Oral history interview with Gene Klein and Jill Klein
Transcript
- [CROWD CONVERSATIONS]
- Hello, you.
- It's Memorial Day weekend, when we remember not only
- those who died in our human wars,
- but all of those whom we have loved
- and influence on our lives.
- I remember at this time the wandering carpenter
- of Nazareth, a refugee in his infancy,
- persecuted in his maturity.
- Please allow us to paraphrase the prayer which
- he [INAUDIBLE].
- Creator, Lord, our father and mother, heaven within,
- life without, [INAUDIBLE] many ways of holding your day
- is here.
- Establish your peace as we live your grace.
- May all people this day share this ample bread.
- Forgive us our aggressions, as we forgive aggressors
- against us.
- Lead us not to divide here, but deliver us from evil.
- Make us instruments of love.
- When the earth falls into the sun,
- yours be the glory, always going on, now and forever.
- Amen.
- Our hymn is "Turn Back, Turn Back," number 196
- in the green hymnbook.
- Some of you may know this as a musical number
- in the musical Godspell.
- But that was not its origin.
- [PIANO PLAYING]
- [CONGREGATION SINGING]
- [CONGREGATION SINGING]
- Do we have any announcements this morning?
- [INAUDIBLE] like German composers, because they
- wrote such beautiful music.
- Since [PERSONAL NAME] playing a Bach piece in the offertory,
- [INAUDIBLE].
- [PIANO PLAYING]
- [CHOIR SINGING]
- [BACKGROUND NOISES]
- Janice MacArthur will greet guests who are with us
- this morning.
- Welcome.
- Thank you all for coming out on this rainy day
- and joining us this morning.
- We usually take this time to ask any visitors or guests
- if they'd like to stand and introduce themselves.
- We'd love to meet you, greet you, and find out
- where you're from.
- Is there anybody who'd like to be the first?
- Or if you are a member here and brought
- a guest that you'd like to introduce,
- that would be nice, too.
- Hi.
- David [PERSONAL NAME].
- My wife Monica, Evan, Claire, and grandchildren
- [PERSONAL NAME].
- Is there anyone else who'd care to introduce themselves?
- OK.
- If there are any visitors here for the first time,
- If you'd like to receive our newsletter,
- you have a lavender card.
- which is in the back of the chair in front of you.
- If you fill it out and leave it on the table in the rear,
- we'll make sure that you'll be put on our mailing list.
- Thank you.
- At this time for the ongoing work of this church community,
- our morning offering will be received.
- [PIANO PLAYING]
- Our speaker this morning is known to many of you.
- Those who do not know him, you will
- by the end of this service.
- It's my very great privilege to turn the service over
- to Gene Klein.
- Thank you.
- [APPLAUSE]
- Beside my daughter Monica, son-in-law David,
- and our grandchildren, my wife Barbara
- is here, my other daughter, Jill Klein,
- and her significant other, Andrew.
- And I'm glad that I see so many familiar faces here.
- Thank you for coming.
- I look around this great hall here
- and I remember the wonderful times that I had here.
- And a few-- but that's another story.
- [LAUGHTER]
- Thursday night at 8 o'clock on the Fox network
- there's a wonderful show called The Simpsons.
- I don't know if you're familiar with it or not.
- But in one episode, Homer, who is
- the father of this modern American family with all
- their trials and tribulations, is
- walking in the clouds with God.
- And he says God, as long as we are
- having this wonderful conversation,
- would you tell me the meaning of life?
- And God says, Homer, you got to wait until you die.
- And Homer said, I can't wait that long.
- And God says, you can't wait six months?
- [LAUGHTER]
- So the reason I'm telling you is because our numbers
- as Holocaust survivors are ending rapidly.
- And through the urging of my family,
- I decided after all these years to start
- speaking about my experiences and what has happened.
- I have spoken to a lot of schoolchildren at the Anne
- Frank exhibit at the JCC.
- I spoke to hundreds of kids who were bused in just
- so their teachers thought it was very important they
- talk to a person who actually survived the Holocaust.
- I feel it is important that people
- know what really happened, no matter how sad it was,
- no matter what a terrible time.
- Not only the Jews of Europe, but a lot of other minorities
- went through to the persecution of Nazi Germany.
- I got to put down the mic for a minute
- because I'm going to give you a little geography lesson.
- It's part of the thing.
- You have to picture Czechoslovakia.
- It goes like this.
- I'm from right here.
- Anyhow, the best part of the [? place ?] is Bohemia.
- You had Sudetenland, itself, the one
- that was so close to Germany that the Germans felt
- it belonged to them.
- The Eastern part is one of those places that
- had the misfortune of constantly changing
- from one country to another.
- I don't want to go back in history to Attila the Hun
- because we'll be here till Tuesday.
- But I'll go back to as far as the Austrian-Hungarian empire.
- Then after the First World War, 1918,
- Czechoslovakia was formed, a wonderful country.
- Their constitution was based on the United States Constitution.
- It was a great place to live.
- Since then, it was Hungary, Russia, Ukraine,
- and who knows what else is going to happen there.
- I always thought it was a wonderful marketing ploy
- to sell the map of Europe with an eraser
- because there was such a tremendous amount of changes
- there that you never knew if you went
- to sleep one night as a Czech, if you would wind up
- waking up as something else.
- As it happened during World War II,
- the Germans decided, because the Hungarians
- wanted to be on their side--
- I don't know how they always pick the losers--
- but they decided to award this little part of the Carpathian
- mountain area, including my hometown,
- to the Hungarians as sort of a reward for being on their side.
- Things weren't really bad.
- Life went on.
- I'll tell you a little bit about my family and my home life.
- My father was a merchant.
- He had a store, housewares, hardware-type operation.
- I had two sisters, my mother, and it was a nice, comfortable,
- middle European Jewish family.
- Life was very good.
- As a child, I thought that everything was just Jim Dandy.
- Even after the Hungarians took over this part
- of Czechoslovakia, life continued to be quite normal.
- Then, of course, as Poland was run over by the Germans,
- we started getting Polish refugees, some of whom
- we put up for a night, gave them food, and so on.
- We started hearing these terrible stories.
- Of course, our mentality was, it won't happen here.
- You know, I mean, our life hasn't changed anything because
- of the war, even though the Germans,
- you could see Germans in the city going through Hungary,
- to the front, and so on, it really didn't affect us.
- In the early '40s, things were still pretty normal.
- Then all of a sudden, actually not so suddenly,
- but gradually, the anti-Semitism increased.
- It was really a horrible thing for a young Jewish boy
- to go to a school assembly and all of a sudden
- hear the anti-Semitism statements.
- You were listening to this thing and you
- were wondering, what have I done to deserve this?
- I mean, here I am not bothering anybody.
- Just because I happened to be born into a family who
- is Jewish, I'm being picked on.
- Things got worse and worse and, of course,
- a lot of the Hungarians who really became Nazis,
- there were the so-called Nyilas party
- who had fashioned themselves after the Nazis,
- and they started all sorts of vandalism in our hometown,
- breaking my father's business's windows.
- I vividly remember waking up one morning to a crash,
- a rock came flying through our window.
- I remember my father rushing out to get some plywood
- to put in front of the windows so we wouldn't get hurt.
- Then came the order by the Germans
- that all Jews have to wear the yellow star.
- Well, this, of course, singled you out
- as somebody who is different, somebody who
- is not as good as anybody else.
- This type of anti-Semitism increased
- until one day the order came for all the Jewish families
- to gather all their belongings that they could carry,
- which was a little suitcase [INAUDIBLE]..
- My father's store was inventoried and padlocked.
- Our house was padlocked.
- All the Jewish families had to meet
- at the town square, where we were marched off
- to sort of a lumber yard.
- This place, when you have a lumber yard,
- they usually have roofs on buildings without sides.
- So in case it rains, the lumber wouldn't get wet.
- So this was our home for the next couple
- of weeks during which time the families tried to make things
- as comfortable as possible.
- But the Hungarian guards at this place
- started periodically to have searches
- for valuables and jewelry.
- When you are a kid and you get a gift sometimes,
- that really has a lot of meaning to you.
- For my bar mitzvah, I got a watch.
- It was a rectangular watch with a black face and gold numbers.
- It was something really special, because this
- was sort of my first grown up gift,
- and it really had a lot of meaning to it.
- When this was taken away from me,
- it really bothered me a great deal because this was
- something that meant so much.
- Then the order came for all the families from this lumberyard,
- which not only included the Jews from our hometown,
- but the surrounding villages who were rounded up,
- they were moved over to a brick factory for the simple reason
- that it was on a railroad siding.
- We didn't know what the significance
- was at that time, of course.
- Here, all of a sudden, we started
- seeing SS German officers coming to talk with the Hungarians.
- Until, in a few days, they decided
- that this is going to be it.
- There are a lot of rumors.
- We heard things like all the Jewish families
- will be resettled somewhere else,
- or we're going to the camp yet, or we're
- going to be working, so on and so forth.
- Here we were with our meager belongings,
- maybe a small suitcase for everybody.
- One morning the order came for us to march around
- this train that just pulled into the railroad siding, which
- was cattle cars.
- I don't know if you know what a cattle car is.
- But it's a huge car with very narrow windows on the top,
- and it had barbed wire on it.
- They told us that we have to go around the train.
- As soon as we turn the corner around the train,
- the German SS guards told us to put all our belongings down
- on the ground and get on the car.
- So they started to count off people by the numbers.
- When they came to my father, he was number 82, my mother, 83,
- one of my sisters, Lily, 84, the sister, Olga, 85.
- That was it, 85 people to a car.
- I was number one in the next car.
- So while we were going from my home town
- to an unknown destination, I was separated from my family--
- I have to find my place here, excuse me.
- In this car, 85 people, babies, children, old people,
- sick people, they're like sardines.
- There were too small drums in the car.
- One had water in it and one was for human waste.
- The train started.
- We were on the train for three days and three nights.
- There was no communication between myself and my family.
- We have arrived to this place that we
- didn't know where we were.
- Early morning, we heard the German orders, heraus,
- heraus, out, out.
- Everybody out.
- The doors to the cars opened up.
- We saw for the first time men with sunken
- in faces in their blue and white striped uniform,
- waiting to unload the people.
- Those who were able to get off got off by themselves.
- People died during this time.
- Sick people died.
- Children died.
- People went crazy from thirst.
- These people started whispering to the young mothers,
- give your babies to the grandmothers.
- Give your babies to the grandmothers.
- What was the reason for this?
- We couldn't fathom the significance.
- But we found out that the babies who
- were going with the grandmothers were
- destined to go to the gas chambers anyway.
- But if a young mother was holding a baby,
- the young mother would go with the baby to the gas chamber
- instead of going to work.
- So they tried to save as many lives as possible
- to the young women [INAUDIBLE].
- My family and I were reunited for a few moments
- before the order came for women and men
- to separate and line up five breast.
- And we started marching, again, to--
- we had absolutely no idea where we were, what we are doing,
- what's going to happen.
- That's the last time that I have seen my mother and two sisters,
- because they went with the women.
- My father and I went in another direction.
- We got to a point where German officers
- were in their freshly pressed uniforms.
- Some of them with walking sticks were pointing to people,
- you to the left, you to the right.
- My father, who had a three-day beard, and he
- was getting a little bit gray at the temples,
- grew a white beard.
- So he looked much older than his actual years.
- I was sent to one side, and he was sent to the other side.
- Again, no idea what was happening.
- So I'm going with this multitude of men to one side.
- We are marching to these barracks.
- We are still in line up on this open field
- when the order comes for everybody
- to take off their clothing.
- Here we are standing, maybe 1,000 men and boys, naked,
- this small bundle of my last connection--
- excuse me-- to my previous life on the ground.
- Now I'm being herded into a barracks.
- These people, where my hair is cut off,
- there are disinfectants being sprayed on us.
- You're taking a shower and come out dripping wet and getting
- this blue and white striped pajamas and a hat
- and wooden shoes and a number.
- This worked in rehearsal.
- All of a sudden, I didn't have a name.
- I don't have a family.
- All I am is a number.
- And I don't know where I am.
- I don't know what's going to happen.
- Here I am in Auschwitz with tens of thousands of others.
- I'm standing out in the rain with tens of thousands
- of others.
- They're counting us for hours.
- We are standing for hours.
- Then the selections come.
- People who have been there longer than I keep whispering
- stand up straight.
- Stand up straight.
- Don't look defeated.
- You stand up straight.
- Because the SS is going through pointing to people,
- you, you, you, you, you.
- Because they have to make room for the new transports
- that are coming in.
- You have to remember, we were the last.
- The Hungarian Jews were the last to be taken.
- These selections are to send more people
- to the gas chambers.
- Of course, we don't know about that.
- I don't know about this.
- I spent approximately-- you have to remember
- this was 49 years ago, so I can't remember everything
- exactly.
- About three weeks later, I'm picked out
- of one of the selections and marched
- with hundreds and hundreds inmates to a railroad station.
- I'm shipped out, again, not knowing where we're going.
- The trip takes about a day.
- We arrive at a beautiful mountainous area
- where I find myself in one of the labor camps
- that the Germans had established to have these slave
- laborers work until they die.
- Later I find out that there's a cluster of these labor camps
- in the vicinity of where I am.
- The name of my camp is Wolfsburg.
- Our assignment is to build railroad tracks that
- connects the main railroad station to tunnels
- in the mountains where the Germans can
- hide ammunition and food.
- Even though the handwriting is already on the wall
- because they are losing on the Eastern Front,
- they're losing on the Western Front,
- they still think the war is going to go on indefinitely.
- Here they have endless supply of slaves to work for them,
- so why not work them until they die?
- So my day consists of getting up at daybreak,
- being counted, being marched out from the camp,
- being counted again at the gate, going out to work details.
- Some of us are working with picks and shovels.
- Some of us are carrying the railroad ties.
- Some of us are building the railroads, the metal,
- the steel things the trains run on,
- terrible, terrible hard physical labor.
- Our rations are unbelievably meager,
- a slice of bread in the morning with something
- they call coffee, The German guards are vicious.
- The kapos that had been chosen from Jews are just as vicious.
- We work six days a week from daybreak till dark again.
- This goes on endlessly, day after day.
- Slowly, it sinks in that you are in an impossible situation,
- that unless something superhuman in you will step in,
- you'll die.
- If you won't die from hunger and malnutrition,
- you'll die from accidents that's a daily occurrence at the work
- site, or some sort of illness.
- There's a so-called barrack that's
- called a hospital barrack.
- Two angels from Greece, doctors who
- tried to do anything for the people
- that they possibly can do, but there's nothing.
- They have paper bandages.
- They have hardly any medication.
- So they are up against impossible odds.
- Days drag on.
- You tried not to think about what
- a horrible situation you're in.
- Inside you there is this tremendous will
- to go on, to live.
- I had this twofold urge.
- Number one thing was I know my family is probably
- in the same kind of predicament I am.
- What can happen if they survive this ordeal and I die?
- How would they feel about that?
- The other thing was I'm not going
- to let these bastards kill me.
- I'm going to live.
- Two things happen during this summer of 1944.
- Incidentally, I was taken to Auschwitz the spring of '44.
- This was a few months later.
- Two things happened to me that are significant.
- So I don't-- significant.
- I don't want to go into a lot of other details,
- because there's a lot of things to talk about.
- One very possibly saved my life and one could have killed me.
- The first one was one morning while we were standing up
- being counted, one of the German SS sergeants
- said what young people here speaks German?
- Of course, my hand went up immediately.
- I had two years of gymnasium German.
- Gymnasiums were high school in Europe.
- You were sort of forced in Europe
- to learn foreign languages because of your proximity
- to other countries.
- So if you are fortunate enough to finish your gymnasium,
- you spoke at least three other languages fluently.
- Of course, my schooling was interrupted.
- But I spoke German enough.
- I'm marched off to the gate.
- There is a civilian in a long leather coat,
- typical Gestapo-looking guy.
- I told myself what have I done?
- Well, the guy takes me outside and says,
- I'm a civilian engineer attached to this camp.
- I need somebody to schlep the--
- you know that thing with the numbers on it
- and they do roadwork?
- He looks through the little instrument
- that nobody calls it this day.
- I have to take that stick with the numbers
- and he tells me where to go, and then he looks
- and he makes marks in his book.
- Well, then here comes a situation where, you know,
- I really disliked people who have a tendency to group
- nationalities or races or religions into one lump
- and say, oh, this is bad, all these people are lazy,
- all these people are good, et cetera.
- But here was a German who after about a week of me
- walking out with him into the beautiful woods,
- that I actually had moments when I
- forgot that I was in the camp.
- I thought maybe I was at boy scout camp going on a hike.
- He tells me I see what a terrible, terrible situation
- this is in the camp.
- I would love to do something for you.
- But if the SS finds out that I'm helping you in any way
- directly, they will punish me where I lose my job over here.
- What I'm going to do is I have to take you
- back to this point where you have
- to join the rest of your group to march back to the camp.
- In such and such a room where I'm
- going to leave you a half hour before time for you
- to go to the group, I'm going to leave some food for you
- under this bench.
- From that moment on, every day there was food.
- I mean, real food.
- There was rice with milk in it.
- There was meat.
- It was something that I'd been dreaming of for months.
- Here it was.
- I mean, I can't be 100% sure, but I credit this man
- with possibly saving my life.
- Because this was about halfway point, well,
- maybe, not totally halfway point, in my imprisonment.
- Making this extra nourishment that I got from this thing
- gave me enough to physically see the rest of my through.
- The other incident came on an early morning
- when the guard said all the boys--
- because they were not just men, there
- were younger boys who were fortunate enough not
- to get killed in Auschwitz immediately.
- They felt they were good enough to work.
- Lined up by date of birth, and so there was, you know,
- 26, 27, and so on.
- So they started counting off.
- Just when they get to me, my good buddy is next to me.
- Because you try, when you don't have any family with you,
- you try to form relationships to support
- each other through the terrible ordeals of the camp.
- They get to this point, they have 200 kids, and they go.
- And me and my big mouth, I go to the sergeant
- and I say I want to go with him.
- My buddy is going.
- The sergeant goes to the oberscharführer, who
- is like a captain or something.
- And he says, this [GERMAN],, this prisoner wants to go.
- And the captain says forget it.
- The Germans are very exact.
- It's not 202, 199.
- It's 200.
- That's it.
- You already have the 200.
- Go back.
- So I go back.
- The unfortunate thing is these 200 kids have died.
- They get killed.
- They wanted to weed out the younger people
- because what was happening was winter was coming.
- Now we have this new fear.
- The inmates are worried that the things like
- hunger or illness or accidents that didn't kill you,
- the cold winter will.
- So we are really getting very, very worried.
- Trucks arrive with clothing from--
- I'm smiling at my grandchildren.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- We are finally able to get some clothing
- from these piles of clothing from people
- who have been gassed in other camps, and shoes.
- And finally, on top of our pajamas,
- we have something else to cover us.
- But because they are civilian clothing,
- we have a big red mark painted on our back
- so they can see that we are prisoners.
- But not like they wouldn't recognize that from our faces.
- I go out to one of the work details
- and I scrape my thigh against some rusty barbed wire.
- It gets infected.
- I have a hard time walking.
- I go to these wonderful Greek doctors,
- which I didn't really want to do too much.
- Because being in a hospital in the camp
- is not a very desirable place, because you're just
- one step closer to God.
- They do as much as they can without anesthetics,
- without any kind of stuff.
- They cut it open.
- They drain the wounds.
- In the middle of winter by now, they
- need to get my strength back.
- Then the order comes that the camp is going to close.
- A lot of these labor camps will become consolidated
- into a [INAUDIBLE].
- Those who can march through the snow
- will start out tomorrow morning and march.
- You don't know how long it's going to take you.
- You don't know what's going to happen.
- Those who are too young, too sick, too late,
- are going to be trucked.
- Well, I'm not taking any chances.
- I'm walking.
- I'm walking with all these thousands of people.
- People are dragging each other.
- The trucks are following us for a while.
- People who can't walk any longer,
- they don't have the strength, falling by the wayside,
- they're pulling on the trucks.
- The trucks eventually go in another direction,
- taking the sick and the lame to be
- gassed in concentration camps that are here to exterminate.
- Finally, we arrive in a large camp.
- There is a collection of thousands
- upon thousands of prisoners that were murdered here.
- There's no labor here anymore.
- We know that the war is coming closer, because at night you
- can see the horizon turning orange.
- Every once in a while, you hear planes flying over.
- You hear muffled sounds of guns and bombings.
- Here we are in this camp, mostly waiting to die.
- There's nothing to do but wait for death.
- I go into the different barracks to see if I can find somebody.
- I run across a middle-aged man who
- was a customer of my father in his store.
- Finally, I find somebody who has something in common with me.
- We talk about the good old times.
- He tells me what a wonderful man my father was,
- how great he was.
- He was a customer that was taking letters
- from a relative who lived in another land
- to be translated by my father.
- I have to tell you a little thing about my father.
- He was captured when he was in the First World
- War on the Austrian-Hungarian side
- and was taken to Russia for four years as a prisoner of war.
- To do something with his time with the other prisoners,
- he learned about six languages fluently.
- So one of his things when he opened his store
- was that people used to come to him from around the countryside
- to have letters translated by him from relatives.
- Meanwhile, they became good customers.
- So anyhow, it was so wonderful to find
- somebody who knew somebody of my family
- and talk about the old times.
- This became sort of an everyday occurrence,
- that I went to see him.
- He was in quite bad physical shape.
- It seemed like every day and then I went there,
- it was getting worse and worse.
- Until one day when I went to visit him,
- just as I got to the steps of his barracks,
- they were carrying him out.
- He was dead, with his number crudely painted on his chest.
- This was another blow to another connection to home
- that disappeared.
- Again, finding some friends who were sort of in my age group,
- we were the ones who had a little more strength
- than anybody else.
- We used to look around and see how we can scrounge some food.
- We noticed in one area where the guards were dumping garbage
- that it sort of overflowed.
- The camps usually had two rows of barbed wires.
- One was immediately next to your barracks,
- then there was a little space, and then
- there was another barbed wire fence, which in some cases
- was electrified, like in Auschwitz.
- In some cases, because they wanted
- to separate the guards with the guard dogs from the prisoners.
- Anyhow it was, they dumped garbage, you know,
- potato peelings, and things like that.
- It sort of overflowed to the section
- between the two barbed wires.
- We sort of took it upon ourselves
- that, even though it's extremely dangerous
- because if they see you from the guard tower,
- you can get shot if you were to escape, well,
- we sort of devised some crude instruments
- to try to reel in some of the potato peelings.
- Which we were successful, it was wonderful.
- They put it on the stove to sort of roast it
- and make a wonderful meal.
- One morning a friend of mine and I
- came out and noticed something very strange.
- The guards were not in the towers.
- The guards and the dogs were not walking around the perimeter.
- Now this could be good news or bad news.
- Either they're getting ready to come in here
- and kill all of us, or they took off.
- Well, fortunately, they took off.
- We didn't know how to handle this until in the distance,
- we see these two horses coming towards us
- and a soldier sitting on one of them.
- This friend of mine, who happens to be Polish,
- looks out there and says, this is not a German soldier.
- They have a different color uniform.
- As he comes closer and closer, this kid
- says this guy looks Russian.
- Well, OK.
- We think it's better than the Germans.
- [LAUGHTER]
- So this guy comes to the gate, opens the gate,
- and this kid starts talking to him in Polish.
- The guy, to make a long story short, says, you're free.
- So of course, we run as fast as our physical strength allows.
- From one day to the next, thousands upon thousands
- prisoners spill out.
- [SIDE CONVERSATIONS]
- Anyhow, they spill out food from the barracks.
- People don't know how to handle the fact
- that we have been liberated.
- Before long, Red Cross doctors, volunteers, food arrives.
- There is a total riot of people who
- are dying of hunger trying to get to the food.
- Those who haven't had any decent food in all these months
- and years make the mistake of overeating and dying from it.
- People are starting to line up to get checked by the doctors.
- The doctors look at me.
- They take my temperature.
- They feel this, they feel that, they say
- you're going to the hospital.
- You're suffering from typhoid fever.
- If we don't take care of it immediately,
- you're not going to make it.
- I go to the hospital tent, or whatever it is, I tell them.
- Give me my medication.
- I'm not hanging around here.
- [LAUGHTER]
- I don't even know where home is.
- I ask at the railroad station, which way
- is Czechoslovakia, which way is Carpathians?
- I know that this train is coming this way with all
- the Russian soldiers, I should be going down this direction.
- So I get on the train.
- I'm extremely weak.
- I have some gold with me.
- It's not really gold, it's a little sack of sugar.
- This is something that's unbelievable.
- I haven't seen sugar.
- So every time I get to a railroad station,
- I get off the train.
- Because every station is doctors,
- Red Cross people, food, medication.
- I get replenished a little bit, catch the next train.
- Again, I go I still don't know where I am, absolutely no idea.
- I get to a point--
- I'm running really late here, if you get restless, say so.
- A young woman in a striped uniform taps me on my shoulder
- and says I'm so and so.
- I've been to school with your sisters.
- I was in the same camp with your sisters and mother,
- and they're fine.
- They have been liberated by American soldiers.
- It's the first time that I found out
- that my sister Lily, my sister Olga, and my mother
- had survived.
- Of course, we are still a long way from home.
- Still don't know about my father.
- I'm going to try to hurry this up
- because we have to hear from my daughter Jill.
- Then I'm going to be back for part two.
- [LAUGHTER]
- Anyhow, I just want to tell you that I didn't feel right
- talking about this for a long, long time.
- But I feel very strongly this type of story has to be told.
- Because there is some sort of mini-Holocaust going on
- constantly in this world, whether it's
- ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
- or the skinheads in Germany burning down
- buildings with immigrants.
- There's always another Hitler in the wings,
- waiting, like, Mr. Duke in Louisiana to get into a place
- where they can do harm to minorities.
- My message to you is that whenever
- you see hatred or bigotry, and I don't
- have to tell you Unitarians because you're always
- on the frontlines of any of these causes,
- but either collectively to stand up for the right of people
- when they ask for a specific race or religion.
- When you go to the polls to support these people
- or individually, go to a demonstration.
- Do something.
- Now I'd like to introduce my daughter, whom
- we affectionately call our daughter, Dr. Jill
- Klein, the professor.
- She's going to make a short talk.
- Then she's going to sing a song.
- Then I will be back with part two.
- Here she is.
- [APPLAUSE]
- I used to give speeches up here when I was 12.
- I still can't quite see over the podium down into the first row.
- Let me just very quickly finish my dad's story
- because that way a couple of things that I have to say
- will make a little more sense.
- When he got home, his mom and his two sisters were there.
- His dad never came home.
- And they realized later that that happened,
- that he was killed the first day that they were in Auschwitz.
- My aunts, one of my aunts and my father and her new husband
- escaped a few weeks after they got home from the camps.
- It was my aunt Lilly's wedding night.
- My dad heard on the radio that the Russians were taking
- that part of Czechoslovakia and it would become
- part of the Soviet Union.
- He knocked on their window on their wedding
- night in the middle of the night and said let's go.
- They left and went to Austria.
- They were in a displaced persons camp.
- The other sister was going to be married.
- So his sister Ollie and their mother
- stayed behind, planning to come later.
- Of course, there was no later.
- They couldn't come out.
- So we have my dad's sister, who had her family there
- in the hometown where my father grew up in the same house,
- had two daughters.
- Those daughters then had each had a couple of sons.
- So I had these first cousins once
- removed who were about my age or a little bit younger than me.
- In the summer of '89, which was before the wall came down
- in Germany, I went to Hungary and met up
- with these cousins of mine.
- We met in Debrecen, where my Aunt Ollie had moved out.
- Most of the family, by then, had gotten out of Hungary.
- There was still one cousin and her children
- that were still in the house in Berehovo, my father's town.
- I had always wanted to go to Berehovo.
- That had always seemed like a dream that would never
- come true because Americans weren't really
- allowed to go there.
- It was near a military installation.
- It just seemed like an impossibility.
- But there was this window of opportunity
- in just a few months, when things had gotten so lax
- there that they really weren't paying much attention to who
- was coming in to visit where, and where we still
- had relatives in that house.
- They since all have gotten out to Hungary now.
- So I got to go to my dad's hometown.
- We met up in Debrecen.
- Five of us piled into this little, little, I mean,
- little Russian car.
- We spent eight hours at the Soviet border
- trying to get across.
- It wasn't that there were any problems,
- there were just a lot of people crossing the border.
- It was a cold wet night.
- We had to all turn our engines off,
- because there wasn't gasoline to keep the cars running
- for eight hours.
- Everyone would get out of their cars every five minutes
- and push, which was an easy job because the cars were
- so little.
- Seeing the people around me, it was real drudgery for them
- because this was their way of life
- dealing with this kind of bureaucracy
- and this kind of inconvenience.
- To me, it was one of the most wonderful nights I've ever had.
- I had a cassette with me of American music,
- and we put it in the car, and rolled down the window
- and we got out and we were dancing
- in the streets, the five of us.
- People in the other cars thought we were crazy.
- We got to my dad's house at 3:00 in the morning.
- We drank a toast to us all being together in that house.
- The thing that I wanted to do the most in Berehovo
- was see the soccer field that my father had grown up playing on.
- He lost all his teammates save one in the Holocaust.
- When I was 17, I started playing soccer.
- My father is a soccer fanatic, as some of you may know,
- and so was his dad.
- I was sort of carrying on the lineage.
- Also, I became a goalkeeper, because that's
- what my father did.
- Those of you who know anything about soccer
- may know that usually people our size are not the goalkeepers.
- [LAUGHTER]
- But that's what we did.
- So I really wanted to go and just go to the soccer field
- where my dad had grown up playing
- and have my cousins [PERSONAL NAME]
- and Tommy take some shots on me and just feel
- what it was like to be there.
- I didn't realize it, but my cousin's husband
- knew the coach of the Berehovo men's soccer team.
- So he had set this all up.
- When we got there, the goalkeeper,
- they were in a scrimmage, and the goalkeeper
- stepped out of the goal and pointed for me to step in.
- So this was very, very exciting.
- It was also very scary, because they were all
- wearing black warm up suits.
- They knew who was on which team, but I didn't have a clue.
- They were all speaking Russian.
- They were sort of motioning to me what the score was.
- And it was great.
- I didn't do anything to really embarrass myself.
- So that was nice.
- But it was the most important thing
- that I've ever done, to go back there and play there.
- There are times when there's such a connection to the past.
- As a Unitarian, I don't believe in a heaven
- and that you get somewhere at the end
- and you get to sit down with everybody.
- But sometimes there's such a connection to the past,
- you feel that window.
- I knew my granddad was there, watching us play.
- OK.
- So it's a slight twist on the old plot.
- It was his granddaughter playing which would have surprised him.
- It was just great to be a part of that life when
- things were good and the time when
- things were good for my father.
- Then three days later, I was on a train to Auschwitz.
- I had gone through Poland with my cousin.
- We stayed with a colleague of mine
- who was a psychologist at the University of Warsaw.
- He and I do research on anti-Semitism in Poland
- together.
- The three of us got on the train and we went down to Auschwitz.
- We toured the camp.
- We put flowers in the crematorium for my grandfather.
- At the end, when we left, we were on our way
- back to the station.
- I remembered that I told my dad that I would get some a couple
- of rocks for him from the camp and that I would bring them
- back for him.
- So I told my friends to go on to the station
- and that I would catch up with them.
- So I ran back.
- I found some rocks.
- There was some barbed wire there.
- I contemplated for a second cutting my hand
- on the barbed wire so that I have this connection to my dad.
- We both have this scar from there.
- Then I realized that that's not what the connection was about
- and that's not what going back there was about.
- Because it was about triumph over that kind of horror.
- It was about surviving.
- It was about life.
- It wasn't about the terror there and the scars
- that people received there.
- So I grabbed the rocks, and I ran as fast
- as I could, the way I knew my father wanted to so many times
- to just run out of those gates.
- And I ran and I ran and then met up with my friends.
- A lot of people have talked about the second generation
- survivor syndrome, that we inherit
- the suffering of our parents, and we
- inherit their pain, that it can mess us up and cripple us
- somehow, and all those kinds of things.
- I have the occasional nightmares and things like that.
- I've had a nightmare once where my soccer team was lined up
- against the wall and we were all shot.
- But that's a very, very small part
- of what it is for me to be the daughter of a Holocaust
- survivor.
- I mean, look at this role model, and look
- what I would have to learn from his experience, which
- is that you can triumph over these things.
- I learned from my father about recovery.
- I learned that bad times, no matter how bad,
- can be lived through and survived.
- And I learned from my father that from the darkest
- of nights, one can emerge to the light of day.
- I'm very proud to have that as part of my life.
- I'm very thankful.
- I'd like to finish by singing you a song
- that I wrote after my trip to Auschwitz.
- [GUITAR PLAYING]
- (SINGING)
- When the world it was so frightening,
- full of darkness and doom.
- Awakened from a nightmare, it was you I would go to.
- With a joke and a hug, you'd banish my fears,
- shed light on the nightmares, make them all disappear.
- There was safety within your arms.
- I sat upon the bird's nest, barbed
- wire filled my sight, imagining what it was to live here
- and the faces of those who died.
- When from the midst of horror, a boy appears and sits
- next to me, so scared and thin, in blue-striped clothes,
- it's my father at the age of 16.
- I said Dad, let's escape.
- Let's run out those gates.
- I'll follow.
- You run ahead.
- He said those gates are locked and electrified
- and those guards will shoot us dead.
- If you are my daughter I must have survived.
- I don't die by a Nazi gun.
- But will I die by the ache in my heart
- over what my life has become?
- This world, it was surprising, full of darkness and doom.
- Here was my chance to banish his fears,
- shed light on his nightmare, make it all disappear.
- And to tell him that life goes on.
- In whispers, I spoke, soon you'll
- wake up to see Russian soldiers at the gate.
- A beautiful sight you will never forget.
- You will regain your life that day.
- You'll go home to find your sisters and Mom
- but it never will be the same.
- Boundaries are changed, and you'll run away,
- and you'll never go home again.
- But your future, it gets much brighter.
- You'll arrive on the American shore.
- To the laugh of the lady of liberty,
- you will start your life once more.
- And you'll move to where the sky is blue,
- and the breeze is always warm, and there you'll
- start a family all happy and safe from harm.
- And Dad, I went back to your home again.
- In your house, I stayed.
- I walked the streets of your hometown.
- On your soccer field, I played.
- I ate walnuts from the walnut tree
- with the family that stayed behind.
- There's still so much love inside that house,
- though so many years have gone by.
- His world, it was so frightening,
- full of darkness and doom.
- Here was a chance to banish his fears,
- shed light on his nightmare, make it all disappear,
- to tell him that life goes on.
- So I promise you this darkness will end.
- The day is coming soon.
- Please hang on, Dad, you know you got
- some sweet living left to do
- I got one more thing to tell you, Dad,
- don't you know that I'm so proud that all the forces of evil
- and hate weren't able to pull you down?
- In the midst of that gray, dreary day,
- he vanished from my sight.
- But I swear as he left, I saw on his face
- a smile ever so slight.
- And I picked up some rocks to remember that day
- and ran out [INAUDIBLE] Arbeit macht frei.
- And the prisoner in him and the prisoner in me, on that day
- we were finally freed.
- This world was so frightening, full of darkness and doom.
- Here was my chance to banish his fear,
- shed light on the nightmares, make them all disappear,
- and to tell him that life goes on.
- To tell him, that life goes on.
- Tell them that life goes on.
- [APPLAUSE]
- OK.
- Now that we got you totally depressed--
- [LAUGHTER]
- --it's time for us to talk about the celebration of life.
- I don't know what famous Greek philosopher first said
- life sucks and then you die.
- [LAUGHTER]
- I really beg to differ with them,
- because there are a lot of beautiful things in this life.
- I'm not meaning to say that life is not difficult.
- Life is extremely hard.
- You get to a point that you think
- things are getting a little better and a little easier,
- and all of a sudden you realize you're
- getting a little bit older.
- So now you have to make all sorts of adjustments
- in your lifestyle.
- Your life is constantly changing.
- You start remembering the good old middle age.
- I'm going to give you a couple of easy examples of let's say,
- 10, 15 years ago, and how things are now.
- Oh, about 10, 15 years ago, you go out
- with friends to eat dinner.
- You start talking.
- You say to your friend, so where are you going on vacation?
- And they say, well, they're going
- to go see a guru in Tibet.
- Then they'll go to the pyramids on camelback, of course.
- Then they're going to go down to Kenya on a safari.
- The rest of the week we are going
- to Amsterdam for a cigarette.
- [LAUGHTER]
- And what are you guys going to do?
- Well, we are going to SUUSI.
- For those of you non-believers, sushi
- is the Unitarian summer camp.
- It usually takes place in Virginia
- somewhere on a college campus.
- Your friends ask you, well, what are you going to do?
- So we say well this is our schedule.
- Five o'clock we have early bird watching hike.
- Six o'clock daybreak, canoeing.
- Then you go to have breakfast at the cafeteria.
- Then you go to your first workshop.
- She's going to take zen Buddhism, basket weaving.
- I'm taking nude massage.
- [LAUGHTER]
- Then we go to lunch.
- I got there 8 and 1/2 minutes before the next workshop.
- Let's go to the dorms and make love.
- Then you go to your afternoon workshop.
- She's taking how to make wonderful vegetarian
- dinners with Hamburger Helper.
- You are crowded into a classroom with 27 other men.
- this classroom is run by a psychologist, a psychiatrist,
- and a social worker.
- All the men in this group have one thing in common.
- They all eat quiche.
- [LAUGHTER] we want to find out where we went wrong.
- After that, they go to the cafeteria, again, of course.
- Then back to the dorm to get cleaned up,
- and then they go to the wonderful worship service.
- And then directly from worship service you go to serendipity.
- Now they got two kinds of serendipity.
- One is for the meek, which is upstairs
- and you listen to poetry, and talk, and comedy,
- and you have wonderful instruments being played.
- Downstairs is the crazy people.
- They dance their heart out from 9:00 till 1:00.
- I got a little secret to share with you.
- The Unitarians were doing the lambada way
- before it became popular.
- Then at one o'clock, the last dance is played and you dance.
- Then, of course, you head for the lobby of the dorm
- where you have a post-serendipity sort of sing
- along, music, singing, and fun.
- Finally, about 2:30 in the morning,
- you're walking towards your door with your loved one.
- And you gaze into her eyes and say, isn't this wonderful?
- This life is great.
- We can get 2 and 1/2 hours of sleep.
- And she says speak for yourself.
- I have a 4:30 AM smocking class.
- [LAUGHTER]
- Of course, the other thing is, too, remember the good old days
- when you could go to a Chinese restaurant
- and say see the combinations here, waiter?
- I'll have all the even numbers.
- She's going to have all the odd numbers, then we'll share.
- Now you do something like this.
- Waiter?
- I'll have the number 13 Chicken Chiang Kai-Shek.
- Wait.
- No salt. No MSG.
- Hold the onions.
- They give me gas.
- Hold the mushrooms.
- They give me a headache.
- Hold the water chestnuts because I just
- read in National Enquirer that they give you
- cancer of the ear lobes.
- [LAUGHTER]
- In fact, hold the chicken.
- Just bring me a bowl of white rice and just one chopstick
- so it will last a little longer.
- Where do you go to the good old American restaurant
- where you order like this in the olden days?
- Is your meatloaf really greasy?
- Good.
- Make me two slices of that, gravy,
- lot of butter on the buns, and a baked potato, salad.
- The food comes.
- You say, oh, waitress?
- You see this little corner of the potato,
- it doesn't have any sour cream on it.
- Please take it back and correct this terrible mistake.
- Same restaurant recently.
- Bring me a plain chicken breast.
- Bring me two carrots.
- Because beta carotene is great for you.
- Bring me four broccoli.
- No, make that six, because Bush hates it.
- [LAUGHTER]
- Bring me a baked potato, plain.
- But I tell you what, sprinkle a little Metamucil on it.
- [LAUGHTER]
- As you can see, life goes on.
- You really don't realize how precious life is
- until you go through something like a Holocaust,
- or a very serious illness, or your house
- crashes down on top of you during a hurricane like Andrew.
- You have to remember that because life
- is so hard that you do have to balance it
- in some fashion with any way that you can.
- Because there are so many pleasurable things in life,
- and so many wonderful things to see and do,
- whether you go out to the West Coast of Florida
- to Naples with someone you love and you
- sit on the beach to watch the sun sink into the Gulf,
- or you soak in the beauty of the Canadian Rockies,
- or you stand on a hilltop town in Tuscany
- and see the endless fields of sunflowers,
- or you sit in the Rome's stadium watching a soccer
- game with 70,000 people, most of them Italians, unfortunately,
- and a few odd Americans.
- Or you hear [INAUDIBLE] singing, or you enjoy [PERSONAL NAME]
- played his magic flute, or you want to watch the Alvin Ailey
- dancers gyrate their beautiful bodies,
- or something even much more simple, but just as meaningful.
- Having your granddaughter come up to you
- and say, GDaddy, let's dance.
- All these are precious moments.
- And my second and last advice to you is enjoy life.
- Get as much out of it as you possibly can.
- Because it's good.
- And the alternatives really suck.
- [LAUGHTER]
- It was really a pleasure to have all these wonderful faces here.
- Thank you for coming.
- [APPLAUSE]
- I think we need to express ourselves
- with that same spirit of life, which
- is in the inside covers of the [INAUDIBLE] hymnbooks.
- [PIANO PLAYING]
- [CONGREGATION SINGING] Spirit of life, [INAUDIBLE]..
- Spirit of life, [INAUDIBLE].
- [SIDE CONVERSATIONS]
- He's such a good boy!
- You did great today.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
- No, I bought them.
- [KISSES]
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Found your gum, huh?
- I thought you would have found that sooner, sweetie.
- Turn around.
- Doesn't he look like Santa Claus [INAUDIBLE]??
- [LAUGHTER]
- We always joke that my dad is [INAUDIBLE] smile.
- Hello, everybody.
- Good to go.
- OK, everybody!
- Get a little closer.
- Just get a little closer, as close as you can.
- Oh, no.
- I need everybody still looking at us.
- We're excited.
- Very excited.
- Number two is exciting, too.
- The only problem is going to be this [INAUDIBLE]..
- I just can't get away from this guy, you know?
- That happens, too.
- Things aren't working [INAUDIBLE]..
- This guy has been on your stomach all day.
- Is she doing this on her own, or--
Overview
- Interviewee
- Jill Klein
Gene Klein - Date
-
interview:
1992 May 30
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
- Klein, Gene. Klein, Jill.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Gene Klein donated the oral testimony to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in September 1993.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:16:45
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn520370
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