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Oral history interview with Joachim Kramberg

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2018.3.1 | RG Number: RG-50.053.0001

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    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.

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    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.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:09:22
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn594275

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