during the night.
- Then they would be taken out in the morning.
- Every day, the death wagon went by.
- And how did they dispose of those bodies?
- I don't know.
- We never got out of camp.
- I suspect they were burned at Dachau, I'm sure.
- But in Dachau, I was simply in the camp.
- Then we were marched out to the railroad station,
- so I never got any other view.
- And then I haven't been back.
- What about the level of the brutality of guards and capos?
- It was less in Dachau at the time I got there.
- Then the worst was Kaufbeuren.
- Kaufering was OK.
- It wasn't particularly brutal.
- Birkenau was terrible.
- Next was, as I said, worse was Kaufbeuren.
- And Dachau was catch as catch can in relative terms.
- Do you think this is because it was getting late in the war,
- as you say?
- Yeah, there were a lot of prisoners there, crowded.
- So the more prisoners there are, the lesser chance of getting
- hit, because they only have so many guards.
- I see.
- And there was really not very much to do.
- I don't ever even remember going on a work detail, as I said,
- in Dachau.
- But I remember going on work detail.
- They were stupid work details, so we
- knew it was make work in Birkenau, but not in Dachau.
- How about the sleeping conditions in the barracks?
- You said it was so crowded, was it--
- It was always very crowded.
- But by that time, that's what you'd expect.
- The least crowded conditions were in Kaufering.
- In Kaufering, we were in essentially an underground--
- you build it, and you dig out the ground,
- and you put a little, small kind of roof.
- Then you cover the roof with dirt.
- And grass grows over the whole thing.
- So you can't tell very much from the overflight,
- except the entrance to this.
- The advantage of this is that it's very well-insulated.
- So it's relatively warm in there.
- And we did have sort of a potbellied stove
- in the center of this thing.
- So if you're in a good location, in other words, if you
- were in a good barracks where they would allow everybody
- to crowd around.
- In nasty barracks, where there are killers,
- they won't let you get near the stove.
- And they'll take you bodily and throw you back.
- So that's the luck of the draw.
- Mhm.
- And how about your barrack?
- I was in a relatively good barrack.
- So we all crowded around and took
- turns when I was in, keeping warm, that is.
- And people who seemed in more dire straits,
- they made sort of a special place for.
- When I was in Birkenau, the way people kept warm early
- in the morning-- they throw you out
- of the barracks about 5:00 or so.
- And it's very bitter cold outside.
- Everybody stands tightly in a human stove.
- We just press together.
- And then they break up so that the outside people
- can come to the inside.
- So you keep forming and reforming, forming
- and reforming.
- And that's what keeps warm.
- You made reference to having a clot removed.
- Was it then?
- I believe you said in Dachau.
- In Dachau, right.
- I could hardly walk with this.
- And I had a clot in my foot.
- So I went to the dispensary.
- And they looked at it.
- And they said, OK, we're going to remove it.
- And they marched me in, put my foot up on the table,
- and I stood on the other.
- And this French Moroccan guy was there.
- And I don't know whether it was an inmate doctor or just
- an inmate who was there.
- I suspect he was a doctor, because he sewed it up OK.
- And he cut in and made about an inch and a half cut
- and removed this clot and sewed it up again.
- And it didn't become infected.
- So it was OK.
- And then I went back to the barracks.
- So there was some form of medical attention?
- Oh, yeah, there was in this.
- And there were people in the hospital with various diseases.
- But there was very limited things that they could do.
- I was hoping that the knife hadn't
- been used before and such.
- So that was all right.
- Well, by the time, as I said, I got to Dachau, it was the end.
- I don't know what happened with the prisoners who
- were liberated right there.
- I haven't met anybody who was liberated at Dachau.
- But I met soldiers there.
- I remember one guy saying, he says, I saw them come out.
- And I just pulled the trigger.
- And I didn't care.
- And I feel bad about it now.
- But he did say, I just--
- I saw that.
- And I said, these guys did it.
- He was sitting in a tank, you know.
- What about your fellow prisoners?
- Did they talk about vengeance also?
- They would have.
- But they were so weak.
- Mhm.
- And then I remember one incident where
- a German comes in a prisoner uniform,
- tries to hide among the prisoners.
- The prisoners tried to hit him.
- Well, you know, a prisoner's reactions
- are so slow that it's like watching slow motion
- cameras in action.
- And he wasn't harmed a bit.
- He was merely trapped by the number of bodies.
- And when GIs used to sit on the side, and they said march by,
- and they'd watch for the bobbing head, and they'd say you.
- Because prisoners shuffle.
- They don't bounce.
- And then they pick them out.
- And all they have to do is take off his clothes.
- And then you say, oh, I can't see your ribs.
- Where did you get to eat?
- How much did you weight?
- 65 pounds when I was liberated.
- Yeah.
- Well, what about your health in general?
- Do you feel like you have any long term health problems?
- Yeah.
- I had, well, the TB, which I got.
- I had this on my foot.
- I was beaten with rifle butts on the side of my hip here.
- I have scars there.
- I've had two open heart bypass surgeries, one in '75 and one
- in '83.
- And I don't know whether that's directly or indirectly
- connected.
- The stress probably didn't help.
- The diet probably reduced my arterial clogging.
- It's the only good thing came from these studies,
- was that you showed that, in severely starved prisoners,
- the arterial clogging decreases.
- But this is not a good way to treat heart disease yet.
- No.
- So the arterial clogging for the time of the starvation--
- Yes.
- --or for the future?
- No, I suspect that for the future, it increases.
- Because the area is prepared.
- That's what I suspect.
- Because there is an area there already that's initiated.
- But what initiates the area is still not
- really completely proven.
- I think that my most severe loss is the loss of my loved ones.
- And it's not just a person.
- It's a connection and a sense of isolation and loneliness
- which is difficult at times.
- I think the loved ones of survivors
- are left with an absolutely hopeless task.
- Because people who love each other
- would always like to make the world good for each other.
- And in many ways, that can be done.
- But you can't restore dead people.
- And you can't restore those wrenching--
- those wrenched ties, I should say.
- And unnaturally wrenched.
- Yeah.
- Well, it's I think sudden losses are never really well-borne.
- But it was a little early.
- And I had no idea that what happened
- to me would affect my children and may even
- affect my grandchildren.
- That-- I thought that it would stop.
- And I think it has.
- It certainly was the only-- if I think
- of did any good thing come out of the Holocaust, yeah,
- I can think of only one, the state of Israel.
- You know?
- And that's the only good thing that came out of the Holocaust.
- The other things were simply losses.
- I don't know that we've learned an awful lot yet.
- But I thought that there would be more tolerance and at least
- regard for people's lives.
- And the traditional reactions that I see in this world
- contradict that.
- I think there's very strong evidence
- that there is no such thing as inherited memory.
- I think what this points to, that supposedly we
- inherit what we learned in history at some subconscious
- level.
- And this is the evidence that the learning level here
- is zero.
- So we're left with the burden of passing it
- on by the traditional cultural methods to change the values.
- Because all of those things that we call inherited,
- it leads to the knee jerk xenophobic reaction.
- I should say also that as a result of this,
- had there been no Holocaust, I would have still left Europe.
- You feel certain?
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
- I could see no way of--
- I could only see adapting under stressful conditions,
- under forced conditions.
- I mean, I could have stayed and I could have--
- but I wanted to live like a human being.
- I was not satisfied living like a subject.
- I didn't want to live by influence.
- When I grew up, the way you got places or did things,
- you worked hard.
- But then, either with the money, or the brains,
- or the influence, you had to have
- a connection to the powerful.
- I wanted to have rights on my own.
- I didn't want to have rights because my father knew
- somebody, or I knew somebody, or I had a connection.
- I wanted to have a house that is not built on a quagmire.
- I didn't want to live--
- I wasn't willing to work with the ambivalence
- of my existence every day for the rest of my life.
- I probably wouldn't have put it in those words,
- but that's how I look at it now.
- I wanted to get out of Europe in 1945.
- And if you'd have asked me in 1945
- why do I want to leave Europe, I would have said,
- because nobody wants me here.
- And I'm tired of holding the door.
- I dearly hoped that my kids would never face that.
- I remember an instance when my son was terrorized by somebody
- on a bus when I was in Davis.
- And I literally saw red.
- I saw my life before my eyes.
- And I went to the principal of the school.
- And he was going to give me a standard song and dance.
- And I told him, I said, now listen.
- I went to school, for my elementary school
- and my gymnasium, in the fear of my life every day.
- That's not going to happen to my son.
- And you're going to see to it or you're
- going to have to deal with me.
- And I'm a very tough cookie.
- And I hit this table and things jumped on it.
- I said, that's not the way children should show up.
- It's your job to catch the bully right now.
- Because we didn't do it in time in Europe.
- And there was nobody to do it for me.
- But I'm here for my son.
- Did he?
- Oh, yeah, he read me right.
- Because I'm very persistent.
- And I went to the parents, and I explained to them just
- exactly how I felt. And they also
- knew that I wouldn't go away.
- But I wish that those issues wouldn't arise.
- Well, after the war, I went to work,
- as I told you, at first in the displaced person camps and then
- in the--
- From-- is it Seefeld?
- Is the name of the town Seefeld?
- Seefeld, the town that I was--
- where the guards ran away, was Seefeld, spelled S-E-E-F-E-L-D,
- Seefeld.
- And the town that we encountered Germans in
- was Mittenwald, when they took us in the gymnasium
- and they gave us some food and allowed us to sleep
- there, which was very nice.
- Because it was very much warmer than out in the snow.
- And then we left Mittenwald and walked toward--
- we had heard that they were setting up
- a camp in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
- And we walked in that direction.
- And then an American major came along
- on one of those Jeeps, tremendous Second World
- War Jeeps with this big pole in front.
- The pole was made to cut wires.
- The Germans used to put wires in the middle of town.
- The people drove with Jeeps with the windshield down,
- because they often broke.
- So as they were driving, the wires would cut it off.
- So to counteract those wires, they
- welded this big piece of steel in front of the Jeep.
- And it's an angle iron that faces forward and pitches
- a little forward.
- So he put us all in his Jeep.
- It was seven of us all together.
- And I sat in front, holding onto that thing for dear life
- and drove us into the Garmisch-Partenkirchen
- prisoner--
- displaced person camp.
- It wasn't a prison camp, a displaced persons camp.
- And we got there.
- And the next morning, bright and early,
- I went to the commander's office and I said,
- I can speak languages.
- I want a job as an interpreter.
- And I got a job right away.
- There was another applicant there who was a PhD, actually.
- But he couldn't speak rapidly.
- He read very well.
- Mhm.
- And they needed instant translation.
- So I got the job.
- Did you have a medical exam at any point early on?
- No.
- No?
- No, I was still in these clothes.
- And then I got some throwaway clothes.
- The UNRRA people were there, and they gave us some clothes.
- And we got some clothes here and there.
- So we went through delousing.
- They loused up the whole camp.
- We were in DDT up to our eyebrows.
- And you know, DDT is awful now.
- But we also have to remember how many millions of lives
- were saved that would have died because there
- was no vaccination.
- There wasn't enough-- there was not enough antibiotics.
- They would have died at the end of the war.
- But they used to literally surround the village,
- put the DDT sprayers.
- They had a nozzle like a nozzle on a gas pump.
- And it goes-- there are these air compressors going boo, boo,
- boo, boo, boo.
- And they grabbed you by your shirt.
- And before you know it, they stick this down the front,
- and they twirl you around and stick it down the back.
- And you're in this cloud.
- [LAUGHS]
- And then they propel you on the other side.
- I saw an American production line in action.
- And man, woman, and child, mayor, lieutenant, colonel,
- I've seen GIs grab a Colonel steps out of the car.
- Sorry, sir.
- [IMITATES AIR COMPRESSOR]
- Everybody comes sputtering and this white dust all over.
- But it stopped epidemics.
- And you can draw lines when those epidemics stopped.
- So that was the medical care?
- Yeah, that was.
- And then I worked, as I said, for this war criminals camp.
- And then there was an opening in a transportation section
- of the military government in town.
- And I heard about and I tried for that job.
- And I was an interpreter there.
- What about the war criminals job?
- The war criminals camp, we prepared these people.
- Once they were processed, there was no more job for me there.
- They were interesting to see.
- They had all kinds of people working.
- A woman with a PhD in chemistry, and a PhD in philosophy
- was single-handedly responsible for 8,000 deaths
- on experiments, unbelievably bad experiments, unbelievably bad.
- Never learned anything from it.
- You just killed the people.
- Oh.
- Did you meet any of the former guards that you knew?
- No.
- No.
- I never.
- No, they scattered.
- These were higher level people.
- We also had-- a famous German film star was there.
- And there was a women's section there also.
- But I worked mostly in the men's section.
- There was an American agent who came from Czechoslovakia.
- His name was Karl Friedman.
- I don't know what he did.
- It turns out my adopted parents met him before I had met them.
- Oh.
- And he sure prepared terrific dossiers on people.
- Because we knew the name of their high school teacher.
- We knew which high school they went to.
- We knew which party they were in,
- which section of the party they were in,
- what time they were where.
- Even got some idiosyncrasies of various schools,
- so if they said which school, he says OK.
- Who was the math teacher?
- And we could check it out.
- Mhm.
- There was a considerable bit of information piled together.
- They were not innocents.
- So you said you were interrogating people?
- Yeah, interrogated people.
- And then that was for a period of about three weeks
- or so, three or four weeks.
- Then I got this job with the military government.
- And I used to go out a lot with GIs.
- In fact, I lived in a house that GIs lived in.
- I lived in the loft, so to speak.
- And I went to a USO show.
- And at this USO show, I ran into-- a member
- of the USO show was trying to buy a camera from a German.
- And he was sputtering in broken Yiddish.
- And then I translated for him.
- And the name of this guy is Harry Hines.
- He was a small bit actor in old cowboy movies.
- He's sort of a poor man's version of this character who
- always had a beard on--
- now I can't remember.
- He was known as a character actor
- in a lot of cowboy movies.
- His name was Harry Hines.
- And Harry Hines introduced me to the people who eventually
- became my adopted parents.
- And they came from the United States,
- originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
- And they moved to California in the '30s.
- And my adopted father's name is Ben Rashal, R-A-S-H-A-L.
- But his professional name was Rochelle, R-O-C-H-E-L-L-E.
- And my adopted mother's name was Jane Rochelle.
- And they were known as a dance team of Rochelle and Bibi.
- And they were headliners.
- And they played at the Paramount in New York,
- and on The Strand in New York, and other places.
- They had no children.
- And when they came to Europe with the USO trip,
- they wanted to help somebody.
- So I ran into them, and we started talking.
- And when I met them, somebody was
- visiting there, a singer by the name of Jane Froman.
- And Jane Froman was a very well-known,
- a popular singer in the United States.
- And she was in the crash, I think,
- of a Pan American clipper.
- And she had lost a leg.
- And even though she had only one leg,
- she was still a very popular singer.
- And I met her there.
- So we started talking.
- And I went back the next day.
- And they asked me, would I like to go to America.
- And I said, let's go.
- [LAUGHS]
- I did go back and tell the people
- at the military government that I'm leaving.
- Because otherwise, they would have had a patrol
- out looking for me.
- Because they thought there might be some people--
- they were still arresting people.
- And I worked with the CIC there when they did
- some interrogation and whatnot.
- So ironically, the major who was in charge of the military
- mission in Garmisch-Partenkirchen,
- his name was Major Heil, H-E-I-L. Very nice man,
- but I told him I was going to go.
- So I traveled with this USO show.
- I was in charge of operating the spotlight.
- That was my job and to bring water to the acrobatic dancer,
- a very nice lady called Nina Nova
- from Denver, Colorado, who spent her precious coupons to buy me
- new boots.
- And I was so small, I only wore the women's clothing.
- But I outgrew it within weeks.
- I changed sizes.
- But we traveled together from Garmisch-Partenkirchen
- through Salzburg.
- We were in Mozart's town in Salzburg.
- And then, eventually, we traveled together to Paris.
- You could just travel like that with no papers, no nothing?
- Well, if you're traveling with the USO show,
- you just sit with the guys and you go across borders.
- They don't ask.
- They think everybody-- and they gave me an American uniform.
- Now when I got to Paris, there was a Romanian ligation
- in Paris.
- The ambassador-- not the ambassador,
- the consul in Paris from Romania,
- hadn't been in touch with his government in two or three
- years, you know.
- He had a flag.
- He had a house.
- I think his wife was French.
- He obviously must have had enough money
- to last out the war there.
- And when we went there with my adopted father,
- I told him in advance.
- I said, look, the Romanians are all very rank conscious.
- He's probably going to call you general.
- If he calls you general, don't correct him.
- If he calls you Colonel, don't correct him.
- Because they'll start at the top and work down to where you say
- that's what I am.
- I said, don't correct them.
- The USO's insignia is a bird, a sort of a wide-winged bird.
- I wouldn't call it an eagle.
- But I knew that this guy, all he knew about American uniform
- was that an eagle is a colonel.
- He called my adopted father a colonel.
- Well, a colonel was next to God in 1945.
- I said don't correct him.
- So he didn't have passport forms, either.
- So we said that's OK.
- Just type it out.
- All we need is a stamp, you know, and his signature.
- So I was officially adopted there at the Romanian embassy.
- And then with that, we could go to the American embassy, which
- is at the Rue Gabrielle Number 2, just off the Place Concorde.
- And I got to know that place very well.
- We went to American embassy for the adoption,
- to apply for my visa.
- And they play an interesting game.
- They say sure, we'll get you a visa.
- But you have to have a steamship ticket.
- Then you go to the steamship company.
- And they say, sure, we'll give you a steamship ticket,
- if you give us a visa.
- So I got the steamship company to say
- we will guarantee passage between these two dates.
- And that was good enough.
- And then they gave me a visa.
- And actually, my last name is Benko,
- with two dots over the O in Hungarian.
- But at the American embassy, they
- didn't have an umlaut on the typewriter.
- And they asked whether I really wanted that, then I'll
- have to wait and go to the other building
- or see if they can find.
- I said never mind.
- Right.
- I'm Benko.
- I became Benko as of then.
- I didn't want to change my name, although my adopted parents
- would have.
- Because I said, I'll never find my aunt.
- Because she knows what my last name is, so she'll be looking--
- and not, as it turned out.
- But really, they were very nice.
- But they helped me get in the country.
- It was understood that I was going to be on my own
- when I got here.
- But they were very generous.
- And they arranged for me for a place to stay in Paris.
- They found out, for example, that in Paris,
- the Rothschilds, the much maligned Rothschilds,
- well, they do a lot of good, too.
- And they ran a block long rooming house,
- which they owned.
- And the name of the street is Rue Guy Patin,
- spelled G-U-Y P-A-T-I-N. Guy is the first name,
- Patin is the last name, some French hero.
- I looked it up once, but I forgot what Mr. Guy Patin did.
- It's right where Boulevard Barbés
- runs into Boulevard Magenta.
- And they run in at right angles.
- And this street connects that at a triangle.
- And it's right near the Barbés-Rochechouart subway
- station.
- And that's where I lived after my adopted parents went back
- to the United States.
- My papers hadn't come through.
- I had to wait in Paris till my papers came through.
- Meanwhile, they had to go back to work in the United States.
- How did you support yourself?
- They left me some money.
- And then I did interpreting for various GIs, or GIs who wanted
- to go someplace in Paris.
- And I'd be their translator.
- And I got to know Paris.
- I got to know the Louvre very well.
- Every day I used to go to the American embassy
- to find out whether my visa arrived.
- And they'd say no.
- And I'd have the day to myself.
- Or I'd go out with people.
- And there were a lot of interesting people in Paris.
- An American composer by the name of Mark Blitzstein was there.
- And he was just a GI writing music.
- And I'd go with GIs sometimes to classes at the Sorbonne.
- And I'd go to concerts.
- And I lived like a GI loose on the town in Paris.
- So were you going out with young women, too?
- Oh, yes, yes.
- And that's why it was difficult to go to high school
- after that.
- [LAUGHS] I had unlimited hours.
- When my adoptive parents were living in Paris,
- I lived in a suburb called Chateau de Crécy.
- And the Chateau de Crécy was the headquarters of the USO.
- And I saw every act of vaudeville
- that ever existed between 1930 and 1945 at the USO in Paris.
- And there were some big stars that came through.
- And there was a huge dining hall that was presided over
- by an American sergeant who ran it
- like a very strict cafeteria.
- Anyway, I remember him telling some very well-known star,
- put her tie on.
- She couldn't have her breakfast without her tie
- on in his dining room.
- But they were very generous with food.
- My adopted father would sit down,
- and he would take something like a half of a quarter
- pound of butter, and mix it in my cereal.
- And I ate incredible amounts.
- People used to watch me eat.
- [LAUGHS]
- Because I'd eat two bowls of cereal
- and two servings of eggs.
- Really.
- How old were you then?
- I ate an awful lot.
- Your teeth were OK during all this, too?
- No, I had problems with my teeth afterwards, but not immediately
- then.
- I had, mostly, a sore foot.
- And my foot was sore, mostly.
- But that was the most obvious sign,
- that my foot would drag after a while.
- And I saw a good deal of Paris then.
- The French dealt very badly with foreigners is the truth.
- I was brought up as a great admirer of French culture,
- because they sponsored Romania.
- And my teachers had gone to school in France.
- And they went to the Ecole Normale.
- And France was very highly thought of.
- But they treated strangers like dirt.
- And eventually, I had to bribe myself to get the police permit
- to leave France.
- I literally bribed my way by giving cigarettes and cigars
- to the various officials.
- I got the stamp to leave France.
- Because you had to have a permit that
- showed that you hadn't committed any crimes from the Paris
- Prefecture of Police.
- The Paris Prefecture of Police's line
- up is like an old-fashioned bank with little teller windows.
- Well, there are about 25 in a row.
- And there's nobody at 24 windows.
- And on the 25th window, it says etrangere.
- And the line runs out and around the entire block.
- And the other guys are sitting with their green shields,
- you know, like old poker dealers, doing nothing.
- And the etrangeres are running around.
- And then they let you through.
- Well, that's how I got my permit.
- My adopted father was very resourceful in getting
- me a room on a boat.
- He went to the editor--
- one of the writers on The Stars and Stripes,
- he had a lot of friends at The Stars and Stripes,
- which was edited in Paris.
- And at that time, a story was going around
- that a general had shipped something like three racehorses
- and I don't know what else back on a ship
- going back to the United States.
- And he said, look, he said, either
- this kid who's been through the war gets a place,
- or I'm going to publicize that this guy did it.
- And we've got the goods.
- We've got the pictures and so on.
- So I got a place on the boat.
- So the pressure--
- Yeah.
- You were saying about giving cigars, so
- why don't you talk about that?
- That must have been--
- My adopted father, he bought the cigars
- at the PX, and the cigarettes.
- And that's what helped me get the permits to get out.
- So when you traveled, you were going by yourself?
- Well, no.
- I traveled with a document that I got from the Romanian
- consulate.
- True, but the Rochelles had left already.
- Yeah.
- But I was in Paris.
- They left from Paris.
- And so I had my passport from the Romanian consulate.
- And then I had my visa from the US and my ticket.
- And they even arranged for me to have fake papers
- to go from Paris to Bordeaux.
- I traveled as captain US.
- Because we had a friend at the USO.
- And the USO had papers with temporary rank.
- So you could get a priority place on a railroad car.
- So I traveled from Paris to Bordeaux and caught my ship.
- And, well, it's a historic irony that you probably
- remember sometimes in American history about the Nelson--
- it's called the Aldrich Nelson tariff.
- Tell us more.
- OK, well, this was an anti-trade measure.
- Because it was a trade.
- Well, I came over on a ship named the Nelson W. Aldrich.
- [LAUGHTER]
- I always thought it was ironic to name a trading
- ship-- it was a Liberty ship.
- So I came to New York.
- And my adopted parents' agent was supposed to meet me there.
- But he couldn't get there in time.
- And a man from the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society met me.
- He met every boat that came from Europe.
- Amazing.
- He was a wonderful man.
- His name was Mr. Schwartz.
- I didn't know him from a hole in the ground.
- And he just looked at me.
- And he says, Mr. [NON-ENGLISH].
- And I said yeah.
- So we started talking.
- And usually, he met people who hardly spoke English.
- And he was very nice.
- And I told him that I will be picked up.
- But he already took me to a hotel,
- arranged for a room for me.
- And then he says, just in case they don't show up,
- you'll be taken care of.
- And he didn't know that you were coming, in particular, did he?
- No, no, he didn't know that I was coming.
- His job was sit there and meet the boats.
- You know, people contribute money for things like HIAS
- and they never know what they do.
- Mhm.
- And what they did was wonderful.
- Yeah.
- And anyhow, my adopted parents' agent picked us up.
- And so next thing, I'm riding in his car.
- Next thing, I'm in Scarsdale, New York.
- Of course, I didn't know Scarsdale
- from a hole in the wall.
- It was a very elegant neighborhood.
- And we were riding home on the bus.
- We take the train to Scarsdale.
- I'm going to his home.
- My entire assets consist of a suitcase in which
- there are two wool blankets.
- There's one shirt, one pair of underwear,
- everything else I'm wearing.
- [LAUGHS] I wasn't going to give up those blankets.
- So we were riding on the bus.
- And he says-- to this day, I don't even remember was it NBC?
- He turns around and he introduced me.
- He says, this gentleman here, he's a president.
- And I still don't know.
- It's NBC or CBS.
- And I said, what's that?
- And they both-- they had a roaring--
- [LAUGHS] but when I said, what's that,
- and I still don't know what I said that's so funny.
- So I stayed with him for a while.
- And then I--
- This was the agent or--
- The agent, yeah.
- Turns out the agent originally came from Romania
- to this country in the First World War
- and he now lived in Scarsdale.
- His name was Smith, Eddie Smith.
- And he had an office in the Paramount building
- just off Times Square.
- And he had been my adopted parents' agent for a long time.
- And where were they?
- They were playing someplace in Chicago.
- So I stayed then with a friend of theirs,
- because they wanted to show me New York.
- And they gave me some money.
- And they said, when you get lost, call up.
- So I didn't get lost in New York.
- It sounds like it must have been a lonely time
- for you being in a brand new country on your own.
- Yeah, but I was very joyous, you know?
- Actually, I really didn't expect gold
- in the streets or things like that in New York at all.
- I really wasn't all that uninformed.
- I was amazed at--
- what struck me most was that I had come from someplace
- where everything was war torn.
- And every face that you looked into had the scars of wars
- and, you know, friend or foe.
- It's as if you'd been stamped with age, and pain,
- and suffering, and being dragged down.
- In Paris, especially in Germany, Paris
- was a little more cheerful.
- And there were elements of cheer.
- But people were so bad off in terms of hunger.
- And the only thing you could buy with that ration tickets
- were bread and tomatoes.
- I ate so many tomato sandwiches.
- [LAUGHS]
- And everyone was trying to sort of primp themselves out
- of the war mentality.
- But Paris was as filthy as New York is now.
- And it had suffered a great deal.
- And when I arrived in New York, New York
- was incredibly friendly.
- And it was clean.
- And I remember thinking that newsstands,
- papers in newsstands regularly?
- And that was unheard of.
- And people actually went in restaurants and ordered things
- and were served.
- And you ordered whatever was served instead
- of this is what we have today.
- And I used to watch people eat outside Horn & Hardart.
- I couldn't believe there was so much food in one place.
- And then people told me a long story about how
- they suffered during the war.
- And their hardship was that they only
- got half a pound of butter or something.
- And that was very strange.
- I went to the Hayden Planetarium and some museums in New York.
- And then I went to California.
- And California was much stranger for me.
- And I went cross country--
- New York to--
- --to California.
- I took a bus trip.
- And that's where I first ran into Jim Crow.
- The bus lines were on strike.
- So I went on American Bus Line.
- That went to Chicago, from Chicago to Indianapolis.
- Indianapolis is the first place where I saw Jim Crow.
- I was riding with a Black ex-GI who had this emblem,
- it's called the ruptured duck.
- It's the symbol that you were a veteran in the Second World
- War.
- And we had been in some of the same places.
- And we were chatting.
- And I said, well, let's go eat together.
- And he said, we can't.
- I said, you don't want to eat?
- I assumed that he didn't want to eat
- with me because I was a kid.
- He says, oh, no.
- He says we have to go to separate rooms.
- And I couldn't believe it.
- [WHISPERING] I couldn't believe it.
- And then I got to Los Angeles.
- And I stayed at my adopted parents' house
- for a short while.
- And then I got in touch--
- there was an article about me in the LA Times.
- And that's how I got in touch with my aunt.
- Someone they knew, someone I'm actually distantly related to
- lived in Los Angeles and came to the house
- and talked to me in Hungarian.
- I remember he said, in Hungarian, you
- look just like Ilus.
- Ilus was my mother's name.
- So I knew he knew me.
- Really.
- Yeah.
- Was this just a wild coincidence?
- No, there was an article in the LA Times.
- And he was a barber in the Paramount Studios.
- Had been there since the mid '30s or so.
- And he read the article.
- It was in the Sunday LA Times.
- And a lot of people called up from that article
- and wished me happy life.
- And they were very nice.
- But he came to the door.
- He wanted to see me.
- And then he told me where my aunt lived.
- My aunt had moved during the war,
- and therefore she didn't have a telephone.
- You couldn't get telephones during the Second World
- War in New York.
- So then I got in touch with my aunt.
- And within two weeks, I was on my way to New York.
- That must have been--
- Yeah.
- Extraordinary.
- Yeah.
- To have a relative.
- It was.
- Well, I knew I had an aunt.
- And it was really shocking.
- My aunt resembled my mother.
- When I got off the train in New York,
- she wore an identical shade of a green suit my mother had.
- I thought for a moment it was my mother.
- But it wasn't.
- And my aunt was very good.
- She had little formal education.
- She came here in 1928, married her husband.
- It was an arranged marriage.
- They came from villages not too far apart.
- And she had three children, twin boys and a girl.
- And the girl was a little younger than I.
- And the two boys were about two years younger than--
- no four years younger than I. So they lived--
- What were their names?
- Oh, Friedman, Martha and Louis Friedman were their names.
- And her daughter's name is Charlotte, Charlotte Friedman.
- It's now Charlotte Pritikin.
- And she lives in San Fernando Valley now.
- She's married to her husband, Pritikin.
- And her two brothers were George and Frank Friedman.
- Only Frank is alive today.
- George was murdered in 1969.
- We still don't know who.
- But they were a wonderful family, a very viable family.
- They were very crowded in a two bedroom
- apartment with three teenagers.
- So the girl had the bedroom.
- The parents had a bedroom.
- And then the three boys slept in pull out beds in the living
- room, this including me.
- And she just refused to treat me as if I was disabled.
- So she told me things about this country.
- First she told me, what I'm going to tell you now,
- you won't believe.
- But I'm going to tell you anyhow.
- It's just your reminder.
- She said, first of all, education is free.
- Impossible.
- You can go to school as far as you want.
- You can work and go to school--
- unheard of in Europe.
- Why was it?
- You wouldn't have time?
- Kids don't work in Europe until they're adults.
- It's not the custom.
- Only English kids work in Europe.
- All the others don't.
- They're really trained to be parasites.
- And sometimes they get to be middle aged parasites.
- And she said, you know, working.
- In Europe, my father, one summer he
- wanted me to become an engineer.
- So he apprenticed me.
- So I would have the apprentice training.
- Because you have to pass the apprentice
- exam in order to get to the better engineering schools.
- His friends called up and said, are you short of money?
- Your son's apprenticed?
- What's the matter with you?
- It was a dishonor for a middle class person
- to wear the blue uniform of a blue collar worker.
- But she taught me more about civil rights than anybody.
- Did I tell you that story, when she--
- No, you haven't really talked about your wife.
- OK.
- She was a woman who lived in the United States as an American.
- She came here with a deliberate purpose
- of adopting a new country.
- She didn't bring her old culture.
- And it didn't wear away.
- She reached and embraced it.
- And she learned American customs.
- And she knew American law and what her rights were.
- And she took them very seriously.
- The day I arrived, the day after I met her at the railway
- station and I was still overcome emotionally
- because she looked so much like my mother, [CRYING] Aunt
- Martha, she takes me home.
- And it's lunchtime.
- And her kids were going to come home from lunch for school
- to meet me.
- We hadn't been in the house maybe 5 minutes,
- and doorbell rings.
- This is a typical New York apartment, a long front
- corridor and then rooms off the side.
- And the doorbell rings.
- She goes to open it.
- And I could see past her.
- There was a cop so large he darkened the hallway.
- And she was about 4 foot 10, small, thin.
- And she says yes?
- And he says is this the resident of Mrs. So-and-so?
- And she looks at him, what's the matter with your hat?
- What's the matter with your hat?
- I'm looking-- at this moment, I'm
- looking for windows to climb out of.
- We're on the fifth floor, I'm thinking
- of jumping to the next window.
- And I know there's a fire escape there.
- I wasn't going to get arrested by a cop, whatever, you know.
- Cops is what I avoided.
- So I see he removes his hat.
- And he says, may I come in?
- And she says no.
- Have you got a warrant?
- He says no.
- Then stay there.
- I was petrified.
- I thought the Earth would end and it would
- open up and swallow us both.
- Or we would both be in jail and the key would be thrown away.
- I only knew absolute authority.
- There's nobody could stop a cop in Romania or in Hungary.
- And here was 4 foot 10 telling 6 foot 2,
- must have been 260 pounds.
- I remember that darkened hallway.
- And she said no.
- And then she closed the door and we had lunch.
- [LAUGHTER]
- Now that, to me, from then on, I knew that I had rights.
- What did the policeman want?
- He was looking for somebody.
- Oh.
- Or other.
- It was-- and I knew.
- Marvelous.
- She was-- yeah.
- She told me everything.
- She told me about the government printing office.
- She knew how to write to the government printing office
- and get a pamphlet.
- Says people around here throw away money like mad.
- But you can get the best books on certain subjects here.
- And you got them from the government printing office.
- And I had a hard time getting along with kids, again,
- because my cousins were 12, and my other cousin was 15 and 1/2
- or so.
- And our lives had been so different.
- But gradually you--
- Did you have any trouble with things like nightmares
- or other kinds of--
- Oh, yeah, yeah, I had a lot.
- When I first stayed with my adopted parents,
- they would wake up because I talk in my sleep.
- And I'd be talking in my sleep, you
- know, in German and Hungarian and French and English.
- And then I'd be screaming and such.
- And then they would wake me up.
- Yeah, I did.
- But gradually that subsided, gradually.
- Yeah, I had them for a long time.
- But they do subside.
- At times, I was depressed.
- I felt very lonely when I went to college.
- As I said, during holidays I was very--
- I felt I didn't fit anywhere.
- And I did have a great sense of loss.
- It's like you keep looking at what you're missing.
- And that is there.
- And once in a while, I see my kids.
- And my parents would be so overjoyed to see them.
- I missed them an awful lot.
- When I had to make decisions, I missed the fact
- that I couldn't consult with somebody that I really,
- really both trusted and regarded highly.
- I was overprotective of my children because of it.
- And I tried not to be.
- But I think I tend to be.
- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].
- Yeah.
- It was.
- And as I said, I still feel that I
- didn't understand my son during a crucial time
- of his development.
- And he's fiercely independent.
- He's very good-natured and very kind-hearted.
- And when he was 9 years old, we were living together
- when I was going to graduate school in Davis.
- And he was dying to have a bike, like all the other kids.
- So graduate stipends being what they are,
- and I'm just divorced, we didn't have much money.
- So I went and I bought him a used bike.
- And as we were walking out of the store,
- I would have loved to buy him a new bike.
- And he said to me, don't worry, Daddy.
- To me, it's a new bike.
- Oh.
- And it touched me.
- It still does.
- Well, that's the best of your values, that he said that.
- Yeah.
- But he had a hard time.
- He was in school, I think, because he
- thought that I was very strong in a certain way.
- So he had to show that he was very strong.
- And I think it cost him an awful lot in his social relationships
- to be very strong and very rigid.
- You know, these things you say, how your being a parent
- is more affected--
- Yeah.
- --I mean, in a way, that's a kind
- of terrible, long term after effects, the kind of childhood
- you had.
- I mean, the kind of childhood in the camps.
- Yeah.
- Did you talk with your children about the Holocaust
- and your experiences?
- I've talked with my son gradually.
- I didn't tell him a great deal.
- Above all, my son and I were very close.
- And we are close.
- And I knew that if I told it without some gating,
- without some stepping, he would hate Germans on sight
- for the rest of his life.
- And I know that hate is very destructive.
- It has its function on a short period of time.
- I mean, it empowers destitute people to do incredible things.
- But long term, it is a powerful negative.
- And I didn't want him to carry that cross on him.
- And my bouts of being very serious and very earnest
- are probably outgrowths of this.
- And he saw that, anyhow.
- So I tried to tell him some things gradually.
- I haven't told him a great deal.
- But he's certainly aware of it.
- And I told Eleanor, my daughter, who's
- 11, gradually, a certain amount.
- And I tell her in bits and pieces.
- And then, actually, she brought it up.
- Because one day-- she's very bright.
- And one day she said, the holiday came.
- So where's the other set of grandparents?
- She was about four then.
- So I told her that they died during the war.
- I didn't want to say they were killed.
- Because then a four-year-old can't handle it.
- I'm thinking maybe it would be a good idea to stop the formal--
- Oh, yeah, sure.
- Oh, my God, I didn't realize.
- --anybody has questions.
- And also allow time for the filming of the documents
- that you have.
- Oh, yes.
- I'm sorry.
- Do you have any more questions you
- would like to ask right now?
- No?
- How about you, Dan?
- We'll need a few seconds here for the tape to roll.
- And then--
- OK.
- OK, tell us about this picture, who these people are,
- and the date it was taken.
- This was a pre-wedding photo of my father and mother,
- taken about in 1928.
- Going from--
- Left to right.
- --left to right, this is my aunt.
- Her name was Irma Salamon at the time.
- This is my father, Rudolf Benko.
- This is my mother, Ilus Benko.
- That's spelled I-L-U-S.
- And this is Martha Salamon, her sister, her older sister.
- She's the one who came to the United States and lived here
- and has three children here.
- And this is her brother, Daje, who
- emigrated to Israel after the Second World War
- and passed away there.
- Roll tape here.
- OK.
- This is, again, pre-wedding picture
- with Rudolf Benko, Ilus Benko, Martha Salamon, Daje Salamon,
- and Irma Salamon.
- By the way, that Salamon is spelled S-A-L-A-M-O-N.
- This is my mother at age--
- about 16, dressed to go to school.
- And so what town would this have been taken in?
- This was taken in a village called Gyeres.
- That's spelled G-Y-E-R-E-S in Transylvania.
- OK.
- And what about this one?
- Now this was a dress up ball where the two sisters went.
- And this is my mother Ilus and her sister Martha.
- They're about 17 and 15 here.
- And this same picture graced both their homes.
- It was in my mother's house.
- I remember it in Europe.
- And the same picture was at Aunt Martha's house
- in the United States.
- That's my mother, baby Paul.
- If you take a look at the crocheted collar on my mother,
- she made that.
- And if you take a look at the baby outfit that I'm wearing,
- that was sent by my Aunt Martha from the United States.
- Reframe this for a moment.
- Paul, same picture as before.
- That's 1929.
- I have to let it run for a minute.
- Oh.
- And this?
- This is at about age two when my parents
- lived in a house, a villa outside my hometown of Cluj.
- And we had a little cherry orchard behind the house.
- And that's my mother, holding me on her shoulders.
- That must be about 1931.
- And that's about the same-- no, that
- looks like a younger picture.
- That's my mother holding me as a baby.
- I can see what you mean.
- And this is--
- The same picture.
- --a reiteration of the earlier shot.
- Yeah, same picture of the earlier shot.
- And I got those from my Aunt Martha.
- She gave me all of these pictures.
- I have literally nothing left from Europe
- when I came to the United States.
- This is?
- This is me.
- I'm not sure what age.
- I'm guessing about three or so, two or three.
- And that's my mother in our backyard, where there was
- a cherry orchard on the back.
- And this is the carriage, my summer carriage.
- Convertible.
- Yes, right.
- I'm guessing, again, it's about 1932, '31.
- And--
- Probably '31.
- --what town would this be in?
- This would still be Cluj.
- This is all Cluj.
- It's also called Kolozsvar in Hungarian.
- And it's called Klausenburg in German.
- OK.
- This is my mother with a new, contemporary hairdo.
- And that's me.
- The outfit is made by my mother.
- And the outfit my mother is wearing
- is also made by my mother.
- She was very accomplished in dressmaking
- and suitmaking and designing.
- And this?
- This is the dining room of our house.
- We had moved from the cottage that you
- saw in front of the cherry orchard into town.
- This is an apartment that we lived in.
- And in this apartment, my Aunt Irma was married.
- If you take a look at the tablecloth there,
- that was made by my mother.
- And if you see that crochet cover of the sideboard,
- that was made by her, too.
- I just want to get a little larger look here.
- Yeah.
- On the left is a stove.
- That's how the rooms are heated there.
- They're fairly high ceiling rooms.
- And I remember that quite well because that's
- where my aunt was married, in this apartment of ours.
- She lived with us at that time.
- This is?
- This is-- over here is the mother-in-law of Irma,
- whose name I don't know now.
- This is my mother.
- And this is a guest at a wedding down here.
- And the other person is I, at a wedding.
- OK.
- Oh, this is a picture of my--
- oh.
- This is your mother?
- This is my mother at a bath.
- These are high salt baths near my hometown.
- It's called Szamosfalva.
- This is a resort.
- It's like the Salton Sea.
- It's very high salt content, the water.
- OK.
- Oh, this is the same wedding.
- The people you see here, this is a friend at the wedding.
- Sorry.
- And so is this.
- The next person is my mother.
- And the person down here is her brother-in-law here.
- His name was Gombi.
- That's G-O-M-B-I, with umlauts over the O. And that's me.
- That was at a family get together.
- OK.
- And here?
- Oh, yeah, that's the picture of--
- it's out of sequence, actually.
- It's in the backyard of the place
- where we lived near the cherry orchard.
- And that's my Aunt Irma holding me.
- Oh, my.
- This is the wedding of my mother's brother Daje,
- who was in the first picture.
- And you can see that this is his bride.
- Is Daje the one over-- there you go.
- This is his bride.
- This is the bride.
- The groom, unfortunately, is not in the picture.
- I don't know who this is, but it isn't the groom.
- He must have been taking the picture.
- This is her mother.
- This is Irma over here.
- And her husband is--
- I'm sorry.
- It's easier if you look at the photograph, I think,
- rather than the monitor.
- And--
- Oh, OK.
- --point with your--
- There.
- OK.
- It's hard to see upside down like this.
- OK.
- OK.
- And these are various kids at the wedding.
- Oh, I know who that is now.
- I'm sorry.
- This is Irma's husband right over here, standing here.
- And the others are various guests at the wedding,
- including the fiddler.
- And you can see I'm wearing the sailor suit over here.
- [LAUGHS]
- OK.
- OK.
- And this is essentially--
- Whoops.
- Same thing.
- This is the same shot.
- You can see that Daje, who was sitting next to the bride
- before, is now kneeling before her.
- Here's the bride.
- And here's her mother and various kids.
- And I don't recognize the rest.
- So they must be guests at the wedding.
- OK.
- And--
- Oh.
- Well, let's see.
- We're over here.
- Same sailor suit.
- This person over here, his name is Otto.
- He was a Salamon.
- And he immigrated to Israel shortly after his 18th birthday
- from Romania.
- This was in the '30s.
- He was smuggled across borders to get to Israel, much
- to the dismay of his father.
- But he got there and lived happily there.
- He's done very well.
- Oh, this is a summer resort, or rather, I went there.
- I spent my summers with my aunt, who had the cross over here.
- That's my Aunt Irma and her husband Gombi is there.
- And this is the daughter of the host of this party.
- This is the host, whose name was Zsuzsi.
- That's Susan and her brother, whose name I don't remember.
- And that's me.
- And this is the host's mother-in-law sitting here
- in the corner.
- OK.
- And this is a picture by our house, which was on a hillside.
- At this time, I'm about seven years old here.
- It's not unusual in Europe, during the summer,
- to really cut the hair off completely.
- And kids sort of vie about who has the more shaven head.
- And I won that competition.
- [LAUGHTER]
- OK, let's see.
- That's mother and son?
- That's mother and son, exactly.
- If you take a look at mother's sweater, she made it.
- If you look at son's sweater, she made it.
- What an amazing woman.
- Yeah.
- And designed it, then made it, I should say.
- Yeah, I got a new suit.
- And that picture was in honor of the new suit
- there, about eight or so.
- Did she make it?
- No, not this one.
- But she made others for me.
- But those are all, everything you see there,
- you can see the same sweater.
- Those were taken--
- I was about eight at the time
- Same set of pictures.
- She just had a whole set.
- And my Aunt Martha gave me all of these.
- Oh, this is a statue in the center
- of my hometown called Cluj.
- On the statue, you can see the figures at the bottom.
- Those are nobles greeting King Mathias.
- This statue was for King Mathias,
- who was a Hungarian King who was supposed to have
- been born in Transylvania.
- And that's why he's honored in the main town square.
- And the statue is over 100 years old.
- And the church behind it is, I think, about 600 years old.
- You can't see the church in the picture, unfortunately.
- Oh, this is the Opera House.
- In Cluj?
- Yeah, this is the Opera House of Cluj.
- You can see it's drawn after French models.
- There's a carriage entrance.
- And that's a usual European opera house.
- I saw my first opera there, Carmen,
- and enjoyed a lot of concerts there and operettas.
- Oh, I don't know whether you can see that.
- But that says Drogerie.
- That's a drug store.
- And the reason we have a picture of this one
- is because my Aunt Irma worked in that drug store.
- This is off one of the squares in Cluj.
- And Drogerie is a Romanian word?
- Means drugstore, yeah.
- Romance language, very similar to--
- Yeah.
- If you saw the cobblestone streets,
- that was a Roman road once.
- We still use the same street.
- And they were just cobble stoned since then.
- OK.
- This came from a camping trip that Irma and her husband Gombi
- took.
- And this is the remains of a Roman tower,
- the ruins of an old Roman guard tower in Transylvania.
- A lot of these ruins around, because the Romans
- were there for a long time.
- And they have viaducts and these guard towers left.
- OK.
- Well, you can see that the war intervened.
- And there are no pictures between 1939 and 1945.
- Actually, this picture was taken in the fall of 1947.
- This was my high school graduation picture.
- I had a little more hair.
- From Stuyvesant?
- Yes.
- This is my first year in college in Berkeley.
- I came to visit my aunt.
- And we're standing in her backyard
- on South Orange Grove Avenue in LA, Los Angeles.
- OK.
- Again, I'm in first year college.
- I'm in front of her house, South Orange Grove Drive.
- And that's my cousin Franklin, who now lives in Palos Verdes.
- That's, again, 1948, spring of 1948.
- Oh.
- This was taken on my first trip in Golden Gate
- Park with my cousin Charlotte.
- That's spring of 1948.
- She took the picture.
- This is my aunt's backyard on South Orange Grove
- Drive in Los Angeles.
- And as soon as she got out of her New York apartment,
- she grew a lot of plants.
- [LAUGHTER] And that's, again, 1948.
- And this?
- Oh, that's my Uncle Louie, Louie Friedman,
- who was my aunt's husband.
- And we're in front of the Chinese Theater,
- I think, in Chinatown in San Francisco.
- They came for a visit.
- This is about 1950.
- OK.
- This is Ben and Jane Rochelle, who adopted me in Paris
- and helped me get into the United States.
- This is their apartment in North Hollywood,
- though they don't live there anymore.
- She passed away.
- And he's still alive.
- They were both dancers, very disciplined dancers,
- played for a long time, the sore backs and hurt joints.
- They were wonderful people.
- Where-- OK.
- This is Irving and Dora Klein who lived in Los Angeles.
- Before that, they lived in New York.
- She was my mother's aunt.
- And in a distant way, we're related to him also.
- But they were wonderful to me when
- I came to the United States.
- They were very kind.
- OK.
- This is a picture of my son at age, about, three, at the Child
- Development Center in Berkeley.
- And he holds a saw exactly the same way today.
- It's amazing how posture is conserved.
- That's my son, Peter.
- OK.
- This is a picture of my son Peter, age about eight
- when he was going to school.
- OK.
- This is a picture of my son at his 21st birthday celebration.
- He came to visit us in Puerto Rico.
- I was there as a visiting professor for a year.
- And he came down to see us.
- And we're celebrating his birthday together.
- And this is your wife?
- And that's my wife, Sandy.
- Oh, that's right.
- We hadn't introduced her before.
- Actually, I have other pictures of her.
- OK.
- Anytime.
- OK.
- This is 1991, a picture of Eleanor, Sandy, and myself.
- How old is Eleanor here?
- 11.
- Well, you have a handsome family.
- Thank you.
- I think so.
- Yes, I mean all of them.
- In this--
- OK.
- This is your daughter.
- Yeah.
- This is my daughter, Eleanor Ilus Benko.
- Her middle name is--
- [MUSIC PLAYING]
- Any time.
- OK.
- Today is July 23, 1991.
- I'm Sandra Bendayan here, interviewing Paul Benko.
- This is interview number four.
- And we had left off with you returning
- to New York from California to be with your aunt and uncle.
- So that's the place to start.
- My aunt and uncle were Martha and Louis Freedman.
- And they lived on East 88th Street,
- just between First and Second Avenue, in an apartment house.
- They had moved during the war.
- And they found a tiny apartment for three teenage kids.
- It was a two-bedroom apartment, three teenage kids.
- And they immediately took me in.
- There were two boys, named Franklin and George Friedman,
- and their daughter, Charlotte were my cousins.
- And they embraced me in the family.
- They tried to make my passage to life as unspectacular
- as it could possibly be.
- They didn't make exceptions.
- They didn't make special rules.
- They didn't treat me any differently
- than their children.
- And I was unaccustomed to American ways,
- to say the least.
- I had lived for a while essentially on my own
- during my stay in Paris when my adopted parents had left.
- I think I discussed how I came here
- through Ben and Jane Rochelle.
- And Ben and Jane Rochelle were in show business.
- And they were traveling around.
- And essentially, they helped me get in the country.
- But they couldn't be responsible for me on a day-to-day basis.
- So that's why I stayed with my aunt and uncle.
- There, my aunt immediately dragged me down
- to Stuyvesant High School.
- Our first meeting was very dramatic,
- because my aunt resembled my mother very much.
- And she happened to be wearing a green suit at Pennsylvania
- Station, where she met me.
- And also, I was overwhelmed by the resemblance.
- And she recognized me immediately.
- I didn't wear a boutonniere or anything
- like that for a recognition signal.
- But as soon as I got to her house,
- that's when the incident with the policeman happened.
- I had just gotten there.
- She fed me some lunch and promptly dragged me down
- to Stuyvesant High School.
- And the people at Stuyvesant High School--
- Stuyvesant High School is one of three high schools
- that one takes an exam to get into in New York.
- At that time, it was Stuyvesant, Bronx High School of Science,
- Brooklyn Tech were those three.
- And they gave me the admission test,
- even though it wasn't the exact date.
- And they admitted me even though I couldn't solve problems
- involving inches and feet.
- And I just crossed it out.
- And I said the international methods of measurements
- were centimeters, meters, millimeters,
- and such, not inches.
- And they were very helpful.
- And Stuyvesant High School turned out
- to be one of the most wonderful experiences in my life.
- They had a wonderful teaching staff.
- And there was a spirit to the school that had nothing
- to do with rah-rahs, or football teams, or soccer teams,
- or whatever teams there were.
- They really recognized the students
- who were intellectually curious and who were accomplished.
- It's the student who solved the most difficult math
- problem was the most famous student in the school.
- It was the student who came up with an original solution
- to a classic physics problem was the most famous student,
- the same thing in biology.
- And most of the student body was interested in engineering.
- And so they leaned heavily into math, physics, and also
- mechanical drawing, and such things.
- But they didn't neglect the humanities at all.
- In history class, in one class, I remember,
- we sat according to political parties from left to right.
- We had two semesters of history, one taught by an admitted
- leftist, and the other one taught by an admitted rightist.
- They were quite ethical in their presentation.
- And they had very, very high standards in this respect also.
- So just because it was essentially
- a science school and an all boys school
- didn't mean that the other things were neglected.
- And the students really competed in the sense
- of getting more information to the classroom, rather
- than less.
- They were very, very tolerant of individualistic behavior,
- unlike European schools entirely.
- Students did talk to teachers, did disagree with teachers,
- which was unthinkable in European life.
- In my first week there, somebody literally
- objected to an explanation of atomic structure,
- because they presented the simplest explanation,
- and left the room in anger, and slammed the door.
- Such behavior, you know, I expected mass executions
- on the spot.
- I thought I'd be thrown out of school together
- with all other members of the class.
- And I'd never be able to darken that institution's doorstep
- again.
- But they didn't.
- The instructor just turned around and says,
- what he says is partly true, but we have to start someplace.
- And since most of you haven't had this before,
- we're going to start with the simplest model.
- Anyhow, the instructors were absolutely wonderful.
- I can still remember my economics instructor,
- for example--
- you'd expect that in science, it would really
- be very up to date because it was a science high school.
- But my economics instructor, for example,
- had half a semester of theoretical economics
- and half a semester of consumer economics.
- And I learned about such things as Consumers Union and such.
- And on the other hand, in the theoretical side,
- we read Veblen in high school.
- And it was a very, very exciting place to be.
- And the school also provided me with speech correction,
- because in New York, schools tend
- to encourage the young students to lose their accents,
- because they feel this is a negative aspect when
- hiring is done.
- And I developed a limp while I was there.
- It turned out that I had a bone fragment in my foot.
- From what?
- From wearing wooden shoes and probably stumbling and hitting
- it.
- But it was diagnosed by a physician who
- comes from my own hometown who was then in New York
- and examined me.
- He then told me I'd have to go to an orthopedic specialist.
- The physician's name was Frank Gruber.
- He was born in Cluj.
- He came from a very poor family.
- And the congregation in Cluj made it possible
- for him to go to school, so that he
- slept in some people's houses.
- And then he got meals in other people's houses.
- And he eventually went to school in France.
- And he was supported.
- And he was a student of Madame Curie.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- He became a radiologist.
- And then he came to the United States with his family.
- And he was responsible for developing
- an early method of photographing ulcers by lowering balloons
- in the stomach.
- Anyhow, Dr. Gruber was also very kind and very helpful to me
- in explaining how things worked here.
- And he referred me to an orthopedic specialist.
- But the fact is that I didn't have a lot of money.
- And so the school--
- there was a student advisor in school, a counselor,
- who said, oh, we have a special fund for that.
- He noticed my limp, too, and talked to me.
- And it turns out that the school had a fund
- that when the student provided 50%,
- the school provided 50% of the funds.
- And I went to see a Park Avenue specialist, who charged
- $25 in 1946, early 1947.
- And that was a lot of money.
- That was 50 hours of work for me.
- And I had to pay it out of my own pocket.
- And that's when I made $0.50 an hour.
- Well, his name was Albert Shine.
- And he looked at my foot.
- And he diagnosed it correctly.
- And I went to Mount Sinai Hospital
- during the Easter vacation.
- And I was, again, treated very, very nicely.
- The social worker who did the intake interview
- told me that, you know, I wouldn't have to pay,
- because I was an indigent for their purposes.
- But I was not treated as an indigent at the hospital.
- It was a model.
- I knew about Mount Sinai Hospital,
- because they had very famous physicians there.
- The doctor Béla Schick is there.
- And he's the one who discovered the scarlet fever test.
- And they're really one of the more famous hospitals probably
- in the world.
- And we had talked about it in the school that I went to.
- That's the kind of school it was.
- And so my foot was operated on, repaired there.
- And I haven't had any problems with it since.
- I took all the appropriate New York State Regents exams.
- But I could not take the Regents scholarship exams,
- because I was not a citizen.
- I didn't qualify for those.
- And when I was graduating, which was February 1948,
- was the cresting of the post-war GI wave.
- There were a lot of GIs applying to schools.
- And the GIs had preference for college admissions.
- So it was very competitive.
- I took the exam for City College in New York,
- because that was $2 a semester.
- And I applied to a number of schools.
- I got into every school that I applied to.
- But we sweated getting into school.
- It's not like California, where students
- who really want to get into school
- can get in fairly easily.
- Did you have any trouble having missed that time
- during the war of school?
- Not really.
- I had a difficult time with--
- the math, I really hadn't missed that much math,
- because I think math is taught an earlier
- stage in European schools than they're here.
- Writing spontaneously, I had a difficult time,
- because I was used to censoring myself very carefully.
- In European schools, one never reveals oneself,
- because that can lead to arrest.
- The way history was taught here was very, very different.
- Well, all teaching methods here are very different from Europe.
- Well, we sat rigidly in chairs.
- And we were told when to take notes,
- and when not to take notes, and such things.
- But it's much freer here.
- There's less direction, also, less proprieties about how
- homework is done or submitted.
- As far as content was concerned, Stuyvesant High School
- was first-rate.
- But it was wonderful to be able to talk to a teacher
- without standing at attention, and first asking
- permission to address them, and all that sort of thing, which
- would have occurred in Europe.
- Also, in Europe, we wore uniforms, which
- I detested all of my life.
- And there was no such thing here.
- The school day was very short.
- That was the one peculiar thing.
- Stuyvesant was overloaded.
- And so I went to school from something like 7:32 to 12:37.
- They ended at odd times.
- And then I worked at the public library in New York
- to support myself.
- My aunt and uncle, who I lived with in New York, as I said,
- they took me and they embraced me in the family.
- And to this day, my relationships with my cousins
- there are closer to brother and sister than to cousins.
- You said that family treated you exactly
- as if you were any other child.
- Right.
- Did you feel that they were doing that, knowing you
- would appreciate it or that they really
- appreciate your experiences?
- No, my aunt and my uncle knew in their hearts
- what new immigrants go through.
- And they did give me some warning clues.
- One is that there is a tendency of people to exaggerate
- how good things were.
- And particularly, my aunt was a very severe critic
- of the entire European culture.
- She used to get into family arguments about that.
- When people brought up the, quote, "good old times,"
- and she would list such things.
- Good old times?
- Says, how many people were raped and never prosecuted?
- And this is way back in the '40s.
- And she mentioned the unpleasant as well as the pleasant aspects
- of the old life.
- Naturally, I went through a period of adaptation,
- because in some senses, I acted as an adult
- when I was on my own in Europe, and I was working with GIs.
- And then I had come back here and be a schoolboy again.
- And when I lived in LA, I think I mentioned that,
- and I went to high school where there's a dance every noon,
- and I was flabbergasted.
- It wasn't that at Stuyvesant High School.
- Periodically, there'd be dances.
- And since it was an all boys school, quite a bit of time
- was wasted in scheming ways to get
- the dance going with the girls' school, which
- was Julia Richmond.
- But I got a job first at a pharmacy on Second Avenue.
- And then I got a job at the New York Public
- Library, which helped me support myself through high school.
- So after a semester of living with my aunt and uncle,
- it was terribly crowded.
- They just had a two-bedroom apartment and four teenagers.
- It's more than I'd wish on anybody.
- I did find another apartment, and I shared it with somebody
- else, nearby, on 80th Street.
- And then I ate with my aunt and uncle dinner, usually.
- And breakfast and lunch, I did by myself.
- And then they moved to California in '47.
- And I stayed on in New York till I finished high school.
- I explored New York thoroughly.
- New York was a wonderful place to be in,
- because for very little money, mainly car fare,
- one could see the most fabulous sights.
- And for a few cents, you could see
- concerts in Lewisohn Stadium and wonderful plays
- in very off-Broadway places.
- And it was a great experience.
- Often, I was very lonely, because my family had, by then,
- gone to California.
- Did you have any connections to the Jewish community there
- or to your neighbors?
- Well, there was a lot of Jewish friends and relatives
- when I first went there.
- But generally, I did have some somewhat more
- distant relatives.
- My aunt's husband's side, Louie's relatives.
- And they're very kind and very generous in every way.
- And I got hand-me-down clothing and such.
- So my support was very much eased that way.
- And Louie had a brother named Joe,
- who had a small grocery store on 89th Street between, I think,
- Second and Third Avenue.
- And he always sold me things cheaper.
- So they were very nice.
- I missed the family.
- And well, part of it was that I worked weekends.
- I worked Saturday and Sunday.
- I worked eight hours Saturday and anywhere
- from four to eight hours on Sunday.
- And then the rest of the week, I would work four hours
- at the public library.
- And this is 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.
- So I guess it was a blessing in disguise that I wasn't.
- I would have been lonelier had I had both Saturday
- and Sunday off.
- And there were times when I was lonely.
- But I also learned a lot about New York.
- The people who worked at the public library
- were a very diverse lot.
- And Stuyvesant, by the way, was a fully integrated high school,
- in the sense that there were Blacks,
- and there were Puerto Rican students there.
- And some of them worked at the public library.
- So we got to know each other.
- And I got to know some guys who played in jazz bands.
- And I went along with them to various jazz bands.
- And literally, I was all over New York.
- And I never felt threatened or--
- and I was never afraid or anything.
- The group of students that I did know
- generally all had great interests
- of some kind of or another.
- And it was a great education to be with them.
- We looked at the world very differently.
- I tended to be very cautious about knowing
- people and talking to people, because that's
- the European political experience is such
- that one does this.
- But I learned the veracity of their expressions
- by the way they acted.
- They were not afraid to say, or do, or disagree such.
- And so I gradually understood that there
- is a freedom that permeates American life at a functional
- level, where people are not constantly censoring themselves
- as they speak, whereas in Europe, even in the most
- educated circles, there is a strong tendency to censure,
- particularly value judgments that involve public issues.
- Private issues may vary, but public issues, in particular.
- Do you think that is true in the culture,
- say, even before the war, before the camps?
- Oh, yes.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- In Eastern Europe, for sure.
- The notions of defined rights, the inalienable rights,
- are unknown to Eastern Europeans.
- The only know rights by connection, by birth,
- by influence, by social status, by professional status.
- Those things provide rights, but not inalienable rights
- that are independent of connections, or status,
- or any political, or social, or ethnic association.
- That's an entirely foreign concept.
- The mouse in my house, my castle,
- they do read it, incidentally.
- I heard that expression, reading in Hungarian books.
- But no one could put that in functional terms.
- It's very interesting.
- No, they wouldn't.
- It sounds like that was one of the more difficult things
- for you to get used to was.
- Yes, it was.
- Yeah, it was.
- I couldn't believe that there really
- was such a freedom of choice.
- I thought it was another con game.
- I mean, in Europe, we heard all these things also.
- But we knew they weren't true.
- And so it was one of the things one paid attention to one
- didn't question in good company.
- But the students' dream of becoming something or other
- didn't depend upon their father's occupation.
- In Europe, that's specifically so.
- I mean, I was in graduate school with the son of a coal miner.
- And he didn't think it was unusual.
- And by the time I was going to graduate school,
- I didn't think it was unusual that he went.
- After all, he went to school and got good grades.
- He passed the exams.
- He got an assistantship.
- So he's here.
- So why not?
- But if you'd asked me that in the first year
- that I came here, I would have said, uh-huh,
- and I would not have believed that at all.
- Well, I did have other experiences
- too when I was working at the public library.
- There was a fellow there whose name was Mapp--
- M-A-P-P-- and was a very good student, went to Stuyvesant.
- And he was Black.
- And of all the people there, we were all
- talking about which colleges we applied to,
- he's the guy who had not applied.
- And I said, Mapp, why not?
- And he said, my father has a bachelor's degree.
- And he's a sleeping car porter.
- And I can get to be a porter without a bachelor's degree.
- And that was a bitter reminder and reflection
- of what that Black physician said to me after liberation.
- But as I said, in Stuyvesant, there were Black,
- and there were even some Black students who spoke Yiddish,
- because they grew up on the Lower East Side
- next to Jewish families.
- And in fact, they spoke good Litvak Yiddish.
- And we would get a substitute teacher.
- And of course, we'd all always be
- talking about the substitute teacher in Yiddish.
- But Stuyvesant was a wonderful preparation.
- And I decided to go into plant pathology.
- The reason I did is because when I investigated
- to go to various medical schools,
- you had to have $10,000 down.
- And there were all kinds of requirements,
- which I couldn't have mastered.
- And I couldn't take the Regents exam and score so high
- that I would get a Regents scholarship because I was not
- a citizen.
- So I applied in various places.
- I applied to the University of Oklahoma, to Norman, Oklahoma,
- because their tuition was $50 a semester,
- even if you were a nonresident.
- They were interested in attracting students from out
- of state, I guess, too.
- And I found out later, that's a good school.
- And I applied to Wisconsin.
- I applied to Oshkosh College in Wisconsin.
- And I applied to Syracuse University.
- I applied to Cornell also, because Cornell's agriculture
- department is supported by the state.
- And so the tuition was less.
- And I applied to Syracuse.
- And I applied to Berkeley, which had the best
- department of plant pathology.
- And I was interested in plant diseases.
- And I was admitted to Berkeley.
- And I went.
- I graduated one day.
- And I left the next day.
- My relatives-- I had some relatives
- that lived out on Long Island.
- These are very distant relatives--
- second aunts and such.
- They gave me the proverbial box with chicken and goodies in it.
- And I got on the bus and went to California.
- And I thought-- by that time, my aunt lived in Los Angeles.
- I had the typical New Yorker's view of California.
- Los Angeles is somewhere on the outskirts of San Francisco
- or vice versa, I suppose, then.
- So I thought Berkeley would be nearby.
- I couldn't possibly believe it was 400 miles.
- So I went to California.
- And I went to Berkeley.
- From the school, I won the Parents
- and Teachers Association Award.
- And that was, I think, $150.
- So I could buy my ticket to California
- and have some money left for the first few days.
- And I didn't realize that California was great,
- but it's much harder to find a job in California
- than New York.
- At that time?
- Oh, yes.
- And very much harder.
- And it took me a long time in Berkeley
- to learn enough to find a job.
- And the jobs were very hard to get in Berkeley.
- So I came here.
- And I didn't realize that California had
- an out-of-state tuition fee.
- And I just didn't have the money.
- So through the Hillel Foundation in Berkeley,
- the director of the Hillel Foundation
- directed me to a women's group in Berkeley
- who had a student loan fund--
- a Jewish women's group had this loan fund.
- And so instead of paying $35, I had
- to come up with $175, which might
- as well have been $10,000 at the time, because I didn't have it.
- So my finances were very rocky in my first semester
- at Berkeley-- very, very rocky.
- And it was very, very difficult to find jobs,
- because there were so many students
- there all applying for jobs.
- Plus, I was not a citizen.
- And there were tremendous numbers
- of jobs in California, both private and public,
- that required citizenship.
- Did you plan to become a citizen?
- Oh, yes.
- Yes, as soon as possible.
- I made sure all my immigration documents were in proper order.
- And I reported to the immigration department
- in San Francisco on Sansome Street.
- But it was a very difficult semester because
- of having very little money.
- And I used to smoke in those days, I'm sorry to say.
- And I used to say sometimes, oh, it's
- going to be a cup of coffee or a pack of cigarettes.
- Well, a pack of cigarettes will last through the whole day.
- So I tended to buy a pack of cigarettes for something
- like less than a quarter in those days.
- I was really in very short rations.
- And I was willing to do anything.
- One of the things that my aunt and my uncle
- taught me was that I did come to this country
- with European views about work, that all work
- was honorable here.
- And they really believed it.
- And they lived it.
- So I had no reluctance about doing physical labor
- or anything of the sort.
- In fact, one time, I thought of becoming a plumber
- instead of going to college.
- And sometimes, I wonder.
- But I knew that I was willing to work.
- But finding a job was very, very difficult. And part
- of finding a job is how to present oneself
- in getting a job.
- And I didn't know that one's supposed
- to do certain things in getting jobs in those days.
- How did you manage financially while you were out of work?
- Well, I would get jobs cleaning people's homes,
- and sweeping, and doing this.
- But there weren't very many jobs like that, because there
- were so many others also doing it-- and dishwashing
- and things like that.
- I got a dishwashing job at the International House,
- finally, in Berkeley.
- And I lasted, I think, a week and a half
- because I broke a cup.
- And that was it.
- So I was fired.
- But since that, had lots of dishwashing jobs.
- I got all kinds of jobs while I was a student at Berkeley.
- And as a result of that, of having no money,
- the Draft Bill was passed, the Selective Service Act of 1948.
- And under that, one could go in the army for one
- year, stay in the reserves, and serve one's military obligation
- that way.
- And this was the Cold War era.
- And there were no GI benefits, though, from this at all.
- But I thought that if I went in the army
- and I saved my salary for a year,
- it would ease my transition in college.
- And it did.
- So I enlisted in the army.
- And I volunteered to do translation,
- which I had done before.
- Then they told me that I was officially an enemy alien.
- And because I was an enemy alien,
- I couldn't possibly get my clearance.
- And if I can't get my clearance, then there's
- no point in training me or doing anything of the sort.
- And I finally asked them, how many native-speaking--
- native Americans, I mean--
- who can get a clearance spoke colloquial Hungarian
- or Romanian?
- And they said, well, that doesn't matter now.
- What we have to do is this.
- So I gave up the ghost on that.
- And I wound up in--
- I was sent to first Fort Ord and then to Fort Hood.
- Now, it's called Fort Hood, Texas.
- It was Camp Hood, Texas.
- It was an Armored Division.
- And I eventually wound up in the medics there.
- And I had a very nice lieutenant by the name of George Kravis,
- who brought me good books.
- And so I read some good books while I was in the army.
- And I learned something about medicine.
- That came in handy later on in microbiology.
- So I got out of the army after this one year of service.
- And I joined the reserves.
- I came.
- I hitchhiked back to California to save money.
- Had you been seeing your aunt and your family regularly?
- Oh, I used to visit them in Los Angeles.
- Actually, I enlisted in Los Angeles
- after the semester was over.
- Yes, we certainly kept in touch.
- And usually, I went down either once at the beginning
- or at the end of the semester and visited them
- in Los Angeles, yeah.
- Did you have any romances in this period?
- Oh, sure, the usual.
- What else did you do in Berkeley if you didn't have money?
- And instead of going out, you went to all the public dances.
- So I danced.
- I eventually taught dancing.
- I learned enough dancing.
- And that's after I got out of the army.
- And that's one of the ways I made
- money is to be a dance teacher.
- I made a lot of friends.
- Berkeley was full of people from all over the world.
- And I went to Hillel a lot.
- So when I came out of the army, as a matter of fact,
- I got a job cleaning up Hillel.
- There was a fellow there by the name of Jerry Plattner.
- And I think he took pity on my plight.
- He was an ex-GI.
- And he got the GI Bill.
- And so for him, the job was great
- because it was an addition to the, I think, $75 a month,
- which was a tremendous amount of money in those days.
- But I lived there for a while.
- And then I moved out in an apartment.
- And I was an undergraduate in Berkeley.
- I was official in the College of Agriculture,
- which means that in the lower division,
- you do mostly science and very little
- else, and then in the upper division, your specialty.
- But there was no law against attending
- classes in other people's classes in Berkeley.
- And the classes are so big, they can't tell who was in there,
- anyhow.
- So I heard a lot of interesting historians,
- and political scientists, and sometimes philosophers.
- And whenever I finished my work in the lab,
- wherever a lecture hall was open nearby, I'd go visit.
- So heard the famous Kelsen, who was a judge of the Supreme
- Court of Austria.
- He lectured on international relations.
- And I sat in the class by Rappaport,
- who talked about Russian diplomatic history.
- And I heard a student of Veblen's, who was still
- a professor there in Berkeley.
- I mean, some lectures I didn't attend regularly.
- But Berkeley, in some respects, was very inhuman,
- because the students are just lost.
- And I had huge classes.
- And we had a class in Western civilization
- that spent five minutes on the entire Renaissance.
- I had more in high school on the Renaissance
- than I had in my Western civilization course.
- But in the sciences, Berkeley shone.
- Now, some of the instructors were very, very good,
- including Dr. Barker, and Dr. Doudoroff, and Dr. Stanier.
- And they were the leading lights of the world.
- I didn't know it then.
- I knew that they were famous.
- But I didn't realize that these were the leading
- lights in the field.
- And they had a view of the world--
- they were professors in the sense
- that they not only taught principals,
- but they taught a view of the world.
- So on the individual student, I don't
- think Berkeley is a place to cultivate undergraduates.
- But for some students who are very aggressive,
- Berkeley is suitable.
- Thus my undergraduate experience was happy in parts
- and absolutely dismal in others.
- There were people there who didn't treat students
- in such a way as to enhance their learning.
- So in what way was it dismal?
- Well, first of all, there were classes where rank intimidation
- was practiced.
- One of the most famous chemists, Hildebrand,
- would say, look to the left of you.
- Look to the right of you.
- On the third day of the class, only one of you
- is going to be here at the end of the semester.
- Now, that's not invigorating to a class
- that is scared silly about the standards, anyhow.
- The very large classes have a sense--
- they tend to repress the good.
- And they don't bring out the best in students.
- Now, for people who are well-trained,
- who are familiar with their field,
- large classes can be handled.
- But for beginning students, they're awful.
- They're just awful.
- And after I started teaching, I realized just how bad
- those were.
- So I learned to learn on my own.
- And in the beginning, I learned a lot, and I got lousy grades.
- I did learn a lot, though.
- I would get interested in something
- and follow it through.
- And I finally learned that the American universities were not
- like the European universities.
- When I was about six, seven, eight,
- my mother rented rooms to university students.
- And they would have very late-night discussions
- on various subjects.
- It could be chemistry.
- It could be architecture.
- It could be politics.
- Or it could be poetry.
- But they had followed, obviously, one stream
- through some process.
- Now, I didn't know this specifically.
- I didn't know this when I was seven years old.
- But my expectation when I went to university
- was that this was a place where one could follow
- one's interest within a course.
- And of course, you can't do that and expect to get quote,
- "good grades" to go on.
- One does this at the expense of a grade.
- So by the time I got to be a junior, I buckled down,
- because I knew I was going to have to get grades
- if I wanted to get into school.
- And I did learn how to get grades better.
- But I was actually a much better student
- when I followed my interests than when I towed the line.
- The plant pathology department at Berkeley
- didn't even have a field course at the time,
- it was so theoretical.
- It was strictly lab and lecture.
- I mean, it's unbelievable.
- But so I kept asking them about this, what they had one.
- And this was a very small department for Berkeley.
- There were only 12 students.
- And the faculty was so distant that my advisor didn't
- recognize me year to year.
- And he only had 12 students to worry about.
- And I thought, this was not the best.
- So when I finished--
- I graduated in '54.
- I started in '48.
- I was out for a year.
- When I came back from the army, I worked for him.
- Then I was out for a while making money.
- I sold shoes.
- And I did various things and then went back to school.
- I did have a good background in microbiology.
- And I got very much interested in microbiology.
- But I also knew that if you call yourself a microbiologist,
- there are no jobs in the United States.
- They're very difficult to get jobs as a microbiologist.
- But if you call yourself a plant pathologist, you did.
- And you only need three courses to call yourself
- a plant pathologist.
- So I took those courses.
- And I had some great, great teachers in plant pathology
- also.
- And the aspect of plant pathology
- that I was particularly interested in
- wasn't in the forefront, then, at Berkeley.
- Later on, it became very much so.
- So I started graduate school in the botany department,
- because I was interested in fungi,
- and there was a professor there by the name of Emerson, Ralph
- Emerson, the grand nephew of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
- who was a great teacher and a great researcher.
- And I got a job working for him as a lab technician.
- And during the time that I was in Berkeley, eventually,
- I should tell you that I earned my living as a grocery clerk.
- And eventually, I joined the union.
- I became a grocery clerk.
- And that was a very steady source of income.
- I was making horrendous amounts of money.
- And I actually saved money during the semester
- by the end of the semester.
- But when I gave up my career in grocery
- clerking to become the assistant to Dr. Emerson,
- and I learned a lot about fungi from him.
- But I learned very little in graduate school in botany.
- And I liked Emerson, as I said, but I didn't like the rest.
- And they didn't like me either.
- So at the end of my first year, I
- went off, because there was a position in Davis
- in the food science department.
- And Dr. Emil Marek, who later became chancellor,
- was at that time head of the food science department.
- And a project opened up that was related to fungi.
- And there was some translation involved in there from German.
- And I could do that very readily.
- And Dr. Emil Marek was a--
- first, he was a very prominent scientist in yeast.
- He and Dr. Pfaff wrote one of the major works on yeast.
- He later became an administrator when he was
- a chairman of the Department.
- But he was renowned for his sensitivity
- to people from all over the world.
- I mean, he could travel anywhere.
- You could drop him off at an airport blindfolded.
- He could pick up the phone and call somebody that he knew,
- he had as a student, or helped someplace in the world.
- And we had students from Greece.
- And we had students from India and so on.
- And in the food science department,
- there's a department that's applied science.
- But the reason that the department became so famous
- is because they stressed the fundamental aspects.
- And they had very few applied courses, as a matter of fact.
- So the people came out prepared to address different kinds
- of problems with that.
- There are certain schools which are called jam and jelly
- schools.
- People learn how to make jam.
- People learn how to make jelly.
- But they couldn't solve a problem to save their lives.
- Well, this was not one of those schools.
- And he took an interest in whether students
- earned enough money.
- And he was known as the deadliest man with a cocktail
- glass, because he raised more money at cocktail parties
- for students than anybody.
- And he did.
- So he asked me whether I wanted to become a--
- whether I wanted a title or whether I wanted money.
- And I said, I needed money right now.
- I was contemplating getting married.
- And so I told him I wanted it.
- So he made me a senior lab tech.
- And I got more money that way than being a research
- assistant.
- That was a great honor, but not much money.
- Did you get married?
- Yes, I did get married.
- And my wife moved up to Davis.
- And we lived there.
- What's your wife's name?
- My wife's name was then Vicky Crook.
- And she had been married before.
- And she had a daughter.
- And her daughter's name was Diane.
- She was two years old.
- And we lived in Davis.
- And Diane grew up.
- And eventually, Peter was born, who's
- four years younger than Diane.
- And Diane is now grown.
- She's a veterinarian and lives in Berkeley.
- And Peter is-- well, he's going to be 34 now.
- And he got his degree in economics.
- And he's learning computer programming.
- And we lived in Davis for those two years.
- And then I got a job in Berkeley.
- And the job was for a consulting organization.
- And this is an organization that consults to food processors,
- because the individual food processors do
- very limited kinds of work.
- And at least in those days, it was very limited.
- And they looked at all kinds of problems.
- So I went in their bacteriology department.
- And I worked there for two years.
- And there came a time when I wanted to buy a house.
- And when I applied for a loan, the guy looked at me,
- he says, how come you're making so little?
- Well, I didn't know.
- I had a master's degree.
- I said, I didn't know how little.
- I thought everybody made this little.
- And he said, no, no, you know.
- So I went and I got a raise.
- But even with the raise that I got,
- I barely qualified for a $12,000 house loan.
- So the state had exams open.
- And turned out that I took a state chemist's exam.
- And I was qualified for that.
- I had the courses.
- And I gave myself a raise by passing the exam.
- And there was an opening on the civil service.
- So I went to work for state public health.
- So had you become a citizen by this time?
- Oh, yeah.
- I became a citizen while I was still a student, at just five
- years there.
- I would have-- no, it took six.
- Actually, I would have become a citizen sooner,
- except they lost my documents someplace in Philadelphia.
- And then they said, well, there's
- a sure way to finding the documents.
- So they fingerprinted me.
- And apparently, that's the magic way to find documents--
- well, in those days.
- I'm sure now, it's much more up to date.
- But then I didn't have any problems with getting jobs.
- And actually, I thought that my army service
- would accelerate it.
- But it didn't.
- I served, also, four years in the reserves
- and got out of the--
- I was discharged honorably as a sergeant in the reserves.
- How was your health?
- I mean, did you ever feel like you
- had any supply from your years during the war and camps?
- No, not really.
- I have scars from being kicked and beaten.
- And I have a spot on my lung, which was discovered,
- which was probably TB-- well, it is TB, not probably.
- No, I had a lot of problems in my teeth were the main things.
- The other problems are the problems
- that all survivors had--
- loss of friends, loss of loved ones,
- and a total disruption in your life, a sense of why am I here?
- Why me?
- But that's common to all survivors.
- And now that I'm done, what am I to do next?
- I'm not sure that I've always answered those questions fully.
- But when I was in food science, for example,
- I would not work on certain kinds of foods,
- or what I considered trivial.
- In plant pathology, I was very firm
- that I was only interested in working
- on food-producing plants and not ornamental plants.
- Now, that's really being silly, is the truth.
- But my ethical position was that those
- are the significant things.
- And these were not.
- I've since learned that ornamental plants are really
- quite significant.
- And there's a lot to be learned from them.
- But in my primal dependence on food, I was focused on.
- And then, well, my choice of occupation
- had to do with the fact that I wanted
- to have a trade which I could practice anywhere in the world,
- whether I spoke the language or not.
- It never even occurred to me to go into a field
- where I was depended on a situation
- of a particular legal situation to make a living.
- Didn't occur to me to become a lawyer, or a CPA, or something
- of this sort, because those are all dependent on knowing
- the local kind of rules.
- And I didn't.
- You said, also, you wouldn't work on certain foods
- that you considered trivial.
- No, I would never work on potato chips.
- I wouldn't have worked on junk food.
- When I got my PhD, I knew something
- about the feeding of astronauts, because one
- of the major professors that I had worked on
- was a consultant to NASA on this subject.
- And I knew that the feeding program in NASA
- was fifth-rate in importance.
- In fact, importance, they're interested in other things.
- And this was mainly a public relations effort.
- It wasn't a serious effort of understanding
- fundamental processes.
- It was there because they sort of had
- to do it, make it look good.
- And I didn't.
- I had offers to join that and very fancy salaries.
- But I didn't want to do that.
- I didn't want to work on, as I said, trivial foods
- or work on iced tea.
- Well, it may be a major source of income for a lot of people.
- But I don't want to become an old person
- and then think back that I spent my life making better iced tea.
- You wanted some very meaningful.
- I wanted something much more meaningful.
- And I generally chose situations where
- that-- when I went to work for the National Canner's
- Association, we were working on a major process of irradiating.
- Part of the reason I went there is because they were using
- radiation to control botulism.
- Unfortunately, the process didn't work out,
- because the bacteria are so resistant that the food turns
- bad once irradiated.
- But what I was concerned with was something
- that was significant, that had a consequence,
- that had an effect, rather than finding
- new packaging for packages for Twinkies
- or something of that sort.
- I wouldn't have done that.
- And I worked at state public health.
- And I worked in the sanitation radiation department
- during the fallout season.
- And I worked there for quite a while.
- And I learned a great deal.
- And I met some very nice people and some lifelong friends
- there.
- But eventually, the work got very, very dull.
- And it was certainly a lot less than what I trained for.
- And so I decided to go back to graduate school.
- And by that time, I had bought a house in Berkeley.
- And my wife, then, also wanted to go back
- to graduate school in either anthropology or Chinese.
- She wasn't sure then.
- She wanted to do some Chinese translation.
- And so we sold the house, packed up, and moved to Davis.
- I applied to graduate school in Davis.
- I applied to Berkeley too.
- And I got in both places.
- But when I visited them, I thought
- that I would get to work with people more directly in Davis
- than in Berkeley.
- And so I went to graduate school in Davis
- in the biochemistry department.
- It was called the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics
- then.
- It was headed by a man by the name of Paul Stumpf, who
- has since retired.
- He turned out to be an excellent chairman.
- And it was a small department.
- It was very, very open.
- Essentially, the professor's policy
- was if the door was open, you could go in.
- And if it was closed, it meant you had
- to wait till the door opened.
- And they were very helpful.
- They were very rigorous.
- And I was very worried, because I hadn't
- been in school five years.
- And there was literally a revolution in biochemistry
- in those five years.
- And I knew nothing about it.
- What I knew about was how to get strontium out of sea animals
- and whatever kind you name, and how to count bacteria
- in waters, and such.
- But I wasn't up on this.
- And the other thing that helped is
- that I got a public health service grant, a training
- grant, which subsidized us in school.
- Those were the post-Sputnik era, when
- there was a great effort in science in the United States.
- And it paid off.
- Everything that today is called biotechnology,
- all the foundations came from then.
- So I was in Davis.
- And in order to get my degree in biochemistry,
- I had to take a lot more chemistry
- than I had had before that.
- So it took me six years.
- Plus, I worked on a problem unsuccessfully for
- almost a year.
- But then I switched problems.
- And my PhD problem worked out very, very nicely.
- And then when I was in graduate school,
- my wife and I were divorced.
- And I got custody of my son, Peter.
- So he was with me.
- And so I knew a lot about what single parenthood is
- like while he was going to school
- and while we were in Davis.
- And we lived in student housing.
- I claim I integrated student housing for single parents,
- because they were going to throw me out
- of married students housing.
- And I told them that there is nothing
- in the act that says that only single parents can live there.
- And they looked at--
- Was this unusual for a father to get custody at that time?
- Yeah, it was.
- In Davis, it was, but not Alameda County then.
- But anyhow, I got into this student housing.
- First, I stayed at a friend of mine's.
- He has a garage.
- And as luck would have it, his wife came from Germany.
- But she's much younger.
- She was born sometimes in the early days of the war.
- And she was very kind to Peter and I.
- And we lived in their garage for a while
- till this the student housing opened up.
- And then I lived in the student housing, which was very nice
- and provided some people to play with.
- And Peter got to be a very good tennis player
- by asking anybody who wanted to play tennis
- to play tennis with him.
- And he went to school there in Davis.
- And one day, he started bugging me about bringing home
- a teacher for dinner.
- So I finally said yes.
- And that teacher is my wife today.
- Really?
- Yes.
- How neat.
- That's it.
- So he brought Sandy home.
- Her name is Sandra Robbins, was then.
- And she was a student in education.
- She was finishing her teaching credential.
- And she was born in San Francisco
- and raised in Santa Rosa.
- And I finished my PhD there and did a little bit of work
- in one lab.
- And then I got a job.
- And I had to take the best-paying job at the time,
- because after my divorce-- you know,
- divorce is usually a financial disaster, and it was--
- my total assets were a very old Plymouth station wagon.
- And so I took a job with RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company.
- I went to Winston-Salem, North Carolina with my son and I,
- mostly on a credit card that came in the mail.
- And then a year later, my wife, Sandy--
- Sandy and I were married in Carolinda.
- And then she came to North Carolina.
- And I was there till 1970.
- And from 1970, we moved back.
- There was an opening at Sonoma State.
- And I've been there ever since.
- We live in Santa Rosa.
- And then Eleanor was born in June 14, 1980, which was
- our 11th anniversary exactly.
- Yes.
- Same day?
- Yes.
- And she's now 11.
- Do you talk with your children about your war experiences,
- about your time?
- Yes, well, they're--
- I have two children, but they're separated in time.
- So I went through two experiences.
- I didn't want to tell Peter very much.
- He knew dribbles, and dribbles, and bits, and pieces,
- because particularly when I was a single parent,
- I didn't want Peter to simply grow up
- learning to hate Germans.
- I did tell him some things, and gradually, little bits,
- because children ask questions and such.
- And gradually, he did know.
- And he did learn about it, but as I said, not all at once.
- And he probably heard about it when this was eight or nine.
- And he liked history.
- He used to read Second World War history.
- And then so he put two and two together.
- Gradually, he learned more and more in his teens.
- And Eleanor heard about it in the sense a little earlier,
- because we were sitting at the table.
- My former wife's in-laws visited us.
- They lived in New York.
- So we seldom had one of these kind of family dinners.
- But we had a family dinner.
- And Eleanor looked up.
- And she said, well, where's your side?
- And I told them, well, they died during the war.
- I used the term died at that time.
- So then gradually, she now knows that they
- were killed during the war.
- And she knows something about it.
- Gradually, she'll get more and more.
- There were some programs on TV which were suitable--
- I preview them, essentially.
- And there were some stories of kids in France
- who were protected.
- And even though I try to protect her as much--
- she has gone through the period of nightmares,
- where she felt threatened, and persecuted, and such.
- And I wish I could have saved her that.
- Did you have nightmares also?
- Oh, yes, yes, sure.
- I think it's less so as time went on,
- but pretty periodically.
- And humans are adaptable.
- And people do heal.
- When I came to this country, I made a very conscious effort
- to disassociate myself from my past.
- So I met other people who lived in the what if world.
- If there hadn't been a war, I would have been this and this.
- And really spent an awful lot of time on it.
- And I think particularly because of my aunt's tremendous sense
- of balance, whatever she said, she
- said it just at the right time, because I'm
- aware for my own children that timing is very, very
- important in children's perception and children's
- learning.
- She just said it at the right time.
- So I didn't mourn my past.
- I missed it.
- And I realized very late.
- When Bruno Bettelheim was at Davis-- in fact,
- I arranged for his coming to Davis,
- I'm the one who found him, and he
- was very hard to find, to speak at the Holocaust Lecture
- Series.
- And it did ring a bell that for a lot of people
- who were in the camps, they never got a chance
- to mourn their parents.
- And they never buried them.
- And that did resonate in me.
- So that was your situation, mostly?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- I mean, I remember, when I was liberated
- and I was both elated and sad, first numb--
- first numb, just numb.
- And then I hadn't even accepted that my parents were dead.
- I turned around and I expected to tell--
- I expected to tell my father because I was with him.
- And I had that sense that oh, he must be close.
- And then I couldn't.
- But on the other hand, I healed in the sense that I told you.
- I don't have a sense of wanting to go back.
- Apparently, I think, I was young enough
- to be able to sever in that cord.
- I think it would be much difficult later on.
- Do you think, at some level, maybe
- you did know your parents' loss?
- Yes, I did, but much later.
- Not when they died.
- Not then.
- No.
- No.
- I think I was well late in my 20s
- when I understood what it really meant.
- And I know that parental loss is very, very difficult.
- And I see it now happening to my friends, and colleagues,
- and such.
- And they're just devastated.
- But at the time that it happened to me,
- there was just no time and no place.
- And there was no--
- when I came to this country, I detested all ceremonies.
- I detested the ceremonies, because in my early childhood,
- these official ceremonies for the king, or for the party,
- or for some--
- all of these great, big marching ceremonies
- were all what I considered total frauds.
- And they were always imposed for some crazy purpose
- that had nothing to do with me.
- And we had few family ceremonies.
- I remember those.
- And in school we had these official ceremonies,
- which I detested, where you were inspected and looked
- at your uniform.
- And so I tended to dislike ceremonies.
- And now, as I grew older, I'm beginning
- to understand the function of ceremonies,
- that they punctuate life.
- We've got 10 seconds.
- I'll let you know.
- Can start.
- You just talked about having learned the importance
- of some rites or rituals.
- And from what you were saying, I assume you mean, say,
- the importance of a funeral--
- Yes.
- --in this case, where we--
- Yes.
- --were talking about mourning.
- I think it is.
- And how in the Holocaust, people died in the camps.
- You didn't know when, where.
- You didn't know where or when our--
- Or even in--
- Don't worry.
- Well, in the beginning, and it certainly was true.
- And I did go through a time where
- I hoped that it was all a terrible mistake.
- But I knew it wasn't, really.
- That German clergyman told me.
- And then I asked.
- And I asked and I asked.
- And I never had any reason.
- And the same thing with my mother.
- I knew.
- But in terms of fantasies, I certainly
- had fantasies that all this was wrong.
- And then it wasn't.
- So I missed my parents enormously.
- But that never left.
- Today, when my daughter does something,
- and she has a certain gestures that resemble my son.
- So I know that they're just inherited patterns,
- because they really weren't raised together.
- And there, she has other gestures
- which remind me of my mother.
- Sometimes, the way she holds a pencil
- or the angle of the head--
- I have an early picture of my mother
- when she was four years old--
- and the head is slightly to the side,
- it's exactly the same angle, that Eleanor.
- And I'm sorry that my mother would
- enjoy Eleanor very, very much.
- And Eleanor has the same sense of humor.
- And she would enjoy the same kind of word games.
- And she'd just be delighted to be
- able to show her something like sewing,
- where you can do fancy stitches or simple stitches.
- And you know, she showed me a certain amount.
- But I think that Eleanor would just thrive in that.
- And when she has a triumph, I sort of miss the fact
- that I can tell her.
- And it was the same thing with my son when he achieved.
- Those are times that--
- those are the events that punctuate life
- and where it's startlingly real, the absence of parents.
- And looking there at the table at a holiday
- and realizing that there are no other chairs here.
- I think the other aspect's that I
- think the children perceive that there is something missing.
- And it's true that Holocaust survivors
- tend to be overprotective of their children.
- That's true.
- Do you feel this to be true?
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah.
- God, yes.
- I certainly do.
- In what ways do you notice this?
- Oh, I tend to be very careful about everything,
- from seat belts to looking out for splinters.
- Or in buying toys, for example, I've
- never bought a toy that cuts children's hands.
- And I've seen lots of people buy.
- Or safety in school or safety in most things around the house
- were probably more than just conscientious.
- We are overprotective.
- Your wife as well?
- Oh, yeah.
- Oh, yeah.
- How about in external relationships or activities?
- Well, I don't know.
- It depends upon the intenseness of the activity.
- I don't think it really matters an awful lot in sort
- of pro forma relationships and casual relationships.
- I think that there is a--
- among our close friends, there's a tendency
- to shy away from some certain areas, because they're
- afraid that they're stepping on a landmine,
- that they're afraid that they're on very treacherous
- psychological grounds.
- In the beginning, people--
- when I first came here, I noticed
- people were really not quite sure,
- because they expected some to explode emotionally
- or to collapse.
- Or well, actually, I've never seen that.
- But I've seen people who burst into tears.
- I have seen people who withdraw, some
- who literally would work, and achieve, and then suddenly
- collapse.
- I was never quite sure whether the experience of the Holocaust
- is singularly responsible.
- But if it's this kind of event, and people have been,
- people are likely to associate the two.
- That said, I don't know for certain.
- I think it's difficult for children and for adults
- both that of people who suffered a great deal,
- if you get into a confrontation or an argument,
- there's a tendency to say, oh, they suffered so much more.
- How can I?
- And so it makes some situations that
- are difficult in themselves more complicated.
- So you mean, your friends wouldn't bring up
- certain topics?
- I think they wouldn't.
- They'd have to know me very, very, very, very well
- to bring up certain topics.
- I mean, there was a time when if they had something German,
- they would have hidden it before I went in their house,
- unless they asked me, well, how do
- you feel about such things are?
- I think there was an anticipation of not
- causing pain, or upsetting people,
- of being cruel inadvertently.
- And then from the early days, there
- were always question marks in people's eyes.
- But I know from my-- as I mentioned,
- in my experience with the soldiers,
- is I know what the effect is.
- And that's why people don't talk about it.
- People can't take that, being told exactly what happened.
- So it's the answers.
- I think the answers are feared.
- As much as they fear hurting the other person?
- Yes.
- Yes.
- And that is reciprocal.
- That's it.
- Have you been able to talk freely of your experiences
- with your wives?
- No.
- No.
- Well, they know some.
- But by the time I met and I was with my wives,
- I was not in pain due to the Holocaust anymore.
- That's true.
- I wouldn't have attempted it with teenagers here.
- They couldn't have handled it at all.
- But by that time, both my wives would
- be extremely sensitive to physical cruelty or such.
- And I wasn't at the point where I needed relief.
- And all telling the details would have given them
- endless nightmares.
- I think my wife does have nightmares sometimes now.
- And you know, I just wish I could spare them that.
- I think wives' roles are particularly difficult.
- And I know that if my wife would have it in her power,
- she would erase that.
- And the nurturing aspect of humans is to undo pain.
- And I think it's an enormously frustrating task,
- because the wives are truly innocent.
- Or husbands, in other cases, are truly innocent.
- And they are facing a problem that they can only witness,
- where they can comfort, but they can't undo.
- And I think that earlier counseling, earlier guidance
- probably would have helped in these areas.
- I don't know if it changes ultimate income, but it--
- not incomes, but ultimate outcomes.
- But I think it may have helped.
- I think it would have reduced the inadvertent pain that we
- cause our loved ones and that enormous weight that's
- on the shoulder of our loved one-- children, parents, both.
- I know children who complained that they just
- carried too big a burden, that they felt they always had to be
- good, because somebody was bad.
- And it's not logical.
- No.
- But it is emotionally understandable.
- Have you experienced this with your children at all?
- Oh, sure.
- They've said that?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Do you think they feel open to asking you questions?
- Or is this delicate ground?
- I think they still feel it's delicate ground.
- Well, it is still delicate ground for them.
- It's really not so much more delicate ground for me.
- I've been with it a long time.
- And I've had a chance to recover and a chance to heal.
- But sparing them was in your mind too?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Sparing each other is a kind of condition,
- although some people argue entirely against it.
- I think they're frightfully naive about the consequences
- of their actions.
- They speak from vast inexperience.
- How about your son, now that he's a grown person?
- Yeah, well, my son is a grown person.
- But he's also a very sensitive person.
- And I think he still feels very protective in this area.
- I don't think he'd like to bring up something
- that he thinks might cause me pain.
- He's a courageous person.
- He'll tell me things that he knows I wouldn't like to hear.
- He certainly doesn't shun bringing up an issue
- just because I might not like to hear it.
- But it goes to a point and not beyond.
- How do you think your family will react to this tape?
- Well--
- Is this a worry of yours?
- Well, no.
- No, because mostly--
- I'm not going to show it to Eleanor all at once.
- I'm going to show it gradually.
- And I'm going to do it sometimes when
- we have time so she can ask questions
- that will come to her mind as going through it.
- And again, I'm going to do the same thing with Sandy, my wife.
- My cousin has seen the tape.
- Our lives were so hectic, actually,
- that she had time to sit down, because her kids are all
- grown out of the house.
- But we haven't.
- So Sandy's only seen bits and parts.
- But she can only take so much because she is very fragile.
- And she doesn't go to the movies that
- show violence, essentially.
- She just doesn't.
- So she is particularly sensitive about physical violence.
- And I don't think that she needs to every bit.
- I think what's best for us--
- that she needs to know that I'm not disabled.
- You said before that you felt healing takes place.
- Yeah.
- Do you think one can sort of totally heal from such a thing?
- Oh I don't think one remains unscarred,
- but I do think that one can heal.
- And the healed person is not identical with the other,
- by any means.
- And one does view the world differently.
- And we know things exist that our imaginations would not
- conjure up.
- But I do think that people can heal in the sense
- that they can function, that they can enjoy life,
- that their lives aren't permanently
- limited and clouded.
- That doesn't mean that.
- They will have pain.
- They will have suffering.
- But it doesn't disable them from enjoying life.
- I think that there is a tendency to look
- at the negative side of things and look
- at the dark prospect in the future
- before looking at the light prospect.
- I think that's--
- I've seen that in survivors.
- But one can learn to remember that there
- is another side to the issue.
- And in recollecting the very bad events and the things
- that people did to each other, one also
- has to remember the positive things,
- because it's the positive things that allowed us to go on
- and to live.
- The negative ones, if we would have believed that
- from the beginning, we wouldn't have lifted a finger.
- And if there's anything quote unquote "good"
- that came out of the Holocaust, it was the state of Israel.
- It's the one good that I can think of.
- And the other is that if we carefully examine it,
- we'll find that there is good seeded in man.
- We just can't let the dark destroy
- the illumination of the good.
- And we have to face--
- for years, we didn't dare say that there's
- such things as evil.
- We said, evil is some miasma that
- hovered in midair and sort of descended
- on people on unlucky days.
- Or it was this kind.
- I think it's a lot worse than that.
- I think there are people who are evil.
- I think that there are people who
- plot evil, with full knowledge of its consequences,
- not deceived, and not misguided, but they plot it.
- And we have to learn how to deal with them.
- And if we plot their demise the same way as they plotted ours,
- they will have won.
- How, then, is one to begin?
- One is that there has to be a meeting of both mind
- and emotion instead of constantly splitting the two,
- that ethical judgments have to be ethical judgments even
- after emotion has been considered.
- And you can't dismiss them.
- The Nazi movement was a great emotional movement.
- And it carried with it--
- it carried people right over the edge in every way.
- I think there has to be an integration of thoughtful value
- with emotions consistent with people about what is right.
- There is a right and wrong.
- There are many situations in which
- it's difficult to discern.
- But there is right and wrong.
- And there are many ambiguities.
- And there are many, many difficult situations in which
- one deals with these questions.
- But nevertheless, when there is a point where people shouldn't
- be able to be nudged over the edge of ethical wrongs,
- when people say stop.
- Do you think that, given some of the comments
- you've made about the structure of the hierarchy in Europe,
- whether there was anything that you could
- see in the German culture or this style of teaching
- or raising of children that would lend itself more easily,
- you think?
- The utter respect for authority is,
- the unquestioning, the reflex to bow
- to authority without questioning,
- how that authority is constituted,
- whether it's acting in a lawful manner or not,
- is very, very dangerous because all you have to do
- is put on a uniform and order people, and they'll follow it.
- And I think that on the other side of that coin
- is that because people act this way,
- they feel they now have a permanent excuse
- slip from their consciences, because they
- followed the order.
- We have to repeal that.
- We have to teach our children to ask why,
- even when we urge them.
- They can't ask why when we yell when they're middle of traffic.
- I understand that.
- But there are many other situations
- where we have to ask children to ask why.
- And where is this leading to?
- Where is this leading to?
- Or what next?
- And understanding the consequences.
- So you see it as much a general problem as one
- maybe specific to Germany or other places.
- Yeah, anywhere else, where the unquestioned acceptance
- of authority is.
- I don't think that the Germans are the only ones who did this.
- There are a lot of--
- I'm sure that in other parts of Europe, this happened also.
- Under the guise of respect for--
- it starts with respect for the parents,
- and then the respect for this, or for that.
- The unquestioning acceptance, it's a very convenient state
- to work itself into.
- And once that state's achieved, it's
- very hard to dislodge people.
- I think the present problems of Europe
- are going to be the same thing.
- No one's going to tell them what's right.
- They have to decide what's right-- at least economically
- speaking.
- What are your feelings about Germany today
- or toward the Germans?
- Have you visited Germany or been back?
- No, I went back to Germany.
- We went to Europe in 1972, my wife and I.
- And we got a cheap flight, flew to Frankfurt.
- And I felt uneasy.
- As luck would have it, we stayed in a hotel.
- And we moved out of Frankfurt.
- We took the train the same day.
- But when we flew back, we had to stay for a day in Frankfurt.
- So we stayed in the hotel there overnight.
- And I remember, there was a very arrogant clerk there.
- And I didn't talk to him in German,
- because I knew if I talked to him in German,
- he would not treat me as well as if I spoke to him in English.
- I counted them on their snobbishness.
- So when he was nasty, I'd say, you know,
- next time, we're going to let the Russians keep you.
- And you know, he was startled.
- I said, have you forgotten?
- And then he was a fairly young guy.
- And he says, well, I really didn't know.
- I said, think about it.
- Actually, when Germany was unified, I was apprehensive.
- But that was my knee-jerk reaction, to be apprehensive.
- When I thought about it, I thought
- that the separation of Germany is artificial for people.
- And this artificial separation gives the mischief-makers
- the major cause around which they could rally.
- In Hungary, after the First World War,
- they had a battle cry of the ardent nationalists
- who were also the ardent Nazis.
- And it's [NON-ENGLISH] It means no, no, never,
- meaning they were always opposed to the decision
- of the Versailles Treaty.
- Well, I don't want the German super-patriots
- to have a cause around which they can rally a lot of people
- by saying that Germany is divided by an evil world.
- I think it would only strengthen them.
- So you think that the potential is there for such a thing
- to happen again if they had the cause?
- I think that if they had the cause,
- the potential is there to happen in a lot of places.
- After all, Germany wasn't the only one.
- It was there in Hungary.
- It was there in Romania.
- It was there in a lot of places.
- They were less effective in Romania,
- less effective in Italy, more effective in Germany,
- more effective in Hungary, more effective in Poland,
- and Russia, and so on.
- But the capacity is there.
- What I do think of the young Germans that I met,
- their either not identified politically at all,
- or those who are aware tended to be much more democratic
- in a genuine way than I've ever seen before.
- But of course, I've seen mostly Westerners and not Easterners.
- From what I see from them is that the official stance
- is very correct.
- What bothers me is that they hate
- the Turks, their Turkish workers,
- just as foreigners or foreign workers,
- and treat them just as miserably.
- They, essentially, are almost--
- well, they may be at the first step
- of what they did to the Jews.
- That's what alarms me, that all the political rights, all
- the human rights, and all this progress
- since the Second World War--
- but they're doing it.
- And the moment that they do it to others,
- it's only seconds away that they'll do it to us too.
- As if a niche were there that's being filled.
- Yes.
- Well, re-education would really mean that sort of thing
- can't happen.
- Now, it's true, it hasn't happened.
- I was alarmed by the fact that they moved the capital back
- to Berlin, because the Germans are very symbolically-oriented.
- And Berlin is associated with the German Empire.
- And it's also true that Berlin had a lot of modern thought,
- and had a great culture, and all that.
- But in the formality, it's when Germany became the capital of--
- I mean, when Berlin came they became the capital of Germany
- that this was the center of the empire.
- I would have much preferred that they face the world from Bonn,
- rather than Berlin.
- I'll be very interested in how Eastern Germany changes
- in time.
- Because in Eastern Germany, the changes
- that went on in Western Germany, political organization,
- and in attitude, and so on, I don't think that took place.
- And when there is no more repression in the East,
- then we'll find out generally what they're like.
- But as I said, these divided lands
- only serve despots and people who
- want to exploit the situation, whether it's North and South
- Korea, or Vietnam, or wherever.
- And you know, I'm certainly not in favor of bloodbaths.
- But the events that happened in the Balkans
- just depress me to no end, that it's
- as if the clock had been turned back to the First World War.
- And the same thing in Romania, the Hungarian-Romanian
- rivalries there.
- I mean, these people believe the worst propagandists
- in the world, their own.
- They really believe that one is better, intrinsically better
- than the other.
- And I'm just revolted by that thought.
- Did you have any sense of whether there
- was antisemitism in Germany in an open way when you went?
- And as I said, I was only there a few days.
- No.
- No, I didn't observe any.
- And from all my friends who've gone there
- and people are going back and forth, there was no official.
- I've talked to people who have observed it
- in people's homes and such.
- So it does exist.
- But it's not officially overt.
- The official line is quite the opposite.
- And I know of people were invited back
- to cities that they came from and were treated very nicely.
- But I noticed that they're not from East Germany, either.
- And I noticed that Hungarians, in spite
- of their rah-rah-rah about being Western
- did not mention an iota about it.
- Now, there are only 250,000 Jews in Germany who were left.
- There were 450,000 in Hungary.
- And they're the most westernized of that group, not to mention
- the problems in Poland.
- I don't know what the scapegoat mechanism can do.
- I don't have a substitute, rather, for this scapegoat
- mechanism.
- You mentioned another time, not today, the process
- of what you might call the visiting
- the sins of the fathers onto the children.
- And I was wondering if you would expand a little more on that.
- I can't remember exactly what we were talking about.
- But it was something along the lines of how one inadvertently
- treats one's children--
- Yeah.
- --the way one was treated or something like that.
- Maybe it's lost now.
- But I thought it was interesting.
- Yeah.
- Well, I can't make the connection right now there.
- Did you raise your children in a Jewish way, religiously
- or culturally?
- Well, certainly culturally, yes.
- Not very religiously.
- But my son went in his early years to Kindershul.
- And that was in Berkeley.
- And then my daughter actually got more.
- The little time that I had with my son
- when I was in graduate school, when we spent time together,
- I would talk to him about our history
- and about our institutions.
- Not in great detail, but I know that he was very clearly
- aware that he was Jewish.
- Because when I first met my wife, my present wife, Sandra,
- she told me, he said, you know, he had a very clear identity.
- And I did it deliberately, because I didn't want him--
- kids in elementary school, for example,
- visit each other's churches like bazaars or something.
- And I didn't want that.
- I didn't want him to be inadvertently influenced
- in any other way.
- I thought he should know what he stood for,
- what the principals were, what are the things that we believed
- in.
- Excuse me.
- With my daughter, when she was, let's see, about 3 and 1/2,
- we joined a congregation called Sonoma County Synagogue Center,
- who were Reconstructionists.
- And they had a wonderful-- and they have a very good Sunday
- school.
- And she's been going there.
- And I think an awful lot of people
- who were running the Sunday school all remembered
- that they hated Sunday school.
- So they tried to make it as attractive,
- as enjoyable, and as meaningful as possible for the kids.
- So they incorporate their Judaism
- including a sense of obligation to others and for those who are
- less fortunate very clearly.
- And I think it's been successful.
- And she says she has no problems with it.
- She had to do a project.
- She did it on Israel.
- And it was really quite a project.
- And in school, she has no hesitation.
- And when I went to school, I wouldn't
- have done a project for Israel, because I
- had enough fights as is.
- You felt like the other students would--
- They would have only ridiculed.
- And I would have had more fights on my hands than I already had.
- Well, there was no State of Israel then, either.
- But I wouldn't have done it on Palestine.
- But she has no problem with them.
- Now, the school assembly, for example, she
- played Hatikvah on her flute.
- And she's played some other songs.
- And it wasn't self-conscious.
- It was perfectly natural.
- So she's getting a cultural and a bit of religious education.
- Oh, yeah.
- I know you also are very involved
- with the Alliance for the Study of the Holocaust.
- Yes.
- And what do you do in that capacity there?
- Well, I'm involved with-- originally,
- I started with the Holocaust Lecture Series.
- And then the Alliance supports that.
- And that's how I joined the Alliance
- for the Study of the Holocaust.
- And there's Holocaust Studies Center at Sonoma State.
- And John Steiner invited me about five,
- six years ago to join.
- The Lecture Series has been going on for seven or eight
- years at Sonoma State.
- And I wasn't there, I think, in the first two years.
- And then in the third year, I joined.
- And luckily, it depends on the vagaries of my schedule
- whether I can join the lecture series or not.
- But I was interested in this when I found out
- how little people knew.
- And first, we heard that the German students didn't know.
- And then we discovered American students don't know, either.
- And I just discovered the French students don't know.
- French students, 20-year-olds didn't know who Hitler was.
- So I participated, mainly because I thought
- it was important for them to know the history,
- know what happened.
- And then the denial of the Holocaust
- and this rewriting of history that's been going on
- provoked me even further.
- So I became more active in that.
- And I also participated in teacher training sessions
- for teachers in Sonoma County.
- And I've gone to about maybe 14 or 15 various classrooms
- at junior high schools and high schools.
- At first, I thought, it didn't make any difference.
- But it makes a big difference when
- they see a live person talking about their experiences
- versus an abstract experience.
- So the personal level.
- Yeah.
- I think that it adds credibility to it.
- And I tried to present it from a 14
- to 16-year-old's point of view.
- Kind of high school students--
- Yes.
- --you're talking to.
- Well, is there any last comment or message
- you would like to say?
- No.
- I'd like to say that I hope that we never have another one.
- Our main reason for participating
- in all these programs are that we never again
- have a Holocaust.
- Agreed.
- OK.
- Do you have any question you'd like?
- The one that I had was that question
- about Victor Honig from my program.
- Oh, I'm so sorry.
- Oh, yes, I'm so sorry.
- I forgot.
- When I arrived in the United States,
- in New York, and my adopted parents--
- I stayed with their agent.
- I think I mentioned his name was Eddie Smith.
- Lived in Scarsdale, New York.
- Anyway, I came to California.
- My adopted father's name was Ben Rochelle.
- His brother, Bill, was a newspaperman.
- I think he was an editor of the Palm Springs paper.
- He apparently called a friend.
- And I was interviewed in the Los Angeles Times.
- The purpose of all this was to get in touch with my aunt,
- so hoping that somebody would read the article
- and put me in touch with my aunt, which
- I hadn't done that time.
- And lo and behold, I got this phone call.
- And it turns out, Victor Honig is very distantly related
- to me.
- He came to this country in the mid '20s, he and his wife
- Victor and Irene Honig.
- He was a master barber.
- He won an international barbering contest.
- And then he moved to California.
- And he had a barber shop at the Paramount Studios.
- So he knew a lot of people.
- To make a long story short, he came to the house.
- You know, the article carried my address.
- And he came to the house.
- And I opened the door.
- And he talked to me in Hungarian.
- I nearly fell over backward, because he looked at me.
- He said, you look just like Ilos.
- Ilos was my mother's name.
- And so he put me in touch with my aunt.
- So he was my connection to the rest of my family.
- Oh.
- And it turns out, he knew my father quite well.
- In fact, he had brought me some baby
- presents when he visited Europe.
- And he now lives.
- And his wife, Irene, passed away.
- And he now lives in Palm Springs.
- He's 89 now.
- Still lives in his own trailer.
- Really remarkable.
- Did you keep up your connection at all?
- Oh, yes.
- Yeah, well we're not closely, but we talk occasionally
- on the telephone.
- He's beginning to wane now.
- His memory isn't as good as it used to be.
- But he at one time was on the cover of Life Magazine,
- cutting the hair of Charlie Chaplin when
- they made The Great Dictator.
- And he knew all the movie greats and so on.
- His house is decorated with these.
- But he was a wonderful gentleman who was very, very kind to me
- when I came.
- Shortly after I came to Los Angeles, when I was still
- staying with my adoptive parents,
- I stayed with them for a period of about a week.
- And he showed me around there and was very, very kind.
- Yeah.
- He was a great gentleman.
- He has the only barber shop with classical music in it
- that I've ever been in.
- Yeah.
- Is there anything else you would like to say--
- No.
- --in closing?
- Well, thank you very, very much.
- You're welcome.
Overview
- Interview Summary
- Paul Benko was an only child, born in 1929 in Cluj, Transylvania (Romania). At age four, his parents were divorced and thereafter he lived first with his mother, and later with his father. During the war years, his mother operated an "underground railroad," assisting and hiding fleeing people, and as part of the organization had attempted to form an orphanage. She was arrested as a subversive but was unexpectedly released from a jail after about three months later.
In the spring of 1944, the Jewish community of Cluj was deported, and Mr. Benko was transported with his father to a Hungarian work camp, and later to concentration camps in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kaufering, Kaufbeuren, and Dachau. His mother died in Auschwitz; his father survived until Dachau, and then died there of illness. Mr. Benko was also ill in Dachau and underwent surgery without anaesthetic at an infirmary there.
Mr. Benko was liberated on May 1, 1945 by Allied forces and thereafter lived and/or worked at displaced persons camps in Seefeld, Mittenwald and Garmisch-Partenkirchen. He was hired as a translator due to his multilingual skills, and participated in the interrogation of German prisoners at the latter camp, which became a war criminals camp. An American couple, the vaudeville dance team of "Dancing Rochelle and Beebe," who entertained Allied troops with the USO, adopted him. He traveled with them and the USO show for a time after the war, to places such as Salzburg and Paris. His adoptive parents secured him passage from Bordeaux to New York, via the steamship Nelson W. Aldrich. In New York, he was greeted by the Hebrew Aid Society, and stayed at first with a friend of his adoptive parents. He subsequently moved to Los Angeles and Santa Rosa, California. Mr. Benko is deceased. - Interviewee
- Paul Benko
- Date
-
interview:
1990 December 12
interview: 1991 March 20
interview: 1991 May 22
interview: 1991 July 23
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Genre/Form
- Oral histories.
- Extent
-
7 videocassettes (SVHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Concentration camps. Holocaust survivors--United States. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives. Jews--Persecutions--Romania. Refugee camps--Germany. World War, 1939-1945--Germany. Men--Personal narratives.
- Geographic Name
- Cluj-Napoca (Romania) United States--Emigration and immigration.
- Personal Name
- Benko, Paul--Interviews.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project conducted the interview with Paul Benko on December 12, 1990, March 20, 1991, May 22, 1991, and July 23, 1991. The interview was received by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives Branch in June 2004.
- Funding Note
- The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:46:41
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn515677
Additional Resources
Transcripts (2)
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Oral history interview with Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner
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Oral history interview with Nadine Lieberman
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Oral history interview with Bernard Offen
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Bernard Offen discusses his childhood in Krakow, Poland; his early experiences with antisemitism; the events he witnessed during the German invasion of Poland in 1939; his experiences in the Krakow Ghetto starting in 1941, including the deportations of many family members and hiding from raids; being deported to Płaszów in 1943; his narrow escape from Płaszów; hiding in a nearby camp with a family member; his deportation to Mauthausen; his subsequent deportation to Auschwitz in August 1944; his experiences in Auschwitz; his transfer in October 1944 to a subcamp of Dachau near Landsberg; his experiences in the subcamp; being on a death march in May 1945; being liberated by the United States Army; his search for other surviving family members; the fates of the rest of his family; immigrating to the United Kingdom after the war; his subsequent immigration to the United States; enlisting in the United States Army to serve in the Korean War; his life after the war; returning to Poland to conduct tours of Holocaust-related sites; the time he spends speaking about his personal experiences.
Oral history interview with William Pels
Oral History
William Pels, born on May 11, 1924 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses his prewar experiences in Amsterdam; his memories of the German invasion of Holland in 1940; the changes that he witnessed during the occupation; witnessing the arrest and deportation of Jews; the German raids on homes to find hidden Jews; his own close call with deportation; moving to Vienna, Austria in 1942 to work in a hotel; his experiences with wartime Vienna; the bombing campaign by the Soviets in March 1945; travelling into Hungary, where he remained until May 1945; his postwar activities; working for the United States Army; working in a former concentration camp; returning to Holland; marrying his wife in Great Britain; immigrating to the United States in 1957; and his life in America.
Oral history interview with Ruth Plainfield
Oral History
Ruth Plainfield (née Oppenheimer), born on January 27, 1925 in Gau Bickelheim, Germany, discusses her childhood in Mainz, Germany; the rise of the Nazi party to power; her father's arrest in 1935 and the effect that had on her; her childhood encounters with antisemitism; her family's immigration to the United States; living first in New York and then San Francisco, CA; her family's experiences in California; her education; and learning of the fate of family members, including a grandfather who died in Theresienstadt.
Oral history interview with Thomas Schneider
Oral History
Thomas Schneider discusses his childhood in Vienna, Austria; being raised as a Catholic child of a Jewish father and a Jewish mother who had converted to Catholicism; being forced to leave school and study at a Jewish school in 1938 after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany; his family's immigration in March 1939 to the United States; settling in New York, NY; his experiences in school, college, and law school; his legal career; and the conflicts he has felt throughout his life about his Jewish identity.
Oral history interview with Mikhail Shlyapochnik
Oral History
Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki
Oral History
Benjamin Sieradzki, born on February 4, 1927 in Zgierz, Poland, discusses his childhood in Zgierz; his awareness in 1938 about Hitler and the discrimination experienced by German Jews; his memories of the mobilization of the Polish Army, and the invasion of Poland by Nazi forces in September 1939; hiding from the bombing; his brothers' escape to the Soviet section of Poland; his family's move to the Łódź ghetto; the harsh conditions in the ghetto; the first deportations in 1941; Chaim Rumkowski's leadership in the ghetto; a visit by Heinrich Himmler in 1942; the deportation in September 1942 of the ill, elderly, and children, during which his parents were sent to Chelmno and killed in gas vans; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1944; his transport, with one sister, to Auschwitz; watching the selections and seeing his sister being taken to the gas chambers; his experiences in Birkenau, then in a concentration camp in Hannover where he worked for the Continental Rubber factory; being forced to work in a quarry, where he became emaciated, sick with dysentery, and indifferent to his fate; the abandonment of the camp by German troops; being liberated; the state of his health and his experiences in military hospitals and then in convalescent homes in Sweden; experiencing anti-Jewish sentiment in Sweden; being smuggled to Denmark to stay with his uncle; his reunion with his older brothers, who had survived the war; the difficulties of his living situation; his immigration to the United States in 1953; and his marriage and family life in the United States.
Oral history interview with Gisela Spigel
Oral History
Oral history interview with Erika Weingarten
Oral History
Erika Weingarten (née Mosler), born on October 9, 1918 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her childhood in Berlin; her assimilated family life; her education; the few instances of antisemitism she experienced; her family's decision to send her out of Germany to attend school in Switzerland and her experiences there; her journey in August 1939 to Great Britain, where she reunited with her parents; their immigration to the United States in March 1940; the work she performed; her continued education; passing as Swiss when she tried to get work; her trips to Europe in later years and the closure she experienced; and her thoughts about the German people.
Oral history interview with Max Weingarten
Oral History
Max Weingarten, born in April 1913 in Lechnau, Poland, discusses his childhood in Vienna, Austria; his education and religious upbringing; studying the law; his work in the film industry with his uncle in London beginning in 1936; his immigration to the United States in 1938 and the work he performed in the film industry; his experiences in the United States Army and his work in intelligence and international law; his life after the war; his marriage and children; his work as a lawyer; his feelings about the United States; and the fates of his other family members.
Oral history interview with Herman D. Wiener
Oral History
Oral history interview with Liza Avrutin
Oral History
Liza Avrutin, born in 1930 in Odessa, Ukraine, describes her big family, which consisted of nine brothers and sisters; how even though her family was not very religious, Liza remembers various religious traditions such as all of the kids saying a Shabbat wish in front of the candles; her mother’s reluctance to leave before the Nazi occupation; her uncle’s evacuation to Tashkent where he and his family survived the Holocaust; the Nazi occupation in October 1941 and the summoning of Jewish residents on December 22; being taken with other Jewish residents to Slobodka (a section of Odessa) where they spent three months; a pogrom in Odessa on October 23-24, 1941 in which much of the remaining Jewish population was murdered; being sent with her family on cattle trains to Vaselinivska; the train journey, during which many passengers died including her father and her four-year-old brother, Boris; her mother’s psychological reaction to their deaths and her eventual death; being taken to Vasnisenska (Voznesensk, Ukraine), where they were sorted and sent to different places; being sent to Babini Balki in Krivoruchka, Ukraine; the lack of food and the death of many of the imprisoned people from starvation; the arrival of the Russians, who murdered all the civilians; being one of two survivors (Rosa Lifchitza also survived) who were rescued by the nearby villagers; waking up in Nadia Zhigalovna’s house with a bullet wound on the top of her head; hiding her Jewish identity by saying her name was “Lida” not “Liza”; changing her name to Valentina Ivanovna Panchivka; her life in the village and the sacrifices her new mother made for her; living with Nadia and her family until 1947; staying in close contact with the family that rescued her; getting married and immigrated to the United States; and changing her name back to Liza when she became a US citizen.
Oral history interview with Aleksandr Belfor
Oral History
Aleksandr Belfor, born September 18, 1923, describes his childhood in Kishinev, Ukraine (now Chisinău Moldova); the onset of the war and his family's escape from the approaching Nazi forces to Alma-Ata, Khazakstan, where Mr.Belfor lived and studied medicine until he was inducted into the Soviet Army; the stories he heard about the tragic fate of many family members during the Holocaust, including the sexual assault of one aunt; being arrested and imprisoned after the end of the war; his life in the Soviet Union and the antisemitism he encountered there; and his immigration to the United States in 1983.
Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshteyn
Oral History
Semyon Berenshteyn discusses his childhood in Moldova; the family's move from Balta to Odesa after the beginning of the war in 1941; the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; the establishment of a ghetto in Balta; working for a Christian friend; passing as a non-Jew by wearing a crucifix; learning of war news from Christian neighbors; the forced labor imposed on Jews; the murders of Jewish men, women and children by German soldiers, including the death of his father; liberation by Soviet troops in March 1944; his service in the Soviet armed forces; his marriage and the birth of his son; and his immigration with his family to the United States in 1988.
Oral history interview with George Denes
Oral History
George Denes, born on September 9, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his family and early life; the fates of different family members; growing up Jewish but not Orthodox; the beginning of the war at which point his father was sent to the front to perform forced military labor and his return before the German occupation began; antisemitism before and during the war; Polish refugees arriving in 1939 and 1940; the belief amongst Hungarian Jews that the Nazi policies would not affect them; the German occupation and his father relocating the immediate family to another part of the city; his mother working as a nurse for a wealthy family while he and his brother stayed in a "private day care" for Jewish children; being discovered and escaping; his father acquiring false papers for the family (new surname was Faketta); staying with an older Christian woman until her son, a Nazi sympathizer, had the boys and their father arrested and taken to a local Nazi headquarters; being imprisoned in the basement of the building with other Jews and some other people arrested by the Nazis; being taken on December 29, 1944 with his family to the river to be shot by the Nazis and being saved when the German army prevented the Hungarian Nazis from shooting in this area; escaping the prison a few days later; reuniting with his mother and going with his family to the eastern side of the river; hiding for several weeks in the basement of a villa; having difficulties acquiring food and being near starvation by the time the Red Army liberated the city; being given food, baths, and clean clothes by the Russians; attending a Jewish high school after the war; being refused by the university because he attended a religious high school; befriending the head of the university's engineering department and being accepted the following year (1956) [note that the first interview includes family photographs]; the revolutionary period following 1956 as well as his life as a university student in mechanical engineering; everyday life in post-war Communist Hungary, including some analysis of the political and social climate of that period; his life after the revolution, including his marriage, the birth of his son, and his military career; his family's two attempts to defect, once without help, and once with help (the second one was successful); the time they spent in Vienna, Austria while their refugee status was established; the help given to them by HIAS; the medical care given to Robert, who had contracted typhus during their escape; his life in the United States, including his career as an electrical engineer working in semiconductors and his divorce; and his state of mind at various points in his life.
Oral history interview with Lev Dumer
Oral History
Lev Dumer, born in 1919 in Odessa, Ukraine, describes the Jewish community in Odessa before the war; experiencing antisemitism before the war; the deaths of his maternal grandparents in pogroms; receiving a degree in radio engineering; working in Kirovograd (Kropyvnyts'kyi, Ukraine) when the war began; the German occupation of Kiev; the Jewish response to the invasion; his family’s evacuation to Chelyabinsk in August 1941; his grandmother, Pena Gershova Dumer, dying while evacuating later in 1943; the Romanians entering Odessa; Jews having to register; the denouncement of Jewish families by antisemitic neighbors living in the same building as his family; the hanging of his college mathematics and physics professor, Foodim, for failing to register; the roundups and mass murders in Odessa; Alexander Sepino, who was able to escape imprisonment; observing a minute of silence every day for five years as a prayer for those who perished; the deportation of the remaining Jews to a ghetto in Slobodka; various righteous people who risked their lives to save Jews, including Oleg Krist and Jora Temoshenko; the experience of his aunt, uncle, and two cousins in Pervopol; the difficulty of living during the Stalin regime; the growing antisemitic trend in Russia during the years following WWII; the Russian government hiding the evidence of the Holocaust from the people; and spending many years gathering information from survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust in Ukraine in order to preserve the memory for future generations.
Oral history interview with Anisim Dworkin
Oral History
Anisim Dworkin, born in 1923 in Smirenskiy, Soviet Union (possibly one of the many Russian places named Smirnovskiy), describes how at the time Jews were required to live in a few designated towns in the Soviet Union; his great-grandfather, who served in the Tsar’s army as a cannon operator for 12 years and was thus given the right to live in a Russian town even though he was Jewish; the regret he feels for having spent his childhood in a Russian town because it stripped him of the rich Jewish culture he saw in his parents, including celebration of Jewish holidays and speaking Yiddish; not experiencing antisemitism as a child but being teased as a child for being part of the lower middle-class; moving with his family to a kolkhoz in Smolensk in 1928; having a good life on the farm until the famine in 1933; several of his aunts and uncles who moved to Brest, Belarus with their families; the arrest of his older brother for writing a letter expressing anti-Hitler sympathies in 1939; the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941; being sent to the east since he was not able to serve in the army because of an injury to the eye; being accepted to serve in the Allied army for four months; studying after the war at a university in Ural (possibly Ural Federal University); working in the oil industry in Ural after the war and being discriminated against because of his religion; being fired from a job as head of the research department at a university because of rumors that he was involved in the Zionist movement; his life now in Perim, North Ural (probably Perm’, Russia); his daughter who is married to a non-Jew; and reuniting with his older brother in 1987.
Oral history interview with Ernest Feld
Oral History
Ernest Feld discusses his childhood in Lucenec, Slovakia, close to the Hungarian border; the occupation of his town by Hungary in 1938; the onset of anti-Jewish restrictions and curfews; his removal to a ghetto; being conscripted for forced labor in 1944; being able to continue his apprenticeship in a bakery; the advance of the Soviet Army and the ensuing confusion; his return to Lucenec in November 1945; his reunion with his mother; their move to Prague, and then Karlsbad; their decision to immigrate to Israel; the boat trip to Israel; the detention of the group in Cyprus by the British; his life in Cyprus until 1949; emigrating from Cyprus to Israel with his wife, whom he met in Cyprus; his successful bakeries in Israel; his later move to the United States.
Oral history interview with Lya Galperin
Oral History
Lya Galperin discusses her childhood in a small town near Kishinev, Romania; her family's flight after the German invasion; the gang rape of women by Romanian soldiers; her family’s imprisonment in the local synagogue; her experiences in the ghetto of Beshard, in the Ukraine, from 1943 until her liberation in 1945; her postwar life in the Soviet Union; her marriage and life in Riga; her mother's attempts at helping the family immigrate to the west; and her eventual immigration to San Francisco in 1981.
Oral history interview with Mae Lopatin Herman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Inna Kagan
Oral History
Inna Kagan, born in 1937 in Kharkov (Kharkiv), Ukraine, discusses her childhood in Kharkov; being a descendant from Khazars; the evacuation of her family in September 1941 to Khazakstan; her father's later evacuation to Perm, Russia; her family's move to Bukhoro, Uzbekistan; and the family's reunion in Kharkov in December 1944. She dicsusses the destruction of the city and learning of the death of her paternal grandparents at the hands of the Nazis. Ms. Kagan describes the increase in antisemitism that she experienced after the war, and emigrating with her family to the United States in 1989.
Oral history interview with J. Daniel Khazzoom
Oral History
Oral history interview with Vilem Kriz
Oral History
Vilem Kriz discusses his experiences in the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) in the late 1930s and under Nazi occupation; his observations, as a journalist, of the unfolding events of Nazi aggression; an encounter with Reinhard Heydrich in 1936; the mobilization of a small national army in 1937; the betrayal of Czechoslovakia by its allies in 1938; the grief of the Czech people after Nazi troops occupied Prague in March 1939; demonstrations against the Nazis by university students and reprisals that came after; his experiences as part of the Czech underground; and conditions in Czechoslovakia during its occupation and after the war ended.
Oral history interview with Mikhail Lapan
Oral History
Mikhail Lapan, born on March 9, 1920 in Bobruisk, Belarus, discusses his childhood in Bobruisk; his enlistment in 1941 at the age of 16 in the Soviet Army; the German attack on Bobruisk; his hospitalization in 1942 in Stalingrad (Volgograd); the invasion of Stalingrad by the Germans; an incident in which the German troops removed the hospital patients and selected Jews and Communists for execution, and that by using the name of a fellow patient who had died earlier that day, he was able to escape that fate; being forced to work in a salt mine in Peine, Germany; having his Jewish identity betrayed; his escape, recapture, and removal to Braunschweig concentration camp; being liberated by US troops; being returned to the Soviet Union; his work in a coal mine in Harlov; his marriage; his return to Bobruisk, where he discovered that he parents had died during the war; and his eventual immigration to the United States.
Oral history interview with Sofiya Manoylo
Oral History
Oral history interview with Shaya Neys
Oral History
Shaya Neys, born on June 28, 1927 in Liepaja, Latvia, discusses his childhood in Liepaja; the arrest of his family in June 1941 by the Russian security agency NKVD, and the family's transport to a military port, where the men were separated from the women and children; traveling by train with his mother to Krasnoyarsk, Russia; their experiences of forced labor and misery in various locations in Siberia until the end of the war; difficulties in returning to Latvia after the war ended and his return in 1956; his reunion with his son and their lives in Riga, Latvia; learning that his father died in a labor camp, and that many of his relatives from Liepaja perished; and his reflections that their deportation to Siberia probably saved his and his mother's lives.
Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki
Oral History
The interview describes Mr. Sieradzki's childhood in Zgierz, Poland; his awareness in 1938 about Hitler and the discrimination experienced by German Jews; his memories of the mobilization of the Polish Army, and the invasion of Poland by Nazi forces in September 1938. Mr. Sieradzki describes hiding from the bombing; his brothers' escape to the Soviet sector of Poland; and his family's move to the Łódź ghetto. Mr. Sieradzki recalls the harsh conditions there; the first transports in 1941; Chaim Rumkowski's leadership in the ghetto; a visit by Heinrich Himmler in 1942; and the deportation in September 1942 of the ill, elderly and children, during which his parents were sent to Chelmno and killed in gas vans. He describes the liquidation of the ghetto in 1944; his transport, with one sister, to Auschwitz; watching Dr. Mengele make selections and seeing his sister being taken to the gas chambers. Mr. Sieradzki describes his experiences in Birkenau, then in a concentration camp in Hannover where he worked for the Continental Rubber factory, and then in a quarry, where he became emaciated, sick with dysentary, and indifferent to his fate. He recalls the abandonment of the camp by German troops, his liberation, the dreadful state of his health and his experiences in military hospitals and then in convalescent homes in Sweden. Mr. Sieradzki describes anti-Jewish sentiment in Sweden, being smuggled to Denmark to stay with his uncle, and his reunion with his older brothers, who had survived the war. He discusses the difficulties of his living situation, and describes his immigration to the United States in 1953, and his marriage and family life in the United States.
Oral history interview with Rahilia Sirota
Oral History
Rahilia Sirota (née Aizenman), born in 1913, discusses her childhood in Chemirovits (now Chemerivtsi), Ukraine; the Nazi occupation of her town in the summer of 1941; her move to a nearby village; learning that the Jewish community of Chemirovits had been taken to the Kamentsk Podolsky ghetto, where 80 of her relatives were killed days after their arrival (this included her parents and younger brother); living in fear in the village she had moved to, and being rescued by two brothers, Nikolay and Pavlo Kuchman [PH], who hid her and then her boyfriend throughout the remaining years of the war; living in holes in the corn fields and caves; moving from village to village; living in barns and hiding from the Ukrainian SS; the assistance she received from the Kuchman brothers and other Ukrainians; learning of the liberation of the Chemirovits in March 1945; her reunion with her boyfriend; finding that everything they had was gone; getting married; the birth of her son; her life in post-war Ukraine until her immigration to the United States; and her enduring gratitude to those who hid and save her during the war years.
Oral history interview with Tom Szelenyi
Oral History
Tom Szelenyi discusses his childhood in Budapest, Hungary; his assimilated family life; his education; his religious upbringing; the antisemitism he experienced while growing up and the increase of antisemitism after the war began in 1939; his family's deportation to the ghetto in Budapest; the anti-Jewish laws; being deported to a Hungarian military labor camp in 1944 and the changes he experienced after the Germans occupied Hungary; his experiences on a forced march in October 1944 from Budapest to Wiener Neustadt, Austria; his journey to Buchenwald by train; the conditions there; the cruelty of the guards; his transfer to Colditz a month later; the work he performed; his experiences on a death march in April 1945 to Terezin (Theresienstadt); his liberation there by the Soviet Army and the conditions after; his return to Budapest; his reunion with his mother; his work with the American Joint Distribution Committee; his experiences in the DP (displaced persons) camp in Ulm, Germany; his immigration to the United States in 1948; his life in the US; his family; and his work.
Oral history interview with Irving Zale
Oral History
Oral history interview with Tamara Albukh
Oral History
Tamara Iosifovna Albukh, born on December 21, 1918 in Minsk, Belarus, describes her childhood; having to leave school after six years to work and contribute to her family financially; getting married and having two daughters (Sara born on May 5, 1940 and Gena born on August 31, 1942); not being able to evacuate once the war started; the German occupation of Minsk; her husband being taken into the army; moving into one of the Jewish ghettos in Minsk; pogroms in the ghettos; doing forced labor in the ghetto and the murder of her daughters one day while she was working; being moved to Trostinetskiy (Maly Trostinec) concentration camp and having to work for the Germans; the murder of inmates every day in the camp and ghetto; escaping the camp on July 29, 1944; the intensification of antisemitism during the war; hearing Russians scream the slogan “Kill Jews, save Russia” which continued even after the war; and having two daughters after the war in 1946 and 1949.
Oral history interview with Bernard Broclawski
Oral History
Oral history interview with George Denes
Oral History
George Denes, born on September 9, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his family and early life; the fates of different family members; growing up Jewish but not Orthodox; the beginning of the war at which point his father was sent to the front to perform forced military labor and his return before the German occupation began; antisemitism before and during the war; Polish refugees arriving in 1939 and 1940; the belief amongst Hungarian Jews that the Nazi policies would not affect them; the German occupation and his father relocating the immediate family to another part of the city; his mother working as a nurse for a wealthy family while he and his brother stayed in a "private day care" for Jewish children; being discovered and escaping; his father acquiring false papers for the family (new surname was Faketta); staying with an older Christian woman until her son, a Nazi sympathizer, had the boys and their father arrested and taken to a local Nazi headquarters; being imprisoned in the basement of the building with other Jews and some other people arrested by the Nazis; being taken on December 29, 1944 with his family to the river to be shot by the Nazis and being saved when the German army prevented the Hungarian Nazis from shooting in this area; escaping the prison a few days later; reuniting with his mother and going with his family to the eastern side of the river; hiding for several weeks in the basement of a villa; having difficulties acquiring food and being near starvation by the time the Red Army liberated the city; being given food, baths, and clean clothes by the Russians; attending a Jewish high school after the war; being refused by the university because he attended a religious high school; befriending the head of the university's engineering department and being accepted the following year (1956) [note that the first interview includes family photographs]; the revolutionary period following 1956 as well as his life as a university student in mechanical engineering; everyday life in post-war Communist Hungary, including some analysis of the political and social climate of that period; his life after the revolution, including his marriage, the birth of his son, and his military career; his family's two attempts to defect, once without help, and once with help (the second one was successful); the time they spent in Vienna, Austria while their refugee status was established; the help given to them by HIAS; the medical care given to Robert, who had contracted typhus during their escape; his life in the United States, including his career as an electrical engineer working in semiconductors and his divorce; and his state of mind at various points in his life.
Oral history interview with Audrey Doughty
Oral History
Audrey Doughty, born in San Diego, California in 1921, describes her mother, who died when Audrey was three years old; her father, who was a naval officer and a member of the diplomatic core; going with her father to Berlin when he was stationed there in 1938; transferring from Stanford University to the University of Berlin; being in Berlin during Kristallnacht and taking photos afterward; writing a journal entry describing that night; having little notion of what was really happening in Germany apart from Kristallnacht as well as the antisemitic and anti-American sentiment from the Germans; how soon after arriving in Berlin, she and her father were invited to review the troops with Nazi officials; sitting in the stands three feet from Adolf Hitler, watching endless waves of troops pass underneath; going with her grandmother on a tour of Germany and neighboring countries in 1939; working at the American consulate after she turned 18; her duties, which consisted of convincing refugees applying for visas to leave the country; being evacuated to Copenhagen in 1940; returning to the US after the war ended; graduating from Stanford University; working as a war correspondent in Honolulu and then went to work for the San Francisco Chronicle; working in the Office of War Information and then working as an Associated Press correspondent in China; leaving journalism and pursuing a career as a social worker; becoming the director of the International Institute in San Francisco from 1975 to 1983; spending two and a half years as the director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation; founding and directing the AIDS Benefits Counselors; directing AIDS Indigent Direct Services; her plans to write a book about her family's history; writing many editorials on possible fascist trends in American society; and her thoughts on Germans [note that artifacts relating to her experiences are shown at the close of the interview].
Oral history interview with Sara Gelender
Oral History
Sara Gelender (née Buzyn), born circa 1927 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her childhood in Warsaw; her memories of the bombing and burning of Warsaw in September 1939; her family's escape to a farm near the Russian border; hiding there for several months; being part of a group of Jewish refugees sent to Siberia in June 1940; the primitive conditions in the labor camp; the work she performed in the camp; getting married in the camp; leaving the camp with her husband for a small town; her continual state of hunger during those years; moving with her husband to Ukraine in 1944; returning to Poland in 1946; the antisemitism they encountered in Poland; escaping to Czechoslovakia, Vienna, and then to a displaced persons camp in Germany; moving to Paris, France, where they lived until 1951; their immigration first to Canada, and then to the United States.
Oral history interview with Sofia Ginzbursky
Oral History
Sofia Ginzbursky (born on December 27, 1915 in Asipavichy, Belarus) describes her mother, who died at the age of 27, soon after she gave birth; going with her siblings to live with their grandfather, who observed Jewish traditions; studying at a technical school in Gomel (Homel), Belarus; living in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), working as a nanny and secretary; getting married and moving to Gomel; moving later to Belostock (Białystok), Poland; being left alone with their two children when her husband was called up for military duty at the beginning of WWII; evacuating from Belostock by train to Zlobin (ZHlobin, Belarus) and then to Baranovichi, Ukraine; destroying all her documents to hide her Jewish identity; witnessing the persecution of Jews in Ukraine when locals helped the Nazis find Jews; how speaking German helped her find a job at a food exchange center where she received food to feed her children; obtaining false papers with a new last name that showed she was Russian and not Jewish; returning to Gomel to look for remaining family members and being captured by the Nazis and was humiliated by Politsai for several days; being released and living with a woman named Nadia Lisitskaya; passing as a gentile refugee from Poland; washing clothes for the German army in exchange for soap and kerosene; seeing the deportation of hundreds of Jews from the Gomel ghetto; traveling with her friend, Sonia, as well as all their children to Oryol (Orel), Russia; finding a new place of stay every night so no one would suspect them of being Jewish; living with Sonia and the children at the house of a Latvian lady for two years; choosing to not wear the Star of David as was requried for the Jews by the Nazis; passing as Russian Orthodox; having a Russian lady teach her son how to pray to an icon when bombings occured; working small jobs while in Oryol; being liberated and moving to Leningrad; getting a new passport and stating her nationality as “Jewish” again; reuniting with her husband in Chkalov (possibly Orenburg, Russia) with the help of her sister; experiencing even more antisemitism after the war; and becoming more observant after the war.
Oral history interview with Genia Likwornik
Oral History
Oral history interview with Mark Malamud
Oral History
Oral history interview with Annemarie Roeper
Oral History
Annemarie Roeper (née Bondy), born August 27, 1918 in Vienna, Austria, describes her childhood in Vienna; her parents' progressive boarding school; her memories of the Nazi ascension to power; her mother's move to Switzerland in 1936 with Annemarie’s siblings; remaining behind to graduate; her father selling their school; the family's reunion in Switzerland; her psychoanalysis studies in Vienna with Anna Freund; her husband-to-be's warning to flee; immigrating with her family to the United States in 1939; moving to Vermont, where they opened a school; her marriage and move to Michigan with her husband; and opening a progressive school for gifted children there called Roeper School.
Oral history interview with Irina Rozhanskaya
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger
Oral History
Ilse Sternberger (née Naumann), born in 1914, discusses her childhood in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland); her assimilated family life; her education; her marriage and her decision to move to Belgium with her husband in 1933; her life in Belgium; her husband's success as a photographer; their decision to move to London, England in 1936; returning to Germany in 1939 in an attempt to help Jewish children leave the country, and being stymied by the bureaucracy; immigrating to the United States with her husband and children in July 1940; her life in the US; her work as a teacher and writer; and her curation of books and exhibits of her husband's work.
Oral history interview with Clara Tsukerman
Oral History
Clara Tsukerman discusses her childhood in Chisneau, Romania (now Chișinău, Moldova) and her experiences after the war began in her region in 1941; her experiences during her family's journey on foot to Vasylivka, Ukraine; their efforts to evade the advancing German front; and their life in hiding in an unnamed village after the Germans caught up with them; the help and protection they received from the villagers, as well as her experiences during and after the war.
Oral history interview with Sam Weiss
Oral History
Sam Weiss, born in 1928 in Ricka, Czechoslovakia (now in Ukraine), discusses his childhood in Ricka, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine); the occupation of the town by Hungarian soldiers; the conscription of Jewish men for forced labor; his father being sent to Germany for forced labor; the institution of anti-Jewish restrictions such as yellow stars and in March 1944, the deportation of the Jews of Ricka; his arrival at Auschwitz; being separated from his family and sent first a children's barracks; being sent to Camp Four in Munich, Germany; being sent to Landsberg, a sub-camp of Dachau, where he was liberated by American troops in 1945; his return to Ricka, where he was reunited with his sister; his attempts to escape Czechoslovakia; his imprisonment by Russian soldiers; his escape to Munich; his immigration to the United States; his service in the United States military; and his family life and career in California.
Oral history interview with Edith Wertheimer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Laszlo Vass
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jakob Atlas
Oral History
Oral history interview with Isaac Silber
Oral History
Isaac Silber, born in 1913 in Złoczów Poland (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), discusses his childhood in Złoczów; the occupation of Złoczów by German troops; the violent and terrifying conditions of the Nazi occupation; his escape from murder by German troops; being conscripted for forced labor in a brick factory; returning to Złoczów to learn of the murder of family members; his experiences in the Złoczów ghetto and in work camps; giving up his baby daughter to be cared for by a non-Jewish family; escaping with his wife and finding refuge in the farmhouse of a Polish man who hid them; and the gratitude he feels to his rescuer.
Oral history interview with Lotte Grunwald
Oral History
Oral history interview with Anne Marie Roeper
Oral History
Anne Marie Roeper describes her childhood in Vienna, Austria; her parents' progressive boarding school; her memories of the Nazi acsencion to power; her mother's move to Switzerland in 1936 with her siblings; remaining behind to graduate; her father's selling of their school; the family's reunion in Switzerland; her psychoanalysis studies in Vienna with Anna Freund; her husband-to-be's warning to flee; immigrating with her family to the United States in 1939; moving to Vermont, where they opened a school; her marriage and move to Michigan with her husband; and opening a progressive school for gifted children there called Roeper School.
Oral history interview with Janina Swift
Oral History
Oral history interview with Polya Liza Pekker
Oral History
Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl
Oral History
Paul Nebenzahl, born August 9, 1921, discusses his childhood in Long Island, New York; his career in advertising; enlisting in the United States Army in 1942; his experiences as a sergeant in the Signal Corps; being part of a secret OSS operational group; working with the French underground movement in southwestern France to hinder the German retreat in 1944; his military service in India and China for the remainder of the war; his life after the war; marrying; having children; and his leisure activities.
Oral history interview with Meier Lichtenstein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Janice Auerbach
Oral History
Janice Auerbach, born August 7, 1934 in South London, England, describes her childhood in London; the bombings and fear she felt during World War II; her evacuation to a farm in Cornwall; the discomfort she experienced while there; her reunion with her family after the war; her various employments around the world; and her marriage to a Jewish man in 1962.
Oral history interview with Helmut Kobler
Oral History
Helmut Kobler, born on January 18, 1928 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his childhood in Vienna and Pohorelice, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); his experiences growing up with his Jewish father and Catholic mother; his experiences after the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938; his mother's decision to move herself and her son to Brno, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); the conditions they lived under; the Nazis' search for his father; being deported to a camp near Ivancice, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) in 1939; the camp’s transformation from a concentration camp to a forced labor camp; working as a coal miner at the camp; the camp’s liquidation in June 1942; being transferred to another labor camp near Oslavany, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); the work he continued as a coal miner; the conditions at the camp; the brutality of the Czech and German guards; being transferred in the summer of 1944 to a labor camp near Postoloprty, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); working to construct an underground fuel pipeline; an accusation against him of sabotage; his subsequent imprisonment in Saaz, Czechoslovakia and Karlsbad, Germany (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic); the brutality of the guards; the poor conditions there; his escape from Karlsbad while out on a labor detail; being recaptured in Brno; the executions he witnessed while imprisoned there; being transferred by cattle car to a prison in Mirosov; escaping from Mirosov in May 1945, a few days before liberation by the United States Army; the aid he received from refugee organizations after the war; reuniting with his mother; being educated as a mining engineer; defecting to the west with a sample of uranium ore; moving to Canada; and immigrating to the United States.
Oral history interview with Ellen Leeser
Oral History
Oral history interview with Anne Marie Yellin
Oral History
Anne Marie Yellin (née Feller), born on December 6, 1928 in Chemnitz, Germany, discusses her childhood in Chemnitz; her family life; the changes she experienced after Kristallnacht in November 1938; her father's arrest and release; her parents' decision to leave Germany; her journey with her parents to Belgium in September 1939; her experiences after the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940 and her father's decision to hide her in a convent; her experiences in the convent; moving between institutions to avoid capture by the Nazis; her conversion to Catholicism; her reunion with her parents after liberation in September 1944; their immigration to the United States at a later point; her life in the US; and the emotional aftermath of her wartime experiences.
Oral history interview with Adele Silber
Oral History
Adele Silber discusses her childhood in Warsaw, Poland; her education in a Catholic school; her family's religious practices; her experiences during the German invasion in 1939; hiding her young daughter with a Catholic family; living in hiding on a farm with a group of partisans; her experiences while in hiding, including the lack of food and the necessity of living in the woods near the end of the war; her reunion with her daughter; her decision to immigrate to the United States with her husband and daughter in 1946; and their life in the US.
Oral history interview with Sylvie Marshall
Oral History
Sylvie Marshall (née Bedel), born on July 1, 1923 in Paris, France, discusses her childhood; her older brother Michel Bedel (born 1918) and her younger brother Alain Bedel (born 1926); her father, who was the president of the largest moving and storage company in France before the war; her adolescence in Paris; being raised Catholic; the participation of her father and brother Michel in the French Resistance; her life with her mother in south central France; the liberation of Paris; the story of her father and brother's arrests by the Gestapo and her father's subsequent death in Buchenwald.
Oral history interview with Elena H. Javor
Oral History
Elena H. Javor (née Gross), born December 15, 1914 in Martin, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia), describes her childhood in Martin; her siblings; her medical education and practice; the birth of her three children; the threat of deportation in 1942; her escape from deportation due to her husband's exemption; Allied bombing in spring 1944; the Slovak national uprising in August 1944; her husband's enlistment to fight; fleeing with her children to a monastery, where they were sheltered; joining her husband in Banska Bystrica; her arrest in October 1944; her husband's disappearance; her liberation in April 1945; her reunion with her three children; learning of her husband's, sister's, and parents' deaths in Auschwitz; her return to Martin with her children; her life after the war; how she studied dermatology; her remarriage; and her family's immigration to the United States in 1968.
Oral history interview with George Denes
Oral History
Oral history interview with Joseph Welgreen
Oral History
Joseph Welgreen, born in 1918 in Sosnowiec, Poland, discusses his childhood in Sosnowiec; his family life and education; the work he performed; the antisemitism he experienced; the changes he experienced after the German invasion of Poland in 1939; being deported to Annaburg in late 1940, and his subsequent transfers to several other labor camps, including Breslau and Klettendorf (both subcamps of Gross-Rosen); the conditions in these camps, his experiences there, the work he performed in highway construction, and his experiences with the guards and Kapos; being transferred to Bunzlau in 1943; the work he performed as a machinist and the conditions there; his experiences on a death march to Dora in February 1945; the work he performed there and the conditions; his liberation at Bergen-Belsen; his journey to Hannover, Germany; the business he established there; and his immigration to the United States in 1947.
Oral history interview with Frank Weinman
Oral History
Frank Weinman, born on July 9, 1914 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his childhood in Vienna and Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia); the introduction of restrictive anti-Jewish laws in Vienna after the Anschluss in March 1938; the family's definitive move to Bratislava soon after; his marriage; his and his wife's forced move to a ghetto camp after Nazis took control of Czechoslovakia; their experiences there doing manual labor; their fortunate escape through a German baggage firm, HAPAG, to Budapest, Cuba, and finally the United States; his parents' escape to Cuba where his father died; his reunion with his mother in October 1942; the assistance he received from his brother who had immigrated to Chicago, IL in 1938; and the success and prosperity he experienced in the United States.
Oral history interview with Morris Rosnow
Oral History
Morris Rosnow (né Moishe Raznov), born on January 7, 1927 in Zdzieciol, Poland (now Dzyatlava, Belarus) discusses his experiences during World War II while hiding in the woods as a member of a Jewish partisan group operating under the organization of the Russian partisans; liberation in 1944 by the Soviet Army; his return to his hometown in Poland, where he remained with his sister until the death of their father; moving to Munich, Germany; earning a degree in engineering; immigrating with his sister to join their other sister in the United States; and earning a degree in pharmacy and raising a family.
Oral history interview with Gary Schoofs
Oral History
Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd
Oral History
Gerta Wingerd (née Alper), born on September 23, 1923 in Bеrhomet, Romania (now Berehomet, Ukraine), discusses her childhood in Czernowicz, Romania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine); the increase in antisemitism in 1938 after fascist rule was established; the occupation of her town by Soviet forces in 1939; the retreat of the Soviet forces; her two brothers' escape toward Russia; the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; the establishment of a ghetto; her family's release; their eventual internment in a ghetto camp in Transnistria until 1944; the conditions, difficulties, and disease that were prevalent there; the family's liberation by Soviet troops; her return to Czernowicz; her escape from Romania to Vienna, Austria, where she worked for the United States Army; being sponsored by the Joint Distribution Committee to immigrate to the United States in 1949; and her experiences in New York, Minneapolis, and Great Falls, Montana before marrying and settling in Mill Valley, California.
Oral history interview with Ilse Eden
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg
Oral History
Oral history interview with Eva K. Breyer
Oral History
Eva Breyer, born on August 18, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her parents, who converted from Judaism to Catholicism after the death of her grandfather; being christened Catholic; her brother, who was born Jewish and converted when he was about a year old; attending Catholic religious classes; antisemitism in Hungary before the Germans invaded; the laws passed against Jews in the 1930s; the bombings after the war started; the drafting of non-Jewish men for the military and Jewish men for labor service; her father being called up for labor service near Budapest; how her mother was able to keep her father from being sent to the front in 1943; the German occupation, at which time the Jewish laws grew worse; having to move to Jewish houses with other families; the round ups led by the Arrow Cross and police in the summer of 1944; her aunt saving her mother from deportation; moving into an apartment building that was under the protection of the Vatican; her brother, who was sent to a monastery for extra protection; being sent to the hospital where a doctor diagnosed her as sick so she could hide with terminally sick children; going to a convent outside Buda; seeing people being shot into the Danube; going to a Swedish house and finding it empty; the arrival of the Russians; her family, who went to the ghetto while she was in hiding; her father’s death from pneumonia in March after the liberation; the mistreatment of the Hungarians by the Russian soldiers; life under the communists; escaping to Austria and then the United States in 1956; and how she identifies as Catholic.
Oral history interview with Kurt Levi
Oral History
Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl
Oral History
Paul Nebenzahl discusses his childhood in Long Island, NY; his career in advertising; enlisting in the United States Army in 1942; his experiences as a sergeant in the Signal Corps; being part of a secret OSS “operational group” working with the French underground movement in southwestern France to hinder the German retreat in 1944; his military service in India and China for the remainder of the war; his life after the war; marrying; having children; and his leisure activities.
Oral history interview with Frank Weinman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Olga Nepomyashy
Oral History
Oral history interview with Floyd Dade
Oral History
Oral history interview with Peter Oppenheim
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ellen Van Creveld
Oral History
Ellen Van Creveld, born in 1933 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses her childhood in Amsterdam; her assimilated family life; her lack of awareness of her Jewish heritage; the changes she experienced after the German invasion of Holland in May 1940, including the new restrictions and her transfer to a Jewish school; her relationships with her non-Jewish friends during this period; the fear of arrest and deportation; her family's decision to go into hiding in November 1943; her experiences while living in hiding; her family's move to Brussels, Belgium with the help of the underground; the false identities they acquired; her experiences in Brussels under false papers, her education; the betrayal of the family and their arrest; her reprieve from deportation due to illness; her experiences in the Jewish hospital and orphanage; her subsequent time spent living in hiding on a farm and in an abandoned castle during the winter of 1944-1945; her reunion with one of her brothers after the end of the war and the fates of her other family members; her postwar life in the United States and Holland; the challenges she faced; her marriage and family; her permanent immigration to the United States in 1956; and her life in the US.
Oral history interview with Lola Welgreen
Oral History
Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshtein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sara Gelender
Oral History
Sara Gelender discusses her childhood in Warsaw, Poland; her memories of the bombing and burning of Warsaw in September 1939; her family's flight to a farm near the Russian border; hiding there for several months; being part of a group of Jewish refugees sent to Siberia in June 1940; the primitive conditions in the labor camp; the work she performed in the camp; marrying in the camp; leaving the camp with her husband for a small town; her continual state of hunger during those years; moving with her husband to the Ukraine in 1944; returning to Poland in 1946; the antisemitism they encountered in Poland; escaping to Czechoslovakia, Vienna, and then to a displaced persons camp in Germany; moving to Paris, where they lived until 1951; their emigration first to Canada, and finally to the United States.
Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger
Oral History
Ilse Sternberger (née Naumann), born in 1914, discusses her childhood in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland); her assimilated family life; her education; her marriage and her decision to move to Belgium with her husband in 1933; her life in Belgium; her husband's success as a photographer; their decision to move to London, England in 1936; returning to Germany in 1939 in an attempt to help Jewish children leave the country, and being stymied by the bureaucracy; immigrating to the United States with her husband and children in July 1940; her life in the US; her work as a teacher and writer; and her curation of books and exhibits of her husband's work.
Oral history interview with Jenny Friedlander
Oral History
Oral history interview with Leonid Bobrovsky
Oral History
Leonid Bobrovsky, born on May 4, 1937 in Odessa, Ukraine, describes being only three years old when the war began; his father who fought with the partisans during the war; the Nazi invasion of Odessa, at which time he and his family were in an underground hiding place (“Kotokloomba”) reserved for partisans and their families; hiding with his mother while his older brother and father helped the partisans; getting sick because the hiding place was very wet; the Nazis discovering various entrances to the hiding place and using poisonous gas to force the people out; escaping from the hiding place along with his mother and older brother; getting caught by the Nazis and taken away to the city jail where there were many other Jewish residents; being separated from his mother, who was later murdered by the Nazis; being moved with his brother to a different jail; his brother’s attempted escape and then suicide; being taken to camp Ombarova where he remained until liberation; working even though he was so young; attributing his survival in the ghetto to the women who protected and took care of him; liberation; being taken to an orphanage where he stayed until his father’s return; his father, who remarried after the war; attending school and studying construction at a college; being married twice and having two daughters; and naming his younger daughter, Polina Bobrovskaya, after his mother.
Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg
Oral History
Oral history interview with Joseph Schein
Oral History
Joseph Schein discusses his childhood is Sosnowiec, Poland; his experiences with antisemitism, and how his plans to immigrate to the United States were disrupted by the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany; being sent to his mother’s hometown Brzostowica-Wielka, Poland (now Vialikaia Berastavitsa, Belarus); avoiding forced labor in Russia by returning to Sosnowiec; being conscripted for forced labor by the Germans in October 1940; his experiences in several forced labor and concentration camps throughout the war years, which included Geppersdorf, Gross Sarne, Kleinmangersdorf, Wiesau, Waldau, Casper Bowder, Gintersdorf, Rostitz, Hundsfeld, Hirschberg, Gross-Rosen, Dachau, and Buchenwald; the conditions in these camps and the various labors he was forced to perform; being witness to medical experiments at Hundsfeld; enduring a death march from Buchenwald; being liberated by American troops; being hospitalized; his marriage to his childhood sweetheart and their stay in a displaced persons camp in Ainring, Germany; immigrating to the United States in June 1946; being the only member of his family that survived the Holocaust; immigrating with an accordion, which was his only possession at the time; and his experiences in the United States.
Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagi-Talavera
Oral History
Oral history interview with Edith Eva Eger
Oral History
Edith Eger (née Elefant), born on September 29, 1927 in Kosice, Hungary (now Slovakia), describes her father (Lajos), who was a tailor, and her mother (Helen Klein), who worked for the Hungarian ministry; her two sisters, Magda and Klara; her favorite memories are of her mother's cooking; her childhood, during which she trained in ballet and gymnastics; preparing to compete for the Olympics for Hungary but being disqualified because she was Jewish; her sisters, who were gifted musicians; the story of how her sister Klara was smuggled out of Hungary when the war began by one of her professors from the music academy in Budapest; the German occupation of Hungary; being taken to a brick factory; being deported with her sister, parents, aunts, and uncles to Auschwitz in May 1944; being separated from her parents, and thus spared the gas chambers; being selected to dance for Dr. Josef Mengele; using her talent for gymnastics and dancing to help survive in Auschwitz; conditions in the barracks; how she helped Magda survive in the camp; being liberated from Gunskirchen on May 4, 1945, at which time she had five types of typhoid fever, pneumonia, and no hair left; going to a displaced persons camp, where she met her husband and became pregnant; immigrating to the United States in 1949, going first to New York, and then to Baltimore, where she worked in a factory; moving to Texas, where she had two more children and attended the University of Texas at Austin; earning her doctorate; moving to San Diego, CA and working as a family therapist; and how her grandchildren are her world and how she lives every day for them. Ms. Eger, her parents, aunts and uncles, and her eldest sister Magda, were deported to Auschwitz in May 1944. Ms. Eger was separated from her parents; she and her sister Magda were spared the gas chambers. Because of her talent for ballet, Ms. Eger was selected to dance for Dr. Josef Mengele. She was able to use her talent for gymnastics and dancing to help survive in Auschwitz. Ms. Eger was liberated from Gunskirchen on May 4, 1945. While in a displaced persons camp, she met her husband and became pregnant. She emigrated to the United States in 1949; first to New York, and then to Baltimore, where she worked in a factory. She, her husband and her daughter Marianne moved to Texas, where Ms. Eger had two more children, and attended the University of Texas at Austin where she ultimately received her doctorate. She settled in San Diego and works as a family therapist and with battered wives and abused teenagers.
Oral history interview with Otto Springer
Oral History
Otto Springer discusses his German upbringing in Prague, Bohemia (now Czech Republic); his education; his family life; the antisemitism he witnessed in Prague in the early 1930s; his marriage to his Jewish wife and the discrimination he experienced as a result; his arrest in 1941; his sentence of forced labor; the help he received from a Gestapo officer; his activities in the Czech underground including the rescue of Jews, aided by two members of the Gestapo; his experiences in another labor camp near Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) beginning in October 1944; the work he performed; a forced march he underwent in January 1945; acts of vengeance by Czechs that he witnessed after the war ended; the suspicion he fell under because of his German heritage; the assistance he received from a Czech military commander; and his immigration with his wife and children in September 1948.
Oral history interview with Greta Stuehler
Oral History
Oral history interview with Magda Silberman
Oral History
Magda Silberman, born on August 17, 1928, discusses her childhood in Pavlovo, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine); the occupation of her town by the Hungarians; antisemitism that she and her family experienced; the occupation of her town by Nazi troops; the gathering of the Jewish citizens and their deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau in April 1944; her arrival, the selections, and her experiences while at Auschwitz; the death march she endured in January 1945 to Ravensbrück and Leipzig; her liberation in May 1945; and her immigration to the United States in 1948.
Oral history interview with Eric Willgott
Oral History
Eric Willgott, born on February 12, 1925 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his childhood in Vienna; his family life; his Orthodox religious upbringing; his involvement with a Zionist youth organization; his education; the increased antisemitism he experienced after the German annexation of Austria (Anschluss) in March 1938; his experiences during Kristallnacht in November; his family's decision to send him to Great Britain with the Kindertransport in December 1938; his experiences in London during the Blitz; his work with the United States government in Germany after the war; his immigration to the United States in 1948; his marriage; his life in the US; and his work.
Oral history interview with Cecilia Kornbluth
Oral History
Cecilia Kornbluth (née Cilli Mehlman), born on October 11, 1920, discusses her childhood in Vienna, Austria; her early experiences with antisemitism in elementary school and gymnasium; her memories of the assassination of Engelbert Dollfuss, Chancellor of Austria, by Austrian Nazis in 1934; the Anschluss in March 1938; the changes that occurred for Jewish Austrians afterward; her two older brothers fleeing to France and to Switzerland; the arrests of her younger brother, father, and mother; her father's eventual deportation to Auschwitz; her brother's incarceration in Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps for 11 months, and his release and move to England; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; being sent for by her brother in Switzerland; her illegal crossing into Switzerland; hiding because she lacked legal papers; being questioned and released; living and working in a refugee camp for single Jewish girls in Basel; living there throughout the war; marrying another refugee who was living in a single man's camp in 1942; having a son; being supported by the Jewish community during this period; her immigration to the United States in 1947; and her family and work life in the United States.
Oral history interview with Ruth Steiner
Oral History
Ruth Steiner discusses her childhood in Dresden, Germany; her well-integrated family life; her education; the changes she experienced after the Nazis came to power in 1933; the necessity of attending a university outside of Germany due to her Jewish heritage; her studies in Geneva; her family's decision to leave Europe in 1939; their immigration to Brazil; their move to the United States in 1940; her life in the US; the work she performed as a librarian; and her husband and family.
Oral history interview with Trudy Lyons
Oral History
Trudy Lyons discusses her childhood in Vienna, Austria; the family's assimilated life; the changes that occurred after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938; having to leave school, and witnessing abuses against Jews. Ms. Lyons describes the family's flight to Czechoslovakia, and their successful immigration to the United States in November 1938; the family's adjustment to life in the US, eventually settling in Indiana; and her education, marriage, and family life in Detroit, MI and San Francisco, CA.
Oral history interview with Margrit Schurman
Oral History
Margrit Schurman, born on April 1, 1925 in Essen, Germany, discusses her childhood in Essen; her memories of antisemitism; the flight of her sister to Switzerland and her brother to England; the events of Kristallnacht; being sent with her sisters to a Catholic school in England; their conversion to Catholicism; her life and experiences in England during the war, including her brother's deportation as an enemy alien to Canada; her separation from her mother, who had married an Italian and spent the war years in Italy; her immigration to the United States; her marriage and life in Berkeley, California; being reunited with her family in California; and her return trip to Germany.
Oral history interview with Edith Deutsch
Oral History
Edith Deutsch, born on January 21, 1925 in Arnswalde, Germany (now Choszczno, Poland), discusses her childhood in Arnswalde; her father, Fritz Abrahamowsky, and her mother, Lotte Gradnauer; living in a large home and being raised as a young child by servants, rarely seeing her mother or father; her family's move to Berlin, Germany in 1933; the difficulties experienced by her family when Hitler rose to power; going to the Olympic Stadium with her class and seeing the No Jews Allowed signs; having to leave public school after the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; fleeing Germany with her family in April 1939 for Thailand; traveling by ship to Singapore; abandoning their plans to travel to Bangkok and instead opting to go to Shanghai, China; staying in a camp in Shanghai for a week; her experiences in Shanghai; working as a sales girl and as a beautician; her marriage in 1946 and the birth of her son in 1948; immigrating to Australia in 1949; living in a boarding house; moving to the United States in 1951; living in Oregon and then San Francisco, CA; and her efforts to socialize with other refugees over the years.
Oral history interview with Francis E. Cappel
Oral History
Francis Cappel (né Franz Erwin Cappel), born on June 2, 1916 in Cologne, Germany, discusses his childhood in Cologne, Germany;his parents, Dr. Paul H. and Meta Cappel (née Braunschweig); growing up in an apartment flat near a synagogue in a mixed (Jewish and non-Jewish) neighborhood; antisemitism in Germany; the beating of his lawyer father by Nazi storm troopers (Sturmabteilung) in April 1933; the boycott of Jewish business; moving in October 1933 to France, where he worked in the textile business; concealing his Jewish origins as best he could, always carrying French or English newspapers with him; befriending a man who brought him to the German Reich secret headquarters where he got to see rare German stamps (Mr. Cappel was an avid stamp collector); moving to Hamburg, Germany in 1935; immigrating to England in 1937; serving as a corporal in the British Army; his success in obtaining transit visas for his father and mother, thus rescuing his father from Dachau concentration camp; getting married to his wife Margo in 1944; leaving the Army in April 1946 and returning to London; immigrating with his wife, children, and parents to the United States; and settling in San Francisco, CA.
Oral history interview with George Wittenstein
Oral History
Oral history interview with Thomas Trier
Oral History
Thomas Trier, born December 27, 1930 in Frankfurt, Germany, discusses his childhood in Frankfurt; his family's roots in the city; his integrated family life; his education in a Jewish school; his experiences in Nazi-era Germany; the economic difficulties his family faced; their decision to immigrate to the United States; the journey to New York, NY and then Chicago, IL; his experiences as a young immigrant in America; his feeling of isolation among his peers as a boy; his education through graduate school; his life after school; the work he performed; his feelings about his German and Jewish identity; and his marriage and family.
Oral history interview with Rita Grunbaum
Oral History
Rita Grunbaum (née Rita van Leeuwen), born on April 9, 1910 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, discusses her childhood in Holland; her career as a social worker in the Hague; her marriage in 1936;the onset of World War II in September 1939; the bombing of Holland; the German occupation beginning in 1940; the birth of her daughter in 1942; the family's arrest in September 1943; their transport to Westerbork concentration camp; her experiences in Westerbork; receiving papers for Palestine from her in-laws who had fled to Mexico; being selected as part of an exchange program with German prisoners-of-war held in Palestine; being sent with her family to Bergen-Belsen in February 1944; being transported from Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 on the Lost Train (also called Lost Transport); her liberation in Troebtiz, Germany; the deaths of her family members during the Holocaust; and her post-war experiences.
Oral history interview with Lily Robinson
Oral History
Lily Robinson (née Lily Solomon Leibovitch), born on June 29, 1939 in Sofia, Bulgaria, discusses her childhood with her mother and sister who had been deported to Haskovo, Bulgaria from Sofia in 1940; her experiences there as a young child; her family's return to Sofia in 1945; immigrating to the United States in December 1946; her life in California; and the emotional aftermath of the Holocaust that she witnessed in her brother.
Oral history interview with Herman Apteker
Oral History
Herman Apteker, born on October 9, 1915 in Dresden, Germany, discusses his childhood in Dresden; his Ukrainian parents; his father (Elieser), who was in business and died when Herman was only four years old; his mother, who started a wholesale business selling clothing out of the family's six or seven room flat; his four older siblings (three brothers and one sister); his male "guardian" (this was a German requirement for children whose fathers had died) Dr. Avraham Borg, who took Herman to synagogue and was the primary source of Herman's religious education; his experiences with antisemitism at public school; his strong desire to leave Germany once Hitler rose to power; his trip to Czechoslovakia in 1933 as part of the Young Macabees, in preparation for immigration to Palestine; spending 10 or 11 months in Slovakia, taking part in agricultural training; his arrival in Palestine in April 1933; becoming very ill with dysentery and malaria; his experiences in Palestine; the immigration of his mother and brothers to Palestine; his work in Haifa; riots that occurred in 1936; becoming a temporary policeman before a British officer offered him a job in the immigration office; his marriage in 1938; the beginning of WWII and his work for the British army (in an office) until he was conscripted into the Israeli Army; working as a commission officer at the Lebanese border; his unique relationship with an Arab officer on the Lebanese side; his divorce and remarriage; his immigration with his second wife to the United States in 1953; and settling in San Francisco, CA.
Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel
Oral History
Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagy-Talavera
Oral History
Nicholas Nagy-Talavera, born on February 14, 1929 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his childhood in Budapest; his time in a Transylvanian ghetto in 1944; his subsequent deportation to Auschwitz; the work he performed in Josef Mengele's medical complex; the experiments he witnessed; his impressions of Mengele; and his subsequent experiences at Mauthausen, Gusen II, and Ebensee.
Oral history interview with Semyon Veyber
Oral History
Semyon Veyber, born on December 20, 1927 in Tomashpil, Ukraine, discusses his childhood in Tomashpil; his religious upbringing; the changes he experienced after the German Army invaded in June 1941; his family's attempt to evacuate, their capture by the Germans, and the help given to the Germans by the local Ukrainian people; his escape from an Einsatzgruppen action; being deported with his family to a ghetto in July 1941, and his experiences there; the work he performed and the conditions; the fear he felt as the German Army retreated that he and his family would be killed before they were liberated; the arrival of the Soviet Army in March 1944; the charges of collaboration that he faced; his life after the end of the war; and his immigration to the United States in 1989.
Oral history interview with Chaya Fuhrman
Oral History
Chaya Ash-Furhman (née Averbuch), born March 19,1920 in Kishinev (now Chisinau), Moldova, describes her childhood; her parents’ involvement in Yiddish theater; her own involvement in theater at a young age; the outbreak of war in June 1941; hiding with her family in the basement of a theater in the Russian section of Tiraspol, Moldova; being transported to cooperative farms in Ukraine and Uzbekistan; being underfed; her father, who suffered from mental distress and dysentery and was taken to a courtyard and shot; how the people who were murdered were then covered in lime, so as not to spread disease; the hardships she and her family endured working on these farms; becoming sick with malaria; working as a seamstress in a nearby town where conditions were better; meeting her first husband; antisemitism that was rampant after the end of the war; her leaving for Poland with her mother and husband, who was Polish by birth; their decision to leave Poland in 1947 while she was pregnant; the family's experiences in a displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria; and their immigration to Israel, where she continued her involvement in Yiddish Theater.
Oral history interview with Peter Mueller
Oral History
Peter Mueller, born on December 30, 1926 in Hannover, Germany, discusses his childhood in Hannover; his family's decision to leave Germany after Kristallnacht in 1938; his life with his father in England; his decision to immigrate to the United States in 1943; his service in the US Army with the medical corps as an instructor in Texas; and his life after military service.
Oral history interview with Eva Cohn
Oral History
Eva Cohn (née Eva Maria Rhee), born in 1923 in Dortmund, Germany, describes her parents, Max Rhee and Else Heinemann; experiencing a warm family life and peace in her early childhood; not experiencing antisemitism until 1934 when her friend shunned her, teachers began to treat her unfairly, and Aryan students were being separated and taught antisemitism; being prohibited from attending public schools around 1935; moving to Cologne, Germany, where she attended a Jewish school while staying with a Jewish family; her family’s experience during an anti-Jewish “Aktion” in 1938, during which German soldiers threw rocks at their windows and burned their synagogue; returning to live with the family in Cologne, while her parents moved to Baudin and stayed with a friend; leaving Germany with her family circa 1938 and going to England just before the ill treatment of the Jews became worse; a law in England that prohibited immigrants from working, which meant her family could not make any money; spending one year in England, before being allowed to immigrate to the United States; settling in Los Angeles, CA; attending Whittier College and majoring in English; working at a school as an instructional supervisor; her father’s death in 1941 from a heart condition; meeting and marrying Hans in Salinas, CA in 1949; having three children and moving quite frequently; and her life in Palo Alto, teaching German, participating in the German association, and leading the Bridge to Understanding, which takes a group to Germany each summer.
Oral history interview with Fred Baum
Oral History
Fred Baum (né Efriam Dovid Boymelgreen), born in Slupaianowa, Poland (possibly Nowa Słupia, Poland), on October 1, 1921, describes his childhood; his one younger brother; his parents, Majlech and Miriam Nhuna, whom he lived with until 1930 when their mother died; being raised religious, and studying before the war at a yeshiva in Otwock, Poland; returning home from school after the war started, and seeing Jews being rounded up for forced labor; working in various government factories, and how the situation got worse and worse; his memories of shootings, confiscations, and deportations; how Jews were not allowed to go to school or to religious services and there was no electricity; his memories of several events including a memory of the rabbi of his town being tied to a horse and forced to run after it until he died; being put into Starachowice with his father and brother in August 1942; suffering from typhus and his father’s efforts to keep him out of the "hospital" so he wouldn't be shot; their transfer in July 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau; his father’s death in Birkenau around January of 1945; being sent with his brother to Buna (Monowitz), where they were given striped uniforms; being transferred with his brother to Lara Hut; being moved in early 1945 to Mauthausen and then to Gusen in Austria; spending a week there and then four days without food in an open train to Hannora, where they worked on an unfinished concentration camp; being separated from his brother on April 5, 1945 and sent to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by the British on April 15, 1945; spending six months in a hospital unit recuperating, and then staying in Bergen-Belsen for five years; meeting his wife, Helen Wiesel, there; getting married in 1946; never returning to Poland; reuniting with his brother, who was his only surviving family member; immigrating in 1950 with his wife and young daughter to the United States; having two more children; and his brother, who also immigrated to the United States and started a family.
Oral history interview with Fred Baum
Oral History
Oral history interview with Fred Baum
Oral History
Oral history interview with Cantor Hans Cohn
Oral History
Cantor Hans Cohn, born in Berlin, Germany on May 31, 1926, discusses his childhood in Berlin; being forced to leave his public school after the passage of the Nuremberg laws in 1935; antisemitic propaganda; his feelings of exclusion from social and athletic activities; the 1936 Olympic games; the events of Kristallnacht; the long wait for a visa to the United States; the family's decision to leave Germany for Shanghai, China; his impressions upon arrival in Shanghai; the life of his family and the Jewish community in Shanghai; his mother's death; the difficulties and illnesses he endured; moving into the Hongkew ghetto when the Japanese took control of Shanghai in 1942; his experiences there; the Allied bombings of Shanghai that took place in the spring of 1945; his life in post-war Shanghai; stowing aboard a ship to Australia in 1946; living as an illegal immigrant in Australia; his immigration to the United States in 1948; being drafted into the military; volunteering as a cantor in a San Francisco synagogue; returning to school and obtaining a cantorial diploma; working as a singing waiter in the Borscht Belt in New York while he was attending Hebrew Union College in New York; being reunited with his father in 1952; and his later experiences.
Oral history interview with Gilbert L. van Mourik
Oral History
Gilbert L. van Mourik, born June 27, 1930 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, discusses his childhood in Rotterdam; his family life; his Protestant upbringing; the changes he experienced after the German invasion of Holland in May 1940; his experiences during the bombing of Rotterdam; his father's efforts to gather and store food; his parents' decision to become part of the resistance; his family's activities, which included hiding a Jewish child in their home for the duration of the war; and the dangers his family experienced and their efforts at self-preservation as well as the moral challenges they faced.
Oral history interview with Bernard Broclawski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sam Zelver
Oral History
Sam Zelver, born in 1935 in Kalisz, Poland, discusses his childhood in Kalisz; fleeing with his family to the Soviet Union after the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939; the attempts of his father, who was in the Polish Army, to join them; the family's journey across Russia to Siberia; his mother doing hard labor in return for housing and food; the hardships they endured for a year and a half; the journeys the family took, which ended in Kazakhstan, where they lived with other Jewish refugees; discovering a relative nearby with whom they stayed from 1942 until the end of the war; the family's post-war journey to Germany, where they lived in a DP (displaced persons) camp; his immigration with his sister in 1947 to San Francisco, CA, sponsored by an uncle who died before they arrived; their stay in the Jewish children's home, Homewood Terrace; his reunion with his mother and stepfather, who emigrated in 1952; his education and service in the United States Army; his work as a salesman; his marriage; family; and religious life.
Oral history interview with Asya Grunkina
Oral History
Asya Grunkina, born on March 2, 1936 in Odesa, Ukraine, discusses her childhood in Odesa; her memories of the occupation of Odessa by Nazi troops on October 16, 1941; the orders for Jewish families to identify themselves in preparation for deportation; hiding with her family in their home to escape deportation; the family fleeing with the assistance of a local Russian man in January 1942; hiding in the catacombs and caves nearby; the assistance of their rescuer and his family who brought them food at great risk; the terrible conditions and privations they endured; and leaving their hiding place in April 1944.
Oral history interview with Kurt Mostny
Oral History
Kurt Mostny, born on March 3, 1919 in Linz, Austria, discusses his childhood in Linz; the antisemitism he experienced growing up; enlisting in the Austrian army and being posted in Vienna; the Anschluss in March 1938; serving as part of the honor guard surrounding Adolf Hitler when he arrived in Vienna to oversee the transfer of power; evading the roundup of Jews in Linz; escaping from Austria; going to Egypt to join his sister, who was pursuing a doctorate in Egyptology; their subsequent move to Belgium; his mother's friendship with a woman from Chile; her success in obtaining visas for Mr. Mostny, his sister, and herself; the entire family's immigration to Chile in 1939; his experiences in Chile; his work and family; his immigration to the United States with his wife and five children in 1964.
Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel
Oral History
Hanna Cassel, born on December 6, 1914, in Berlin, Germany, describes her father Arthur, who owned a shoe store and her mother Rebecca, who helped run the store; her one brother, Werner, who was six years younger than her; her mother's parents, who were very religious, and spending during many holidays going to the temple with them; her parents, who were not religious; attending a private elementary school and then a girls' high school, which she was not able to finish because about a year and a half before she would have graduated, she lost her scholarship (because she was Jewish); her father's business ending because he was Jewish; not experiencing much antisemitism when she was younger, and how at first most people thought Hitler was crazy and he would never amount to anything; her very good non-Jewish friends, especially at school; her family home and her childhood and her love for reading; not having many options after she dropped out of school; her desire to go to Palestine with some of her friends, which her parents did not want her to do; moving to Rome, Italy and working as a nanny for several different families; how by 1939, Hitler had influenced Mussolini's policies and foreign Jews were required to leave Italy; the popular sentiment in Italy about Germany; the government-sponsored persecution growing worse; being arrested in December 1940 and put into a women’s concentration camp (she had avoided the first roundups); living with about 65 other Jews, Roma, and Yugoslavian partisans; conditions in the camp, the people there, and the flourishing black market; the German occupation of Italy and how the villagers in the town around the concentration camp helped free the prisoners because they knew the women of the camp would be killed or deported immediately by the Germans; hiding in the fields and then walking back to Rome, which took her about ten days; eating vegetables she took from nearby fields during her journey; being given fake papers by the police in the concentration camp’s town (the papers identified her as Anna Castelli; she told anyone who asked that she was an Italian fleeing the Allies); hiding with various friends in Rome; how most people at this time were surviving on the black market; the destruction of the synagogue in Rome right after she returned and the liquidation of the ghetto; the deportation of thousands of people; how several years earlier her parents and brother had gone to Shanghai, China, where her brother and father both died; having very little correspondence with her family while she was in Rome; getting some information from listening to the radio, which was illegal; living in hiding on the outskirts of the city when Rome was liberated on June 5, 1944; the euphoria at that moment and the difficulty of life after the liberation; how food was hard to come by; getting a job at the American Joint Distribution Committee; getting a visa to the United States and arriving in the US in December of 1948; her mother’s death and Hanna’s depression; working nights while taking classes at San Francisco State College; earning a BA and wanting to become a librarian; becoming a teacher after earning her Master’s degree; returning to Italy almost every summer once she was a teacher and visiting friends; returning to Germany for the first time in 1972 to visit a cousin; her hesitation to return to Germany; having a Bat-Mitzvah in 1983; experiencing antisemitism in the US, especially at the high school where she worked; and never marrying or having children.
Oral history interview with Vera Korkus
Oral History
Vera Korkus, born in 1928 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her childhood in Vienna; the onset of World War II, and the opportunity that she and her sister had to go a Kindertransport, which they both refused; the forced move she and her family made in 1940 to Jewish ghetto in Vienna; their transport in October 1942 to an unnamed camp, where her father died of lung cancer; being sent with her mother to Auschwitz two years later; being separated from her mother; her reunion with her sister; the terrible conditions at Auschwitz; her encounter with Dr. Josef Mengele; being transported to Kurzbach, a subcamp of Gross-Rosen, where she endured forced labor and a 3-day march to Bergen Belsen; her escape from the march; finding protection from the Germans with Russian soldiers; the sexual assaults that occurred; her life after the war; moving to Bohemia (Czech Republic) then Vienna; and her immigration in 1949 to the United States.
Oral history interview with Steffi Black
Oral History
Steffi Black, born on October 17, 1920 in Berlin, Germany, describes her childhood; her Polish parents Charlotte Pink and Felix Israel; her father’s factory in Berlin and his work with his brother, Leo, installing electricity in the city; her complex family dynamic; her lack of a Jewish identity; her parents' divorce; her mother's remarriage to Otto Goetz in Switzerland; her separation from her father; her father's involvement in the Spanish Civil War; spending the summers of 1932 and 1933 in Poland with her grandparents; attending a Jewish school for about nine months, but feeling left out since she was not Jewish; her reunion with her father and their immigration first to Cuba and then to the United States; her father's death in 1946 in Nevada; her marriage and life in the US; visiting Germany in 1980; and her three children.
Oral history interview with Benjamin Parket
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ann Burger
Oral History
Ann Burger (née Anni Rosalie Rautenberg), born in 1920 in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), discusses her childhood; her father Arthur Rautenberg, who was the manager of department stores; being raised religious but not Orthodox; attending private school and then public schools; her experiences with antisemitism in school after Hitler's rise to power in 1933; her Jewish friends at school; the loss of her father's business; the family's move to Berlin, while she remained in school; her move to Berlin after her graduation in 1936; her cousin's immigration to Palestine; the family's decision to flee Germany; the efforts of their American family members to obtain visas for them; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; training as a nurse; a job opportunity for work in Sweden, where she remained during the war years; her parents’ journey to Spain, Cuba, and then to the United States; her reunion with them in the US in 1946; and settling in San Francisco, CA, where she married and had a family.
Oral history interview with Volf Gershaft
Oral History
Oral history interview with Klara Garmel
Oral History
Klara Garmel (née Pleshivaya), born on February 17, 1926, discusses her childhood in Yarun’, Ukraine; her parents' work on a collective farm; her memories of Jewish school as well as participating in a pioneer Ukrainian youth organization; the onset of war with Nazi Germany in 1941; the confusion that ensued; the enforcement of anti-Jewish laws; hiding from a roundup; witnessing brutal acts perpetrated against her grandfather; escaping, with the assistance of non-Jewish friends, to Poland; encountering her mother and sister, who returned to Ukraine; her experiences moving, hiding, and passing for a non-Jew; her conversion to the Russian Orthodox faith; marrying a widower far older than she; the advance of Soviet liberating forces; reclaiming her Jewish identity; leaving her marriage; working until she had sufficient funds to return to her home; learning that all but a sister and brother had perished; remarrying and having a daughter; and immigrating to the United States in 1992 due to the antisemitism she experienced in Ukraine.
Oral history interview with Polina Sorkin
Oral History
Polina Sorkin (née Britavskaya), born on November 25, 1931 in Krutye, Ukraine, discusses her childhood in Ukraine; her brother and father's service in Soviet Army; the German invasion and seeing troops in her town; her family's unsuccessful attempt to flee; an incident in which all the Jews were rounded up and marched to a barracks where they were imprisoned; escaping the barracks; traveling from village to village; being sheltered by relatives and strangers; her reunion with family members in a ghetto; traveling to an orphanage in Balta, Ukraine, where she remained until the end of the war; reuniting with her family; her life after the war; and her immigration to the United States.
Oral history interview with Mikhail Blank
Oral History
Mikhail Blank, born on April 22, 1930 in Bershad, Ukraine, discusses his childhood in Bershad; the family's experiences on a collective farm; his memories of antisemitism; the family's move from Bershad to a nearby camp after the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; an incident in which his father and brother with other men were locked in a stable from which they escaped and returned to Bershad; the occupation of the area by Romanian troops and the establishment of a ghetto in September 1941 in Bershad, where he and his family lived until the end of the war; his escape attempts; illnesses he endured; the forced labor his father and brother performed; his father's death; the liberation of Bershad in March 1944 by Soviet troops; his brother joining the fight against the Nazis and his death in battle in July 1944; his life in Bershad after the war; his military service; and his immigration to the United States in 1991.
Oral history interview with Kurt Gronowski
Oral History
Kurt Gronowski, born on July 16, 1923 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his childhood in Berlin; the antisemitism he experienced; the destruction of his family's business during Kristallnacht, November 1938; the family's escape to Shanghai, China; his experiences while on board the ship from Italy; the family's arrival in Shanghai and the assistance they received from the Jewish community; life in the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai; conditions during the Japanese occupation; the improvement of conditions after the war ended; immigrating to the United States; the difficulties he encountered while living in Indiana; and settling in San Francisco, where he became a successful businessman.
Oral history interview with Rosa Wigmore
Oral History
Rosa Wigmore (née Adler), born September 8, 1923 in Ulic, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), discusses her childhood in Ulic; her family life; the changes she experienced in 1939 following the Hungarian annexation of the region; her experiences during her deportation with her family in 1944 to a ghetto in Ungvar, Hungary (now Uzhhorod, Ukraine); their deportation to Auschwitz; the selection she survived with her sister; her illness; her experiences in the infirmary and the help she received from a doctor who arranged to transfer her to another camp; the work she performed; the assistance she received; her lingering health issues; being liberated in May 1945 by Czechoslovakian partisans; her postwar experiences in Prague; her reunion with her sister; their immigration to the United States; and the fates of her other family members.
Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd
Oral History
Gerta Wingerd (née Alper), born on September 23, 1923 in Bеrhomet, Romania (now Berehomet, Ukraine), discusses her childhood in Czernowicz, Romania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine); the increase in antisemitism in 1938 after fascist rule was established; the occupation of her town by Soviet forces in 1939; the retreat of the Soviet forces; her two brothers' escape toward Russia; the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; the establishment of a ghetto; her family's release; their eventual internment in a ghetto camp in Transnistria until 1944; the conditions, difficulties, and disease that were prevalent there; the family's liberation by Soviet troops; her return to Czernowicz; her escape from Romania to Vienna, Austria, where she worked for the United States Army; being sponsored by the Joint Distribution Committee to immigrate to the United States in 1949; and her experiences in New York, Minneapolis, and Great Falls, Montana before marrying and settling in Mill Valley, California.
Oral history interview with Evelyn Lowen Apte
Oral History
Evelyn Lowen Apte (née Eveline Loewenberg), born in 1929 in Goerlitz, Germany, describes her brother Gerald; her father Herman Alexander Lowen, who was a cavalry officer during the First World War; her mother Else (Gradnauer) Lowen, who had a great interest in art and attended an art school in Berlin; how her family did not consider themselves religious but when the war began the Jewish holidays became more culturally significant to the family; having a happy childhood; her father’s desire to emigrate as soon as Hitler came to power; getting around the quota system by becoming property owners in the United States; traveling through Paris, France in 1937 and taking a ship to New York, NY, arriving on February 22, 1937; the fate of her extended family; settling in Portland, Oregon; learning English; the difficult transition to American life, especially for her mother; feeling like an outsider in high school, but beginning to feel American in college; visiting Germany in 1966; how she does not enjoy speaking German with people her age, but is willing to speak German with the younger generation; attending Reed College in Oregon for two years, and then transferring to the University of California at Berkeley, where she did her undergraduate and some graduate work, finishing her education in London; becoming a social worker; considering herself an atheist, but still feeling close to the Jewish culture and traditions; the large community of Jewish refugees in Portland; and her reflections on her experiences as a refugee.
Oral history interview with Annette Herskovits
Oral History
Annette Herskovits discusses her experiences as a young child during the Holocaust, including her infancy in Paris, France; the occupation of Paris by Nazi troops; her father's decision that the family should go into hiding; hiding with her older siblings with occasional visits from their parents; the arrest and deportation of her parents in June 1943; her brother's efforts to find a safe place for her outside of Paris; being fostered with a couple in an unidentified location; being visited by her siblings during this period; and understanding that she would never see her parents again.
Oral history interview with Guta Zlotlow
Oral History
Oral history interview with Alfred Cotton
Oral History
Alfred Cotton (né Baumwollspinner), born on December 29, 1925 in Hamburg, Germany, discusses his childhood in Hamburg; his Polish parents; his father’s wholesale wine distribution business; his memories of the antisemitism after the Nazis rose to power; his parents' selling their business because of the anti-Jewish boycotts; the expulsion of his father to Poland in 1938; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; the arrests of the teachers at the Jewish school he attended; his parents' decision to place him on a Kindertransport; leaving Germany for a boy's camp in Suffolk, England; the arrest and internment of all boys over age 16; being moved to Sheffield, England and living in a camp run by refugee women; attending a public school; learning that his parents and grandparents were deported in 1942 from Poland where they were living; his immigration to the United States in the early 1950s; and his involvement in Kindertransport reunions.
Oral history interview with Marion Mostny
Oral History
Marion Mostny, born on May 22, 1927 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her childhood in Berlin; the changes she experienced during the 1930s; her parents' decision to leave Germany; her family's immigration to Santiago, Chile in April 1939; the community of Jewish refugees there; the fates of family members left behind in Germany; her life in Chile; her and her husband's decision to immigrate to the United States in 1963; their life in San Francisco, CA; her decision to write her memoirs; and the importance of Holocaust remembrance. [See her memoir titles, Conversations with my grandchildren : a journey through three continents.]
Oral history interview with Roy Calder
Oral History
Roy Calder describes his early life in an assimilated family in Berlin and Dresden; his invovlement in Jewish youth groups; his awareness of increased antisemitism after the Nazi rise to power; his parents' decision to send him to school in Switzerland in 1935; his attempts to convince his family to leave Germany; his regret that they did not; his decision to immigrate to Great Britain; the jobs he held in Birmingham, England; the beginning of World War II in 1939; his internment as an enemy alien in Sherbrooke, Canada; his return to England in late 1940; why he volunteered for the British army; his six year service in Scotland, Nigeria, India, and Burma; his marriage to another Holocaust survivor; his decision to immigrate to the United States in 1953; his Jewish identity; and the effects the events of the Holocaust had on him and his wife.
Oral history interview with Alfred Batzdorff
Oral History
Oral history interview with Mikhail Felberg
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sandor Hollander
Oral History
Oral history interview with Abraham Jaeger
Oral History
Abraham Jaeger, born on March 13, 1916 in Vel'ký Bočkov, Czechoslovakia (now Velykyi Bychkiv, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his career as a salesman; his escape in October 1939 to Palestine, where he was imprisoned for six months; his experiences serving in the British Army in Egypt, Syria, and Cyprus; joining the Israeli Army in 1948; his career and life in Israel, where he lived until 1958; his immigration to the United States; and the death of his parents and three of sisters in the Holocaust.
Oral history interview with Judy Kirkham
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rita Kuhn
Oral History
The interviews describe Ms. Kuhn's childhood in Berlin, Germany, her life as the daughter of a Jewish father and non-Jewish German mother as the Nazi regime rose to power, and her growing awareness of antisemitism and change. Ms. Kuhn describes the dismay she felt after the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938, and the privations her family suffered as a consequence of the Nuremberg Laws and her father's unemployment, living with meager ration allotments, detainments, and forced labor. She discusses life trapped in Berlin during the war years, bombings, and forced labor in a small factory. Ms. Kuhn remembers the round-up of Jews in Berlin in February 1943 and her release, because her mother was German. Of particular note, Ms. Kuhn discusses the Rosenstrasse Protest of 1943, when a group of Aryan women protested the imprisonment of their Jewish husbands and children, in which her mother participated. Ms. Kuhn describes the occupation of Berlin by Russian troops, and her family being asked to identify Nazis to them. She recalls her first exposure to information about the concentration camps and the Holocaust, the time she spent in a displaced persons camp, her desire to leave Germany and her immigration to the United States in 1948. Ms. Kuhn describes her return to Berlin for the 50th year memorial of Kristallnacht, when she participated in a silent march from the a synagogue to Rosenstrasse in commemoration of the protest there.
Oral history interview with Greta Reisman
Oral History
Greta Reisman, born on January 6, 1927 in Mattersdorf (Mattersburg), Austria, discusses her childhood in Nuremberg, Germany; her religious upbringing and assimilated education; the changes she experienced after the Nazis came to power; the increasing antisemitism as well as her family's decision to relocate to Yugoslavia and Hungary; her experiences in Yugoslavia; the actions her grandmother took to allow them to remain there; her decision to join the rest of the family in Hungary; and immigrating to the United States in 1940.
Oral history interview with Joseph Schein
Oral History
The interviews describe Mr. Schein's childhood is Sosnowiec, his experiences with antisemitism, and how his plans to immigrate to the United States were disrupted by the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. Mr. Schein describes being sent to his mother’s hometown, Brzostowica-Wielka, near Volkovisk, in Russian Poland, and eluding forced labor in Russia by returning to Sosnowiec. He discusses being conscripted for forced labor by the Germans in October 1940, and his experiences in several forced labor and concentration camps throughout the war years, which included Geppersdorf, Gross Sarne, Kleinmangersdorf, Wiessau, Waldau, Casper Bowder, Gintersdorf, Rostitz, Hundsfeld, Hirschberg, Gross-Rosen, Dachau, Buchenwald, and possibly others. Mr. Schein describes the conditions in these camps and the various labors he was forced to perform, being witness to medical experiments at Hundsfeld, and enduring a death march from Buchenwald. He discusses his liberation by American troops, his hospitalization, his marriage to his childhood sweetheart, their stay in a displaced persons camp in Ainring, Germany, and their immigration to the United States in June 1946. Mr. Schein relates that he was the member of his family that survived the Holocaust and his only possession when he emigrated was an accordion. He also describes his experiences in the United States.
Oral history interview with Dan Dougherty
Oral History
Dan Dougherty, born May 30, 1925 in Austin, Minnesota, describes being drafted into the United States Army 17 days after his high school graduation; transferring from the 44th Division to the 45th Division; seeing combat on the Sigfried Line and experiencing a slight injury; returning after his recovery and fighting at Aschaffenburg, Germany; the surrender of Germany seven days later; taking part in the liberation of Bavarian US prisoner of war camps and concentration camps; going towards Nuremberg, which had already fallen to the Allies; arriving in Dachau, where they found thousands of emaciated corpselike inmates; coming upon Allach concentration camp; and going to Munich, which they occupied on May 1, 1945.
Oral history interview with Max Erlichman
Oral History
Max Erlichman, born in November 1931 in Caracas, Venezuela, describes his parents Tobias Erlichman and Bella Galinskaja; spending his childhood years in Amsterdam, Holland until he was taken to Westerbork with his brother and father in mid-November 1942; the deportation of his mother to Auschwitz in September of 1942; the deportation of his older brother Zacharias to Auschwitz in October of 1942; never seeing either Zacharias nor his mother again, and finding out after the war that they were both killed in the camps; being sent with his brother and father to Bergen-Belsen, where they stayed for nine weeks; being sent to a camp in Wülzburg, Germany and remaining there until they were liberated in March or April of 1945 by the American Army; recuperating along with his father and brother in a house provided to them by civilians in the town of Weissenburg in Bayern, Germany; being sent to a displaced persons camp in Würzburg for a week before being sent back to Holland; his father’s travels between Holland and the United States for a few years after the war; and immigrating to the US with his brother.
Oral history interview with Marianne Gerhart
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rose Herskovic
Oral History
Oral history interview with Eugene Katz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Tillie Molho
Oral History
Tillie Molho, born on December 25, 1926 in Salonika, Greece, discusses her childhood in Salonika and Athens, Greece; her experience of the Italian and German invasions of Athens; living in hiding for two years with a Christian family; the scarcity of food and the fear of discovery; her reunion with her family after the liberation of Athens; her family's attempt to reclaim their home from German collaborators; her life after the war; and her immigration to the United States in 1951.
Oral history interview with Edith Newman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Agnes Allison
Oral History
Agnes Allison (née Agnes Suzannah Halàsz), born on October 28, 1926 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses her childhood; her younger sister, Judy; her mother, Ilona Gero and her father, Robert Halász; attending a private German school established for the children of diplomats; the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, and the arrival of Polish refugees; the Hitler Youth movement at her school; her family’s conversion to Catholicism in 1939 and her awareness of the anti-Jewish laws in Hungary; the German occupation of Hungary beginning in March 1944 and the increased restrictions imposed on the Jewish community; her family being forced out of their home; working for the Germans for a short time in exchange for protection; becoming friendly with a German officer's chauffeur, Fritz, who told her that the German soldiers kept watch at night to protect everyone in the apartment from the Hungarian Nazis, the Arrow Cross; going into hiding in December 1944 with the help of a priest, Father Reile; remaining in hiding until the liberation of Budapest in April 1945; learning the fates of family members; and her belief that the Arrow Cross was responsible for the deaths of Budapest Jews.
Oral history interview with Ann Gabor Arancio
Oral History
Ann Gabor Arancio, born on September 2, 1926 in Gyula, Hungary, discusses her childhood in Gyula; her childhood experiences with antisemitism; her experiences passing as a Christian with false identity papers; being captured in November 1944 by Nazi troops; doing forced labor in a brick factory; her escape with her mother and sister; going into hiding in several locations; the liberation of Hungary; studying in Holland; immigrating to the United States with her husband in 1950; and her divorce, remarriage, and family life in the United States. [Ms. Arancio was featured in the book, A Time to Flee: Unseen Women of Courage.]
Oral history interview with Valerie Balint
Oral History
Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska
Oral History
Yanina Cywinska, born on October 28, 1929, describes growing up with her Ukrainian family, including her parents, Wladyslaw and Ludwika, and her older brother, Theodor; traveling a lot as a child; living mostly in and around Warsaw, Poland; attending ballet classes; being raised Catholic; her father’s Jewish friends; being taught by her parents to not look down on Jews or ever make an antisemitic comment; her father, who was a doctor and was asked by the Nazis, once they had invaded Poland, to perform some medical experiments on Jewish twins; his refusal to conduct the experiments and his subsequent imprisonment in jail for a short period; the Warsaw Ghetto, which was constructed in 1939; her father’s realization that he had a moral obligation to help the Jews and his failed attempts to get the local priest to help; her family’s participation in the underground movement; making several trips a day through tunnels and sewer lines into and out of the ghetto; carrying ammunition, jewelry, furs, medicine, and poison for the black market; witnessing executions and other violence; the various tunnels that they used to get in and out of the ghetto; being arrested and sent to a detention center; being taken out in the middle of the night with other people into the forest, where they dug ditches and then were lined up and shot; surviving the massacre because she was behind another woman, and she fell into the pit and pretended to be dead; climbing out of the pit and hiding in a haystack, where a farmer found her; reuniting with her parents at the detention center; her aunt, Stasha, paying the Gestapo to get Yanina and her brother out of the detention center; returning to her aunt’s house; being beaten and abused by her aunt for being a “Jew-lover”; her brother, who ran away; working as a servant for her aunt; ending up homeless and wandering around the streets of Warsaw for a while; staying for a few weeks with a couple she met at the detention center; reuniting with her parents at the detention center; being sent with the other prisoners to Auschwitz in cattle cars; the journey; arriving at Auschwitz; surviving a gas chamber after being revived by another inmate; being given a uniform; the shaving of her hair; being tattooed with a number; working in various places, including a factory, a kitchen, in the labs, and at the crematorium (note that it is generally thought that only men worked in the Sonderkommando doing the jobs that Yanina said she did); her methods for survival; being forced on a death march to Dachau; being liberated by American soldiers; staying in a displaced persons camp for a while, where she was sexually assaulted and impregnated by a soldier; her two abusive marriages after the war; meeting her third husband; the effects of the war on her emotionally; giving up on God; and her long recovery from her traumatic experiences.
Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ilse Lewy
Oral History
Ilse Lewy, born on February 26, 1920 in Wuppertal, Germany, discusses her childhood in Wuppertal (now part of Elberfeld); her memories of the increase in antisemitism after Hitler rose to power 1933; being forced to leave school and move with her family; working at a factory until 1936; her move to a children's school in Sweden that prepared students for immigration to Palestine; her travels there by train and her experiences in the school for the next two years; being summoned back to Germany to immigrate with her parents and sister to the United States; the voyage on a ship through the Panama Canal; arriving in San Francisco, CA; returning to school; her attempts at and final success in being admitted to nurse training; her experiences with antisemitism in the United States; volunteering for the United States Army; being stationed in the Philippines where she met her future husband; and their marriage and family life.
Oral history interview with Esther Kemeny
Oral History
Esther Kemeny, born on August 19, 1912 in Michalovce, Slovakia, discusses her childhood in Michalovce; attending law school and graduating 1936; incidents of antisemitism; her disbarment in 1939 because she was Jewish; meeting her husband and their marriage; the escape of her brothers and father to the United States in 1940; being deported with her husband to Auschwitz in 1944; the deplorable conditions at Auschwitz; the birth and tragic loss of her son in Auschwitz; her work in the hospital at Auschwitz; the death march she endured; her experiences at Ravensbrück concentration camp; being liberated by Russian soldiers; the assistance she received from the Red Cross; her return to Slovakia and her reunion with her husband who was in the hospital in Bratislava; their immigration to the United States in 1949; their move to New York and then Ohio; her husband's medical practices; and the birth of her daughter in 1952.
Oral history interview with Ray Redel
Oral History
Oral history interview with Roma Barnes
Oral History
Roma Barnes (née Rosenmann), born on March 15, 1930 in Demblin (Deblin), Poland, describes being subjected to a lot of antisemitism in school when she was growing up; the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939; the roundup of Jews; fleeing the roundups several times; her parents, who were caught in the first roundup and sent to Sobibor, where they were killed immediately upon arrival; returning to her town, where she met up with her uncle and stayed with him; her uncle’s preparation of fake passports for all of them to go to Switzerland; watching as her uncle was captured by the Nazis and shot; being caught and sent to a work camp, where she witnessed such atrocities as watching the hanging of her friend; being sent to Chesokova, where she was liberated; and staying in Egland after the war before going to the United States.
Oral history interview with Margot Braun
Oral History
Margot Braun (née Feibush), born January 28, 1923 in Berlin, Germany, describes growing up in a suburb of Berlin, where there were very few Jews; being forced to go to a Jewish school in Berlin when Hitler came to power in 1933; her family’s experience of a "pre-Kristallnacht" in June of 1938, at which time she and her family were awakened and forced to leave their businesses and move in with their relatives; her father’s many siblings, including his brother who was an extremely wealthy businessman in San Francisco, CA; leaving with her family for England in March 1939; the arrest of her parents at the beginning of the war; living with her cousin in a foster home in England; her parents’ eventual release; and her family’s immigration in October 1948 to the United States.
Oral history interview with Ted Ellington
Oral History
Theodore “Ted” Ellington, born in February 1928 in Vienna, Austria, describes being an only child; growing up around antisemitism and being defensive of his Jewish identity; the religious nature of Vienna schools and having to attend Christian educational activities; being also required to go to Jewish education sessions; how there were about eight Jewish students in his elementary school class of 35 children; his father, who made a living selling foodstuffs for livestock; the economic inequality in Vienna and his family’s practice to provide lunch for an unemployed family once a week; the violence that erupted in Vienna in 1934; the Anschluss in 1938; seeing tanks in the streets and army planes flying overhead daily; the Nazi flags and swastikas all over Vienna and the pro-Nazi sentiment of many Austrians; the Nuremberg laws; being forced to attend an all-Jewish school, where Nazi children would gather outside and taunt the Jewish students; the burning of synagogues and the destruction of his grandfather's store; his memories of Nazis entering their family home and beating his father after he asked the officers for paperwork stating that they were allowed to conduct the search; how the officers took virtually everything the family owned, including his cherished stamp collection; his parents’ desire to relocate to the United States; his parents’ decision to enroll Ted in a program that was run by the Quakers that took children from Austria and placed them temporarily with a family in England; going to Belgium in April 1939 to live with his uncle; going to England in May 1939 and staying with a family there until 1946; being treated well by the English family; attending school in London; his parents’ migration to San Francisco, CA in 1940; traveling to New York, NY in 1946 and a train to San Francisco, where he reunited with his parents in May 1946; attending San Francisco City College for one year and then UC Berkeley; earning his degree in accounting in 1950; joining the US Army for two years and then becoming a CPA; getting married in 1965; and his two daughters.
Oral history interview with Anna Hollander
Oral History
Oral history interview with Theo Joseph
Oral History
Oral history interview with Elisabeth Katz
Oral History
Elisabeth Katz (née Rosenthal), born on April 23, 1920 in Fürth, Germany, discusses her childhood in an assimilated Jewish family; her mother's conversion to Judaism and reversion to Lutheranism; the ambivalent position that she felt placed in because of this difference; having to change schools once Hitler rose to power in 1933; attending a Jewish boarding school; entering nursing school in Frankfurt in 1938; her memories of the events surrounding Kristallnacht in November 1938, including the arrest of her father; immigrating to London in late 1938 to work in a hospital; being interned as an enemy alien; returning to London and working as a nurse during the Blitz; visiting her parents in 1947 in Germany, where they had remained throughout the war; her father being one of the three Jews in Furth who survived the Holocaust; immigrating to the United States in 1949; moving to San Francisco, CA; and marrying a fellow refugee.
Oral history interview with Jim Sanders
Oral History