Oral history interview with Joachim Kramberg
Transcript
- Three years.
- So she must have been born by the end of World War I,
- somehow?
- Because your date of birth is in 1914.
- So your youngest sister probably was born in '18 or '19,
- something like that.
- Yeah, yeah.
- My father kept his word.
- But he loved his family.
- And he never divorced my mother.
- And how long I live, I don't remember
- if they was arguing between [INAUDIBLE]..
- So I didn't think of this.
- They loved each other?
- Yeah, it was the atmosphere in the house was everything peace,
- you understand.
- If we with the kids alone, we respect each other.
- And that.
- On a Saturday, what did you do?
- Did your father go--
- No, no, no.
- Do something with you?
- Saturday, got up in the morning, went to the mikvah, came home.
- We ate dinner.
- And also one thing--
- this woman who raised us, she was sitting by the same table
- that all [INAUDIBLE] sat.
- I think, I don't know if you will
- find somebody which will give you a better
- opinion about my father.
- Did your father talk with you about politics?
- About the larger world around?
- There was a newspaper, so like here,
- is The New York Times, there was Moment,
- The Chwila, the most popular Jewish newspaper.
- Was your father somebody who was interested in politics?
- Well, what he read in his paper.
- He was not-- he didn't live so like the Americans are
- living with baseball, and something else.
- No, I guess what I'd like to hear or understand is,
- since the more--
- in the later years of your childhood,
- and when you started to be a grown man,
- the world situation was becoming more and more complicated.
- One thing I tell you, here, you have girls, 12 years old,
- and they have babies.
- That didn't exist.
- You understand?
- No, but there was the time of the big depression,
- the time after World War I, in terms of economy was not easy.
- You were in a Jewish community in Poland,
- antisemitism was rising.
- So how did your family experience those years?
- The first thing, ma'am, I live on the street,
- the Wałowa, the name for the street.
- I tell you, was half Jewish people,
- families, and other Catholic families.
- Quite a few are a high officer from the military.
- Lived on this street.
- You know.
- Did you socialize with each other?
- I mean, did you--
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
- The most time I had friends, Pollacks,
- and one time, my father, sitting in the living room--
- and read whatever, came one guy, a Jewish guy.
- And he asked for me.
- So my father get up, opened the door, he say, go.
- Your Catholics are here.
- It was an open house.
- My all brothers associated with the Catholics.
- In school, did you go to a school
- where both Jews and Gentiles were together?
- No, we were going to the same school.
- You see, there was a Jewish school.
- We never went to the Jewish school.
- And did you feel that it mattered at school if you
- were Jewish or not Jewish?
- Were people treated differently?
- Oh, yeah-- you can imagine that one day,
- on the outside the school, I was playing.
- And somebody from the third floor was coming back over,
- and say, hey, listen, your brother
- is [INAUDIBLE] fighting.
- So I run up, and I tried to run under the table,
- and my brother took a pencil and knocked him in the head.
- No, no, we was not Jewish people which was afraid for a fight.
- And if somebody insulted us, we react so like--
- he was [INAUDIBLE].
- There was a beautiful park, it was
- sitting different Jewish boys and girls.
- And sometimes they attack them.
- So my brother a few guys more, he was watching that,
- and he had good sticks.
- They want beat the Jews, then we beat them.
- And if you say, they, who are they?
- Who were these people?
- Who?
- You know very well that the Jewish people are not liked.
- That we gave [NON-ENGLISH]--
- we gave the religion, we gave medicine, everything.
- But they don't like Jews.
- What they can do?
- It is easier to hate like love.
- Yeah?
- This is a completely different thing.
- And especially was the whole antisemitism
- came from Eastern Europe.
- If you came in a company from German, or French, or Belgium,
- you never heard a word Jew.
- And there-- during the war, I had
- some trouble with the police.
- And I felt that I cannot stay more in Warsaw.
- I must disappear.
- I took a detective--
- of the Gestapo.
- I smashed his face, and I run away.
- So the ground in Warsaw started to be dangerous for me.
- So I told my girlfriend, we will get married.
- I got married.
- And I went on the farm.
- Let's backtrack a little bit before we get to this--
- to the time when you got married.
- I would like to hear a little bit more
- before about your growing up, in terms of your education.
- You went to school in Tarnopol for how long?
- There was a three-year commercial lyceum.
- And what was your plan?
- What did you want to be?
- Or what were you studying for?
- Commerce.
- Commerce.
- So I was sure end up in my father's factory.
- OK.
- So you went to this three-year--
- Three years.
- --school.
- And when did you--
- After gymnasium, I went to lyceum.
- So like here, the Baruch College.
- So about what age were you when you finished your schooling,
- approximately?
- I finished my schooling with starting the war.
- [GERMAN]
- So you were still at school when the war started, in '39?
- After a year time, when I left school, starting the war.
- So you went to school in Tarnopol?
- You finished school in Tarnopol?
- And what happened next?
- What did you do?
- I did nothing.
- I was most times I spent in my father's business.
- My father, how much he gave you, that was enough.
- You see, you didn't need to beg my father give you--
- I have no money.
- I [INAUDIBLE] ma'am, I am proud of my heritage.
- So you started working in the family business
- together with your father and one of your brothers?
- The eldest brother.
- And did you did you plan at that time to stay in Tarnopol?
- Or what did you want to do?
- Ma'am, you didn't plan nothing.
- But the life was very nice, you understand?
- You had everything.
- There's only one-- the one bother that my father had
- trouble with the military.
- So he went to Argentina.
- But he's not alive no more.
- I was in Argentina four years ago.
- To visit your brother's family?
- Yeah, I went to visit his grave.
- I was a week time.
- He had a daughter with a son.
- They sold the works for Shell Oil Company.
- And the daughter, the daughter married a non-Jewish man.
- And one time he expressed himself,
- I saw what is in him, inside, anyway--
- I didn't talk more.
- When did you last see your brother?
- Oh, by that-- when I was four or five years ago,
- he was already dead.
- But did you see him after he went away to Argentina?
- Did you--
- Oh, yeah, he was writing letters, and that.
- And we had a man which was a good friend for my father.
- So he said to us that the letter, that his son got
- married in this house.
- So we had contact, and everything.
- Right, right.
- Was a big family, it was a nice family.
- So but eventually, things changed in Tarnopol?
- Oh, sure-- I was in Tarnopol with David Robert
- three years ago.
- But I just want to get to the--
- as we move forward in the history,
- in 1938, for example, were you still working with your father?
- No, by then the German-- you see, we had a lots of presses,
- [GERMAN] soap.
- And they brought presses for everything,
- and they were made from the full metal, what
- the [INAUDIBLE] metal.
- Not iron, copper.
- So what-- the job they took everything.
- Well, how do you remember these times when the Germans came?
- I, personally, will tell you that I
- didn't have to hard times.
- But I was--
- I am a witness what has happened to all the people.
- Were you afraid about what could happen?
- Did you realize what was happening?
- Ma'am, I am a Cohen.
- And Cohens have terrible temper.
- And I was sitting in a restaurant in Warsaw,
- and I have stuff for the underground.
- Came in one guy, and I didn't know
- there was another guy, and the girl which
- was working in the restaurant, she right away
- showed me there's another exit.
- I go out that exit, and the other guy stays there.
- And he hit me with a eine Peitsche.
- With a whip?
- Yeah.
- And he tried to make the corner so he had a help.
- I put my leg and he fell on his face.
- I took his hair, and smashed it to the street.
- And there was a taxi, I jumped in a taxi, and I drive.
- And the taxi drivers, they knew what was going on.
- And one corner, I took the corner, they were still behind.
- I gave them 500 złoty, and you go.
- And I jump out, and I went in, in a house.
- What later I found out, son of a gun, was bleeding like hell.
- I couldn't stay in Warsaw more, you know.
- They would look for me.
- How did you get to Warsaw?
- What brought you to Warsaw?
- Did you go for work reasons?
- No, no, to Warsaw, I had a 10-ton truck with six soldiers.
- And my boss told them to bring me to Warsaw.
- And that-- and on the way, to Warsaw,
- they must stop in Krakow.
- And in Krakow, was a known camp--
- the Plaszow.
- The director for the camp was Amon Göth.
- He could stay on a balcony with a gun,
- and didn't like someone--
- killed them.
- I mean, and he got--
- they caught him, and he was sitting in jail.
- So I said to the director, I would like to see him.
- And I went there.
- Oh, [GERMAN],, and a Polish sergant,
- there was not an executioner, though.
- A Polish sergant thought if he can take off
- his pants and his shoes, he will hang you.
- And the judge said, good, all right.
- And I was staying 20 foot from the place
- where they hanged him.
- Well, and ma'am, that Amon Göth was a high cultural guy.
- Fat and intelligent.
- I ask him, how could you do that?
- Oh, no, [GERMAN].
- In the notes that I got from your son,
- he says that in 1939, when the Russians occupied Tarnopol,
- you worked as an accountant for the local government
- in the division of propaganda films.
- Can you--
- I was the economist from the state.
- I didn't work, but I had a friend
- he would say, listen, you must work next door where
- lives an NKVD man.
- They will start to look for what you're living in that.
- So he came one day told me that in the office, they need a man.
- I say, well, what can I--
- how you know that?
- You will do the job.
- He was a lawyer, and he couldn't do the job.
- So I went there, applied.
- And they gave me the job.
- And I had two weeks--
- they want to see what I can do.
- And after two weeks, they say, you are accepted.
- I got a very good salary from them.
- So who was your boss?
- The Communist Party.
- The Communist Party.
- The government.
- OK.
- And--
- I was starshii ekonomist OblIspolkoma.
- And what specifically did you-- was your task?
- What did your work consist of?
- My job contains on that--
- they gave me-- tell me a number, 10 million, 20 million.
- And I suppose to divide that money, each village, each town.
- And I divide it.
- They send that to Kyiv--
- Kyiv agreed that they send that papers back to me.
- And I do one thing--
- I was giving out money.
- And the law in Russia--
- so if I give you money, something to do,
- in the end of three months, you didn't use the money,
- you must--
- that was left over to give back to the cashier.
- And you get new money from the cashier.
- There was one guy, the Fedulov, he was--
- he had the propaganda.
- That is-- and the plan was that he will build a garage,
- there they can fix that part, too--
- they can fix the trucks and that.
- He didn't fix nothing, he didn't build nothing.
- And they came after me.
- And in each office is a member, is an NKVD.
- He called me in.
- I say, I never touched money, I didn't see money.
- And tell him, that is my job.
- But that-- the Fedulov, he had the Orden Stalina i Lenina,
- they cannot arrest him.
- They took me.
- They brought me to the center from the NKVD,
- and they start to write.
- Write, write.
- Podpishi.
- So I will tell you that--
- so like I said, nikhuya.
- He went out, comes another guy.
- So the whole evening and the whole night,
- they came with three acts.
- In the morning, Alan Warning came in, a guy in uniform,
- and you know a Jew recognizes a Jew.
- I recognize that he's Jewish.
- So I don't speak to him in Russian.
- What I speak to him in Jewish.
- And I tell him what they think, that I'm stupid?
- But what I will say?
- They will send me in Siberia.
- After our time, he came back, he said, "Poshli domoi", go home.
- So you were released?
- Yeah.
- So if I sign one paper, I would enter Siberia.
- And could you go back to your work after that?
- Or what happened?
- What?
- Did you return to your work?
- Yeah.
- And then?
- And then, it was the end for the Russian.
- And they called me to the air force.
- So I went to Russian air force.
- Meaning, you were drafted?
- What?
- Does that mean you were drafted?
- Yeah.
- Yeah?
- Come there, they're organized, they have nothing.
- So I will tell you a joke--
- the Russian which sits next to me,
- he ate the soup, one side down and the other side.
- And he gives me the--
- I look on the--
- he say, [RUSSIAN]--
- Which means?
- This means, ty sukin syn, what do you think?
- That I ate good, shit?
- [LAUGHS]
- Everything was tougher off.
- And one night, the Germans came and they smashed him in pieces.
- That's the general was there--
- he was screaming on them.
- And I had a--
- I kept-- and she offered me--
- I give you a talk, and come with us.
- That's Russia I came to my home, and I told--
- and I told my mother, what?
- For that-- had the Vienna furniture
- to go with them hollow baskets, they didn't have shoes.
- But my mother would go, I will survive with the whole family.
- But [INAUDIBLE] in Russia, a commandeer
- can steal if he has a good chauffeur.
- Without a chauffeur, he cannot steal.
- And he wants me to go to Russia.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- So you decided against it?
- Not I decided, but my mother.
- And I had my sister was together with me on the airfield.
- So one day, they came--
- they smashed everything.
- They is who?
- They're the Germans.
- The Germans.
- So I told my sister, my sister was a nurse there.
- So I helped her to put them on the wagon, a few wounded guys.
- And I told her, you don't come back.
- Stay home, I will come home.
- And later, after 12 o'clock in the night, I left the base,
- and I went home.
- Went home.
- The first week I didn't go out.
- I took off all the clothes [INAUDIBLE]..
- And after about five, six days, that the German came.
- Was your family afraid of the Germans arriving?
- No, on the beginning, if somebody
- told what the Germans are doing, ah, [GERMAN]..
- We don't believe it.
- She didn't believe it.
- And your one brother had already left, too, for Argentina,
- right?
- Oh, he left before the war started.
- Did your father or your mother, or any of you
- brothers and sisters ever think of following your brother?
- No, that was-- that was my brother
- was eight years before it started, the war, he went.
- So you did not feel threatened, that you were not
- thinking that something could happen to you?
- No.
- We didn't believe people came from the west part of Poland,
- which was under the German.
- If they came and tell stories, they couldn't believe them.
- And I will tell you, I, myself, couldn't
- believe that such a cultured nation can commit such things.
- But later, when Molotov with Ribbentrop made that pact,
- later they start in Warsaw, also.
- So did you officially leave the Russian army?
- Or how did you get out there?
- They-- I got an order, that to report to the airport.
- Right, but then you said that you left, no?
- And I left.
- You left when the Germans came?
- Yeah, I left, and a week time, the Germans came in.
- But at that time, when the Germans came in,
- the Russians went away back--
- back to Russia.
- Right, and you stayed home with your family?
- Sure.
- That's my family.
- How many of your brothers and sisters
- were still home at that time?
- Everybody was home.
- Nobody was married and living somewhere else?
- No, only one sister, she got married in Lwow.
- I had a uncle which was the director from the court,
- so she lived with them.
- That is-- and another doctor fell in love on her.
- And my uncle--
- Late that evening in his house.
- What they done-- they didn't survive, either.
- So what happened?
- Tell me-- tell me what happened to your family?
- What's [INAUDIBLE]---- first thing you imagine,
- they took my father.
- And my father, with that time, came back from Majdanek
- back home.
- How did he do that?
- How?
- My father didn't look Jewish.
- He had a nose-- very [INAUDIBLE] nose,
- and two bubbles on the nose.
- And he came home.
- Did he escape?
- Or did they let him go?
- No, he escaped.
- And he was walking from--
- no, forgot what-- he walked from there the whole way.
- And he came home.
- And next time, my father was in a basement with a [YIDDISH],,
- a rabbi, a known, very nice rabbi.
- They took them.
- They what?
- I'm sorry?
- They took them.
- Took them all.
- Didn't came back one.
- If my father would be with that rabbi, I don't--
- I believe that he would came one time more.
- You imagine?
- That moment when we saw my father back--
- I was every time--
- I had [INAUDIBLE] which was the master man from a garage,
- every time with him.
- I went in the country.
- And whatever I bought--
- one egg for me, one egg for him, one chick--
- whatever he got, cheese, egg, butter.
- So I had--
- I said to my father, I brought a live chicken,
- he went to the shochet.
- He-- Yeah-- now, I--
- one-word question-- why am I still alive?
- And I want only tell you, I have a life thanks to my wife.
- I had a date with the best woman that was ever born.
- A woman with a heart and feelings,
- beautiful woman, educated, everything.
- But she died from cancer.
- How did you meet her?
- What?
- How did you meet her?
- The underground needed some parts for their lives--
- the phones and that.
- So they gave me a small piece of paper, and I went there.
- Come in, in the first room sits my wife.
- She went in, told them who was there.
- He told to let me in.
- I went, and I told him that--
- I pulled out the piece--
- that.
- And he was working with on the underground.
- On the way out, I see there sits a very nice-looking woman.
- I ask her if she would dine with me.
- She said, yes.
- And from that day--
- And her father-- a friend has a big farm in the next village,
- and they every time planned that that daughter
- will get married to his son.
- And she will go on his farm, and the other daughter
- will take my father-in-law's farm.
- And one time, I appeared at her--
- what the heck?
- A guy came from the skies, you getting married?
- No, no-- and they know, the traditional,
- they keep their wealth.
- So I took all the stuff, what she had for her parents,
- packed this stuff, and took her sister
- and sent it back to the family.
- I don't need nothing.
- And I went out and I bought my wife the best things--
- panties, everything, from top to bottom, nothing from there.
- No, she went there, and they see that it's no joke.
- He came on [INAUDIBLE].
- He invite me the first time, so I came there, one a marine,
- in the uniform.
- And the other guy was a chauffeur and [GERMAN]----
- in German.
- I bought a nice box of drink and I went there.
- I went there, and one time comes in the girl
- and serves, and say something to my wife.
- And she said, she goes out, she comes back.
- But after 10, 15 minutes, she didn't come back, I go out,
- you know, dark there.
- What I hear-- a hound, the bark there.
- So I go there, I open up the gate,
- and there stays my wife with a huge girl.
- Believe me, it was a terrible picture.
- Her father had a fruit farm.
- And a Jewish man was living in a small cottage built there,
- and he was living all of his life there.
- And my wife was going with that girl to school.
- She brought out food, and brought out
- some stuff, and that.
- And she said, that she is not there.
- So my wife say, go there and there, I will open up the door.
- You can sleep on that.
- But it was a terrible picture.
- And on Sunday, the parents went that the church, and I
- had a cold.
- I lay in bed, and I called my wife.
- My wife doesn't answer.
- I put on some clothes, and go and stands a little boy.
- And in Europe, them round [NON-ENGLISH],,
- they had the wash--
- and she washes him.
- And later, she took kerosene and was a--
- had already lice and that.
- She packed up-- she gave him my underwear.
- [LAUGHS]
- She packed him a package of food.
- She cannot keep him.
- No, this is--
- I had the best would ever be.
- I had a wonderful, beautiful life.
- Was that--
- And one day--
- I had a chicken farm, and eat breakfast,
- my wife said, Jay, you know, that the roof on that house
- is too small to contain to the religion.
- I want to convert.
- I never, never, never had a word Jew, not Jew,
- that didn't exist.
- And she went to a rabbi and she convert.
- She was a wonderful--
- that is the life.
- Do you want another one?
- No, no, no-- yeah.
- Yes, but this-- but still, I cannot complain,
- comparing to other people.
- I lived in Berlin.
- I bought a boat for 10 people from the council,
- from Czechoslovakia.
- And I bought the horse over--
- a beautiful horse, I have.
- I gave her the best.
- That woman had a beautiful life with me.
- What can I do?
- You loved her?
- Yeah.
- It was not an artificial, ma'am.
- How old was she when you met her?
- When I met her, she was 26 years old.
- And what was her name then?
- Irene.
- Irene, and her last name?
- Irene Turek
- Turek
- Was a beautiful woman.
- Elegant, smart, you can imagine.
- If you have business with me, something doesn't go straight,
- and you go sit down both and talk over,
- she can every time, you go away, she come in, Jay,
- give him $1,000 more, whatever.
- Don't argue.
- She never was on my side.
- She was a lovely woman.
- Did it protect you that you were married to her
- during the time of the war?
- Ma'am, I had that accident with the police,
- that place, Warsaw--
- was not a place that to live more.
- I must try to go on.
- And they--
- How did it happen that your father and mother and siblings
- were taken away, and you escaped being taken?
- How did that happen?
- What do you mean, how it--
- Because you survived, and most of your family did not.
- So how did that all happen?
- Can you talk a little bit about that?
- Ma'am, I am not a religious Jew.
- I go only once in Yom Kippur.
- I go to the synagogue.
- But I felt alone--
- I believe that something is above us.
- Lots of people, they don't believe in God.
- I believe in God.
- I give you-- listen, I was laying in [GERMAN] house
- in Berlin.
- I was dying.
- And I came out.
- How did that happen?
- Or what happened?
- How did you--
- What happened?
- My right kidney was closed up in a carbuncle.
- And one of the biggest--
- the professor [GERMAN].
- And to operate, I say, doc, if you take out the kidney,
- I jump from the window.
- And I was alive, like lay on the table.
- And at that moment, when he woke up a rip from me,
- and take out the kidney on a dish.
- I lost that-- but there was a sister, the Matilda,
- she said, professor, maybe you take the kidney out.
- Have ever-- [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]----
- I was able to get.
- He, thanks God, I never have trouble.
- I never was operated, or something else.
- When was that?
- Was that after the end of the war?
- When did that happened to you?
- At the end of the war--
- that happened in '46.
- Can you imagine?
- After a week's time I came home, I got terrible pain.
- So my wife calls him up, he came with his own car,
- picked me up, and brought me to the hospital.
- And you know what it means, [GERMAN],, to take out--
- that the nun from the chapel?
- He took a gallon of glass what--
- that would threw it on the floor.
- [GERMAN],, Jesus and this, [GERMAN]..
- But they came out, they didn't move--
- that's OK if they saw, you see.
- By me, he heals everything, so like by a dog.
- And dries up.
- The outside part couldn't--
- that closed up.
- But inside was left the materials.
- So he opened up one day more, cleaned out.
- And that.
- And Self, a SS man, what he told me--
- he was the [INAUDIBLE] of his counting house.
- It's in the east sector.
- His family lives [INAUDIBLE],, so he
- was coming every time Monday.
- He had his room across the hallway.
- He spent with me hours and hours, talked to him and that.
- He thought if I wouldn't work with them,
- I could never be a professor.
- What did he know.
- Life is not a romance.
- Life, then, every time it happened something.
- How did you learn about your family?
- What happened to your family?
- Well, I was feeding my family.
- And when they took my mother and her sister,
- I came in the morning, and I was crying.
- That my mother say, what happened?
- And I told her.
- I have my brother and a sister, and together, they took her.
- He went with me, but it was closed up by the gate.
- And was a German--
- the soldier, he told me that he would talk to his superior.
- And they came, and they told them,
- they are Hungarian from the Wehrmacht.
- Then we enter the ghetto.
- Here, I was sitting in a car, what are you--
- [SPEAKING GERMAN]
- So were you considered to be a part of the Wehrmacht?
- Did they consider you being part of the Wehrmacht?
- No.
- No?
- No, what I had done what he told them.
- [SPEAKING GERMAN]
- And he saw what's going on.
- Let me try to understand a little better--
- your mother and your sister were brought to the ghetto.
- Yeah.
- Where-- were you at that time--
- They built right away, they separate already
- the Jewish people from the others.
- What protected you from going to the ghetto?
- I was working for the [GERMAN],, and I had--
- well, what I want to tell you, when it starts
- on the Stalingrad very, very bad, they need a man,
- they brought [NON-ENGLISH],, and with heat for the motor.
- And I went to Stalingrad [INAUDIBLE]..
- And it was terrible.
- They brought down guys without both legs, or with one leg.
- It was terrible.
- But you see, in that moment, I didn't keep bad feelings.
- While there were soldiers, there was the sacrifice.
- So like lambs.
- I personally-- and now, also, I have no bad feelings
- that the German people.
- What about your father and your brothers?
- Oh, they gone, they finished.
- How-- I mean, what did you see, or what did you hear?
- Ma'am, everybody was walking around being sure that he
- will not come home.
- When the Germans came in, they took my father to the jail
- to dig out what the Russians did.
- The Russians killed a lots of people.
- And my father, in the evening, my father came back home,
- and he was telling-- it was terrible,
- was the bodies already, rotten, stinking, and that.
- We was living with that.
- You cannot understand that.
- You understand me?
- And then, what is?
- In fact, that I tell you, life is not a romance.
- Oh, no.
- When your--
- All of life is struggling.
- When your father did this--
- was forced to do this kind of work,
- was that after he came back from Majdanek?
- No, no, either way, the first three or four days,
- they took the respectful people from the town, from that city.
- Quite a few people didn't came back, you know.
- Were your parents and your siblings
- deported at the same time?
- No.
- Or did that happen in one after the other?
- Yeah.
- And you knew about that?
- Yeah, I knew about that.
- And I went-- and I went to the [GERMAN] and worked.
- And you were-- what were you thinking?
- Were you thinking that you would be the next one?
- Ma'am, I don't know.
- I, myself, I was all the time I have a gun.
- Honest.
- And I promised myself, if they catch me,
- and they want to kill me, I will kill at least two guys of them.
- Every time I've worked with a gun.
- Well--
- How did you make your way from Tarnopol to Warsaw to Berlin?
- Oh, that-- I had a 10-ton truck with six soldiers, they want--
- they brought me to Warsaw.
- I had everything different, if that's what they want.
- And I already had my first wife there.
- You were married before?
- I was married when the--
- after a week I came back from the war, there was--
- I came home, and I had a girlfriend.
- The parents want us to get married.
- And I married her.
- And the same girl which was my wife,
- was sitting in the basement of the Gestapo.
- And she sent me a letter that she is pregnant.
- [INAUDIBLE] So I found a Polish woman,
- I gave her that picture of her for now,
- and make a confrontation in the Gestapo.
- And they let my wife out.
- And later, I couldn't--
- my conscience couldn't let me run away
- from that wife, what I married, and in the church.
- Well, the parents, if they would find out
- that this older daughter married an American Jew,
- they would kill her.
- So after the war, I found my first wife,
- and she married a Jewish boy in the big jail in Warsaw.
- That boy was with his father.
- And they both was plumbers.
- So he found a place where he built a bunker
- for himself and for his father.
- And then, when he met my first wife, he said,
- you will be my daughter-in-law.
- And after the war, I gave away my wife,
- and she married that young man.
- And there was, under Praga in Warsaw,
- was a house where all Jewish came together.
- And she, for a girl, died two years ago of cancer.
- But we went apart in a very good way.
- We knew, or I say with her and die with her,
- or I have a chance to save her life and save my life.
- And the baby she was pregnant with?
- Was that your child?
- No, that is the second wife.
- I was-- we was--
- I was discussing with my first wife
- the same way I sit here with you.
- There was no other way.
- And after the war, I found her, and she married the boy.
- And that old Jewish man, he was in heaven, you understand?
- And I went to the wedding.
- And--
- So you stayed on in Poland for a while?
- Or did you?
- In Warsaw.
- In Warsaw.
- Yeah, my first wife was in church
- when I got married to the second wife.
- But other than-- whenever I was in Canada,
- I went and I looked for her.
- We-- she didn't have hate against me.
- I did that what was right that time.
- I couldn't leave my second wife, and you
- know that the Pollacks--
- there's a bunch of murderers, they would kill her.
- So I told her who I am, I offered her money--
- I had lots of money, I was making vodka.
- There were two farmers.
- And whatever they made, half of them, half for me.
- And I had money.
- I had the jewelry from my family.
- I want to give her everything, and I will disappear.
- If I hand her the newspaper, but this big [PERSONAL NAME]
- died in an accident, you will be free.
- She said, no, I don't want.
- I want you.
- And after that, what I saw with my own eyes, who she is,
- I couldn't let her.
- And that, I discussed with my first wife.
- When was your first son born?
- What?
- What year was your first son born?
- Andre was born in '42 or '43.
- Still during the war?
- Or after the war?
- No, after the war.
- The 5th of May, the Russian army went in to Berlin.
- But that was '45, right?
- And I am behind them, and I found a place to live,
- and everything.
- Yeah.
- And how long did you stay in Berlin?
- Oh, Berlin, six years.
- I had a beautiful business.
- I was only the one which has an import for chocolate,
- cigarette, coffee--
Overview
- Interview Summary
- Joachim Kramberg, born January 27, 1914 in Tarnopol, discusses the time period after WWI when Tarnopol became part of Poland; his parents Laura and David Kramberg who owned a soap factory; his family life with six siblings; Russian control of Tarnopol at the start of WWII; the German occupation of Tarnopol; his mechanical ability and time as a slave laborer in Rokita lager; working in a garage to repair trucks on their way to Stalingrad; how in 1943, the Wehrmacht colonel in charge of the garage helped him escape by providing him with a German uniform and transportation to Warsaw where he had childhood connections to the Polish Resistance; obtaining false identity papers to pose as a Polish Catholic; meeting Irene, a non-Jewish Polish woman during one of his missions to a telephone/radio company; marring Irene and living as a Catholic Pole during the remainder of the war; revealing his true life story to Irene who decides to stay with him; becoming a black market merchant at the end of the war and moving to Berlin in 1946; the birth of his son Andre; owning a chocolate company called Hollandia which was a legitimate business front for his black market activities; how he was nearly kidnapped by Russian NKVD agents; agreeing to leave Berlin at his Irene’s insistence; immigrating to the United States in 1951 and buying a chicken farm in Connecticut; the birth of his second son Robert; moving to Brooklyn, NY in 1962 and becoming an electrical contractor; his immediate family members, including his oldest brother Jacob who immigrated to Argentina before the war to avoid being drafted into the Polish Army; his brother Samuel who survived the war in Krakow under a false identity; his sister Helen and brother Louis who immigrated to Palestine in 1939; his younger sister Zanita and mother Laura who were sent to Belzec; his father David who was killed in Tarnopol; and his sister Lota who was killed in the town of Zbarazh, near Tarnopol.
- Interviewee
- Joachim Kramberg
- Date
-
interview:
2008 November 02
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Robert D. Kramberg
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
1 DVD.
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
- Men--Personal narratives.
- Personal Name
- Kramberg, Joachim, 1914-2016.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Dr. Robert D. Kramberg donated the oral history interview with Joachim Kramberg to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in January 2018.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:09:22
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn594275
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Transcripts (2)
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