Oral history interview with Henry Shery
Transcript
- This is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- interview with Mr. Henry Shery in Manchester Township,
- New Jersey on the very last day of July, July 31, 2015.
- Thank you very much, Mr. Shery, for agreeing
- to meet with us today and to talk with us today.
- You're very welcome.
- As I just mentioned to you off camera,
- we're going to talk a lot about your life and your family's
- life pre-war to get a sense of what
- was the world you were born into,
- what was the world that was lost.
- And I will start with the very simplest of questions.
- And the very first one is can you
- tell me the date of your birth?
- December 3, 1929.
- December the 3rd, 1929?
- 1929.
- And where were you born?
- In Lodz, Poland.
- And what was your name at birth?
- Hirsch [? Gundsher. ?]
- Hirsch [? Gunsher? ?]
- Mm-hmm.
- OK.
- Did you have brothers and sisters?
- I had an older brother.
- What was his name?
- His name was Yonah.
- Yonah?
- And I had two sisters.
- And could you tell me Yonah's date of birth?
- No, I don't remember.
- I don't really know.
- Or his year?
- He was about four years older than me.
- And your sisters?
- My sister-- I had one older sister.
- Her name was Dora, Dvora.
- She was born in the year, I think, 1927.
- She was older.
- And then I had a younger sister.
- Her name was Bela.
- Bela?
- She was born, I think, in 1930.
- She was the youngest.
- She was like a year and a half younger than me.
- Tell me a little bit about your parents too,
- starting with their names.
- My parents-- His name was Jacob.
- Gunsher?
- Right.
- My mother was Golda.
- What was her maiden name?
- And her maiden name was Kochanski.
- Kochanski?
- And was she also from Lvov?
- She was from Lodz.
- Excuse me, Lodz?
- Lodz.
- I don't know much about my father's background,
- because we were very close to my mother's background--
- my mother's family, because my father's family
- I didn't know much about.
- I know he had a sister that came to the United States.
- And he used to get pictures from them.
- Everybody that comes from the United States
- sends pictures over there, they're
- always in front of a car.
- That's true.
- And to me, it was a novelty, because we didn't
- have that many cars over there.
- We had dorozkas.
- We had the buggies.
- What's a dorozka?
- Horse and buggy over there a lot.
- We also had the public transportation.
- We had the trolley cars.
- But I know I had an aunt that came over here.
- But I didn't know her name over there, because all the year--
- all the pictures we had over there--
- there were letters over there-- was all
- this destroyed in the ghetto.
- And I didn't know her married name.
- I didn't know when she came to the United States.
- So I really never pursued to find them.
- But my mother's family, we were very close.
- Before we go to your mother's family, your father's family--
- I just wanted to know-- do you know if they were from Lodz
- as well?
- I think so.
- I think so.
- I know my father was in the Russian Army--
- the First World War.
- And I think he was stationed in Poland.
- So was he part of--
- was Lodz in the part of Poland that was controlled
- by the Russian Empire?
- I think they were fighting against the Austrian Army
- that time.
- That I know.
- And he was something in the purchasing
- for material for uniform materials over there.
- That's what he told me.
- That's what he did in the army.
- But that's all I know.
- OK.
- So his family is more of a blank slate?
- Right.
- My father's family is really a blank thing over there
- that I don't know much about.
- OK.
- So the Kochanski family.
- My Kochanski family I know.
- My mother she had two brothers, and she had two sisters.
- So five kids?
- She had two sisters.
- One was the youngest sister.
- Her name was Esther.
- I know she married.
- She got married over there.
- And they had a restaurant.
- It was a bar and a restaurant.
- And he had a salami factory.
- And during the war, they went to Russia.
- They escaped that way?
- They escaped.
- They went to Russia.
- They join the Partisan.
- Then when they came back, some other people came back,
- and they told us that the Russian underground killed
- them.
- They both got killed, because they
- were in the Jewish underground, in the Partisan.
- And they were killed by the Russians.
- My other-- one uncle I had, my other uncle, my oldest uncle
- over there was Uncle Avraham.
- He left in 1934, I think.
- He left for Palestine.
- He and-- he has three sons and two daughters over there.
- They all went to Palestine.
- OK.
- So that's two of your mother's siblings.
- Right.
- One aunt, they had a grocery store in Lodz.
- And they all went to Auschwitz.
- And you never saw them again over there.
- What was her name?
- Do you remember?
- No, I don't.
- I don't.
- All I know is I could see them.
- They were all redheads.
- And that leaves one brother.
- One brother, my Uncle Leon.
- He had the ladies' clothing factory.
- Not a clothing factory, but he had
- a store in the center of Lodz.
- And during the war--
- First or Second?
- The Second World War.
- The Second World War.
- The First World War was only I'll tell you about my father.
- But this uncle over there, the Germans
- came in and confiscated all his--
- He only had ladies' coats.
- They took everything away and closed the shop over there.
- And where he lived, he lived in uptown over there.
- And of course, they closed uptown over there,
- and they start moving everybody down to the ghetto.
- So they closed his thing up over.
- And for that matter, he had a couple of bulks of clothing,
- of material.
- He brought it over to my father to hide it.
- And we hid it over there.
- And somehow the Germans came, and they said--
- because we had four-room apartment over there.
- And one of the rooms over there, he hid his material over there.
- We put the [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH],, the closet in front of it.
- And apparently the Germans knew that there's
- a lot of room over there.
- So they say, "What's in the back of this over here?"
- They know.
- They moved it out and took all the goods out of there.
- So it didn't work?
- That didn't work out.
- What was the name of his ladies' coat store?
- Do you remember?
- It was Kochanski Store.
- Kochanski Store.
- OK.
- So that was his.
- And that was the end of his business over there.
- We'll come to the war year and what happened there
- in a little bit.
- Right now I want to concentrate on your very earliest years
- in the interwar, before--
- Before the war, we--
- Tell me about your mother and father
- and how your father supported the family.
- Tell us that.
- My father was a manufacturer of children's clothing.
- So he manufactured them?
- He manufactured only children's clothing.
- And did he have a store as well?
- No, no, he didn't have a store.
- He was--
- A wholesaler?
- He was-- I would call it [INAUDIBLE]..
- He would manufacture for other stores.
- He had like six sewing machines over there.
- He had pressers and everything else over there.
- And that's what he made a living over there.
- He wasn't an orthodox person, but he was, I guess--
- Let me say that there was nobody in Lodz-- or in Poland,
- I guess--
- somebody that you weren't necessarily orthodox,
- but you were religious.
- Friday afternoon, my father's shop was closed.
- I know he went to the barber to get his beard--
- He had a very short beard around.
- He had his beard trimmed and his hair done over there.
- It was Friday afternoon and that was it.
- But Sunday, the factory worked.
- Was it a large factory?
- No, just small.
- I don't know what this is large.
- To me, it was large.
- Yeah, but you were a child.
- To me, it was large.
- He is, I know, six sewing machines.
- He had a pressing room over there and all this over there.
- So would you say you had a handful of workers?
- Yeah, he had people working for him over there.
- About a dozen or less?
- No, less than a dozen, I guess.
- Whatever.
- So it wouldn't be a large place.
- Yeah.
- Some of them were Jewish or some of them
- were not Jewish that worked for him over there.
- Sewers and things like that?
- But he made a living.
- And then in the summertime, we used
- to go-- my mother used to take us down to the like a summer
- home.
- We didn't have it over there, but we rented the room by farm
- over there.
- And that's the way we got out of the city in the summertime.
- Was it far from Lodz, this summer place?
- Yeah, we went-- it was public transportation.
- Oh, so it still was within, let's say, the larger--
- Yeah, well, my father would come down on Friday afternoon.
- OK.
- So it wasn't that far away?
- No, it wasn't that far.
- No.
- It was maybe an hour away over there, something like this.
- I don't remember exactly.
- But I know we got there by public transportation.
- And then the farmer would pick us up
- with his wagon over there.
- And that's where we spend the summer,
- a couple of weeks over there.
- Always the same place?
- Well, you know something, to me, they all seem to me the same.
- OK.
- I know I'm asking you questions in some ways are really
- ludicrous, because how can you remember
- whether it was the same farmer?
- It was 70 years ago.
- I don't remember.
- I know we went to farm.
- Yeah.
- And we always had fresh [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
- Sour cream.
- Cream.
- Sour cream.
- Fresh one over there.
- And we had fresh milk over there.
- I mean, fresh eggs over there.
- That was a great thing over there.
- That's what you remember.
- Right from the farm we had it over there.
- But was this a Gentile farmer?
- Yeah.
- But they used to give up--
- Part of their home.
- --part of the home over there.
- This was extra income for them over there.
- And a lot of people--
- It wasn't just our family did it.
- We used to get together over there,
- and all the kids used to play together.
- It's fun.
- The farms over there, that's the way the farmers used
- to subsidize their living too.
- Tell me a little bit about Lodz itself.
- When you were growing up, what kind of a city was it?
- Lodz itself was a very big city.
- It was the biggest industrial place in Europe.
- It was the biggest textile industry over there.
- As far as the Jewish life, we had Jewish day schools,
- Jewish Gymnasiums, which was high schools.
- They had a Jewish hospital.
- We had our own Jewish theaters over there.
- My mother was an avid theater goer over there.
- She used to love to go to the Jewish theater over there.
- And right now, every time she came back--
- That's how I learned the Jewish songs--
- from her.
- It was a very lively city.
- Was it a pretty city?
- Very pretty.
- Really?
- Even if it was industrial?
- Industrial, but it had parks over there.
- And it wasn't the smokestacks.
- It was textile industry.
- Textile industry was very clean.
- They actually produced all the textile for most of Europe.
- That's a lot.
- Yeah.
- Lodz happens to be a very, very industrial--
- I mean in textile--
- city.
- And then life was very complacent over there.
- Everybody was--
- Was your family-- would you consider that you were
- well-to-do, or were you middle class?
- I really don't know, because I didn't know any better.
- I mean, I felt I had everything I needed, everything I wanted,
- because I didn't want much.
- I didn't need the--
- Radio we didn't have.
- You didn't have a radio?
- No.
- There was one radio in our apartment complex over there.
- One person had a radio, and everybody listened to him.
- That was until the war.
- Then the Germans confiscated it.
- I'm going to ask a lot of questions
- to get a picture of where you lived--
- and I mean physically.
- So can you tell me whether you were in the center of the city
- or in a residential area?
- We lived in the Jewish section, which
- wasn't the center of the city.
- It was or was not?
- No, it was not the center of the city.
- We lived in-- well, actually, the street that I lived over
- there, it was called Zydoska.
- Zydoska?
- Jewish Street?
- Jewish Street, right?
- We had synagogues on the left side.
- We had a synagogue on the right side.
- Was it a city street?
- City street.
- All city street.
- It was for apartment houses.
- All right, and those apartment houses,
- can you describe what they look?
- Well, each apartment was a courtyard.
- Inside?
- You had a courtyard in the center.
- And each apartment house had the caretaker
- that lived on the premises.
- At night he used to close the gates in the front.
- And then it was like--
- I don't remember-- it was three stories, I know.
- Three stories.
- Three stories.
- On the left side, in the back, and then the right side.
- So at each house it was a courtyard.
- Did people have their own transportation,
- like horses and buggies that they kept in the courtyard?
- No, no, no.
- We had the little car just in the front over there, which
- was called like the taxis.
- They were parked on the end of the street.
- And was that what you call dorozkis?
- That's right.
- For that, by then, my grandfather, which I never met.
- He died I think the year before I was born.
- Your mother's father?
- My mother's father.
- He was a horse trader.
- He used to go out and buy those horses.
- They're the special type of horses.
- They're not work horses, but they're horses for carriages.
- They're not very big, and they're not very small.
- He used to go out in the--
- that was his business.
- He used to go out.
- He always had a couple of bodyguards
- with him, because he carried a lot of cash with him.
- He used to go out to the farms.
- He will go away for two days or three days
- and bring back a bunch of horses.
- And then he would--
- he had the stable.
- His stable was actually across the street from where he lived.
- And he used to stable the horses over there.
- And then people that had all dorozkas
- would come to him to buy it.
- To buy the horses.
- To buy the horses, right.
- I see.
- So it's like a car dealer.
- Yeah.
- It's just like a car.
- When you think about it, it is.
- It's just like a car dealer, because most
- of the transportation was done with the--
- instead of cars.
- With a little bit less pollution.
- Yeah.
- And they used to go with dorozkas.
- When you would walk out, let's say, in order
- to paint a picture for us-- when you'd walk out
- of your apartment in the morning and be on your street,
- what would you see in front of you?
- We saw a deli across the street.
- One of them was a deli that only sold the salami, pastrami.
- Then there was another store over there
- that only had dairy products--
- milk, cheese.
- Then there was another store that had groceries.
- Everything was in barrels over there.
- You bought them.
- That's the way you shopped.
- So my mother used to go shopping every day.
- I mean, we didn't have refrigeration.
- So every day you went to shop.
- She used to go out and shop every day.
- We used to go with her over there.
- Not so far.
- We used to carry the bottles back.
- And did you live on the first or the third?
- On the third floor.
- On the third floor.
- Walk up.
- Yeah, we walked up.
- We didn't have any problem walking stairs.
- What did your apartment look like?
- Describe it to me.
- It was a little four-room apartment.
- It was a kitchen.
- One of them was like a we call it a parlor.
- Then there was bedrooms.
- I slept with my brother over there.
- And we slept on the--
- you know, I don't remember really.
- But I know everybody had a place to sleep.
- My parents had one room over there.
- The rest of the rooms we used to use.
- OK.
- So you and your brother had a room, and your sisters?
- We had one room together.
- My sisters had a together room.
- And your parents?
- And parents.
- And then you had the parlor and the kitchen?
- Right.
- Now, we didn't have central heat.
- OK.
- So how did you heat the place?
- It was in the middle of the apartment was--
- It was a heater, I guess.
- It was tiles.
- And you had to put wood into it over there.
- Would you heat by wood or coal?
- I think it was wood.
- We used to put the wood into it.
- And then it would produce heat all around.
- And it was a tiled oven?
- It's not a cooking oven.
- No.
- This was a heating thing over there.
- So each apartment had their own heater--
- had to heat alone over there.
- Cooking was separate.
- I think it was coal at that time over there.
- OK.
- But this was one kind of unit that
- was tiled for the whole apartment or for one room?
- That's for only one.
- So if you want to have in wintertime more heat,
- you just move closer to it.
- And did you have electricity?
- Yeah.
- Electricity we had.
- Did you have a phone?
- Phone?
- Phone.
- I didn't have a radio.
- How would I have a phone?
- How would we even know what a telephone was?
- Yeah.
- OK.
- I'm trying to get a sense.
- I didn't even know what a telephone
- was that time over there.
- And you said very few people had cars?
- Nobody in my neighborhood had a car.
- I mean, we saw car going by the street over there,
- it was a novelty.
- Uptown they had some cars.
- We saw cars going around over there.
- But on our street, when a car went by, it was a real novelty.
- I've heard of people saying when a car would
- come by where we live, we chase it, because it was so--
- No, when a car went by over there,
- it was a real novelty to see a car go by.
- But most of the transportation was done by horse and wagons.
- They delivered everything.
- And so it sounds like you didn't have to go far in order
- to buy food every day.
- No, no, we didn't have to go far.
- No.
- Far, no.
- You have to go.
- And the synagogue, we didn't have to go far either.
- It was either to the left or to the right.
- School, you walked to school.
- It was, I don't know what, 20-minute,
- 30-minute walk to the school.
- And did you go to public school?
- Yes.
- OK, so you went to a school where
- there would be Jewish children and Gentile children.
- And Christian.
- It was a public school.
- OK.
- I'm going to ask you in a little bit more about the school.
- Right now I still want to find out about things at home.
- What about your father's factory?
- Was it close by?
- Did he have to travel far?
- He had it downstairs in the same place over there.
- Ah, very easy.
- Very easy.
- So he had his workshop?
- He had downstairs in the same complex over there.
- He had his shop over there.
- Did your parents own the apartment or did they rent it?
- No, we rent it.
- OK.
- And did you know the people who did own it?
- No.
- No.
- Sometimes, they live in the same place.
- Sometimes, they didn't.
- I think I know who owned it.
- He was my next-door neighbor, but I wouldn't know their name.
- He was an importer of smoked fish.
- He used to import smoked fish in those wooden crates over there,
- because every time he brought in his fresh things over there,
- he used to give it to my mother.
- Tasty.
- It was very good.
- I think he used to go to Gdansk.
- And that was the port city in Poland over there.
- That's where he used to bring it from over there.
- Did you used to when you were a kid--
- and I'm talking already school age--
- did you used to wander out beyond your neighborhood
- streets much?
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah?
- Did you go to the center of town?
- Yeah.
- We used to go down.
- We used to go down.
- I had no problem going around anyplace over there.
- I was never afraid of anything.
- Did you go by streetcar?
- We went by streetcar.
- We went down like two blocks down over there,
- picked up the streetcar over there.
- From there, we went.
- Did you go to the cinema when you were a kid?
- Yeah.
- Not too often, but we went.
- We went to see cowboy movies.
- Yeah?
- Did you go see them like kids over here
- did on Saturday afternoons?
- No, no, no.
- I didn't go Saturday.
- We used to go whenever.
- But my brother used to go out.
- My sister used to go out more.
- But I didn't go that much over there.
- But my brother, he was much older,
- so he was already like an adult.
- To your eyes.
- And so he would go.
- But I used to go with my grandmother.
- She used to live across the street.
- The grandmother who was the widow of your grandfather
- the horse trader.
- Right.
- She lived across the street over there.
- And the stable was closed, but she lived over there.
- Until my uncle bought the big apartment house uptown.
- It was with all modern things over there.
- He sold-- he or whatever, I guess all of them--
- they sold my grandmother's house over there.
- And he gave her an apartment uptown over there.
- So then we used to go visit her.
- Up to her, we had to take the trolley car already.
- OK.
- And did that apartment house look
- different from where you lived?
- Yes.
- It was central heat.
- It was completely different.
- It was a very modern building.
- Did it have an elevator?
- No.
- No.
- Elevators.
- Did it have balconies?
- Did your apartment have a balcony?
- No.
- No.
- We had windows.
- In wintertime, we use it as a refrigerator.
- Yeah.
- We used to put the stuff outside over there,
- and we kept things cold.
- But we didn't know any different.
- And to us, everything was just the way it was supposed to be.
- I mean, life was simple.
- But we didn't look for anything that--
- You didn't feel anything missing.
- I didn't miss nothing, no, because I had my friends.
- We used to go out and play soccer.
- We used to play on the streets over there.
- We used to play.
- We used to go to park, play.
- Did your family keep the traditions, like every Sat--?
- Saturday night my mother lit candles.
- On Friday night, I meant.
- Friday night my mother lived candles over there.
- And Friday, me, my brother went to the bakery,
- which was next door.
- We lived at number 18.
- Number 20 was the bakery.
- Friday afternoon, the bakery closed up over there.
- We used to bring--
- I don't know if you know what the heck
- I'm talking about-- a cholent.
- No.
- Tell us.
- What is it?
- A cholent is a--
- How would they say?
- Casserole?
- My mother would prepare a--
- Saturday, you're not allowed to cook.
- So how do you eat Saturday a hot meal?
- You bring it Friday to the bakery.
- She used to put--
- a stew.
- A cholent is like a stew.
- You put the meat, potatoes, carrots,
- with beans, whatever you want to put in.
- And then you wrap--
- the pot gets closed up, gets sealed up.
- You wrap it up with newspapers.
- You put your name on it and bring it down to the bakery.
- And they'd put it into the oven.
- On Saturday afternoon when my father
- was finished with services--
- if I go, I went too, but my brother
- went with me over there--
- it was my job and his to bring the cholent home, the pot home.
- It's an important job.
- Everybody else's pots were there too.
- They had loads of pots over there.
- Everybody had their name on it.
- You took it home.
- And my mother opened it up over there.
- And that's why we had a hot meal then,
- Because Saturday, they wouldn't cook.
- OK.
- That's how you dealt with that.
- That's how we dealt on a weekly basis.
- And was that the same meal every Saturday?
- Pretty much?
- It was pretty much the same.
- I don't know, whichever way she prepared it over.
- And it was called cholent?
- Cholent.
- Cholent.
- Cholent it's called.
- And that was a tradition.
- Was it tasty?
- It's-- I guess so.
- Nothing was left out of it.
- Nothing was left out of this.
- And you do wouldn't go shopping for nothing
- on Saturday until after the Sabbath.
- So when the Sabbath was over, you can go to the deli
- and buy something over there and take home.
- OK.
- And would that be like Saturday afternoon?
- Saturday evening.
- Saturday evening.
- Saturday evening after--
- The Sabbath is over.
- After the Sabbath is over.
- Sabbath is over after sundown over there.
- In the summertime, it's later.
- In the wintertime, it's earlier.
- That's when the stores opened up.
- All the stores were closed on Saturday.
- Friday afternoon and Saturday, all the stores were closed.
- All the Jewish stores.
- Were there any Christian stores there?
- Not on my street.
- They didn't have any.
- The only Christians that they had was the caretaker.
- And his family lived over there.
- Because I think most of the people that
- lived in that apartment house were Jewish, if I can recall.
- Although, we had a monastery in the backyard.
- In the backyard?
- Yeah, from my window, I could see the nuns over there
- all the time, because the monastery was right over there.
- So it was a convent?
- Right.
- A monastery-- convent was there.
- It was all nuns over there.
- OK, then it was a convent?
- Yeah.
- They were right--
- I mean, from our window--
- You could see it.
- Yeah, I could see them.
- So it was mostly a Jewish neighborhood, but it was--
- Well, Lodz is a city.
- --mixed with others.
- Yeah.
- What language did you speak at home?
- Yiddish.
- Yiddish.
- Did you learn Polish?
- Yeah.
- I speak Polish in school.
- OK, but before you went to school,
- did you hear any Polish at all?
- Yeah, I heard Polish, because this was the language
- that you used over there.
- But at home, my parents spoke Yiddish all the time.
- And the adults spoke Polish, but they spoke primarily Yiddish.
- OK.
- Now let's go to school a little bit.
- You said it took you about 20 minutes to walk there?
- About 20 minutes to half an hour.
- I don't remember how long, but that's what it took.
- Do you have any memories at all from school?
- Well, the school was mixed.
- But I didn't go to school that long over there,
- because as soon as the war started,
- the Jewish kids weren't allowed to go school no more.
- As soon as the Germans formed the ghetto,
- the school would have been in the ghetto.
- Oh, I see.
- The school would've been where the ghetto was closed in.
- So the Polish kids had to move out.
- And they brought in all the Jewish people
- from different places had to move in over here.
- But how many years had you gone before the war?
- About three years.
- About three years.
- So you had finished your third year.
- But then the Germans say the Jewish are not allowed
- to go to school anymore.
- They can't.
- Yeah, they're not allowed.
- The school was closed.
- Let's talk about before it was closed.
- Do you remember any of your teachers?
- No.
- No.
- What about any of the other classmates?
- I don't remember them.
- I don't know them.
- I really don't know them now.
- Did you remember learning about Polish history?
- Yeah.
- But this was elementary school.
- Yeah, that's right.
- You wouldn't be learning a lot.
- So we didn't go into history or anything like this.
- It was primarily learning the ABC, learning grammar,
- you're learning how to count.
- So this was--
- Yeah, you're right.
- --basic.
- Basic things.
- Basic things, right.
- So we didn't go into that thing, because that I never
- went that far.
- Yeah.
- Did your parents read newspapers?
- Did they get newspapers at home?
- Yiddish.
- Yiddish newspapers.
- Yiddish newspapers.
- But they get those.
- All Yiddish newspapers, because there
- were so many different Yiddish newspapers over there.
- Was there any in particular that your parents subscribed to?
- No?
- I wouldn't know, because I didn't--
- You didn't read them though.
- --know how to read Yididish.
- Yeah.
- But do you remember seeing your father--?
- I remember seeing the Yiddish paper over there.
- I know they had the Yididish paper over there,
- and that's what they used.
- And now I'd like to learn a little bit
- about what kind of people your parents were, what kind
- of personalities they had.
- Tell me about your father and your mother.
- Were they outgoing?
- Were they more reserved people?
- Tell me a little bit about them.
- My father, he wasn't, let me say, very close to children.
- He was more reserved.
- You had to look up to him.
- Not that he spanked anybody or anything.
- You just showed respect because he was your father.
- And my mother in turn was a different person.
- She was more close with children.
- And she was close with nieces and nephews and everybody else.
- She was more a social butterfly, like I would say.
- So that was the difference between them.
- He was your father.
- So you respected him and you never said anything--
- You didn't argue with him.
- If he said something, this what it was.
- Your mother, you could--
- Negotiate?
- Not negotiate, but she would say you
- want to do this, and go ahead and do this.
- She was more flexible, let's say.
- OK.
- Did your father ever take you to his workshop with him?
- Did you go down there much?
- Yes.
- Yeah?
- Did you learn some of the ins and outs.
- Well, I used to observer.
- I used to observe.
- I was too small to get to the machine,
- but I went down to see what was doing over there.
- And I spent some time over there.
- Did your sisters or your brother ever work there with him?
- My brother went down there with him.
- My sisters, I don't think went in over there.
- But my brother did.
- So would you say you were closer to your mother
- because she was more outgoing?
- Yeah.
- Well, I was close to my mother because she was my mother.
- OK.
- And it's not that I wasn't close to my father,
- but your father was sort of--
- you put him on the roof or whatever.
- Today, we live in a different world.
- Today, you treat your father sometimes like your friend.
- But your father wasn't a friend.
- Your father was your father.
- Sounds like he was an authority.
- Well, yeah.
- You didn't argue with him.
- It was his opinion.
- What he says, went.
- What about your parents?
- Did they ever tell you how they met and married?
- No?
- Well, yes.
- How they met, I don't know.
- But I found it out later that my brother was actually
- a half brother.
- Apparently, what happened, his mother died in childbirth.
- With him?
- With him.
- Then my father married my mother.
- But he considered her the mother,
- because I found this thing out later in life.
- When I was an adult already, I actually found this thing out
- from a cousin in Israel.
- Really?
- Because I didn't know it.
- But his mother died in childbirth.
- OK.
- So your mother was your father's second wife?
- She was the second wife.
- Was there a great age difference between them?
- I guess it was.
- Yeah?
- I don't know how many years different.
- But there was an age difference.
- It's not that he was an old man.
- But there must've been some age difference.
- I don't know exactly what.
- But if you found this out when you were an adult,
- it doesn't sound like it made a huge difference.
- To me, it didn't make any--
- he was my brother anyway.
- Yeah.
- Were you closer to any of your siblings,
- any particular sibling in particular you were close to?
- Well, I was close with all--
- Of all of them.
- --of them, with all of them.
- And how would you describe your family life?
- Would you say it was a warm family?
- Do you say we really wouldn't get along?
- It was a normal family.
- We had everything that--
- my father provided.
- He was a provider.
- My mother in the house.
- Did she have any help?
- No.
- She used to go to the--
- When she wanted to go to theater,
- she went to the theater.
- My father didn't go.
- Maybe he did sometime over there.
- I don't remember whether he went or not,
- but I know that she used to go.
- She used to go to all Jewish plays over there.
- Any time a Jewish play came out over there, she was there.
- Is there anything in particular you
- think that you learned from your father that stayed with you?
- And the same question applies to your mother.
- Any sort of values or any sort of habits or ways
- of thinking or things like that?
- I guess things rub off on you without you knowing.
- Sometimes, yeah.
- I don't know if I have any trait that I
- learned from them over there.
- I really don't know.
- But I guess I am who I am.
- Maybe it's because of them.
- I'm sure it must be because of them,
- otherwise I wouldn't be here.
- Well, the first years of life everybody
- says are the most important ones.
- They found the foundation of how a child will develop.
- And how that child, whether they'll be resilient later
- on as life goes on or whether they won't.
- All I know is I learned to, from them, respect for others.
- And I am who I am.
- Yeah.
- Were the children treated with respect?
- Yeah.
- They treated you with respect as well?
- Absolutely, yeah.
- OK.
- So it was a two-way street.
- It was not only that you respected your father
- because he's your father and your mother
- because she's your mother, but they also showed it.
- Right.
- I never had any problem like this.
- No.
- OK.
- So your father, Did he go to synagogue every week?
- He went Friday afternoon, yeah.
- Friday evening, Saturday morning, he used to go.
- Let's turn a little bit to the wider world then.
- You mentioned that there were times
- that you were in a mixed environment that is not
- only a Jewish environment.
- Right.
- Did you ever experience any kind of negative situations
- because you were Jewish in the larger Polish world?
- Not really.
- In school, I didn't have any problems.
- We didn't have any problem over there.
- But we went out over there to play football--
- With other boys?
- We played with others.
- So over there we had no problem--
- until--
- Things happened.
- --war broke out.
- So I didn't feel any animosity against me from anybody.
- But I didn't have many non-Jewish friends,
- because most of my friends were Jewish.
- When I went out to play ball, I went out
- with the same kids that were supposed
- to go to Hebrew school.
- So instead of going to Hebrew school, we played hooky.
- We played ball.
- And then my grandmother, she paid the rabbi over there
- to teach me.
- And she was mad-- why I didn't go to cheder.
- So told her I like to play ball.
- So when was cheder?
- What time of the week was cheder?
- Cheder, it's small.
- It's learning only Hebrew, only prayers actually.
- But we were like four or five boys over there in that thing.
- And he wasn't very nice to us, because if you
- didn't repeat after him, he would spank you right now.
- So we didn't like to go.
- It was a bit old-fashioned.
- Yes.
- So instead of this, we get in, we run out, and we play ball.
- So when you would go, would that be after regular school?
- After regular school, right.
- After regular school.
- So it was five days a week?
- Well, whenever we were there.
- Which means that whenever you weren't playing ball you went.
- When we were there, we were there,
- because we liked to play outside better.
- So it wasn't an easy thing to do.
- It's a complete different language over there that you--
- Yeah, a completely different language.
- And those people-- that rabbi over there
- is supposed to be a teacher, wasn't necessarily
- so compassionate to you.
- So most of my friends were Jewish.
- So I'm going to widen the circle even more.
- First, I wanted to find out about home, and the street,
- and the neighborhood, and school, and then
- the non-Jewish community.
- So you didn't have that much contact.
- No.
- Now I want to make it even a little bit wider.
- And that is, at home, did anybody ever
- talk about political events that were happening?
- Like did that ever come into discussions?
- Not that I can--
- nothing that I can recall.
- OK.
- So even Polish politics, like when Pilsudski died in 1935,
- do you remember if that was an event?
- Yeah, that was an event over there.
- We knew that he passed away.
- And everybody was a mourning over there,
- because he was the president at that time.
- So those things came to play.
- But otherwise, politics-- if it was discussed,
- I wasn't involved with it.
- Of course not, you're a child.
- I wasn't present.
- I'm not saying that my parents didn't discuss
- the thing with their neighbors over there, among themselves,
- or whatever.
- But--
- It didn't touch the kids.
- We weren't touched by it over there.
- OK.
- So if that's the case, then when Hitler
- came to power in Germany, you were four years old.
- No, no.
- Well, when he came to power, yeah, that's different now.
- Now when he came--
- that's in 1933.
- And Germany is not Poland.
- So it's another country.
- Do you remember any talk about him
- and about what kind of things were going on in Germany?
- Yes, yes.
- This I remember, because my uncle,
- my mother's older brother, in 1934, he wanted my father--
- He said he was going to go to Palestine.
- But Palestine had the White Paper.
- You couldn't emigrate to Palestine.
- So he sold his business to my other uncle.
- Your mother's other brother?
- Right.
- He sold his business to my other uncle.
- He bought property in Palestine.
- He bought an apartment house in Tel Aviv.
- So he was able to get--
- The British government gave him an allowance as a capitalist
- to emigrate to Palestine with his children,
- with his five children.
- So that was a way because he had money.
- So he came over to my father.
- He says, "Why don't you go too?"
- My father says, "What am I going to do?
- Sit down on the sand bar over there?
- It's all sand over there.
- There's nothing for me to do over there."
- Here, everything was normal over here in '34.
- But my uncle took his family, and they went to Palestine
- at this time.
- And why?
- Why did he do that?
- Because two of his sons were Zionists.
- They went to Palestine illegally,
- because they smuggled themselves in over there.
- And they wrote to their parents, come down, come, come.
- And my aunt says, "I got my two sons over there.
- And I'm not going to stay over here."
- What for?
- Why should I stay?
- So they decided he was going to sell everything over
- here and go to Palestine.
- And so they're the only ones that left alive.
- And they settled over there.
- And my younger cousin, which he didn't to go yet over there,
- he went to Italy to the Naval Academy
- to become a naval officer.
- Italian Naval Academy?
- In Citta Vecchia.
- He went there.
- But also he had a British passport, because he went there
- and then he came back, and he went
- to Citta Vecchia over there to become a naval officer.
- But the rest of the family stayed in Palestine.
- So this is one of the two sons, you're saying?
- Right.
- That's one of the three sons over there.
- He had three sons and two daughters.
- But they went.
- And he said to my father, "Why don't you do the same thing?"
- Then you already knew what Germany was like.
- You had an inkling of what Germany was like.
- But you're saying the reason they went
- is because their children went.
- And they were Zionists.
- Because the children wanted to become Zionists over there.
- But they knew that in Germany there
- was a red flag out over there.
- So even though it's a different country,
- it was enough to help them say "let's get out."
- They knew something was brewing over there.
- That's why they went over there.
- So whether it was this or just because they were Zionists,
- I don't know.
- I couldn't say that definitely that this
- is what influenced them.
- I don't really know, because that time I, I think, was--
- in '34, what was I-- six, seven years old at that time, right?
- But I remember them coming over, talking to my father.
- And my father says, "Look, nothing
- is going to happen over here.
- We have everything over here that we need.
- Why go ahead and up with everything
- and go to Palestine over there?
- What did you buy over there?
- Apartment house on the sand over there.
- There's nothing there.
- Sand dunes.
- Well, at that time you could think
- that it seems a lot riskier to go to a place
- that isn't even a real country yet--
- Right.
- --and where you have difficulties getting in.
- Right.
- You couldn't get in.
- You couldn't get in over there, because the British
- had put the embargo.
- You couldn't go.
- But what prompted this was a question
- that I asked of when Hitler came to power, was that discussed?
- Not that I remember.
- Not that you remember.
- Not that I remember.
- I knew there were the Polish politics was involved, yes.
- But the German politics, I don't remember anything of that.
- OK.
- Now as we go towards the later 1930s, all around Europe,
- there was a sense of insecurity because as Nazi Germany grew
- stronger, they started having interests in expansion.
- Whether this was annexing Czechoslovakia,
- whether this was annexing the Memel territories,
- the talk about Gdansk and Danzig,
- the same place, and what does that mean, the Corridor.
- And did any of these types of wider European unrest
- make itself felt in Zydoska Street in Lodz?
- Oh, yes.
- That time already, politics was very much in everybody's mind--
- that Germany is going to expand.
- And what are we going to do about it?
- Well, we have a Polish Army.
- We have a Polish army.
- Poland was an independent country over there.
- And if Germany's going to invade,
- the Polish Army is going to protect you.
- But it didn't work out like this.
- Do you remember the summer of 1939?
- That would be the last summer before September 1,
- just when Germany invaded Poland.
- Do you remember that particular summer?
- Were you out in the countryside like usual?
- I think we were.
- I think we were at that year too.
- Do you remember hearing when the war starts?
- Well, the war started--
- Yes, because we saw right away planes coming over.
- German planes?
- German planes came right over Lodz.
- They started bombing and bombing and bombing over there.
- Were they bombing Lodz?
- All we knew was all of a sudden, the Polish Army disappeared.
- Some of them disappeared to England.
- It didn't take more than three days over there.
- Germany took over all of Poland.
- They just went right through.
- All of a sudden, we saw German tanks
- and German trucks and everything just
- go right through over there.
- In Lodz?
- In Lodz.
- And Lodz for those people who don't
- know where it's located geographically,
- what part of Poland is Lodz in?
- It's actually central.
- Central Poland?
- From Warsaw to Lodz is about 100 kilometers or something.
- And so it's further west than Warsaw?
- I think so, yeah.
- OK.
- By the way, had you ever gone to Warsaw--
- No.
- --before the war?
- OK.
- Had you ever traveled outside Lodz
- and the farmhouse that go to?
- No.
- So by the third or fourth day, you already see German--?
- We saw German--
- Troops.
- --tanks and German trucks and German Army all over Lodz.
- But we didn't think that--
- they're going through, but we didn't
- think that life was going to be so disruptive.
- Those first couple of days after they
- arrive, did anything change much?
- Yes.
- What happened?
- The synagogue was burnt down right away.
- On your street?
- On our street, we had things out over there
- that before the ghetto closed over there.
- They had bulletins all over the place over there
- to bring all religious books down to the yard over there
- by the synagogue.
- Did people do that?
- You have to do it.
- People did it over there.
- And what they did, they poured gasoline on it
- and set it on fire right away.
- So nobody expected this to happen?
- They burned this thing down and they burned the synagogue
- at the same time.
- All religious books over there and all the synagogues,
- right away they burned it up over there.
- So we saw already what we're dealing with over here.
- Then what happened?
- And the next thing, they said that they're
- going to clear the ghetto.
- Was your street part of the ghetto?
- Yeah.
- Did that mean you have to move?
- No.
- Or you could stay in your apartment?
- We didn't move, no.
- We didn't move.
- But we had other people moving in to us.
- I see.
- So in your four rooms, did you have other families?
- We had three or four other families moving in.
- Wow.
- It was a revolving door.
- Once they closed the ghetto up, it
- was a pretty big area over there.
- It was barbed wires with the German uniformed soldiers
- around over there.
- You couldn't go in and out.
- And they had brought in people from Austria,
- people from France, people from other parts of Poland,
- from small towns over there.
- They brought them into the ghetto.
- And then we had to share the apartment with them over there.
- But then they took some people and send them out
- to labor camps.
- The ghetto walls, was your street close
- to where there would--
- No.
- --be a border?
- So you were like in the middle of it?
- We were in the middle somehow.
- Right.
- We weren't near the fencing over there.
- We were blocks away.
- The ghetto was a big--
- it was a pretty big-sized ghetto over there.
- And how did they create the enclosure?
- What did the enclosure look like?
- What was it made of?
- All made out of barbed wire with all fencing.
- And then they had posts, guard posts set up
- over so many meters.
- And it was patrolled by the German Army.
- Was there any streetcar still going through the ghetto?
- No.
- There was nothing, nothing over there.
- So no public transportation anymore?
- No, the only thing that they had was they
- brought in food with horse and buggies.
- They brought in food.
- And the only other horse that they had over there
- was to take the dead bodies to the cemetery.
- We'll come to that.
- Your grandmother, did she have to move back?
- No she passed away.
- I think she passed away I think before the ghetto closed.
- But the war had started?
- I think it was just before the war started
- that she passed away.
- OK.
- And what about your uncle who had bought
- that modern apartment building?
- What about him?
- Well he ended up moving into the ghetto.
- Yeah, not moving into the ghetto,
- with other families over there.
- He and his wife and two children.
- So in your life, it meant you could no longer go to school.
- No.
- The schools were transformed into tailor shops.
- I see.
- All the schools became work places.
- And what about your father's own business?
- The two older machines were taken out.
- OK, so his business stops?
- Everything stopped.
- Everything stopped.
- There was no more private enterprise.
- So all his assets that is those--
- gone?
- Everything soon as the ghetto was created,
- you either work for the German government,
- for the German Army, or nothing.
- And did you have any direct encounter
- with any German soldier or official or representative
- at any point during these early days?
- Yes and no.
- In the evening, we had the gates were closed
- by the apartment over there, but you
- wanted to look out to see what's going on.
- So we went out.
- I went out, a couple of other friends.
- We stood out.
- We opened up the gate a little bit and looked out.
- And there was a big SS man with a young boy.
- He must have been no more than about 12, 13 years old.
- They walked in the middle of the street.
- And he had a gun.
- And the kid had a gun.
- And they were shooting up into the air like this, just
- to show you that we are going by over here.
- We closed the gate and ran right home.
- So this was a little German boy?
- A little gentleman boy in a uniform.
- And in the German SS uniform.
- He must've been no more than 13 years old.
- The handgun shooting up in the air.
- So that's the encounter I had at that time over there.
- And this was right after the ghetto closed.
- So you ran home after that?
- Yeah, ran and closed the thing over there and ran away.
- We ran home.
- Up until this point in what you have told me--
- and it might be because I haven't asked the right
- questions yet--
- I don't get a sense that anybody was murdered yet.
- I don't get a sense of anybody being shot or killed
- or somehow.
- The synagogue is burnt.
- The books are burnt.
- The ghetto wall was closed.
- Life gets a lot harder.
- People's livelihoods are taken away.
- But direct hostile action.
- Well, the first thing they did--
- the Germans when they took charge of the ghetto,
- they appointed Kapos.
- This was Jewish sort of police.
- Then they formed different brigades.
- They formed shops that make leather boots, furniture
- places, uniforms for the German Army.
- All this was set up in different factories.
- Primarily, the schools were right away
- set up with all the tailoring.
- And then what they did is they formed the hanging gallery
- in the center of the ghetto.
- A hanging gallery?
- And they would choose randomly.
- Every once in a while, you saw 10 people hanging
- on the thing over there.
- And everybody had to go out and look at it.
- Just to show you if something happens over here,
- I'm the boss.
- So who would do the hanging?
- Jewish people, people from the ghetto.
- Either somebody spoke against the German something,
- somebody spoke against the Kapo, or whatever.
- Of if they didn't like you, your attitude or whatever--
- You didn't have to have a reason for it.
- Who would put the noose around the neck?
- I think the Kapos did it.
- If they wouldn't do it, they would get shot.
- But the Germans were right over there.
- The German SS men were right over there.
- So if they didn't do the dirty work,
- they had the Jewish guy do the dirty work for them.
- The Kapo had the band on that shows you he was a--
- it was like a civil servant.
- What color was the band?
- What kind of symbol did it have?
- Do you remember?
- I don't know.
- I think it was white or whatever--
- Oh, yeah, by the way, before the ghetto closed,
- you had to wear a Star of--
- David.
- --Star of David in the front and in the back.
- And that was before the ghetto started closing.
- Just for identifying yourself that you're Jewish.
- You could be uptown, but you have
- to have the yellow star on you.
- Do you ever remember going outside what would become
- the ghetto for the last time?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I went out before the ghetto was closed.
- I had the yellow star.
- In the front and the back, everybody had to have it.
- That was a must.
- That was the first order that the Germans gave.
- Juden, Jews, must wear a Star of David.
- They knew what the Star of David was.
- So that's what you had to do.
- So this were you have to identify yourself
- against everybody else that you're Jewish.
- That was before the ghetto was closed.
- And when you did that and you wore the yellow star,
- did you have a different experience when you
- were walking down the street?
- Well, people would look at you differently.
- The Polish people didn't think that Jews had horns on it.
- But they know you were Jewish, you lived your own life
- over there.
- You lived in the same country, but you were a little
- different than a Christian.
- But with this Star of David, they
- knew that you were Jewish by the way.
- But you see, when this happens, you're
- a 10-year-old boy or a 9-year-old boy.
- You're still a child.
- And I'm wondering whether or not you experience something
- as a child.
- Well, you experienced that you were
- deprived of certain things.
- You couldn't go into a store and buy a piece of candy,
- because you weren't allowed to get in over there.
- Jews are not allowed to go in over there.
- And then the Jewish stores right away were wiped out.
- So all the places your mother went shopping for pickles,
- for bread--
- They were closed up already.
- Once the ghetto closed up, all the stores were closed.
- There was nothing over there.
- Because what you did is you get a card,
- a ration card that you can buy things over there--
- but only whatever was bought in through the ghetto
- dispensaries.
- So you had a ration card for--
- The two dispensaries, right.
- There was no private enterprise.
- Did you have to pay for goods?
- For food, for example.
- You know something, I think you did, but I--
- Don't remember.
- I don't remember how or what, if you bought.
- But all I know is when I started working there--
- there was no school over there.
- My father worked in the tailor shop.
- I worked in the tailor shop.
- My brother worked in the tailor shop.
- My sister, I think, worked in the tailor shop
- too for a while over there.
- And we got food, because we got a bowl of soup
- over there when we got in in the morning.
- So this I know.
- Same tailor shop, everybody?
- Well, we worked there because my uncle was a foreman over there.
- So we were able to get a job over there.
- What kind of things were you making in that tailor shop?
- Uniforms for the German Army.
- It was all-- assembly line.
- I did one thing.
- That's all I did.
- I sewed the sleeves in.
- I just sewed the right sleeve.
- Somebody else sewed in the left sleeve.
- But if you were holding back the assembly line,
- you lose your job.
- Did you hold it back ever?
- I don't think so.
- I don't think so.
- But you were a little boy?
- Well, but you had to keep up with everybody.
- And so when you sewed it in, did you sew by hand or machine?
- Machine.
- On the machine, which I know my father's machines because I
- used to go down over there, so I knew a little bit about how
- to handle a sewing machine.
- It's also a 10-year-old boy handling a sewing machine.
- I worked right along with everybody else over there.
- And I sewed one sleeve in over there.
- Did you use foot pedals?
- Yes.
- All foot pedals.
- And the machines that you were using
- were your father's old machines?
- Well, was his machines plus hundreds of other machines.
- OK.
- So they gather them together.
- They had tremendous factories over there,
- because we made the uniforms for most of the German Army.
- So this huge textile city.
- The huge textile city.
- That's why they kept Lodz Ghetto as a ghetto.
- They didn't go ahead and destroy the ghetto over there,
- because they needed free labor.
- They need free labor for the German war machine.
- I want to ask about another element here.
- You mentioned earlier Jewish Kapos.
- And you mentioned that very soon there were various labor
- brigades that were organized.
- One of the features that the Lodz Ghetto was known for
- was its production.
- Right.
- And many people-- maybe not all people-- but many people
- say that the reason why there was such production
- is because the leader in the ghetto was Mr. Rumkowski.
- Rumkowski Chaim.
- Yeah, Chaim Rumkowski.
- And he's a very controversial figure.
- And I'd like to ask you about that.
- Did he ever cross your path or your family's path?
- No.
- Did you have anything to do with him?
- No, he was very aloof.
- The Germans appointed him figuring that everybody's going
- to look up to him over there.
- And whatever they fed him, he fed to the people.
- Was he seen as a representative of the people
- or a stooge of the Germans?
- I guess he was both.
- He played both sides of the fence.
- And it just so happen, when I went to Auschwitz,
- he was the next train.
- Really?
- I saw him in Auschwitz when he got off the train.
- And he went right into--
- Where?
- Right into the oven.
- Wow.
- They wanted to make sure that he is gone, because he
- left on the last train.
- I left on the train just before the last one over there,
- when they evacuated the Lodz Ghetto.
- Wow.
- So that was Rumkowski Chaim--
- Chaim Rumkowski.
- I don't know what was he for the--
- I mean he tried to tell you that--
- try to calm everybody down over here.
- But then again, he played to the Germans the same way.
- Was he a politician?
- I guess he was a politician at the time.
- How did people in the ghetto talk of him?
- Not very favorable, because you couldn't blame the Germans,
- because you had very little contact with them,
- but you could bring your hostility to him, that he
- doesn't do more for you.
- They had songs about him over there--
- that Rumkowski Chaim, he gives you water but nothing else.
- You thought he was going to bring food in over there.
- He promises that he is going to talk to the German
- and improve the life over there in the ghetto,
- but it never happened.
- Well, in some ways, it's a very thankless position,
- because it could be that there's nothing you can do.
- I'm not saying that he could do more.
- I understand that.
- I'm not saying that he could do more,
- but I'm saying the people brought their anger out
- against him.
- At the same time-- and this is why I think partly why
- he's controversial--
- is that there were reports that he took great advantage
- of his being in this position.
- Probably, because he had--
- The main thing in the ghetto, what you looked for, is food.
- A place to sleep.
- Wherever you slept over there.
- Working, you had to go to work.
- You didn't go to work, you didn't eat.
- But he had the food they brought.
- He took whatever he wanted.
- But I wasn't privilege of being in his company.
- But from what I understand, he lived a pretty decent life
- over there.
- But he also must have had plenty of headaches with it too.
- I'm not saying that he had it rather easy.
- But life in the ghetto wasn't easy at all.
- Life in the ghetto was--
- every man was for himself over there.
- How soon after the ghetto was created
- did you start feeling hungry?
- Very, very soon.
- As soon as it closed up over there,
- you knew that food was rationed.
- My father got sick.
- He passed away in--
- I think in '42 it was.
- There were no doctors over there no more.
- The doctors were taken out over there.
- And either he died of sickness or he died of hunger.
- All I know is my mother said to the children,
- "You don't have a father anymore."
- Did he die at home?
- He died at home, right.
- How did you bury him?
- How?
- They took him, because you couldn't go out
- to the cemetery.
- They have the burial brigade, which
- they didn't have a horse at that time
- no more, because the horse was taken away.
- They had people that carried dead bodies out
- to the cemetery on a wagon on two wheels over there.
- So who brought him down from the third floor?
- I don't remember.
- Some people did it.
- I don't remember what goes on.
- My mother says, "Get out of the room.
- From now on, you're orphans."
- So that was my life over there.
- And a year later, my mother passed away.
- In 1943?
- So then we were left to fend for ourselves.
- Now, your mother had she been working in the tailor shop too.
- No, she didn't.
- She stayed at home?
- She stayed at home.
- Apparently, she might have got some kind of a ration thing
- over there that she was able to buy, get some food.
- But she doesn't go to the shop.
- We went to the shop.
- We ate over there.
- But if she died out of hunger, I don't know.
- It's possible.
- Was it also at home?
- She was at home, right.
- She died at home.
- Were you work when that happened?
- I think so, yeah.
- So easy it wasn't.
- So then we were left the four of us over there in that place,
- because the ghetto was already thinned out
- at that time over there, because children under 10
- were taken out to go to better places.
- And people over 60 were sent out to--
- the Germans-- to better places over there.
- So the better places were that they--
- The trains were being sent out every day.
- Did people believe--
- In the beginning, I can understand
- that they may think that they're going to go to someplace else
- and they'll live there.
- Did, at some point, people stop believing that?
- I think most the people believed that the Germans take
- the children out because they're a burden over here.
- They're sending them out to some kind of summer camps.
- And the older people, they're taking them out
- and sending them out to also better places,
- because this is only for the working people, people
- that are capable of working, people
- that are capable of producing.
- If you're over 60, they're taking you out
- to some kind of a older people's camp.
- And the children go to children's camps.
- And most the people believed it.
- I believed it too.
- I never believed that they'll take people
- down to a crematorium, because when I got down to Auschwitz,
- I came down with my brother, my two sisters, my uncle, his wife
- and two children.
- We were on the same train.
- And I looked up, and I saw a big chimney.
- I said to my brother, "Boy, I'm so glad that they
- have a big bakery over here.
- We're probably going to have all the bread we want over here."
- I didn't realize that this was a crematorium.
- Because I know every bakery had a big chimney.
- And of those people that you mentioned who went--
- your brother, your sisters, your uncle, his wife,
- and their children--
- how many of you survived Auschwitz?
- Me, my brother, and my uncle.
- Three?
- And my cousin.
- Four.
- His daughter.
- So your sisters, no?
- They went to the left.
- Mengele told them to go to the left.
- And anybody that went to the left
- went right into the showers.
- And my aunt with her boy, Mengele
- told her to go to the right and the boy to the left.
- She says, "I don't want to give up my kid."
- He says, "Then you go with him to the left too."
- So me and my uncle and my brother went to the right
- over there.
- We were there.
- So that's what happened.
- OK.
- I'll come to Auschwitz in a little bit.
- But still back in the ghetto, did
- you work in this tailor shop the entire--?
- Entire time, right.
- So we're talking four, five years.
- Until around September '44.
- That's pretty late.
- That's like five years.
- Till September '44 I worked in the tailor shop.
- And how did that ghetto change in those five years?
- It got thinned out and thinned out and thinned out constantly.
- Probably, Rumkowski had to produce
- every week or every twice a week or every other day
- so many people had to be shipped out.
- Did he have to choose?
- They had to choose.
- They had to send you an order someday--
- you're going on to the--
- pack your suitcase and come to the train station.
- Was the train station inside the ghetto area?
- It was right outside the ghetto over there.
- It was close.
- The train station was right there.
- But either the Kapos choose or whatever,
- but they thinned out the ghetto constantly.
- There were very few children in there,
- because most of the children were already shipped out.
- You had made it just under the wire.
- Right.
- Well, my sister, the younger sister, she
- was most of the time in hiding, because she was too
- young to go to work over there.
- But somehow we got food for her.
- If she didn't have anything to eat over there,
- we would go down to the kitchen at night
- and we'd scoop up the potato peelings.
- And we were fighting with the rats.
- The rats were there before us over there.
- Take it home and cook a soup out of it,
- just to have something to eat.
- Remember, we also got one loaf of bread a week over there.
- Each person?
- Each person got a loaf of bread a week over there.
- And you had to divide it yourself.
- And you had to make sure it last you for the week.
- Somebody ate it up in three days, the other four days,
- you had nothing to eat.
- So my youngest sister, we shared it with her.
- We share the foods with her over there.
- And there was a black market.
- How did it operate?
- Some people, if you could buy maybe a loaf of bread
- over there, half a loaf of bread, a slice of bread,
- if you have a gold ring or something, you give this
- and you buy two ounces of bread.
- So there was always somebody that gets something out
- over there that has what you call protection.
- But the bakery over there that gets a loaf of bread and he
- divides it and he sells it after for things.
- But that's how you survived.
- Did you ever buy anything or sell anything
- on the black market?
- No, I didn't have nothing to sell.
- What about the things in your apartment?
- Did your parents-- well, during the time, were they both alive?
- Well, I'll tell you the truth.
- Most of the stuff that we had, in the wintertime,
- we burnt up most of the stuff over there just
- to get some heat.
- And if there was an empty apartment over there,
- we would go in--
- not just me, but others over there--
- take part of the furniture, break it up,
- and use it for fuel.
- No coal?
- No, you had no coals over there.
- You had no wood outside over there.
- So if you had some, you broke furniture up over there just
- to heat your apartment in the wintertime,
- because you were freezing.
- Life wasn't easy.
- It doesn't sound it at all.
- And these are your early teenage years--
- Right.
- --that you're going through at this point.
- Was this a seven day a week thing?
- That is, you worked every single day?
- No, I think we got one day off over there.
- I think Sunday we were off, I think.
- And did people do anything on this free day?
- You were looking for some food.
- Primarily, this was your most important thing
- to do is to see how you survived the next day.
- Although, we had-- even in the ghetto--
- we had youth groups over there.
- We used to get together sometimes in the evening
- if you weren't too tired.
- There were like little Zionist groups.
- And we were talking about what's going
- to be after the war is going to be finished if we ever
- survived.
- So we did have cultural things too.
- Even though in the ghetto, there was a Jewish theater group too.
- And Rumkowski Chaim, he was on the front seat.
- So I they tried to be give you a little bit of culture also.
- You were enslaved, but they try to give you a little bit--
- Something to look forward.
- --something to look forward.
- But primarily, your most important thing
- was to survive that day.
- Then you look forward to surviving the next day.
- And that was the most important thing over there.
- Did you ever celebrate things like birthdays
- in the family anymore?
- What kind of birthdays you going to celebrate over there?
- What are you go celebrate with?
- Yeah, just wanted to know.
- What are you going to celebrate with?
- There was nothing.
- You couldn't buy anything over there.
- You couldn't buy cake or anything.
- You couldn't bake nothing.
- There was no flour or anything like this over there.
- Birthdays-- you celebrated if you lived through the day,
- you celebrated.
- You celebrate that day over there.
- And you look forward to the next one over there.
- And you always hope to see that the war was going to end.
- Did your parents personalities change in those years?
- Well, I think everybody's personality changed.
- Everybody was worried what's going to be.
- How we going to live through this thing over here?
- How we going to live through atrocities like this?
- Nobody could imagine that something like this
- could ever happen.
- How can humanity do like something like this over.
- Here the Germans were a very sophisticated country.
- Everybody looked up to them over there.
- The most scientifically developed country
- was the German country, right?
- And here, you think they would do anything like this?
- So but did my parents' personality change?
- I guess sadness set into everybody.
- That your life was completely turned upside down.
- Did anybody talk to anybody else,
- or you had no energy to talk?
- Well, we had energy to talk.
- But we always talked about when is this war going to finish.
- Everybody looked forward to the war to finish over there.
- We didn't have a radio, but one of my neighbors had a radio.
- All radios had to be confiscated.
- All the radios there were confiscated.
- He hid the radio.
- And he used to open up sometimes the radio.
- And we just listened to BBC, the British Broadcasting over there
- in Polish.
- So you were able to get it?
- So we sort of knew what was going on a little bit.
- Aha.
- Did you hear through the radio that there were
- such things like Auschwitz.
- No.
- No.
- No.
- No, this we didn't know.
- This we didn't know.
- We believed what Rumkowski told us over there, that they're
- going to be relocated.
- The younger people are going to be relocated.
- The older people are going to be relocated.
- But we knew that the Warsaw Uprising took place over there.
- This we knew through the BBC Polish station over there.
- So you knew of both the Ghetto Uprising
- and the other uprising?
- The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
- The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
- That's all we knew about.
- We knew when this took place.
- Because the Warsaw Uprising happened later.
- The whole city when it had the--
- Right.
- The Warsaw Uprising I think took place in 1943,
- I believe it was over there.
- And then the larger one after the Ghetto Uprising was in '44?
- Well, I'm talking about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
- Yeah.
- You heard about that--
- We didn't before this.
- We knew that the major uprising--
- we knew it took place over there.
- So also was any reports of the course of the war on the BBC,
- like when the Germans lost at Stalingrad?
- Well, no.
- You don't remember that.
- I don't remember it, but all I know
- is we knew that Russia got involved with it over there.
- We knew this, that Russia is involved.
- And we knew that Germany was marching on Russia over there.
- This we knew.
- This we heard.
- But we all were looking to see what's going to happen by us.
- Of course.
- You said you didn't have any direct contact with Rumkowski.
- But could you recognize him on the street?
- Yeah.
- What did he look like?
- He was a very nice looking gentleman
- with black rimmed glasses.
- He always wore a hat.
- What do they call it over there?
- A fedora?
- A fedora.
- He always wore a fedora.
- He was dressed very nicely with an overcoat.
- He looked like a gentleman.
- What was his job before?
- I haven't got the slightest idea what he did before.
- I don't know nothing.
- I didn't know nothing about him what he was before.
- But apparently the Germans picked him out to be the head
- of the thing.
- They had established the whole committee.
- And he was the head of the committee.
- So when the ghetto was actually liquidated--
- and it was liquidated really late September '44--
- '44, right.
- When you say your were on the second to last train,
- that means you were amongst the last people.
- Almost.
- Almost the last ones, right.
- So was the ghetto pretty empty by then?
- Pretty much.
- Pretty much, because from what I gather
- is that the Russian's Army was coming closer.
- So the Germans decided, well, it's time
- to liquidate this over here, because the Russians were
- moving their front over.
- They went already to Warsaw.
- And they were heading towards our way.
- So the Germans decided, well, it's time
- to liquidate and get rid of all the people over here.
- So do you remember when you got the notice
- and how you got the notice to go?
- Well, we got the notice in the shop over there.
- Tomorrow morning be at this and this time over here.
- Bring your suitcase with your clothes.
- And you're going to a labor camp.
- So we're going to a labor camp.
- They're closing the ghetto.
- We're going to a labor camp.
- So everybody that got to the train over there,
- we got a loaf of bread, into the train.
- Was this the first time you were outside the ghetto
- gates in five years?
- Yes.
- Did it look any different outside than it did inside?
- All you did is march.
- Got it.
- People marching over there with German SS
- men on both sides with the German shepherd
- dogs on both sides of you over there.
- And just march, march, march.
- You came to the train.
- Parked you in over there, closed the gate, close the thing.
- They had a bucket in the corner of the cattle train over there.
- And there was enough room to stand.
- And that was it.
- Then we traveled like three days.
- Did you know where you were going?
- We didn't know where we're going.
- All I now is we heard the train stop.
- The train stopped and we heard the whistle blowing.
- They filled up water for the train
- because this was done on steam.
- People were looking out.
- You couldn't look out over there.
- There were little cracks in the thing.
- Maybe we're going to get a drink of water over here.
- And there was nothing.
- Nobody gave us anything over there.
- So for three days, no water?
- People died in the train.
- And on the thing over there, somebody who sat down
- on the floor never got up.
- We're traveling this for three days.
- The trains got water because the locomotive was run on steam.
- Of course, we didn't get a drop of water over there.
- We had this loaf of bread.
- You ate it up the first day, you had
- nothing for the next three days and doesn't make a difference.
- Until we got to Auschwitz.
- "Arbeit macht frei."
- Yep, we saw the gates.
- Over there they had different Kapos.
- They help you get the suitcases out there,
- and they put the suitcases down.
- And you go through this over here.
- Through what?
- And Mengele was over there.
- And he looks you over.
- How did you know it was Mengele?
- I didn't know.
- I knew later on his name was Mengele.
- Do you remember what he looked like?
- He was a stocky, I think, bald-headed, round face,
- and a big stocky little guy over there.
- "What kind of work you do?"
- I said, "I'm a tailor."
- "Go over here."
- My brother, tailor-- get over here.
- My uncle, tailor-- over here.
- That was it.
- Did you get numbers?
- No.
- They didn't number them no more, because they stopped.
- They didn't have enough time to tattoo everybody,
- because they got shipments, so many of them towards the end
- that they didn't have time to tattoo people.
- So I never got a tattoo.
- Because before, when they didn't have that many trains coming
- in, they had enough time to put the hot iron on you over there.
- But when we came, it was already mass production.
- So they didn't have time to tattoo you.
- So you were put to one side and everybody else
- that you mentioned earlier went to the bakery?
- Went to the other side.
- Yeah, OK.
- When did you learn that that wasn't a bakery?
- Pretty soon.
- Pretty soon.
- I found out from some of the people that work over there.
- They said this is not the bakery.
- They didn't say it's a crematorium either.
- They said people go in over there
- and you don't see them anymore.
- To me, it didn't make any sense.
- But the older people realized right away what it is.
- Then I found out what this thing was.
- It was a crematorium.
- So no one really spoke openly?
- When I got to Auschwitz, I had no idea.
- Nobody-- my uncle, which was an older man--
- he was an adult--
- he didn't believe it either.
- We had absolutely no knowledge of it,
- because you didn't think that this is what it is.
- But we soon find out.
- It didn't take long.
- In a day or so, you found out what this thing was.
- And then it hit you that went there--
- Then you knew, and you were holding--
- I was in Auschwitz for, I don't know, close to two months
- or something like this.
- OK.
- What did you do in Auschwitz?
- Just clean barracks over there.
- And we went out in the morning.
- You had a head count in the morning.
- We had to go out over there for a head count.
- They stood out for about two hours in the morning.
- It was freezing cold.
- Yeah, it was getting to be winter.
- It was freezing cold.
- We all had this white and blue pajamas with torn shoes.
- And that's all you had.
- They didn't have any coat or nothing over there.
- You stood over there for about two hours in the morning--
- about 5 o'clock in the morning or something this.
- They took head counts over there.
- And if you ever spoke to somebody,
- if you said over there, the SS men would take you right out
- and shoot you right in front of everybody.
- You saw that happen?
- Yep.
- Life didn't mean nothing to them over there.
- Life had no value to them.
- So that's what they did.
- I was there for about, I think, close to two months over there.
- And you cleaned bags?
- Well, they clean barracks over there.
- We cleaned the barracks.
- We cleaned outside.
- You didn't have any specific job over there.
- We were in a holding pattern at that time.
- In the holding pattern, they didn't
- know where to send us yet.
- So it felt transitory?
- Right.
- That's what we were over there.
- We had a head count in the morning and a head count
- in the evening, I think also.
- And then we got a bowl of soup over there in the daytime.
- We had a bowl of soup.
- It mostly was potato soup or kohlrabi
- or something like this.
- It was vegetarian.
- Rolling.
- So you were in a holding pattern while you were in Auschwitz?
- Right.
- And I was asking did you meet people
- from other places in the Lodz ghetto in there?
- Yeah.
- In the barracks?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, a lot of them from Lodz.
- But it was a mixture of people--
- people from Poland, people from Romania, people from Hungary.
- There were all kinds of people over there.
- There were I think Russian prisoners of war over there.
- It was a mixture of all kinds of people.
- But each one had a different insignia on it other there,
- where Jewish had one type.
- If you were homosexual, you had something else.
- If you were Russian prisoners, had a different thing
- on your pajama things over there.
- Were you all mixed together?
- Yeah.
- So you could have a Russian prisoner
- of war in your barracks?
- Right, you could have everybody.
- Everybody was in prison together in the same big barracks
- over there, because you were stacked like three or four
- high in the pigeonholes over there.
- But each pajama thing over there had a different color insignia
- on it.
- So whether you're a political prisoner,
- it had something else over there.
- And in Lodz, you had worn regular clothes.
- In Lodz we wore regular clothes.
- And you never had an appel or anything like that?
- No, we all had to have-- you had to have the yellow Star
- of David on you.
- Yeah, but you didn't have to gather in the morning
- like you did in Auschwitz?
- No, over there you went to work early in the morning.
- You worked till at nightfall over there.
- In Lodz, no.
- In Lodz, you went to work in the morning over there.
- You stayed in the shop all day long,
- because you got a bowl of soup when you got into the shop
- over there.
- And you got a bowl of soup when you finished.
- OK.
- So talk about no food, but were you hungry on Lodz,
- or were you hungrier in Auschwitz?
- Both.
- Both.
- Yeah, of course.
- I'll tell you both.
- The same hungry.
- I'll tell you both.
- Yeah.
- In Auschwitz, you didn't think of food over there.
- Really?
- You were hungry.
- But hunger didn't make that much of a difference
- already, because you knew that you're
- going to die here anyway.
- In Lodz, you were hungry because you went to work,
- because you had a different life a little bit
- before this over there.
- So it was new to you to be hungry.
- Here, hunger was already an old thing.
- So you got a bowl of soup over there in Auschwitz.
- We got a bowl of soup over there.
- And that bowl of soup with a slice of bread over there,
- and that was it for the day.
- So it kept your body alive, let me say.
- What happened to you as a person?
- What happened?
- You were very bitter.
- You were very bitter?
- Yeah, that all of a sudden your family disappeared, you
- don't have any life over there.
- You were bitter against Germans, any German,
- whether this was an SS man or this was just a policeman
- or whatever.
- You were bitter that they made your life bitter.
- But you were hoping that eventually it's
- going to come to an end.
- You didn't know whether it will or not over there,
- whether you're going to live out the war
- or the war's going to live you out.
- So this was your two months--
- About two months over there, right.
- Then what happened?
- Well, then we were shipped out to Hanover.
- That was a trek.
- We were there.
- The Germans took so many people.
- And then suddenly now we're sending you to a labor camp.
- Fine, you're going to a labor camp.
- So we were shipped up on the train.
- I don't remember how many people we
- were at this time over there.
- We went to settle us down in Hanover.
- It was some kind of a barracks over there.
- And we were assigned to work in the rubber factory, Continental
- Rubber Company.
- The US company?
- Continental.
- Continental, yeah.
- Well, I found out later that it was partly
- owned by the British, in part American and German.
- They made tires.
- They made vulcanizing rubber.
- We did it on the tracks on tanks so the tanks
- can go on asphalt without ruining the asphalt,
- because tank is normally run on steel.
- So we vulcanized this thing over there onto those rubber tracks.
- That factory over there, I worked
- over there a couple of months.
- So that brings you into deep winter?
- Right.
- Yeah, we worked over there.
- So in the morning, we had to go out and had also a head count.
- We stood outside over there.
- And we still had the same blue and white pajamas over there.
- We're outside for an hour, two hours over there.
- They counted everybody out.
- And then they marched us into the factory.
- And the factory, we worked mixing rubber vats
- with the big things over there.
- They had a German foreman.
- They wore the mask with goggles with rubber gloves up to here
- and boots up to here.
- And we were just bare-handed over there.
- We did all the dirty work for them over there.
- Were there fumes?
- Pardon me?
- Were there fumes?
- Fumes?
- Did it smell?
- Well, it all smelled from rubber.
- It was mixing all chemicals together,
- rubber chemicals together--
- rubber plant, some rubber other thing, whatever.
- They put all the chemicals in over there.
- And we were just working it over there.
- We had to work the plants.
- We had to mix it.
- We had to clean it.
- We had to do this over here.
- By working over there, then I was assigned
- to clean the floor over there.
- And I clean the floor.
- And there was some German civilians workings there too.
- They were sitting by the desks over there.
- I don't know what they were doing over there.
- But there was a young woman, I don't know, maybe 20,
- 25 years old.
- She was working on one the desks over there.
- And I was cleaning around there.
- It was lunchtime, and she threw out a piece of bread over there
- to the floor.
- And I think she threw it to me.
- So I went down, and I picked it up over there.
- There was an SS lady--
- also a young woman with boots up to here, with heels this size.
- Probably, we made it in the Lodz ghetto.
- She went ahead with her heel, got me right into the head
- and split my head open.
- Oh my goodness.
- And I had to throw the piece of bread away.
- Of course, I took something, whatever I had over there.
- I put the thing, and I held it over there
- until it stopped bleeding.
- It was bloody for a day or two.
- I still got the--
- A scar?
- --scar right over here.
- With her sharp heel, she went right out like this over here.
- First she went like this, and then she went other way
- and hit me right in the mouth--
- for a tiny little piece of bread.
- So do you think I love Germans?
- Yeah?
- So that's the kind of work we did over there.
- And we walked a couple of months until we were useless to them.
- We were too weak already.
- Was there any sabotage that you know of?
- Not, there was no sabotage.
- We worked--
- Nobody risked any sabotage?
- No, there was no sabotage in this over here.
- We were glad to get through the day over there.
- And we finished working over there,
- we will march back to the barracks over there.
- We got another bowl of soup over there.
- And we waited for the next morning.
- It got to the point where we were useless to them.
- And they brought in Russian prisoners of war.
- Apparently, they had gotten a hold
- of Russian prisoners of war, which was much stronger.
- They had them over there.
- And they marched us to another camp.
- What was the name of that camp?
- The name of other camp was camp Ahlem.
- Ahlem?
- A-H-L-E-M.
- OK.
- They set us up in the barracks over there.
- We must have been like 1,000 people.
- And this was still near Hanover?
- This was near Hanover, outside of Hanover.
- And we were assigned to work in a quarry, in the underground.
- Oh.
- And it was cold, wet, dark.
- There were dynamiting underground over there.
- Apparently, they must have been starting
- to build a factory underground over there-- ammunition
- factory.
- So we were the ones that they were dynamiting.
- We had to load things up.
- Like the rocks and things?
- We had to load the rocks up on a little trains
- and push them out.
- That's not exactly easy work.
- That was hard work.
- That was the hardest work we ever had to do over there.
- So this we worked for--
- And people died over there.
- When we pushed out things over there,
- we also had the bodies on top of the thing over there.
- And when we pushed out the thing with somebody dead,
- the German soldier took a rock over there
- and stuck it into their mouth to get it out like this.
- So you'd see a corpse coming out on top of the rocks--
- We had a corpse, put him right on top
- of the little train over there with the rocks, and push them.
- We had like five, six, seven people
- pushed the train out over there.
- Each one was on one little train like this.
- Yeah, a little trolley type thing.
- Yeah.
- And it was on tracks over there.
- They had tracks going in.
- So we worked over there.
- And this was murderous work.
- Were you with your brother and your uncle?
- My brother was with me that time.
- My uncle was with me that time over there.
- And one morning, my brother couldn't get out
- of his bunk over there.
- He says, "I don't feel good."
- So I call down one of the foremans over there--
- a Jewish foreman.
- I tell him he doesn't feel good.
- So he says, "Don't worry about it.
- We'll take him to the infirmary."
- Well, they took him into the infirmary.
- I didn't realize what they do in the infirmary.
- They inject you with gasoline and put you
- into the back with all the other corpses over there.
- And that was the end of him.
- So that's how I lost my brother over there.
- Your last family member of your immediate family.
- Right.
- He was gone.
- So me and my uncle just left over there.
- So that was the end of it.
- And we walked over there.
- And day in and day out we worked.
- In the morning, we had to have a roll call over there.
- And we went down to the quarries over there.
- We worked in the quarries and pushed.
- They were dynamiting and people died over
- there left and right--
- from hunger and from cold and from disease.
- And people just died in the quarry down there.
- They were dynamiting.
- People just died, and we just pushed them right out
- over there.
- How long did this last?
- That lasted until the day of liberation.
- OK, so this would have been like mid-February?
- Till the liberation was around in May.
- So you were liberated at the same time
- that the war ended or before?
- I was liberated by the American Army 84th Division in Hanover.
- How did it happen?
- Well, all of a sudden, we heard that the Allied Army's closer--
- coming close.
- We heard some rumors over there.
- We listened from the German soldiers.
- They were talking to themselves.
- So they took about 600 people on a death march
- to Bergen-Belsen--
- all the people that they felt could work.
- About 60 of us over there--
- I was one of them--
- that they felt don't worry about them over there.
- They were left behind.
- I understand that when they marched to Bergen-Belsen,
- some of them were shot and some of them died on the way
- over there.
- But we were about 60 of us they left over here.
- And the Germans gave orders--
- what I found out later--
- was to kill everybody off and burn the camp.
- But all of a sudden, at night, we heard shelling close by.
- And then all of a sudden, there wasn't a German soldier
- to be found.
- They all disappeared.
- Early in the morning, there was nobody there.
- And then we saw Jeeps--
- the 84th Division pulling up.
- Did you speak any English?
- No.
- Any words of English?
- We saw the American soldiers coming.
- I think there was some Polish prisoners by us
- too in that camp over there.
- The camp had all electric fencing around.
- Somehow he broke that fence over there.
- And we realized that everybody was free.
- Just like that?
- Then what happened, the American soldiers
- started giving people chocolate and gum
- and the people started eating and they died.
- You saw this?
- The stomach couldn't control food over there.
- They died from dysentery.
- A lot of the people just passed away right after liberation.
- What about you?
- Did you eat any chocolate?
- I don't remember what I ate.
- I don't remember what I ate over there.
- I'm not a chocolate eater to start off with.
- But I don't know what I ate.
- I really don't know.
- But I know they gave out rations,
- whatever the soldiers had.
- They gave.
- First of all, when they came up to that camp,
- they didn't know what they saw.
- They said, "Wait a minute, those are not
- human beings over here," because they were all skeleton.
- And people were laying on the street.
- People couldn't just walk up.
- They couldn't wake up over there.
- They couldn't stand up.
- They said to themselves, "What did we come upon over here?"
- They couldn't believe that those were human beings.
- They were so astonished over there
- that they didn't know what it was.
- Coming to this over here, I did something over there
- with a documentary about this thing about Camp Ahlem.
- There was one soldier, who was from Sioux City, Iowa.
- He was stationed-- for training, he went down to Louisiana.
- Before he was shipped overseas, I
- think for $1 he bought a color camera in pawn shop
- and took it with him.
- Well, when he came at this camp over there-- he was a private--
- he just took some pictures of this.
- He couldn't believe what he saw.
- And from this itself--
- I'll tell you later-- but there's
- a whole documentary is done from this one little camera thing.
- But this 84th Division which Henry Kissinger
- was part of this over here.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah.
- He was part of the liberation of my camp over there.
- He was in intelligence.
- Well, when he drafted into the army,
- they put him into the tank command over there.
- And they realized he speaks very good German.
- They put him into the intelligence over there.
- So he was part of the liberators of my camp.
- And after that whole documentary came out,
- I got a call from a gentleman from Florida.
- I have his name written down some place over there.
- He says to me--
- he gave me his name-- he says, "Do you remember me?"
- I says to him, "I don't know if I remember you."
- He says, "I'm 92 years old now, but I was the commander
- liberating your camp.
- And I was in charge on the civilian area
- for that whole area over here.
- And I took the civilian Germans to carry,
- to bury all the dead bodies that were
- on the back of the barracks."
- Do you remember that at the time?
- I knew there were bodies over there.
- I remember seeing German civilians digging holes.
- But he was in charge of this over here.
- He was a Jewish officer.
- They made him in charge of that whole area.
- So because he says to me, "Do you remember me?"
- I says to him, "No, I don't."
- But that's what happened, how the liberation came.
- We were liberated by the American army.
- Early in the morning, you saw Jeeps and the gate
- was torn down over there.
- And we realized we were all free.
- Although, we didn't care that much over there.
- In all honesty, when we heard bombing from far away,
- we saw planes coming, we said to ourselves,
- "I hope they're going to bomb this camp over here,"
- because our lives didn't mean nothing over there.
- I said let the Germans get killed over here,
- because to us, we were dead anyway already.
- But of course, it didn't happen.
- But that's how the liberation came.
- And then what happened to you?
- Pardon?
- And then what happened to you?
- Well, after liberation I went with my uncle,
- because somebody said that the Bergen-Belsen was
- a camp for women.
- So my uncle says, "Let's go to Bergen-Belsen."
- Somehow there was the British Army was over there.
- The British Army was in Bergen-Belsen over there.
- But the British and American were interchanging over there.
- We were in Hanover.
- So we got a ride on a British truck that was going that way.
- We ended up in Bergen-Belsen.
- And we started looking around for family.
- I figured maybe my sisters are there,
- because somebody told him there was a Kochanski over there.
- So he figured his wife is there.
- But instead of his wife, he found his daughter over there.
- And they told me what happened to my sisters
- and what happened to his wife--
- went to the shower with the boy.
- So then I went.
- There was nothing for me to do in Bergen-Belsen.
- We saw British soldiers with the Star of David.
- This was the Jewish brigade from Palestine.
- And they in turn said, let's get the young people together,
- and we want to organize them to bring them into Palestine.
- So we traveled with the British trucks
- ran by the Jewish brigade, which was against their rule,
- against the British rule.
- And they took us down to a place in Sulzheim.
- It's in Germany.
- And we were there about 600 of us over there.
- They're from Poland, from Romania, from Hungary,
- from Czechoslovakia, from Slovakia, from Czechoslovakia,
- from all over Europe, from France.
- And we were all young people over there.
- Some were between 14 to 18 years old.
- They formed little groups over there, like a little kibbutz.
- You know what a kibbutz is?
- Mm-hmm.
- You know what a kibbutz is?
- Tell me.
- It's a cooperative village.
- We stayed over there and waited to--
- So were you legal or illegal?
- Well, over there?
- This was a DP camp.
- Oh, excuse me.
- I'm sorry.
- This was a DP camp.
- It was a legal DP camp over there--
- displaced person.
- But it had only young people over there,
- because the brigade wanted to make sure
- that save the young people.
- So we were there.
- And over there, we started learning a little bit Hebrew
- already, because they started teaching us.
- And we were trying to get passage to Palestine.
- Well, before this, we were demonstrating over there.
- I'll show you pictures that to have.
- A demonstration, we walked in Sulzheim
- and in Frankfurt we walked, demonstrating for the United
- Nations to let the Jews come into Palestine,
- because the British put up a White Paper over there
- that they didn't let anybody in.
- But in May of 1946, the British government
- allowed 600 children to emigrate legally to Palestine.
- So I was one of them.
- And we ended up in Palestine at the time.
- You were 16, 17 years old?
- Yeah.
- My goodness.
- It was 1946.
- We got into Palestine that time.
- 600 young people, that was the only legal emigration
- that the British government allowed
- due to a lot of pressure from the United Nations
- to save the children over there.
- So 600 of us got into Palestine.
- And I settled in one of the kibbutz, which
- was a cooperative farm.
- And we were working over there.
- And then we went to school over there.
- We worked a half a day.
- We went a half a day schooling.
- This is the first time you have any formal education
- since third grade?
- Right, that's correct.
- OK, that's six, seven years later.
- So we went to work.
- I worked on the tractor over there.
- I went at 5 o'clock in the morning till about 12:00.
- And then from 1 o'clock or 2 o'clock till about 6 o'clock,
- we had schooling.
- And how long did you stay in this place?
- I stayed over there until 1948, when the war broke out.
- OK.
- Well, that'll be another series of questions.
- But is there a time when you stopped feeling hungry?
- When?
- After the war, after you're liberated, how long did it
- take for you to feel like finally I've had enough to eat.
- Well, that time already, you didn't think already
- about food, because we had food already then.
- So you didn't feel that I'm full,
- but we knew that we don't have to worry
- about the next meal over there.
- We're not going to be hungry now.
- And what about the other parts?
- The part where I had asked you about Auschwitz of So how did
- that affect you as a person.
- So when you're liberated and it's over,
- is there any part of this time when
- you start to think about what those several years have been
- and what was going on with you?
- You constantly think about it.
- That's one thing in the back of your mind
- that you really don't forget.
- You can think of a million other things, but--
- You were thinking of this always.
- --any trigger, you remember it.
- This is something that you never forget.
- Even up to today.
- Up to today.
- I can visualize every minute of what it was.
- All those years that passed already--
- I had a completely different life since then over there--
- but still you remember it.
- You said in Auschwitz you were bitter.
- And did that stay?
- Did that feeling of bitterness stay--
- once you were safe again?
- Not until you think about it.
- If you don't think about it, you don't.
- But you think of when you got off that train over there
- and you saw that sign--
- "Arbeit macht frei."
- Work will make you free.
- Work makes you free.
- And how deceiving this was.
- We came over there without any knowledge.
- Maybe some people knew what was going on.
- I'm not saying that everybody was as naive as I was.
- Maybe some people had a feeling, because there
- was an underground that was working on things over there
- that did inform people.
- I just wasn't privilege of knowing it over there.
- Neither was my brother and neither was my uncle.
- He was a worldly man.
- In his young days, he used to be a bicycle--
- he used to go on bicycle races in Lodz.
- He wasn't a backward person.
- And--