Oral history interview with Harry Burger
Transcript
- [MUSIC PLAYING]
- A separate universe with laws of its own.
- The Holocaust defies every final solution
- to the problems it engenders.
- Roadmaps have been prepared by historians, poets, theologians,
- philosophers, and novelists to unravel its mysteries.
- But the maps are faulty.
- Passports to the Holocaust universe
- are only one-way tickets.
- To enter its borders, one is never free of its power
- to leave.
- One is different forever.
- So no source can remain untapped.
- Meet Harry Burger, who entered that universe,
- survived the trip, and will help us with our roadmaps
- so that we can understand.
- Harry, let's begin when Germany took over Austria.
- How old were you?
- What do you remember happening?
- OK, I was 14 years old.
- I remember, just prior to Germany taking over,
- Austria wanted to stay independent.
- And Chancellor Schuschnigg at the time
- had free elections going.
- Of course, Hitler didn't like that,
- because he knew he was going to lose.
- So the pressure was put on the government.
- And the story was, we do not want to shed brotherly blood.
- So step down.
- And Schuschnigg finally heeded that advice
- and gave the government over to a man named Miklas,
- which nobody really knew.
- And he lasted during the Anschluss, which
- was the German occupation.
- What year is this?
- This was in March 13 of 1938.
- German troops marched into Austria.
- And I must say that Austria had about three soldiers and four
- cannons at the time.
- And they were all in the mountains.
- There was no real resistance possibility.
- But for the world, that's the way it was done.
- Germans marched in.
- And if you have ever seen a German army march
- into anything, it was awesome.
- It really was awesome.
- This was before wars, and they looked awesome.
- Government was given over to a man named Seyss-Inquart,
- who was Hitler's chosen Nazi.
- Austria became the Ostmark, part of Germany,
- and he was now the leader of that area.
- On the 12th of March, you could see
- nothing but red, white, and red flags
- all over the city of Vienna, very patriotic.
- On the morning of March 13, there
- was nothing but swastikas.
- The police force pulled them out of their pockets,
- put them on their arms.
- Every building in the city had flags.
- It sounds as though they were prepared.
- Totally prepared.
- There was a big clandestine Nazi movement in Austria
- for the-- ever since Nazism was in Germany.
- And now it was legal.
- Of course, everything came out.
- Jewish people were taken by surprise.
- Everybody thought we're going to have elections,
- and this is going to be whipped, and there's no more.
- Unfortunately, as you know, it didn't work that way.
- You were 13 or 14.
- 14.
- You were in middle school at the time.
- Right.
- What was your family like?
- Who was in there?
- Parents, brothers, sisters?
- What was your family--
- what was your family composition,
- and what do you remember about the actual occupation?
- How did it affect your family?
- It affected me not immediately.
- I have a sister who now lives in New Jersey.
- And she wasn't there at the time.
- She was married and lived in Italy.
- So she had no problem with that.
- What I remember of the Anschluss was nothing disturbing.
- The school friends used to walk in the street
- and saw Hitler's picture in every window, store window.
- And what I remember is they saying to me, isn't he
- beautiful?
- And I thought he was an ugly man, really.
- What was beautiful about Him but I wouldn't
- say anything, of course.
- A little later, some of my so-called school friends
- started throwing rocks at our windows and breaking them.
- And nobody made nothing of it either.
- Was there antisemitism that was prevalent in Austria
- at the time?
- Always.
- Always.
- Did you suffer from it?
- Did you have fights about it?
- No.
- Were you segregated out?
- No.
- Did you live in a segregated area?
- We lived in a very nice area because my father
- was doing very well.
- There was a segregated so-called area
- in Vienna, which was the second district, which
- they called the Jew Island.
- It was between the Danube and the Danube Canal.
- Jews chose to live there.
- They had their own shops, and their own synagogues,
- and everything was their own, and very little
- Aryan interference.
- Aryan.
- That's a German word.
- Yeah, that's clean, blond, blue-eyed, German.
- What business was your father in?
- My father was in textiles.
- And here's another turning point.
- He represented a French company with factories
- in Czechoslovakia that delivered textiles to Austria, to Vienna.
- Now the Germans had no real textiles for a long, long time.
- And when they occupied this territory,
- They were buying everything in sight.
- So my father's business bloomed.
- He made more money than he could ever use.
- And he said, this is heaven.
- I don't want to leave here.
- So there was no thought of being in danger.
- No, at that point--
- No problem at all.
- --his so-called friends and all the Austrians
- would come up to him and say, you
- have nothing to worry about.
- You're one of the good guys.
- We're not after you.
- We want the Hasidic Jews that came and immigrated
- from Russia and Poland and disturbed our way of life.
- And nobody thought nothing of it,
- because they were in a segregated area anyhow.
- So it was lullaby land.
- Everybody told you you have nothing to worry about.
- But the change came gradually.
- And how did it come about?
- No more movies for Jews.
- No theaters.
- No nightclubs.
- No public places to speak of.
- They went so far as to mark the benches in the parks,
- "not for Jews."
- They had little games going.
- And at night, they used to paint, with chalk, the streets
- with anti-Nazi slogans.
- And in the morning they would catch Jews going to work,
- and gave them brushes, and a pail of water,
- and says you clean it up.
- So the big topic at the time was who got
- caught to clean the streets.
- And that's as far as it went, until Crystal Night.
- Kristallnacht.
- The 10th of November.
- I think it was the 9th of November,
- a German diplomat was shot at the steps
- of the embassy in Paris by a Jewish man named Grynszpan.
- And that was the occasion now to declare Crystal Night.
- That means on the whole day of November 10,
- every Jew could be persecuted openly in the streets
- without any repercussions.
- You could kill them.
- You could beat them.
- You could rape them.
- You could put him in concentration camps.
- And nobody would say anything about it.
- And as it came about, that's how it stopped.
- We survived it due to a very humorous incident again.
- I have a cousin, Fred Burger, who
- now lives in Washington, who at the time
- was in the army, Austrian army.
- Now Fred's blond and blue-eyed, looks like a Nazi.
- And when the Germans took over, they incorporated them
- in the Wehrmacht, put a swastika on his chest,
- and he was now a German soldier.
- Of course, he came back to Vienna.
- And that day he was with us, in uniform.
- And when the Nazis came to the door
- to see if there were any Jews there,
- he opened the door scared stiff.
- And they gave him a Heil Hitler and left,
- because he was a German soldier.
- And it was only by accident that he happened to be--
- A total accident.
- He was as scared as anybody else.
- He came hiding with us because if they found out
- he was a Jew in the army, they would have executed him.
- Oh, they didn't know that.
- I was about to ask, were there Jews in the Austrian army?
- No, of course not.
- Never.
- He just looked so totally German, like the master race,
- that there was no doubt about it in their minds.
- So one kept it a secret if one wanted
- to get on in that society, that you were Jewish.
- Well, it wasn't a secret, because every non-Jew
- wore swastika on the lapel.
- And the Jew was not allowed to do this.
- Now when you saw a man walking down the street
- without a swastika, you know either he
- was an enemy of the regime or he was Jewish.
- But I'm talking about before Hitler.
- The swastika is with Hitler.
- No, before Hitler, everybody knew
- who was who, because in Austria, you
- had to go to the police station when you wanted to move
- and give them your new address.
- It was not like here, where you just pick up and go.
- It was a registration state.
- Everybody knew the whereabouts of everybody at all times.
- And what their religious affiliation was--
- Absolutely.
- --what their nationality was.
- How did life change for the Jews after Kristallnacht?
- At that point, the Jews realized that they
- had to get out to survive, because now everything became
- radical my father was arrested and was
- put into a local jail in Vienna, and was told,
- if you don't sign over your business,
- we send you to Dachau.
- And they let him stew for six weeks.
- And after six weeks, he was good and ready to sign anything.
- He went to Dachau?
- No, he was in the jail.
- Excuse me.
- In the jail.
- They let him out for the signature.
- A administrator took over the business.
- And he now made preparations to get out.
- We had an affidavit in with the American consulate.
- The waiting list was very long.
- My father was born in Poland, which
- means maybe seven, 10 years of waiting,
- which everybody knew is not going to work.
- So the decision was made.
- We have to try to get away through Italy,
- which was an allied country--
- you didn't need a visa--
- and then illegally into France.
- I remember procuring a passport at the Gestapo.
- That means total testing of background.
- If you owed any money, taxes, or whatever.
- They finally issued a passport with a big red J in it
- for "Jude"--
- it's "Jew"-- so you should be marked for life.
- And they allowed us to take out 20 Marks
- per person, which at the time was the equivalent of $5.
- I want to back up a minute, Harry.
- Did you hear a conversation?
- Were other people in the Jewish community talking about
- leaving, trying to get away?
- Everybody was trying to get away.
- They went so far as to buy visas to Shanghai in China
- just to get out.
- And many of them got that.
- You had to have a visa.
- So anyhow, we went--
- finally went to Italy, got into San Remo.
- My sister at the time had left from Italy
- and went and lived in Nice.
- And they arranged for us to cross the border illegally,
- which was quite frequently done at that time
- by a lot of people.
- What it was, they went to Ventimiglia,
- which was the border.
- And there was a big piece of property
- owned by a Russian scientist who experimented with monkeys
- on the youth serum.
- I remember that quite clearly.
- And half his property was in Italy and half was in France.
- So they got you into his half in Italy,
- and you walked right through, and you wound up in France.
- But of course, instead of having a taxi waiting for you
- on the other side, there was absolutely nothing,
- because you paid your money.
- You're it.
- But there were buses.
- Nobody spoke the language.
- My family-- my father and mother were
- with me and myself and some other fella,
- a lawyer that was in prison with my father at the time.
- And we just took a bus to Nice, and arrived
- in the middle of the night, and nowhere to go.
- We didn't know where we were.
- So we went to a hotel.
- Didn't need any papers.
- We didn't know what was happening.
- It was so different.
- Did not need papers.
- No, it was a free country.
- You weren't stopped at borders, nothing.
- Nobody wanted anything from us.
- If you had the bus fare, you were in business.
- This is '38.
- 1939.
- 1939.
- And what happened there is we finally, in the morning,
- got my sister and my brother-in-law out.
- We went to the local police station.
- They gave us a temporary permit.
- Not a problem.
- Not a problem.
- Just has to be renewed every month.
- And you had no right to work.
- You could not take a job.
- How were you to live?
- Well, let me say--
- Where were you trying to go?
- We were trying to go to America.
- OK.
- Now how were you supposed to live under these conditions?
- They didn't care.
- You're supposed to be rich.
- You're an immigrant.
- You have your own money.
- A lot of people got a lot of stuff out-- my father
- got stuff out, I know.
- My father had a Swiss bank account--
- I know that-- at the time.
- So there was no big problem in living.
- And we all, we're waiting for our visas.
- Didn't come.
- Quota closed down.
- The war was declared finally in 1939, on September the 3rd.
- At that point, the French were yelling,
- we're going to teach these Germans a lesson.
- In three weeks, we're going to be in Berlin.
- And we dopies believed.
- We believed all this, this big propaganda.
- The French had no army.
- The Fifth Column was eating them up.
- And they dug in the Ligne Maginot,
- the big ligne, the line that they built
- to defend against Germany.
- German built one.
- It was called the Ligne Siegfried.
- It was right opposite of it.
- The cannons were pointed at each other.
- And that was supposed to last forever.
- Except for one thing.
- They did not protect the Belgian border.
- So when, in 1939, as I said, on September the 3rd,
- when Hitler invaded Poland, the Allied declared war,
- we were still in a free country, and we
- were waiting for the victory.
- On the 10th of May, on my birthday,
- the Germans started the Western Front invasion.
- Circled around all the defense lines, went into Belgium,
- and got into France from the north.
- And in record time--
- by that, I mean, June 21, a little over a month,
- they were in Paris.
- The cannons in the Ligne Maginot couldn't be turned around.
- The army was totally disbanded.
- The tanks had no carburetors.
- Everything was in great shape.
- On the 25th, the armistice went in force.
- It was unconditional.
- It was signed in the old railroad car
- that they signed the 1918 armistice.
- Hitler had that.
- Now we were living in non-occupied France.
- France thought that they were Allied of Germany now,
- and Germany took it for granted.
- They needed the troops.
- They couldn't occupy the whole country successfully.
- So they occupied the north into Paris, a little bit
- further down.
- And Vichy became the capital of Free France.
- It was governed by a man of Pierre Laval, who
- was a total Nazi.
- On September the 13th of 1940, he
- declared that he wanted to see Germany victorious
- because the future of the world lies with Germany.
- That's what we had to face now.
- We had no German troops, no Gestapo, but we had the French.
- And they made sure that they got enough manpower to Germany--
- and all the Jews they could catch.
- Something happened to your father.
- Later on.
- Ah.
- I'll get to that.
- Now what happened here was that the French didn't go and pick
- up Jews like the Germans did.
- But every month you had to go back to the police station
- to renew your permit.
- And one month out of three or four
- or so, they would pick up everybody that came
- and send them to a holding camp, to Gurs.
- And we didn't know at the time that the Germans would pick up
- from there.
- So they did it their own way.
- I, fortunately, had a lot of friends.
- I was young.
- And they told me when to go and when not to go.
- And we peeled through this thing until, I would say,
- in early 1942 it became serious.
- It became to the point where if you were caught in the streets,
- they would send you away anyhow.
- So we were hiding at the time with a French family.
- And I couldn't understand why, but they were Nazis anyhow--
- French Nazis.
- And they were hiding us, maybe for future reference,
- to say, well, I had--
- I helped a Jew, in case it doesn't go so good.
- And this went on until 1942.
- On November the 27th, the French scuttled their fleet in Toulon.
- They sank 89 crafts.
- And at that point, the Germans had to occupy.
- So the 2nd Panzer division, SS Panzer division,
- came through and occupied the Free French zone.
- But they left the small piece for the Italians,
- which were Allies.
- And again, fortunately enough, living in Nice,
- I was on the Italian occupation.
- Now let me say something about Italians.
- They were just great people.
- They didn't know about the Jewish problem.
- They didn't care about the Jewish problem.
- They did not want to make war.
- They wanted to make love.
- And it's true.
- And they were protecting whoever they could.
- The synagogue was allowed to operate again,
- and the Italians were cooperating
- with the synagogue in Nice.
- Were there Italian soldiers there?
- Yeah, but now, see, the French government was still in charge.
- And we still had to go to the police station,
- to come and say hello there.
- So that one time, again, it came very dangerous,
- and the synagogue said, look, there
- are 40 Jews here, including a few Hasidics,
- that are in danger.
- And the Italian commander said, we'll
- take him into a civilian prisoner of war camp
- in a town called Sospel.
- It's in the Alps.
- Keep them for four or five days.
- Then we'll transfer them into a forced residence
- next to Rome, where they have nothing
- to do but come twice a day to the commando and say,
- here I am, presented.
- And they live out the war like that.
- No problem.
- The town was called Sospel.
- Sospel.
- That's where the camp was.
- So they brought us in with--
- it was two Italian army trucks with 40 shivering Jews.
- We didn't know what the hell was going on.
- And they brought us into this camp.
- And now we saw what this was all about.
- It was a camp for British and American civilians
- that lived in the area, which were supposed
- to be aliens, not desirable.
- And they put them in this camp.
- And they lived like kings.
- They had all the food in the world.
- How bad can it be, with spaghetti and meatballs
- every day, when everybody else is starving?
- The soldiers made your beds.
- It was a paradise.
- And the reason they treated them so well
- is because the Italian prisoners in America
- were treated equivalently well.
- So it was a balance sheet here.
- It was neutral.
- But instead of letting us out in five days and go to Rome,
- they forgot about us.
- The Italians were very smooth about that.
- They had a little dog in their that we call Domani.
- That means "tomorrow."
- Because whatever you ask the Italians, they said, tomorrow.
- So we stayed in that camp for 40--
- four months.
- I'm sorry.
- Four months.
- During that time, something very frightening happened.
- A German truck of soldiers came to the camp
- and wanted them to deliver all the Jews with arms out,
- and the Germans defended it and didn't let them in.
- I mean, the Italians.
- Wouldn't let them in.
- Germans left.
- And they saved us that way, because they came specifically
- for the Jewish population in this camp.
- Wouldn't give them up.
- At some point, though, the Italians did leave.
- Well, here it comes now.
- After four months, they said, we don't have
- any business with these people.
- We're going to have to put them in a forced residence.
- Now it came to them.
- But instead of Rome, it became a town in France
- on the Italian border, close to the Italian border,
- in the Alps.
- It was Saint-Martin-Vésubie.
- And there were 700 or so Jews that were living there.
- And all they had to do is twice a day
- go and present themselves.
- And this was really a terrific deal, because the whole world
- was at war except us.
- And this lasted until September 29 of 1943.
- Badoglio, who had, at that point,
- became the chief of Italy, because Mussolini was arrested
- and he was taken out, he and Eisenhower met in Malta
- and signed an independent armistice.
- Now the Italians decided the war is over.
- Let's go home.
- Now our protectors now decided to leave.
- As they packed up, they realized they couldn't go down
- the roads with their gear.
- They had to go into the mountains.
- The Germans were already coming in.
- And at that point, as the troops left,
- almost 700 Jews followed them, not
- knowing where they were going.
- Into the mountains.
- Were going to Italy.
- They didn't realize that they were going
- into Alps of 3,200 meters high.
- That's about 12,000 feet.
- Were you clothed?
- Nobody knew what was going on.
- We had regular clothes on.
- It was September.
- It was fall.
- But you're still all together as a family.
- You are still all together as a family?
- No, at that point, my father was already gone.
- And I want to interject that now.
- He tried to buy a Cuban visa for the family.
- And this was in 1942.
- And he did.
- Paid a lot of money for it.
- And when he came home, we all realized it was very phony,
- and it would never go over.
- So he was very upset, went back to the man,
- and the police was there already.
- And they ask him what he was looking for.
- And he says, I want my money back.
- I got cheated.
- Says, come down to the police force
- and we'll straighten this all out.
- And they put him in jail for six months awaiting trial--
- for what, we don't know.
- The trial came, and he was, at the time, acquitted.
- It was annulled.
- And they wouldn't release him from prison
- because he was a Jew.
- And they send him to Gurs.
- And that was the last we saw of him.
- And I will tell you the result later
- of what happened with him.
- But my mother was still with me at the time.
- And we were able to cross the mountains.
- I spoke Italian at the time, and I
- was chosen to spearhead this thing so
- that I can explain what's going on with all these people.
- We went over the [NON-ENGLISH],, which is,
- as I said 3,200 meters high.
- And on the other side of that was an Italian fortification
- which was built in World War I. And the troops were in there,
- and they were already celebrating peace.
- And I came in with about 700 people.
- The commando over there, they asked me, what you got here?
- And I says, we have 700 Jews, refugees.
- They're hungry and they need to sleep.
- And he didn't know what Jews were.
- But he made sure that they were all bedded down
- and they were fed.
- And he in his office went to the phone,
- and he called the nearest town, which was Cuneo.
- And he wanted to talk to somebody in charge of the army.
- And he says, I have 700 Jewish refugees here.
- What do you want me to do with them?
- And I was there, and I knew what was going on.
- It was a moment of silence.
- And then he says, hold them there,
- and we'll check back with you.
- And that to me was a sign of "forget it."
- That same night, an SS dispatch came up,
- didn't go into the camp at all.
- Just checked the situation out and left.
- And I decided at the time, without panicking anybody,
- let's get out of here.
- We were about 5:00 in the morning.
- Everybody was assembled, and we went down the mountains.
- You were how old at this time?
- Pardon me?
- You were how old at this time?
- At that point I was 16, 17.
- And you sensed that something was wrong.
- Oh, I knew right away that he didn't talk to Allieds.
- No American troops down there.
- OK.
- Go ahead.
- Because everybody said now that they are in peace,
- the Americans are going to come right in,
- and there's not going to be any resistance, and goodbye.
- Nobody knew how many German troops were in Italy.
- The whole Afrika Korps was in Italy at the time.
- They were defeated in Africa.
- They all came into Italy.
- What happened when the Germans came in?
- [CHUCKLES]
- They came into--
- I was in a town called Bulgari, which was in a valley.
- And we came down.
- And it was free.
- There was nobody there.
- And I remember the Jews all assembled
- in the center of town, and had a couple of drinks
- from the fountain.
- And there were a couple of little grocery stores.
- They were able to buy things, that they didn't
- know how good they had it.
- And I looked at this with a few other people, and I said,
- this cannot last.
- There are too many Jews in the middle of one town,
- and we decided to get out.
- There were 12 of us, including my mother.
- Including your mother.
- Yeah.
- We went away from the center of town,
- and there was little mountains going on, little hills.
- We got into the hills.
- And within a very short time, the Nazi trucks came in.
- They surrounded this area.
- Loudspeakers came up.
- Everybody surrender or you will be shot.
- Now they understood.
- And just about everybody surrendered except us
- who were already in the hills.
- They were carted away into a camp next to--
- was a town called Cuneo, which was the biggest
- town they had there.
- And it was, again, an Italian camp,
- and the Italians were guarding it.
- And the Jews weren't maltreated yet.
- But we took off.
- We went into the next valley.
- We were given shelter by farmers--
- poor people.
- They gave us a farmhouse.
- There were 12 of you, but it was not a problem to get shelter.
- No, because the Italians didn't like fascists
- and they didn't like Germans.
- What kind of 12 was it?
- Who was in this group?
- It was a bunch of friends we had made in Saint-Martin.
- Young?
- Old?
- A couple, some kids my age, and two singles--
- single guys.
- We were friends, playing cards together.
- Your mother is still with you.
- Yeah.
- And at that point, it became more and more frequent
- that the Germans came up the valley roads with their trucks,
- and they started branching in a little bit.
- And it became a little fussy.
- And I went into the mountains with about 30
- Italian deserters, what they called deserters.
- They were just waiting for the war to end.
- They didn't want any trouble.
- They were mostly officer material.
- They were armed.
- And their whole purpose was to survive until the Allies came.
- And as you know, they didn't come.
- So this group became the nucleus of a underground force.
- At first all they wanted to do is rob grocery stores for food.
- And then we'd turn around.
- Really?
- We'd do a little more than that.
- And I was part of that group.
- Where did they get the munitions?
- They attacked the German ammunition dumps
- and what have you.
- And for food they sometimes stole
- or they were befriended by farmers?
- The farmers helped.
- Were you called partisans?
- Yes.
- We were.
- The 1st Alpine Division was formed.
- Now within May '44, which is about a year later,
- this group of 30 now was 20,000 strong.
- Wait, before we get to 20,000, what
- was the scope of your operations?
- What did you do.
- Well, the first--
- What did you do and what did they do?
- The first thing we had to do was sabotage,
- blew up railroad, electrified railroad lines, bridges.
- Blow up everything that rolls on wheels.
- That was the purpose.
- Were you successful?
- Absolutely.
- I will tell you how successful in a little while.
- They said, from a bicycle up to a fire engine,
- through baby carriages, whatever had wheels, you blow it.
- Of course, that also involved contact with Germans.
- The battles were usually very short
- because we always had the mountain to go back to.
- As I said, we got an awful lot of volunteers,
- people that now wouldn't wait for the Allies
- because they were stuck in Monte Cassino.
- They were not going to bombard this monastery that
- was so precious to them, knowing damn well that the Germans were
- implanted there with all kinds of weaponry.
- Well, they finally decided they're
- going to blow it anyhow.
- That's when the Allies advanced, finally.
- We got down from the mountains on April the 30th in '45.
- We didn't know that we had won the war already.
- You see we, never knew anything.
- We had no communications like we had today.
- We were in a local area.
- It was only a local operation.
- You weren't part of a larger network.
- The whole network, the army was a large army,
- but we were a small group in a small town.
- So this was all over the place.
- All right.
- Now at some point, you linked up with the Allies.
- Everybody linked up with each other before we saw the Allies.
- The Allies gave us three weeks to clean up the mess.
- By that, I mean, when we occupied our territory,
- the Germans ran like hell.
- And if you ever see a mighty army defeated,
- it was a pleasure to look at.
- They were in rags.
- They had no wheels.
- Wonder why, huh?
- They were walking.
- To show you the mentality of the German army, the mighty
- German mentality, the Nazi mentality,
- they would not surrender to the partisans
- because the propaganda said they would cut ears off,
- and they torture you, and so on.
- They weren't half wrong.
- But the problem is, it wasn't that bad.
- So they walked towards Milan, which had a camp for Germans.
- The Allies had it.
- I think it was the 8th Army, British Army.
- And the Americans had established
- a big prisoner of war camp.
- And that's where they wanted to go.
- But through their walk to Milan, they made it a death march.
- They burned every farmhouse on the way,
- shot everybody that was in the house except the smallest
- child.
- Why, we don't know.
- And this is after they lost the war.
- It just show you how great they were,
- and how deserving they were of their end.
- Well, we were now in the position of cleaning up.
- We formed a tribunal, which was mainly
- part of the original 30, which now was the military police.
- We got to judge spies, traitors, all kinds of undesirables.
- And most of them, I must say, were put to death.
- We gave them a fair trial-- one minute,
- just the way they did it to us.
- Did you ever kill anyone, Harry?
- Oh, yeah.
- At that time, they said that the German away
- keeps the doctor away.
- A German a day keeps the doctor away.
- Were you ever frightened?
- Always, because if you got shot in this kind of war,
- you died anyhow--
- gangrene or what have you.
- We had no doctors, no hospitals.
- We were a roving force.
- Did you ever come close to being caught?
- Once or twice.
- But close, maybe 30, 40 feet away from them, and running,
- because sometimes they came up the mountains
- with Russian troops, Ukrainians, and they didn't know-- they
- had no fear.
- So now the war is over, but you decide
- to stay for another month.
- No, we didn't decide.
- I was in the army.
- I couldn't leave.
- And I was an officer by now.
- And they told us, you go back in the mountains
- and get the SS down the drain.
- And I says, you do it.
- I'm not going in the mountains.
- I know what it's all about.
- One man can hold a hundred back and win.
- So I says, we wait them out.
- And we did.
- And they came down hungry and in distress.
- And we got orders from the Allies
- that every SS is to be treated--
- you have carte blanche.
- You pick them up, you make them dig their graves,
- and you shoot them-- no trials, no nothing.
- How do you recognize an SS man.
- His blood type was tattooed on his armpit.
- It's as simple as that.
- You are now how old?
- Now I'm going on 21.
- We did that.
- We exterminated every SS we could find.
- And it's probably most of them.
- Some of them probably got away.
- They were all executed and buried on the spot.
- And I was finally discharged exactly one month
- after the war ended.
- You were an officer in the Allied army at this point?
- No, we still--
- What army?
- What army is it you're referring to?
- The Italian underground, the partisan.
- Ah, OK.
- 1st Alpine Division.
- I was discharged--
- You went back to France.
- I was discharged, the first man discharged from this group.
- It was me, because I wasn't Italian.
- They offered me to stay in Italy, become an Italian,
- and take over the police force in this town.
- And I says, you've got to be nuts.
- At 21 you become chief of police.
- It's ridiculous.
- Anyhow, I went back with an Allied motorcade.
- And my mother was with me.
- And we got back to Nice.
- We were coming in late, and they put us into a hotel
- just for the night.
- And in the morning, we were screened
- by French army personnel.
- And when I was asked where I was born, and I said Austria,
- I mean, I was in an American uniform, 101 Airborne,
- and the man said, I have to arrest you
- because you are Austrian.
- That means German.
- He did not recognize the Jewish angle now.
- And they put me in a old hotel, in the Hotel Swiss in Nice,
- for three weeks in internment to find out what's going on.
- And this was not pleasant, because there
- was a lot of SS in there, and a lot of Nazis and fascists.
- And this wasn't my place.
- After three weeks, finally, they came to me,
- and they realized what was going on, and I was liberated.
- And I started a new life.
- Now very poor.
- I think I got about $20 discharge money.
- You and your mother are together.
- She survived this.
- She survived with me.
- How old was your mother at this time?
- She's dead.
- She died.
- No--
- How old was she?
- Yes.
- How old was she then.
- I think it was about 40.
- About 43 or 44.
- Incredible.
- You stayed in France--
- My mother knew what happened to her.
- She was not accepting this whole thing.
- She kind of lived in a dreamworld for these years.
- She was never hurt badly, mentally.
- Interesting.
- She's stuck up in the mountains.
- She is in a--
- Yeah, just lived her daily lives.
- Disregarded the whole thing.
- Now my father was finally sent to Auschwitz
- at the end of 1943.
- He was executed.
- How do you know that?
- I know from a man that was a good friend of his who
- came back, who was a kapo, and who
- took my father under his wing.
- He loved my father.
- And I broke him down.
- I told him, if you don't tell me, I'll kill you now.
- It doesn't make any difference to me.
- So he finally told me.
- My father was burned alive.
- The Germans had run out of gas.
- And they were just taking all the weak bodies
- and putting them right in the oven.
- A lot of people do not know this, but this is the truth.
- Out of the 700 that were, that surrendered in Italy
- when we broke away, they were all shipped to Auschwitz
- and all were executed.
- There was not one survivor.
- That's the story.
- You've had an incredible experience.
- I mean, the word doesn't even cover it.
- Where did you find the inner resources, the strength,
- to deal with what you did?
- It was a question of survival.
- Once I realized that there was no return here,
- that if they ever get you, you don't come home.
- Because they showed their brutality, finally.
- I decided it was much easier to pick up a gun
- and shoot back, and take a few with you.
- That was all there was, survival.
- We didn't even know if the Germans are
- going to lose the war or not.
- We thought they were winning all the time.
- At least the armed forces looked like that.
- Are you a bitter man, Harry?
- Not anymore.
- I still wouldn't go to Germany.
- I still would never go back to Austria.
- I think they're the biggest antisemites ever, still today.
- As you know, the whole Jewish population of Austria
- has shrunk to about 50,000, and mostly transients.
- We have no family left.
- Everybody was wiped out.
- This interview is coming to an end.
- Is there anything further that you would like
- to say to the viewing audience?
- Just watch it.
- It shouldn't happen again, because it could,
- at any minute.
- Just look around you in the world and see what's going on,
- and the persecutions, and the killings.
- Even in our country.
- Thank you, Harry, for helping us with our roadmap--
- You're entirely welcome.
- --to an unfathomable kingdom.
- Thank you so much.
- [MUSIC PLAYING]
Overview
- Interviewee
- Mr. Harry Burger
- Date
-
interview:
1988 July 17
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
- Burger, Harry.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received a copy of the interview from Harry Burger in March 1995.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:10:36
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn520447
Additional Resources
Download & Licensing
- Request Copy
- See Rights and Restrictions
- Terms of Use
- This record is digitized but cannot be downloaded online.
In-Person Research
- Available for Research
- Plan a Research Visit