Oral history interview with Alexander Fishman
Transcript
- Good evening.
- I'm Jessica Sheena.
- This is my grandfather, Alex Fishman.
- And this is my grandmother, Ruth Fishman.
- My grandfather will answer some questions about the Holocaust.
- Where were you born?
- Hi, Jessica.
- I was born in Sighet.
- At that time, it was part of Romania.
- You would better known as Transylvania.
- But my father and my mother, the same place they were born--
- were Hungarians.
- When I was born in 1917, it became Romania.
- So I was born in a town called Sighet, Romania.
- But ultimately, I became a Hungarian.
- I became a Hungarian citizen.
- OK.
- Did you have a peaceful childhood?
- Well, had a peaceful childhood.
- I had no problems.
- I grew up like any other boy.
- You used to grow up--
- I went to Romanian schools.
- I graduated.
- And I had no problem growing up.
- What did you do day by day?
- Well, day by day, I was in school.
- And then, at the age of 21, after I graduated,
- I had to be in the Romanian Army.
- And I served in the Romanian Army from 1939 till 1941.
- At that time--
- What was it like in the army?
- At that time, the Hungarian government
- took over our city, part of Transylvania.
- And I became a Hungarian citizen overnight.
- But peace didn't last long because after a while
- the Hungarians became very anti-Jewish and antisemitic.
- They were always antisemitic.
- We had no peace at that time.
- We were afraid that they would haunt us as Jews.
- Ultimately, my brother was called in
- to serve in a labor camp.
- And he was sent to Siberia.
- And he was married already.
- I was married too, at that time.
- But luckily, at that time, at least for the time being,
- he came back after serving in--
- I'm sorry, not Siberia, in the Ukraine,
- while the Germans attacked the Russians.
- And he had to dig trenches and work in the most
- unfavorable conditions.
- He came home broken physically, but not spiritually.
- He was strong enough.
- And he started to recover.
- As soon as he recovered, suddenly
- I received a letter from the Hungarian government
- that I have to report to the labor camp.
- That was in 1942.
- And from 1942-- you asked me what I did.
- From 1942 till 1944, I was in a strict Hungarian, anti-Jewish
- labor camp.
- We were working very hard.
- We had very little food.
- But luckily we were, in a way, free, that we had our own money
- and we could buy our own food.
- So to that extent, it wasn't too bad.
- Wasn't that the place where you could bribe people--
- Yes.
- --for privileges?
- We could bribe people for privileges.
- And I had enough money at that time.
- And there was no problem.
- But nevertheless, it was very hard.
- Then, in 1944, on March 18, the German Nazis--
- the German government took over Hungary.
- They marched in in Hungary.
- And it was just at a time when I was
- supposed to get a furlough for the birth of my second child.
- And that's when they marched, and I
- was supposed to leave on Sunday, March the 18th.
- And when they took over the city, I was cut off
- and I couldn't go anymore.
- So I never saw my second child.
- But I had no idea what they were doing.
- And in the meantime, I learned that, as soon
- as the Germans took over our part of the city, Transylvania,
- all the Jews were put in ghettos.
- And my father, as a matter of fact,
- not only was he in a ghetto, but he was taken as a hostage
- because the prominent Jewish people at that time
- were all taken hostages.
- The reason was that they had to give the government all
- their valuables, all their assets, all their money, gold
- and silver, whatever.
- But I didn't know about this at that time.
- So anyway, I was in Budapest, in the outskirts of Budapest,
- in my unit.
- The Jewish unit was working in a beer factory.
- And we worked very hard.
- We had to carry ice, tons of ice and grain
- and everything over our back.
- And they were working us very hard.
- Finally, the war came to an end.
- In the meantime, we didn't know what was going on.
- We knew that my family, the whole town of Sighet,
- was deported to Auschwitz around June.
- But we didn't know anything about it.
- We never heard about gas chambers.
- We never heard about killings.
- We were cut off, completely cut off.
- We knew that they are killing Jews,
- but not to the extent what we learned after the war
- and during the war.
- People outside the German area, like in the United States
- and anywhere else in the world, they
- knew more than we knew about it.
- Finally, around September, I heard
- that our unit would be given over to the Germans,
- and we would be transferred to Germany.
- At that time, three of us, two of my buddies and myself,
- had a safe house.
- And overnight we snuck out from the camp.
- But a fourth boy suddenly realized
- that we are sneaking out.
- He came with us.
- We didn't have room for him, so we didn't know what to do.
- He said to us, if you go, I go.
- So finally we decided that two of my buddies
- were going to another safe place,
- and I will take him with me.
- So we went to a safe place, and we stayed there till October.
- By October, his money ran out, and I didn't have money.
- But the woman and the family said to us, look,
- we are going to keep you.
- But for him we are not responsible.
- And unless he pays us for something, we will keep him.
- But he didn't have any money either.
- If that family would have been caught with us,
- they would have been shot on the spot
- because they were hiding Jewish people.
- So we had nothing else to do.
- But I had a second safe place in a hotel,
- where a Gentile person knew about me.
- And we went to that hotel.
- At night we snuck out.
- And we lived there for several weeks.
- And the Russians were already around Budapest.
- That was November, the beginning of November.
- And I remember the fateful Friday.
- It was November the 3rd, 1944.
- I went out to have breakfast or to have a shave--
- I don't remember what it was anymore-- because in those days
- I didn't shave myself.
- I didn't have anything to shave with.
- When I came back, my buddy was still in his pajamas.
- And in the meantime, it got late.
- And it was around noontime.
- And we had to go downstairs, across the street
- to a restaurant to have lunch.
- Naturally, we had all false papers.
- I Hungarianized my name from Fishman to make it a Hungarian.
- And it was called Halász.
- That means a fisherman.
- But my friend still was in pajamas, and I got hungry.
- And he said, OK, wait for me for five minutes,
- and I will be ready.
- But I said, look, I'm going down,
- and I will order your food.
- You don't eat soup anyway, so I might as well
- go and eat my soup.
- And by the time you come, your food will be there.
- And I closed the door.
- And I still heard the words ringing in my ear.
- Wait for me for five minutes.
- And as I went down the stairs--
- because we lived on the first floor,
- we didn't have to use the elevator.
- So I came down the spiral stairs.
- A Nazi came up with a big Nazi band, a Hungarian
- who was my old schoolmate.
- And he recognized me.
- He was a Hungarian.
- And by the time I saw him, I knew that something is wrong.
- So as I started to go down in the foyer,
- suddenly I hear he calls my name.
- And at first, I didn't respond.
- Then he started to yell louder.
- Finally, I stopped, and I turned around.
- And I pretended that I saw him for the first time.
- Then he says, what the hell are you Jew
- doing here without a star and without a band of David?
- Instead of a star, we had to wear a band.
- So I said, well, I'm here to look for my family and so on.
- He says, your family is already gone.
- I said, what do you want from me?
- He says, I will take you in.
- And I promised him--
- I told him, I will give you everything.
- Just let me go.
- He said, I have already everything.
- And at gunpoint, he took me over to the Nazi headquarters.
- And finally, to make a long story short,
- the reason I didn't have a band here with the Star of David,
- I was sentenced to three days in prison.
- That was Saturday.
- I went to prison there.
- And it was a room like a football field, that prison.
- It was full of Jews.
- It was some 200 or 300 Jewish young people.
- Were men, children, women, girls,
- all bunched together and were all sleeping on the floors.
- And when I came in, they all ran to me
- and asked me, what's going on?
- They didn't know what was going on.
- They were there for weeks.
- And I said, I know the Russians are already here
- around the corner of Budapest, but we are waiting for them
- to occupy the city.
- But next day, Sunday morning, suddenly everything changed.
- The Germans, SS took over the prison.
- And they marched us to the main synagogue
- in Budapest, a beautiful synagogue.
- And they kept us there for two days.
- And they were desecrating the Torahs
- and everything, those Nazis--
- the Hungarian Nazis, mind you.
- They were sitting on the bema.
- And they were taking out the Torahs.
- And they were lighting cigarettes from a fire,
- and they were lighting cigarettes
- with the Torah pieces.
- Then Monday morning, that was March the 5th or the 6th.
- Let's see.
- Friday was the 3rd, 4th, 5th-- the 6th.
- They started to march us.
- And we marched from Budapest to the German border.
- It was some 200 miles, 250 miles.
- In the meantime, while we were marching,
- they didn't give us any food for the few days.
- And it was in November.
- We marched for five days.
- We slept in football fields and soccer fields.
- That's where they put us in there, without anything.
- We were all together and freezing.
- Children died.
- Old people died.
- Women died.
- And those who couldn't walk were left behind.
- And then we heard shots.
- And they were probably-- naturally
- they were all shot to death.
- Finally, we arrived at the border.
- And those Hungarian Nazis were as bad, if not worse,
- than the SS.
- We arrived at the German border.
- The Hungarian Nazis finally left us.
- And immediately they put us in cattle wagons, and jammed.
- I don't know how many, but we couldn't even move.
- We couldn't move an inch.
- Finally, after two days without food and without any water
- and without any sanitary conditions,
- we arrived at a camp called Neuengamme.
- At least 20% of the people who were in that cattle wagon
- were dead or near death and so on.
- We embarked.
- And I remember how we embarked.
- Suddenly we saw people coming to us who were Jews apparently,
- Poles who had those pajama-striped suits.
- And they were telling us, you stupid Hungarians.
- Now you come here?
- The war is almost over.
- But we didn't know.
- We were so isolated from the world that all we heard is,
- or all we read, what the Germans told us,
- what the Germans wrote in their newspapers.
- We arrived at that camp, Neuengamme.
- And those able people were put to right.
- And those sick people were told, you go to the left.
- And you will take a shower.
- And we will clean you up.
- And then we will put you in a hospital,
- and you will get strong enough to work for us.
- We believed them.
- We didn't know about gas chambers at that time.
- We didn't know about anything.
- You weren't aware what was going to happen there?
- We didn't know.
- We didn't realize it.
- But next day, we realized what was going on.
- We never saw those people.
- And that's when my ordeal started.
- We were working very hard.
- They beat us to death.
- We had to witness hangings because they found--
- with one boy, and in his pajama pocket
- they found a piece of bread.
- And they couldn't figure out how he got the bread because it
- was during the noontime.
- And bread was given only in the evening.
- What we had in the morning was--
- we had to work 16 hours or 18 hours a day.
- We had in the morning black coffee.
- At lunchtime, for a half an hour, we had so-called soup.
- I don't know what the soup was-- for a bowl.
- At least it was warm.
- In the evening we had a slice of bread,
- a piece of salami or whatever it was.
- And that was it, nothing else.
- That was our food.
- And a lot of people were hungry.
- I remember there was one boy.
- He was my age at that time.
- We had a bunk.
- I was below, and he was on the top.
- One morning, I wake up and he was still, not moving.
- In the meantime, the German guards--
- the kapos, we called them-- started to come
- and started to beat us.
- Get up, get up.
- And that boy didn't move.
- So quickly, I started to wake him.
- He was dead.
- He died overnight, just out of exhaustion and out
- of not wanting to live and out of hunger.
- Then one day, they took a bunch of us.
- I was one of them.
- And they marched us.
- Neuengamme there was a camp near Munich.
- And they marched us, some 50 or 75 people,
- to a building which looked round like a dome.
- And what they wanted to see-- they
- wanted to experiment whether gas will penetrate that building.
- But we didn't know at that time, and we had to go.
- And I remember we were sitting out where they put us down
- on the floor.
- It was a round room.
- We were sitting at the wall and just sitting and waiting.
- But then suddenly, the sirens came because at that time,
- at 11 o'clock exactly, the American bombers came.
- No, at 11:00.
- That's right.
- During the day, the bombers came.
- And they started to bomb the city of Munich.
- So they postponed this experiment.
- So we were lucky because we would
- have been dead within 10 seconds right there because they wanted
- to see whether some sort of a gas
- penetrates in that building.
- But it wasn't sealed probably enough.
- But you might have been alive and not alive.
- I don't know what happened.
- So they took us back.
- And our whole camp was just burning of fire.
- People were dying.
- Jewish people, and even the Germans, were dead.
- And I had to help to put out the fire from the roofs,
- from the kitchen, from there, and from all over.
- And they were beating us with--
- I don't know what kind of sticks they were.
- But they were beating if we didn't move fast enough.
- Finally, I had to climb up to a roof where the fire was there
- and put out the fire.
- And there was a two-way roof.
- And I had to--
- there was a hook ladder where you come from one roof
- to another.
- And that ladder where I was climbing was giving out,
- and I started to fall.
- And I thought, this is it.
- But I fell in a big barrel.
- And there was a nail there which went into my foot.
- I found a piece of bread there, a big piece of bread.
- It was a week's ration.
- Quickly I put it under my pajama jacket.
- I had a pajama jacket with a string.
- And one of the kapos, who wasn't German--
- he was a Dutch.
- His name was Karl.
- He was one of the nicest, I must say.
- He saw that.
- And I thought, if the other German kapos would
- see that, they would take away the bread from me,
- and they would probably shoot me on the spot.
- But he didn't say anything about it.
- And I was happy, without realizing that I
- had an infection in my foot.
- So at least that bread kept me for a while.
- But we had to work.
- And they beat us every morning.
- When the sirens started to ring at 11 o'clock at night,
- we had to go down the spiral stairs.
- And if we didn't move enough, the German Nazis
- were standing around at the corners
- and beating us with their belts.
- [SPEAKING GERMAN],, they used to holler.
- [SPEAKING GERMAN]
- And there was not a moment of peace.
- Finally, that camp was bombed completely.
- And that was almost already in March.
- That was in March '45.
- Alex, you didn't tell them what happened about your leg,
- though.
- Yeah, about my leg, my leg started to swell.
- And there was a Jewish doctor there.
- His only medicine was jam, strawberry jam.
- So he really couldn't do anything.
- So that Karl, that Dutch kapo, said,
- why don't you go to the doctor?
- So I went to the doctor, the Jewish doctor.
- He said, I cannot do anything for you.
- At least you won't work.
- And within two days you will die,
- so it will be easier for you.
- So next day, that Dutch guy comes over.
- He said, well, what did the doctor say?
- I said to him, well, he said he has nothing to give me.
- And I will just not go out for work,
- and I will die peacefully.
- So he went to the doctor, to the Jewish doctor.
- He said, if that man dies, you die with him.
- So the doctor started to cry.
- He says, but I have nothing to give him.
- I have no medicine, nothing.
- What can I do?
- So that Dutch kapo took me down to the German infirmary.
- And there, they cleaned out my wound
- because it was all from a rusted nail.
- But I lost more than 60% of my weight.
- So the camp, anyway, was all bombed out.
- You weighed then about, what, 85 pounds?
- Even less.
- At that time 85, but when I was liberated,
- it was less than that.
- They took us up to northern Germany, Bremerhaven.
- There was a camp.
- I really don't remember what camp
- it was because we were so weak at that time.
- And we came in that camp.
- And as we marched in there, we saw
- dead people lying near the buildings,
- like animals, all over.
- At least 300 dead people were lying there.
- Some had even got pajama clothes.
- And we were animals too because we saw a good jacket,
- we were grabbing it from the dead.
- We were looking in their pockets whether they
- have something valuable, a piece of bread or anything,
- or a string to tie our pants.
- And the stink was unbelievable, but we didn't realize that.
- And we arrived there.
- And they didn't feed us.
- We didn't work at all.
- We didn't realize for 10 days or a week
- we didn't get any food, nothing.
- We were just browsing around near the dead people
- to see whether we can find some food.
- Then suddenly we realized that they are gone.
- There are no guards there.
- Everything was gone.
- So then people were hungry.
- And I remember that people couldn't do anything,
- so they took the grass and they eat the grass.
- They boiled the grass, and they started to eat grass.
- And I was to the point where I almost did that.
- But then I still said to myself, if I eat that grass,
- sure I'm going to die.
- Maybe I can wait for another day or so.
- And sure enough, next day, the British Army moved in.
- And they liberated us.
- And I remember when I saw the first tank, I said, my God,
- five minutes.
- If I would have waited five minutes for my friend,
- I would have never been here.
- But nevertheless, I never realized
- what happened to my family.
- Finally, after the war, the British put me to the hospital,
- and the Jewish organization helped me
- with food and everything.
- And finally I went home to Sighet.
- And then my sister was at home and nobody else.
- And she told me then the story how my parents, my family,
- my children, all were deported.
- But somehow, it was so fresh that I just
- couldn't grasp that.
- And I just listened to it, and it couldn't enter in my mind.
- Finally, I lived there for a while.
- And then Sighet became again Romania.
- And suddenly the communists took over.
- And I was on their blacklist because I was considered
- a Bourgeois with my parents.
- So I had to flee now Sighet.
- So I went back to Germany.
- And from there, I went to Israel.
- Wait a minute.
- How about the time when you went to Marseilles?
- And in Marseilles, were running guns for the Haganah?
- I was working for the Haganah.
- And after a while, I said, I would like to go to Israel
- and fight.
- And in 1948, finally I went to Israel.
- And within two weeks, I was already at the front.
- And in 1949, I was let go from the army
- because the first war was over.
- That was what we called the Liberation War.
- And after the war, I had nothing to do.
- The Israeli Army didn't provide for me
- any shelter, any food, nothing.
- Whatever money I had, it was gone.
- The only thing they could do for me is they
- sent me to a kibbutz, which was a very good kibbutz,
- one of the best kibbutzim.
- I was there--
- Hulda.
- Hulda, that's right.
- I was there for a while.
- And one day, as fate wants it, I met your grandmother.
- And that was the first time that I
- could talk to her about my plight and what happened.
- Up to that point, I just couldn't talk about it.
- She was the first one who I was telling my story about it,
- about my children, about my whole family.
- And she somehow understood that.
- And this helped me a little.
- And this brought me out from my dizziness and from my--
- I didn't even-- I wasn't able to think.
- I didn't want to think because it was so painful.
- And then, slowly I started to recover.
- But still, the memory is still here.
- But I look forward.
- Now I have you and all my family, my grandchildren,
- Benjamin, Rachel.
- So you will carry on the torch.
- And I hope you will remember this story.
- How about Rita?
- [LAUGHS]
- Well, Rita-- you see, your mother--
- I didn't tell too much to your mother
- because I was afraid, at that time-- maybe I should have.
- But I told her very little.
- I never told her these stories which I told you.
- But I told your grandmother.
- Grandmother knows all these stories.
- But I hope--
- Jessica probably has some questions she wants to ask you.
- Could you tell us about the time you went to the movies
- and you saw--
- Oh, yeah, that was the first time I broke down.
- Up to that point, I never was able to.
- I didn't want to think.
- And I just couldn't penetrate.
- I didn't shed one tear for my family.
- And one night, I went in Tel Aviv to a movie
- where they showed one of those Nazi movies
- where the Polish Jews were herded in wagons.
- And there was a little boy with his hands up.
- You probably have that picture.
- There were other pictures where little children were shown.
- And the minute I saw those little children,
- suddenly a cry came out from me.
- And I started to sob, and I couldn't help it.
- That was the first time that I was able to get it out a little
- from my system.
- But your grandmother was the first person whom
- I was able to talk about it.
- But that was the first time.
- And that was in 1949, when I first bursted in tears.
- And up to that point, I was so--
- I knew it was so painful to think about these things,
- but I didn't.
- I ran away from it because the wound was still very fresh.
- Do you have any other questions?
- I want to thank you so much.
- Grandpa, could you tell me the story about the apple?
- Oh, yes.
- Do you know what happened?
- One day we were marching.
- The German Nazis were marching us to sort of a field
- where there were a lot of fruits there people were selling.
- But it was empty when we marched through there.
- And as I marched, I found a half a rotten apple on the floor.
- And I looked around to see whether other people found
- and saw it.
- And I was the first to saw it.
- And I grabbed it.
- And I put it in my pocket.
- And I was so happy that I found a half a rotten apple.
- And I was eating that in such a way
- that nobody should see that because apples
- were my favorite fruit.
- And I remember your brother once asked me, Grandpa, how
- come that you were so strong?
- And I used to tell him, because when I was young,
- I used to eat a lot of apples.
- At bedtime I used to eat six, seven apples at night.
- And that was my favorite fruit.
- And that's what I used to tell your brother, Benjamin.
- Grandpa, did your parents ever talk about [INAUDIBLE]??
- No, not really.
- Our parents and all the elderly Jews who had some stature
- never wanted to talk about it.
- I remember a man came back from Poland.
- And he was telling us, not about gas chambers,
- but he was telling us about how they killed Jews
- and how they torture, they put in ghettos.
- And they are giving them the hardest work.
- And they are just dying of hunger and so on.
- And we were telling this to our parents.
- And our parents were very angry, the whole family,
- my whole family, not only my parents-- my uncles,
- my everybody, you name it.
- And the head of the synagogue, the president of the synagogue,
- who was my uncle, he said, you cannot talk about such things.
- This is a crazy man.
- That's not true.
- And don't talk about it.
- Look, we have nothing here.
- We just have to keep quiet.
- Naturally, we didn't know about these things.
- But the young people, people like me and others,
- knew something.
- And we were telling our parents, why don't we get out from here?
- But it was too good for them to stay there
- because they didn't want to believe it.
- And that was what happened.
- And if our parents would have believed
- what those people who were some coming back were telling us,
- maybe--
- Maybe you would have migrated.
- I would have migrated to Israel.
- It's so weird to think that [INAUDIBLE]..
- They could have saved your life.
- If you had waited five minutes for your best friend.
- Especially my uncle, who was the president of the synagogue,
- he was so adamant about it.
- Don't repeat such things because it's not true.
- And he didn't repeat it.
- But we knew that something is going on.
- Could you talk about the Israeli Army and what it was like?
- Yeah, after I had to flee the communists,
- I signed up to the Israeli Army in Germany.
- And from Germany, I was sent with a group of people
- to Marseille.
- But in Marseille, they asked me to stay there for a while
- to help.
- We had a camp in Marseille.
- And all those people who were going to Israel at that time--
- because the state was not declared as Israel, as a state.
- So they had to be trained how to use arms
- because they were immediately sent to the Haganah.
- That was before the Israeli Army was created.
- It was called the Haganah.
- And it was a castle in Marseille where we trained there
- for weeks and weeks.
- And after two or three weeks, when all the people were
- able to carry an arm and how to work an arm,
- we sent them with a boat to Israel.
- Some were caught and sent to Cyprus.
- Some went through.
- But anyway, this camp--
- we had to buy arms for the Haganah in those days.
- We were three people who were buying arms for the Haganah
- in Marseille.
- But we had to have some support from people
- because it was very dangerous.
- So we hired the so-called mafia there who were protecting us.
- We were paying them nice monies.
- And they were protecting us because the first time
- we bought arms, we were robbed from them.
- They themselves, the French mafia, were robbing us.
- So we thought, it's better to join with them
- than to fight them.
- And they were protecting us.
- And we bought a lot of arms, mostly Czechoslovakian arms
- we bought.
- And we sent them with the ships.
- That was illegal then, wasn't it?
- It was illegal because at that time
- Israel was not a state yet.
- Israel became a state in '49, and that was in '48.
- And finally, after Israel became a state,
- I said, OK, I had enough.
- I want to go to Israel to fight.
- They send me to Paris for a week or two to relax a little.
- And after that, I said, I have enough.
- I want to go.
- And with a small, little boat, I went to Israel.
- We arrived in the morning.
- And in the afternoon I was already in uniform.
- And then, after 10 days of training,
- I was sent to the Negev.
- I was at the Dead Sea.
- I was fighting the--
- Jordanians.
- The Jordanians at the Dead Sea.
- And after that, in '49, in May, I think, finally the war was--
- it was nowhere.
- It was truce.
- And that was when I released from the war.
- And then later on--
- Then you had typhus, remember?
- Yeah.
- No, I had malaria.
- Malaria.
- Had malaria.
- I caught malaria at the Dead Sea, at Sodom.
- I was stationed in Sodom, Sodom and Gomorrah and En Gedi.
- En Gedi is a place where King Solomon had his mines.
- And it was a beautiful place, En Gedi.
- But Sodom was an isolated place.
- It was the mountains, were the salt mountains.
- And then I caught malaria which--
- I didn't know about it.
- But I got a furlough one day.
- And five days later, when I came back on the plane,
- they wouldn't let me on the plane
- because I looked too pale, and I was shivering and everything.
- And immediately they took me to a hospital in Jaffa.
- And they kept me there for a week or two weeks.
- Tell them the wonderful story about how they shipped you out
- ahead of time.
- Oh, yes.
- [LAUGHTER]
- We had to wait for the plane when
- the war was over to come back to Tel Aviv or to Jerusalem.
- But we had only a small plane.
- And only four or five people can be
- shifted at one time or another.
- And I was way down on the list.
- So we had nothing else to do, and we played cards, poker.
- And I was winning every day.
- And people were-- and I felt sorry for them,
- but I was winning.
- Finally, they decided that instead of putting me
- on the bottom of the list, they put me on the top of the list
- to ship me out.
- [LAUGHTER]
- Because you were winning poker a lot?
- I was winning a lot, and I was lucky.
- But that malaria really took a lot out of me.
- I was shivering at night.
- And only in the evening, I was cold and hot, hot and cold.
- It was terrible.
- But it was over.
- Can you think of any more stories?
- Well, as I told you, all these stories,
- even though they happened a half a century ago,
- they are still so vivid in my mind.
- And I can see, for instance-- one thing I will never forget,
- the last time I saw my little girl.
- Her name is Aniko.
- I still remember, as I left, I said goodbye to her.
- And she was standing with her mother at the gate
- and waving to me.
- And her last words were-- and I'm translating it to you from
- Hungarian to English--
- but Daddy, make sure you come back.
- And that was the last word.
- And those words are still in my ear after 50 years.
- She was born in 1940, October the 31st.
- She would have been 53 years old now.
- And your daughter Rita named Jessica after Aniko.
- You are named--
- Because your name is Jessica Ann.
- You are named after Aniko.
- And your mother is named after my mother.
- Her name is Rita.
- And your great-grandmother's name was Rivka.
- But going back to your mother, I never
- told your mother these stories.
- She never knew about it as much as you know
- and your brother knows.
- And I hope Rachel, when she grows up,
- she will learn from you all these stories.
- Grandpa, thank you so much.
- Thank you for asking me.
- I know how hard it is for you to talk about.
- It's hard for me to hear it.
- It was hard for me, but since you are my granddaughter,
- it was a little easier to tell you these stories.
- You should know.
- As people say that, never again.
- And it is important that people should never
- forget what happened.
- You know, that's what Elie Wiesel says all the time,
- that we have a responsibility to maintain the memory.
- We do.
- You stood up for our religion.
- You were there.
- Well, I suffered for being Jewish, but I'm not sorry.
- I was born Jewish, and I'm Jewish.
- And I will always be Jewish.
- Grandpa, how did this affect your feelings about God?
- Well, you see, Jessica, I grew up in an Orthodox family,
- especially my mother was very Orthodox.
- My father wasn't too Orthodox, but he
- was quite a religious person.
- I had to go to the synagogue every Friday, whether I wanted
- to or not, every Saturday.
- And sometimes even the morning I had to go.
- Somehow I grew up being Jewish.
- But it was interesting.
- After the concentration camp, where I saw so many Jews,
- innocent young people who were hanged
- for finding a piece of bread in their pockets
- and so on, I said, where is God?
- Is there a god?
- If there is a Jewish God or any god, can a god let this be?
- And I said to myself, well, I'm Jewish,
- but I'm not religious anymore.
- And I didn't believe in God.
- For three years, I was not able to even go near a synagogue.
- And until your mother started to go to Hebrew school
- because she had to be bas mitzvah,
- that was the first time I went to the synagogue
- because I just didn't believe in God anymore.
- And yet, I never thought of not being Jewish.
- I was born Jewish.
- I suffered for being Jewish.
- And I would never throw away my Jewishness.
- But I wasn't religious.
- I'm not a religious person, but I'm a very Jewish person.
- And being Jewish means a lot to me.
- Never thought my mind to deny my Jewishness
- or to say I'm not Jewish or have Jewish or whatever.
- And I hope you understand what I mean.
- But I didn't believe in God.
- And I couldn't go near a synagogue.
- I remember when I was pregnant with Rita,
- I begged you to make your peace with your God.
- I couldn't.
- I said, there is no God.
- And if there is God, then he cannot do anything for us.
- And I remember that I used to love
- to go to a Kol Nidre services.
- My office used to be in New Jersey.
- And we used to come home--
- I used to leave my office early because I wanted to be home.
- And I listened to the radio, in QXR.
- I listened to the Kol Nidre services
- which they had recorded.
- And I remember when I came home, I
- used to tell your grandmother that,
- well, finally I listened to the services.
- But I just couldn't even think about it.
- Now I go to the synagogue, just because
- of the memory of my parents.
- And the first time when your mother
- started to learn for the bas mitzvah, that
- was the first time that I made peace with God.
- What do you mean you made peace with God if you still
- don't believe in God?
- Well, let me tell you how.
- I made peace with God through my parents
- because my parents believed in God.
- I felt that I'm going to a synagogue on the holidays
- and on the New Year's Eve and on certain occasions for them.
- And this is the peace I made with God.
- I don't believe there is such a person.
- And if there is, he must be very old
- and not listen to us anymore.
- But the reason I'm going to a synagogue
- and I made peace with God is, actually,
- I made peace because of my parents,
- because they believed in God and my whole family comes
- from a Orthodox background.
- And I just feel that I owe them this much.
- But I just cannot believe in God.
- If God did not do anything when 6 million Jews were tortured,
- innocent children, innocent people who had nothing to
- do with the war, who were quietly living and doing
- no harm to anybody--
- so how could God see that?
- You know, I read somewhere, Jessica--
- in some of the Holocaust books I read
- that we had to stand in line for hours
- to watch how our Jewish people were hanged.
- And I read somewhere that in another place
- such a thing happened.
- And as they were watching, the three young boys
- were strung up the rope and hanged.
- And one says to the other, here, you see?
- God just was hanged.
- And somehow, just think of it.
- If God is there, why did he let this happen?
- [COUGHS]
- No, don't ask.
- Just another story.
- The first night we arrived in concentration camp Neuengamme,
- it was around--
- after they gave us a bowl of soup,
- they put us in a room approximately 10 by 12.
- And there were 50 people.
- They jammed us in, or 60 people.
- And one man was a very sick man.
- And they gave us soup and a piece of bread.
- And that man couldn't eat that bread.
- And he was dying there.
- And there was a cot there, and he was lying on the cot.
- And his bread was in his pocket.
- And all the people were standing around that bed
- to wait for him to die.
- And I remember-- at that time, it was natural.
- But now, if I think back, it's like we were animals.
- They made us animals.
- And finally, that man, after three hours, after suffering--
- I don't know what he died of, but he just died.
- And the minute he wasn't breathing, 60, 70 people
- were jumping on that bed to grab that piece of bread.
- Well, you wanted to ask me about what I think about the United
- States and during the war.
- And let me tell you.
- I didn't know about it.
- But when I heard what FDR did, it just
- made me very, very angry, that he turned back
- a ship of German children, men, and women because--
- You mean Jewish children?
- Jewish children, Jewish German children.
- And when I read that, I just couldn't
- believe that FDR, who was such a democratic person, who
- cared, allegedly, and yet he did such a thing.
- And I don't think that I can ever forgive such a atrocity
- what he did.
- I don't know whether it was politics or not politics
- or it was the State Department, who
- was so antisemitic in those days, even more than now,
- against Jews.
- Now it's against Jews plus against Israel.
- And I think this blot will always be in FDR's grave,
- so to speak, as far as I'm concerned.
- It's just like one part [INAUDIBLE] in your heart that
- you cannot forgive for what you were suffering.
- And people were just like, they knew about it
- and they didn't do anything?
- I cannot forgive the Hungarian Nazis at all.
- I could forgive some Germans because after the war,
- I saw something more humane.
- But the Hungarians--
- Jessica, let me tell you something.
- The Hungarian people are born antisemitic
- when they are in their mother's womb.
- They are born antisemitic.
- They live antisemitic.
- And they die antisemitic.
- The Hungarians I could never forgive
- what they did because we were Hungarian citizens,
- and they gave us over to the Germans.
- The Germans had no responsibility for us.
- We were slaves.
- They sold us as slaves, and we were their citizens.
- The Romanians were more protected than the Hungarians.
- That's right.
- The Romanians were more protected.
- The Romanian antisemitic government
- said that if we have to kill Jews,
- we will kill them, not you.
- And a lot of people survived and so on.
- But the Hungarians were so entrenched
- in that antisemitic idea, that they looted and hated.
- They were killing Jews and throwing them in the Danube.
- As a matter of fact, when my sister came home,
- she heard from friends who were with me together that I was
- shot and thrown in the Danube.
- She thought that I was dead.
- And I thought that she was dead.
- But the Hungarians I can never forgive.
- And I can never forget.
- I would never go back to Hungary.
- I would never go back to Sighet.
- Jessica, I wish you would write Elie Wiesel about a documentary
- he made called, Sighet, Sighet.
- He went back in the '50s, I think.
- And he made a documentary.
- And if I recall, he showed even my family there.
- He showed still pictures.
- And as I recall, what he said is,
- there's nothing else here but the cemetery.
- That is such a good documentary, that I
- think that that should be shown in every school.
- I think part of that story that you didn't tell,
- Alex, that's important is that Elie Wiesel put
- the family pictures in because they stopped him
- from completing the movie, and they never
- allowed him to complete it.
- That's right.
- So his way of completing it was to gather from all the people
- that he knew family members' pictures that died.
- Why didn't they let him?
- They didn't want it publicized.
- They're not publicized.
- That was after the war.
- That was in the '50s.
- What do you feel like when people say
- that there was no Holocaust?
- I feel that they are so ignorant.
- They don't want to believe it.
- They have all the facts that is there.
- And they are so entrenched in that anti-Jewishness
- and antisemitic, that they just cannot bring themselves
- to believe it.
- Although I feel that, deep in their heart, they believe it.
- But yet they don't want to say it.
- Do you think that those commentators, like who
- ran for president this time--
- David Duke?
- Not David Duke--
- Buchanan.
- And he says that there was no such thing as Holocaust.
- He knows that it was.
- Or David Duke, and he said there was no proof.
- There is proof there is a Holocaust.
- They know it, but they don't want to admit it.
- What about the memories all those people had?
- It's not enough to just [INAUDIBLE]..
- These people who act like this, you can never trust them.
- And that's why it's important for us, and for you,
- and for your brother and sister, and for all the Jewish children
- to go on with this story with the Holocaust,
- not to let it die.
- Because if we let it die, then they will win.
- And Elie-- this isn't just a Jewish story.
- That's true.
- It's not just a Jewish story.
- Not only 6 million Jews were killed and gassed.
- There were other-- Catholics were killed and gassed,
- gypsies, and non-believers or anti-Nazis.
- Everybody who was anti-Nazi was gassed or killed or sent
- to a concentration camp.
- There were over 10 million people
- who were killed by the Nazis.
- Out of these 10 million, close to 6 million were Jews.
- Russians were suffering.
- Grandpa, some people couldn't--
- I mean, I'm not trying to stick up for the Nazis,
- but some people, they didn't believe in Hitler.
- And they didn't believe in the Nazis, but they were forced to.
- Their parents had them do.
- They would have been shot on the spot
- if they weren't for Hitler.
- Jessica, not at the beginning.
- At the beginning, it was free.
- It was a free choice.
- Hitler came to power by free elections.
- And if you will watch all those documentaries,
- you will see how those young people were raising their arms
- and hollering, heil Hitler, heil Hitler, sieg heil, sieg heil.
- Nobody forced them to vote for them.
- They voted.
- It was a democratic election.
- But then he became a dictator.
- And in order to start the war, he
- had to blame the Jews because there was nobody else to blame.
- He couldn't blame the Catholics.
- He couldn't blame the French or anybody, but always the Jews.
- The Jews were the target for him without any reason.
- You know, Jessica, you asked me a while ago,
- how come that we didn't know what was going on?
- Well, let me tell you why.
- Because first of all, in Hungary,
- where we lived-- at that time we are Hungarians--
- you had no newspaper other than the German Nazi newspapers
- and the Hungarian Nazi newspaper, no magazines,
- no nothing.
- It wasn't a free press.
- Everything was Nazi.
- As a matter of fact, I used to tell your grandmother
- that I used to buy all the Nazi newspapers.
- And your grandmother asked me, why
- did you spend your money on Nazi newspapers?
- I said, because I wanted to know what was going on.
- That's the only way I found out.
- At least I knew that half of it is lie or 90% is lie.
- But at least I wanted to see what they think of Jews.
- There I was reading all the hatred of the Jews,
- but never a concentration camp.
- Always reading the Jews were resettled to camps
- where they had to work hard.
- That's all that was done with them.
- And that's why we didn't know what was going on.
- As a matter of fact, Jessica, we didn't even know that V-Day,
- the June 6--
- D-Day.
- I'm sorry, D-Day.
- We didn't know about June 6, D-Day.
- As a matter of fact, it was June the 6th
- or the 7th when my family was sent to Auschwitz and gassed.
- We didn't know about D-Day.
- We had no idea what was going on.
- We didn't know that the Allies landed in Normandy.
- We didn't know that Italy was taken.
- We didn't know that Hitler was shot.
- We didn't know that Mussolini was captured.
- We had no idea because we were isolated,
- and the newspapers didn't bring this.
- Jessica, let me tell you about a story, which I told you before,
- that when we took off from the Hungarian labor camp,
- remember I told you that one of the boys came after us.
- We were three of us.
- Another boy came after us.
- And as we stood there out of the camp,
- suddenly we saw that this boy is there.
- And we said to him, hey, what do you want?
- He said, I'm going with you, no matter where or what
- or where you go.
- So we all said, come on, you go back.
- Where are you going?
- We have nothing to do with you.
- And he wouldn't go.
- So finally, we took him aside.
- And we were talking, the three of us.
- And we said, look, what shall we do with him?
- They said, we don't care.
- I think he should go back.
- And I said, if he goes back, he is going to tell that we left.
- Or if he doesn't go back, what are we going to do?
- He's coming after us.
- So they said, look, we have--
- the two of them said, we have another safe place.
- And he will go with you if you want to.
- I said, I will take him.
- At that time I didn't realize they betrayed me,
- that those two had a safe place without knowing me.
- I gave them a safe place from my money and from my connections.
- In the meantime, they had their own safe place,
- which ultimately turned out they never
- went to concentration camp.
- They never were caught.
- So he came with me.
- And I just felt sorry for him because I couldn't leave him
- there, and they didn't want to take him.
- And I thought, well, they have a safe place.
- He might as well come with us.
- So we had to go in the outskirts of Budapest.
- And we took at night--
- it was around 10 o'clock.
- We took a cable car out in the outskirts.
- And we had to walk through a big soccer field
- to find that house.
- It was a peasant's house.
- And it was around 11 o'clock.
- And we were in an open soccer field.
- And the bombs started to come, the airplanes started.
- It was a strafe bombing there.
- And we had nowhere to run or to go.
- And we were just lying down on the field
- and just lying there for 20 minutes or 25 minutes
- until the bombers left.
- And finally we reached the house.
- And the woman opens the door.
- And she sees us, and she says, who is he?
- I said, well, he is with me.
- So she says to me-- she took me aside and says,
- look, you gave us a lot of money.
- You fed my little-- she had a little girl.
- Her name was Annie, I think, [INAUDIBLE],, Annie.
- And she said, I will take you, but I
- have no responsibility for him.
- She said that if I am caught, I'm
- going to be shot on the spot with my child.
- And I take a chance with you, but with him?
- So I said to her, look, he has a lot of money.
- I'm out of money.
- I don't have any money.
- You don't have to take me.
- But she was nice enough.
- She took me.
- And she said, but he has to pay me.
- He had silver.
- He had gold.
- He had I don't know what.
- He had money at that time.
- So she kept us until we had the money.
- And then she said, look, I will keep you, but I don't want him.
- If he doesn't pay me, he should go.
- So we talked it over with him.
- And I said, look, I won't let you go
- because he had nowhere to go.
- And I felt so sorry for him.
- But I still had a plan B. I still had another place.
- So I said to him, if she doesn't let you stay here,
- I will go with you.
- And early in the morning, finally we
- decided we are leaving.
- And we took a cable car back to Budapest.
- It was in a hotel called the Hotel Royal.
- And there we had a man--
- he was a Gentile--
- who knew about me through a friend of mine
- who was from the same town, who was with me.
- His name was Reiss.
- Lotsi Reiss was his name.
- He is now in Israel.
- And we came to the hotel.
- And we said, we want to see this gentleman.
- And when he rang his phone, we picked up the phone
- and I gave him the code word.
- And he came immediately down.
- And he said to the clerk, he says, these two are my guests.
- Just put them down as I will pay for them.
- And we all had false papers.
- And we stayed there until that fateful November the 3rd,
- Friday.
- Tell the story too about that man
- that you called up and gave your father's name.
- Oh, that was before I was caught.
- I ran out of money.
- And if you didn't have money, you didn't have a safe place.
- You didn't have certain privileges in that labor camp,
- in that hard labor camp.
- And then I knew a man who was dealing with my father, who
- was a businessman.
- And they had business together.
- And I looked up his name in the telephone book.
- And I called him up.
- And I said, this is Mr. Fishman.
- And I gave my father's first name.
- Oh, he says, hi, how are you?
- I didn't know you were here in Budapest.
- I said, look, I don't want to talk too much,
- but I would like to see you.
- Can you see me?
- He says, yes.
- And we made a date that we will meet at the railroad station,
- a big railroad station.
- He asked me how I will be dressed.
- I asked him how he will be dressed.
- And I told him, he told me.
- And then I'm going to the railroad.
- And I'm standing there on the street,
- and suddenly I see a man that's coming over me.
- And he tells me, hello, Mr. Fishman.
- I says, how did you recognize me?
- He said, I knew it's not the senior Fishman.
- I knew that.
- But I recognized somehow a Fishman voice.
- If you knew me--
- I knew immediately when I saw you,
- you looked like your father.
- But I knew that, on the telephone,
- it wasn't your father.
- And I think he gave me maybe $500 or $600,
- equivalent to $500 or $600, so that kept me again.
- And so--
- There were so many fortuitous circumstances
- that kept him alive.
- Then one evening, I'm walking in Budapest on the street.
- And suddenly, in a little alley, I
- see that a group of elderly people with shovels
- on their shoulders are marching.
- And suddenly I recognized my Uncle Sigmund.
- And I thought, my God, if he sees me
- and he says hello to me, I'm dead.
- Because I didn't have my band on.
- I was walking with false papers, like not a Jewish person.
- And as I stood there at the curb and he passed by,
- he looked at me.
- And he was so smart not to make a move that he recognized me.
- And I was so scared that he would say,
- hi, what are you doing here or things like that.
- I would be in trouble.
- How does he know me, who I am, and so on and on.
- But he was smart not to say a word.
- And did you see him after that?
- Oh, sure.
- He lived after the war.
- He lived through.
- He lived.
- He didn't go to concentration camp
- because somehow he was lucky to stay there.
- His group was never sent to Germany.
- He was in labor camp there in Budapest.
- It just happened that my company, because we
- were young people, were sent.
- And the Germans needed young people.
- It was just horrendous.
- Children were crying for hunger.
- And we went through--
- those peasants-- as we went through the highways,
- the peasants were standing on the sides.
- And they were hollering, dirty Jews, you deserve this.
- Again and again.
- They were so cruel to us.
- And finally, maybe one or two gave some sick person
- a little water or so on.
- But we were dying.
- People were dying like flies.
- Hungry, no food.
- The minute they gave us to the Germans,
- at least the Germans gave us some food after three or four
- days.
- That's why I said that I can never forgive the Hungarians.
- They are worse than the German Nazis.
- All the Jews had to wear a Star of David on their breast.
- But people like me who were in labor camp
- had to wear a yellow band with the Star of David
- and a military little cap.
- That was the sign that you were in a labor camp group.
- So the Hungarian Nazis, the outsiders, the police
- couldn't touch you.
- And if they arrested you, you immediately--
- they called your commander, and your commander
- came and bailed you out.
- That's what happened to me once.
- What happened to me once that I was in town.
- And I was with a family at a--
- This was when you were in the labor camp?
- In a labor camp, yes.
- As I told you, if you had money, you lived a little easier.
- So I got a furlough for two days.
- It was over a weekend.
- And I remember we went with a family.
- They had a daughter, a little girl, and father and mother.
- And we all went to a movie.
- And after the movie, it was too late.
- And they said, why don't you sleep over?
- So I said, OK, I will sleep over.
- And suddenly, around 4 o'clock in the morning,
- we hear big noises.
- It was in a housing project with--
- I think it's 10 or 12 floors with maybe 500 or 600 people
- living there, but mostly Jews.
- 90% were Jews there.
- And it was in the best part of the town.
- Around 5 o'clock, big noises.
- So we wake up.
- And we see the Hungarian Nazis are all
- surrounding the building.
- And it was an atrium, a courtyard down.
- And they were having a microphone.
- And they were hollering up, all the Jews
- should come out, down on the pavement
- right here within 10, 15 minutes.
- Within 10, 15 minutes, maybe one or two persons went out.
- And they're starting to shoot, first in the air.
- And people got scared.
- And so everybody went out.
- Well, I didn't know what to do.
- And the family I was staying with went downstairs.
- And they were waiting there.
- But then they started to search all the floors,
- and starting from--
- I think it was 10 to 12 floors.
- And I was at the sixth or seventh floor.
- And as they started to approach, I was still in the house.
- I went in an armoire.
- Instead of built-in closets, they had armoires.
- That was a closet.
- And I was hiding there.
- And through the hole I see a 10-year-old boy
- who was maybe four feet tall had a rifle which
- was five feet tall.
- The rifle was taller than he.
- And he opens the door.
- And he says, are there any Jews here?
- And he looks around.
- And I saw him.
- And he looks, he looks.
- And finally he left.
- If he would have opened the door to the closet, to the armoire,
- he would have shot me right there.
- But then I saw there was no escape.
- So I went down.
- And suddenly, they started to march.
- When they gathered all the Jews, some 400 people--
- children, men, women, you name it, just Jews.
- And they were marched out.
- And that was on a main street, like here on Fifth Avenue.
- We had to march there, all those with a yellow star
- and I with my military cap and the yellow band.
- And as we walked, people were spitting at us.
- Dirty Jews, now we will get your apartment.
- You live too nice and so on.
- They were spitting at us and hitting us and everything.
- They took us-- I don't remember-- to some station.
- And there they screened us out.
- They put us in cells.
- And then, when it came to interrogation for me, I said,
- look, I was just caught.
- I couldn't get home.
- I'm with this-and-this company.
- And you call.
- And you will see that I'm with them because I
- didn't have any papers with me.
- So they called the company.
- And they said, yes, we have such a man here.
- We will send a sergeant.
- So the sergeant came, and he bailed me out.
- And he said, you're stupid.
- Why did you stay there overnight?
- I said, I didn't have a transportation anymore.
- He bailed me out.
- Then there was another thing I almost got killed.
- I think I told your mother, Rita.
- We were working on a building for a big Hungarian Nazi, where
- we had to move his furniture from one house
- to a nicer and bigger house where Jews used to live.
- And we had to move his furniture.
- And as we moved the furniture back and forth,
- it was noontime.
- And suddenly we were hungry.
- And we went across the street to get some food.
- And suddenly the siren started to blow up.
- And everybody was running back and forth.
- And I wanted to get back from one street to another,
- from one side to the other side, back to the building
- where my unit was working there.
- And I was hit by a car.
- Luckily it was a small car, and I was thrown to the pavement.
- I just picked myself up, and that was it.
- I told you this story.
- I don't think so.
- No?
- [LAUGHS]
- Yeah.
- I remember even the street.
- It was a very elegant street.
- It was a big Hungarian Nazi, where
- we had to move his furniture to a big Jewish place
- where the Jews were thrown out from there.
- The same hit I got here when I was in the jeweler.
- But I had a lot of--
- Near misses.
- Near misses.
- Talk about your papers when you got caught.
- Yeah, I have to tell you another thing, Jessica.
- When that friend, so-called colleague
- of mine, who I went to school together caught me,
- he took me over to the Hungarian Nazi headquarters.
- And as we come in, he says to the man at the desk, he says,
- here, I caught you another dirty Jew.
- The Russians were already around there, around Budapest,
- cornering every part, but they didn't move in.
- So the man, that Hungarian Nazi at the desk says,
- what shall I do with him?
- So one other Nazi says, send him to the police.
- So he says, OK.
- So he and another guy were marching me.
- One had a gun--
- and the guy who caught me with his pistol
- were marching me two blocks to the police station.
- And here I had in my pocket--
- he knew my true name, which was Fishman.
- And I had in my pocket all kinds of false papers,
- which-- different names and different this.
- Everything was different.
- And I knew that when they marched me to the police
- and they will ask me my name, I have
- to give my true name because he will be there
- and he will know if I give another name it's not true.
- And I knew if I will give my true name,
- they will check with the unit.
- And I was a deserter already.
- And they would have shot me on the spot there.
- I thought, well, that's my fate.
- And I don't know what to do.
- And as they marched me to the police station, I in the front
- and the two with the pistol and with the gun marching in.
- And there was a sergeant, a Hungarian sergeant
- who was sitting at a desk.
- He was an elderly man.
- And one guy says to him, we brought you
- here another Jew who was caught without an armband
- with a yellow star.
- So he says, OK.
- So the sergeant takes out a piece of paper and a pencil.
- And he starts to write.
- He looks up suddenly.
- And before he asks me what's your name,
- he looks up at those two.
- He says, I don't need you anymore.
- You can go.
- And they says, OK.
- And they salute, and they leave.
- By that time, I knew I was saved because now I
- can give my false name because the sergeant doesn't know me.
- So the sergeant looks at me, and he says,
- how did you get caught so late?
- So immediately I knew that he's not such a bad man.
- It was November, I told you, and it was a cold November day.
- And he had a little oven what he was burning to have fire
- because it was cold there.
- And he says, what's your name?
- I gave my false name.
- But he immediately knew that it couldn't be.
- I couldn't have such a perfect Hungarian name.
- So he said, look, I have to go here
- in the other room for a minute.
- If you want to warm yourself up near the fire, you can do that.
- I knew immediately what he had in mind.
- So when he went out, I took out my wallet,
- and I burned all my false papers.
- And I took out the money which I had.
- I had maybe several hundred dollars.
- And I left myself with $15 or $20,
- and I put all the money on his desk under a little paper.
- He came back.
- He looked under the paper.
- He took the money.
- And he said, I'll tell you what I will do.
- This afternoon the magistrate is coming.
- And I will tell him that you were caught without a band.
- And you will get a day or two, and they will let you go.
- But then that was my misfortune that just that day,
- Sunday or Saturday, the Germans took over the jail.
- So there they would have released me,
- and I would have gone back to the hotel.
- What became of the people in the labor camp?
- In which labor camp?
- In the labor camp that you escaped from.
- Oh, they were sent to Germany.
- I don't know what happened to them.
- But they were all young and strong like me.
- They were all sent to a German camp.
- I don't know where they were sent
- because the whole unit, per se, with lock, stock and barrel
- was given over to the Germans.
- So your biggest crime, at least up to this point,
- had been that you had deserted from the--
- That's right, I was a deserter.
- And I have to tell you another story.
- While I was still in camp, one day the sergeant comes.
- And he says he needs 10 volunteers to go in town.
- Of course, I was the first one to say I'm a volunteer.
- He took the 10 of us.
- And we didn't know what for.
- We asked him, what for?
- He said, don't ask questions.
- Fine.
- We went in town, marched with the yellow band here.
- And suddenly he takes us to a square
- where there are a lot of people there with chairs around.
- It's like a semicircle.
- And then he tells us why we volunteers.
- He had to take 10 people to witness
- an execution of a Jewish deserter, a young boy
- at my age.
- We were standing there for an hour and a half,
- until finally they brought this young man.
- And he stood there.
- And all the Hungarian Army was there.
- And they read him his sentence.
- You are a deserter, and you are sentenced to death.
- You have anything to say?
- He said, I have nothing to say.
- And we had to witness how he was shot.
- But not only that.
- After that, we had to go around and see how he looks.
- That's why they needed the volunteers, the 10 of us,
- to witness this, not to think for desertion.
- That's why I knew that if I would given
- my name while that guy was there,
- I would have been sent back, and I would have had the same fate.
- But this is the cruelty the Germans
- did, that you had to witness the execution
- to teach you a lesson.
- But that young boy was so brave.
- He just went without mercy and without begging because he knew
- that nothing would help him.
- I can still see his face.
- Such things keep in my memory, that he just
- went erect without any fear or anything.
- He knew that nothing can help him.
- And we had to walk around and watch him as he was lying there
- on a big--
- he was lying like this, right there.
- There are a lot of such stories that I can tell you.
- But mostly when, in my camp, three Jewish boys
- were put under the rope because they
- found some bread in their pockets.
- And they couldn't explain how come they did.
- And it wasn't fresh.
- It was a stale bread.
- And they knew that it couldn't have been from
- last night because they gave us always sort of a fresh bread.
- And he couldn't tell them how they got the bread.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Alexander Fishman
- Date
-
interview:
1992 May 22
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
1 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives.
- Personal Name
- Fishman, Alexander.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Alexander Fishman donated the oral testimony to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in August 1993.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:16:44
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn520366
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