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Oral history interview with Nissen Mangel

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2011.177.41 | RG Number: RG-50.677.0041

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    Oral history interview with Nissen Mangel
    Transcript
    My name is Dr. Henri Lustiger Thaler.
    I'm here today with Rabbi Nissen Mangel.
    This interview is sponsored by the Amud Aish Memorial
    Museum in Brooklyn and the United States Holocaust Memorial
    Museum in Washington.
    Rabbi Mangel, can tell me the town that you were born in
    and your date of birth?
    My name is Nissen Mangel.
    I was born in Czechoslovakia in the city of Kosice.
    Till 1939, Kosice belonged to Czechoslovakia.
    After Hitler gave a certain portion of Czechoslovakia
    to Hungary should join Germany in the war effort,
    and then it became Hungary annexed Kosice, and became
    Kassa.
    I was born in Kosice.
    It eventually became Kassa.
    When we were caught by the Germans,
    then it was in Hungary, and Kassa.
    Now, again, it's Kosice in Czechoslovakia.
    Then only till the end of the war,
    it was annexed by Hungary, this part of Czechoslovakia.
    By now it turned back to Czechoslovakia.
    I was born in October 31, 1933.
    And in 1944, the beginning of 1944,
    when Kosice was already Hungary, then the Germans
    entered the Hungary.
    They start to take the Jews.
    So--
    Rabbi Mangel, if we could just go back just a little bit
    before this.
    I'd like to know a little bit about your family life
    and the life in Kosice, and just some of your earliest memories
    before we go to 1944.
    My grandfather came from Poland, from Sacz, Galicia.
    And he settled in Kosice.
    He became a businessman.
    My father was only born in Kosice.
    And I was born in Kosice.
    My father bought the house where I was born,
    and where, now, after the war, I came back to Kosice.
    I claim this house belongs to me, because I'm
    the inheritor of my father.
    So the government said, yes, it belongs to you,
    provided you come back to Kosice for five years.
    If you live here for five years, you're Slovak.
    And I became Slovak.
    You know, Czechoslovakia became split
    into Czech Republic, Slovakia.
    But obviously, I'm not going back
    to live for five years in Slovakia.
    So I have that house, but it was confiscated by the government.
    And my grandfather began the textile business.
    My father expanded it.
    Until we were taken to Auschwitz,
    my father had this textile business in Kosice.
    In Kassa, when it became Hungary.
    And, as I said, at the beginning of April, the SS came.
    In 1941, my father was already born in Kosice,
    so he was a Hungarian or Czech citizen.
    My grandfather came from Poland.
    They never allowed for the Jews to become citizens.
    He always remained a Polish citizen.
    In 1941, they decided all the Jews of Polish origin,
    Polish citizens, were deported.
    And my grandfather, my grandmother
    lost their lives in Babi Yar.
    As you know, in Babi Yar, so many thousand Jews were killed.
    So also because they were Polish citizens,
    so they took them from Kosice, or from Kassa, to Babi Yar.
    First to the Kamianets Podilskyi,
    from Kamianets Podilskyi to Babi Yar.
    And there they met their death.
    This was 1941.
    And when they start to take the Jews from Hungary
    it was in 1944.
    And if we could just go back for a moment,
    again, to your mother's side of the family.
    Just tell me a little bit about--
    My mother's side of the family was living always in Slovakia.
    As a matter of fact, just a few months ago,
    I went visit again this part town
    of Kurima, which is between the city of Presov and Bardejov.
    It's a very Jewish, religious little town.
    And there, my mother was born with six siblings in Kurima.
    And in 1942, they took the Jews from Slovakia.
    In Hungary they took them in 1944.
    From Slovakia they took the Jews for 1942.
    So all the Jews, 60,000 Jews from Slovakia were deported
    to Auschwitz, and met their death in Auschwitz.
    But certain Jews which the government
    needed for their country--
    engineers, doctors, lawyers and so on, big businessmen--
    they left.
    So this were called the VIP people.
    So my mother's two brothers also got, for a lot of money,
    this VIP certificate, and they remained till 1944.
    By 1944, Slovakia was almost Judenrein.
    Completely empty of Jews, except these few thousand Jews
    who were the VIPs.
    And in Hungary, they start to take the Jews in 1944.
    So my mother's family were there till 1944,
    and at the end of 1944, they also
    took the Jews from Slovakia.
    And, in Hungary, they took at the beginning of 1942.
    So, just tell me a little bit about the religious life
    in Kosice before the war.
    Before the [INAUDIBLE] begins for--
    In Kosice had 20,000 Jews.
    For Europe, a city which had 20,000 Jews was considered
    a large Jewish center.
    I would say the majority of 20,000 Jews were all observant
    Jews.
    That even those the nonobservant,
    they called the Neologen. Neologen
    is like the reformed Jews.
    I would say that Neologen in 1944 in Kosice
    were like the model Orthodox here in United States.
    But even they were not as rigid, not observant as the Orthodox
    Jews.
    But nevertheless, they were still observant.
    And they were called the Neologen.
    And Kosice was an extremely religious city.
    So what was life like growing up and--
    I learned in cheder from my earliest youth.
    And I had a very, very enjoyable, happy young life
    as a child.
    My mother took us, my sister and me, every year for summer,
    to Kurima.
    Our grandparents, to Slovakia.
    And it was a very joyous, nostalgic--
    I look back, I think back, at a very, very comfortable,
    and happy, joyous life.
    And all this stopped when the Germans occupied Hungary.
    Until then, my father used to go to synagogue three times a day.
    For the morning, mincha, and maariv.
    When the Germans occupied Kosice, it was very dangerous.
    So then he went only on a Shabbat.
    But otherwise, he always went three times a day
    to the synagogue.
    We were very observant Jews.
    Our forebears come from Galicia.
    Hasidim, yes.
    And the cheder was a very pleasant--
    I didn't go to Talmud Torah, because Talmud
    was more communal.
    My father wanted I should learn about a private school.
    Of course, it cost much more, but of course, the teaching
    was a much more personal, much closer,
    there were not so many students.
    So that's very good cheder which I liked very much.
    And I learned till nine in the cheder.
    And the same thing, my sister went to school.
    And we also had a Bais Yaakov.
    There was a Bais Yaakov in Kosice.
    But all this ceased, came to an end, in April 1944.
    Do you have a memory-- it must be,
    for a town of 20,000 mostly observant Jews,
    Neolog and orthodox, the [YIDDISH] must have been
    remarkable.
    Do you have a memory of that?
    Absolutely.
    Yes.
    When it came Sukkot, we had an apartment house,
    several apartments.
    Seven apartments.
    My father in the courtyard built a big, big sukkah.
    My sister and I went and decorated.
    Before the decorations the sukkah.
    These are fond, fond memories.
    And how all the families came together
    for the meals, and singing songs and speaking,
    social conversation.
    It was very beautiful.
    Seven families.
    And the sukkah was beautiful.
    The same thing also, every festival was very joyous.
    Anything further you want to say about?
    We'll move along.
    I just want to know a little bit more
    about, maybe, other family members?
    Brothers, sisters?
    My mother had two brothers who also lived in Kosice.
    They also met their death in Auschwitz, and they were taken.
    But anyways, it was April 1944.
    As I mentioned, my father did not go to shul, the synagogue.
    It was like 7 o'clock in the morning.
    My sister and I were still in bed.
    My father had his tallit and tefillin on him.
    And he was praying the morning prayer.
    Suddenly we hear a big knock on the door.
    A violent knock on the door.
    My father goes with the tallit and tefillin
    to the door to open the door.
    And suddenly barge in seven SS.
    They had a list of all the members in this family.
    Then began to take us to the ghetto in Kosice.
    My had the tallit and tefillin on.
    And we were still sleeping.
    We were woken up already in the bed.
    And the chief SS has the list.
    He says, you know, where is Mrs. Mangel?
    My father says, she went out to the marketplace shopping.
    It was not like nowadays.
    If you need fish, you can go to the store,
    you can get gefilte fish.
    If you need the bread challah, you go to the bakery
    and get challah.
    You get everything what you want, you get ready made.
    In those days, in 1944, you have to purchase,
    you have to buy, bake, and cook, every prepare yourself.
    So my mother got up 6 o'clock in the morning,
    went down to the marketplace to get everything.
    The chicken and the fish and the vegetables and the fruits.
    Everything what we needed.
    And this was by 7:00 in the morning.
    So she was she wasn't home.
    So the SS says, where is Mrs. Mangel?
    My father says to the chief SS, she's at the marketplace.
    So the SS says to my sister, get up, get dressed,
    and go fetch your mother.
    So when I hear this, I say to the SS,
    I'd like to go with my sister as well.
    I also want to go together with my sister.
    The SS takes me and pushes back in my bed.
    Go, you lay down.
    I jump up again, and I say, I'd like to go with my sister.
    The SS pushes me back a second time.
    I jump up a third time.
    I start crying.
    I was not yet 10 years old.
    10 years old.
    And I say to the SS, I want to go.
    Crying, I want to go with my sister.
    So my father, since I was crying,
    my father says to the SS, why don't you let him go?
    You see that they are siblings almost the same age.
    She was only a year and a half older than me.
    And near my bed was the chair which had my clothes.
    And near her bed was a chair, also with her clothes.
    He says, even just see their clothes are all similar.
    They always play together.
    Why won't you let him go?
    So SS said, go.
    So both my sister and I went out to find mother.
    She went to the marketplace.
    The marketplace was teeming with people.
    That has 20,000 Jews.
    Everybody went to buy what they need for Shabbos.
    So we went from place to place where they sold fish,
    where they sold the chickens, all the bakery, the challah,
    so on.
    So we looked all over.
    We couldn't find mother.
    It took at least a half an hour, 45 minutes.
    Looking, it's a tremendous big marketplace
    for thousands of people.
    And not only Jews.
    Many Jews, because of our Shabbos.
    But there was also non Jews.
    It was teeming with people.
    We looked all over.
    We couldn't find mother.
    So then we decided, mother must have gotten
    everything what she wanted.
    She purchased what we wanted, and she must have gone home.
    So let's go home.
    So we went home.
    On the way, going home, we see mother in front of us
    at quite a distance with two bags with fruit, merchandise.
    What you want to prepare for Shabbos.
    And we run to mother.
    And we catch up with her.
    And we say, we tell her, Ma, the SS came to take us.
    Dr. Lustiger, she became nervous, jittery, shaking.
    She knew what does it mean, SS come.
    And this words ring in my ears whenever I remember my mother.
    She said, if Tate--
    Tate means, your father--
    if Tate is going to Auschwitz, I want to go with him.
    So in other words, not she's going to escape,
    but she's going to go home, into the clutches of the SS.
    She says, if Tate is going to Auschwitz, I will go with him.
    I was a little boy, 10 years old, like 10 and 1/2 years.
    A little boy.
    And I wasn't extremely smart, but I
    said to Ma, what's the hurry?
    You are out.
    Away from the SS.
    Sister is out.
    I am out.
    Maybe Tate also will be able to get out
    of the clutches of the SS.
    Let's not go immediately home.
    She was, rush, let's go home.
    So mother says, from seven SS, you can escape.
    How can you escape in a house?
    You've just been here.
    Seven SS, how can you escape?
    But I kept on insisting, you are out, we are out, let's--
    She wouldn't listen to me.
    As I mentioned, we had an apartment house,
    and all the tenants were Jews.
    Only the caretaker, the janitor, was a non-Jewish family.
    They were called the Shabbos goy.
    To put out the light Friday night, and so on.
    On the Shabbos morning.
    There the daughter, who worked in a tavern.
    Now, they like us very much.
    Because every time, when they come up.
    So, nowadays, you have the Shabbos clock.
    You know, you just prepare the clock, the gadget,
    and the light should go off.
    In 1944, all these gadgets weren't available.
    So we had this Gentile family, the janitor, and they,
    either he, or she, or the daughter would come up,
    and my mother said, 12 o'clock.
    Half past twelve.
    It all depends how many guests we would have.
    Come and close, they closed the light.
    But they just didn't come to close the light.
    My mother would give them the leftover chicken soup, and all
    the kneidlach, and everything.
    So they liked her very much, because my mother treated them
    royally.
    Always gave them, the food what we ate, gave them also.
    So they loved her very much.
    Now, this daughter was working in a tavern.
    So I said to my mother, Ma, let's at least go.
    And her name was Ivanka.
    You know, Ivanka.
    Just like the names of a Ivanka, you know,
    Trump's daughter is Ivanka.
    It's very popular, Ivan or Ivanka.
    So we says, let's go to Ivanka, and let's
    let her go to our house, and see what happened to Tate.
    Let's see what happened to Papa.
    So this my mother agreed.
    She went to the tavern.
    And by this time could have been like 8 o'clock in the morning,
    maybe even a little bit later.
    And she says, so my mother goes over to Ivanka,
    please go to our house and see what happened to my husband.
    She says, Mrs. Mangel, don't you see all these customers,
    the drunkards.
    Who came to drink already, so half past eight.
    There were drinking already in the tavern.
    If I don't serve them, they'll make a riot.
    Let me serve each one a cup of whiskey,
    and they'll be content for a half an hour or so.
    And then I got this half an hour,
    I'll be able to go to your house.
    So this my mother had no choice.
    To this my mother acquiesced.
    Agreed.
    But my mother was jumping for nervousness.
    What's going on?
    And she said, Ivanka, make it fast.
    Eventually, she served all the clients, all the drunkards,
    the whiskey, a cup of whiskey.
    Scotch.
    And then Ivanka went.
    As she went to the door, of course, we followed her.
    And my mother said, hastened her up, Ivanka, make it fast,
    make it faster.
    She said, I'll make it as fast as I can.
    So, Ivanka went from the tavern.
    Let me just tell you.
    If this is the street.
    Here's a tavern.
    Here's a tavern.
    In the middle of the block, she had
    to go to the end of the block, and then at the corner,
    she had to make a right turn.
    In the middle of that block was our house.
    So rather, she had to go half a block on this side,
    on this street, and half a block on this street.
    And as she was walking, of course, fast, because my mother,
    hastened her up.
    Ivanka, make it faster, faster.
    She came to the corner.
    She was about to turn on the corner.
    Suddenly, what did we see?
    Tate.
    Tate appears at the corner.
    Dr. Lustiger, I jumped from the store, and I run to my father.
    Says, Ta?
    How did you get out?
    From seven SS.
    Just when this house should be seven SS.
    How did you get out?
    My father says, listen.
    Now is not the time to speak.
    Let's run.
    Let's run.
    Better we run.
    See, the Germans, they took the Jews from whichever city
    they came in a very methodical, very systematic way.
    Didn't take haphazardly, any Jews they found they would take.
    First they would take from the center of the city.
    If you belonged to a different part,
    they wouldn't take you, because the time will come.
    Tomorrow, the next day, they take you from there.
    That was very methodical.
    So, the outskirts of Kosice, my parents' niece and nephew lived.
    And they weren't there.
    And we didn't endanger them, because, as I said,
    they took it very systematically.
    For example, we took the Jews from Borough Park,
    if you belong to Flatbush, they wouldn't take you
    until the time comes to take the Jews from Flatbush.
    If you belong to Queens, they wouldn't take you from Queens.
    So they didn't, and then we went over there.
    We came to the outskirts of Kosice.
    We came to them.
    So then I asked, Tate, how did you get out from seven SS?
    He says, we had in Czechoslovakia
    very expensive, beautiful, beautiful furniture.
    In those days in Europe, for example, take this table.
    That has legs.
    Has like eight legs.
    But in Europe, the legs were thick, thick legs,
    and all engraved beautiful carvature.
    All kind designs.
    The breakfront, also heavy wood, and designed,
    engraved beautiful designs.
    And these the Germans would take to Germany.
    This is expensive furniture.
    It's like expensive jewelry, or expensive fur coats.
    They were sent to Germany.
    So the Germans, the SS says to my father, take the bedroom.
    And they see also heavy furniture.
    And heavy for the collection of their beds,
    or the top of the bed, or beautiful carvature.
    So they said, take the bed, and the tables, and the chairs,
    and for the dining room, that this heavy table.
    Put it in the first room.
    The SS will come, everything will be organized there.
    They should be able to take it easy.
    Not they should have to carry it, schlep it,
    from one room to another room.
    So they said to my father, you take the furniture,
    and put it in the front room.
    My father was tall and strong.
    A young man.
    Was altogether 42 years old then.
    And he says, it's impossible.
    I cannot carry it.
    Impossible.
    I cannot carry it.
    He says to the SS, if you'll help me, I'll do it.
    Myself, I cannot do it.
    Instead of helping, the SS says to my father, [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    I should help you?
    And he punched in my father's face.
    My father falls down, and he starts kicking.
    You should do it.
    My father says, you can beat me to death.
    It's impossible.
    You know, the old saying says, you can jump down a roof,
    but you can't jump up a roof.
    Yes?
    How strong you are, you can jump down a roof--
    but it's impossible.
    Said my father, it's impossible.
    So SS, they discussed, arguing, debating.
    My father says, I cannot do it.
    He says, you must do it.
    So my father says to the SS, you know what?
    Let me go down the street.
    Let me get somebody She'll come up, help me.
    SS says, good, but you have to pay for the helper.
    So my father said, yes.
    I'll gladly help him.
    So my father goes down to the street, innocently,
    thinking he should look for somebody
    he could pay to come help.
    But he couldn't find immediately somebody.
    He took a few minutes.
    So suddenly the thought comes to him, [SPEAKING YIDDISH] God
    Almighty.
    My wife is out.
    My two children are out.
    I should return, go back?
    Then decide to escape.
    To run away.
    And then run away, and this Ivanka met him in the corner.
    And then we came, and we went to the [INAUDIBLE] and a nephew
    and a cousin for them.
    The nephew and a niece.
    Their cousins.
    Now, let me just emphasize fire.
    I'm diverging now a little bit.
    Fire has opposite characteristics.
    Fire can make something which is hard soft.
    Take meet.
    You can't eat it.
    It's hard.
    But you cook it, you boil it, becomes soft.
    Even further.
    Steel.
    Iron.
    It's tremendously hard.
    Firm.
    But put on fire, it'll melt. So fire can use something which
    is very hard, can make it soft.
    But fire has also the opposite characteristic.
    It can also make something which is soft, can make it hard.
    Let me give you one example.
    Eggs.
    Eggs soft-boiled.
    Eggs, the more you cook it, becomes harder.
    So in other words, it has two opposites.
    Can make something that's hard, make it soft.
    Something which is soft, can make it hard.
    The fire of Auschwitz.
    The fire of the death camps.
    Some people were hard, firm, in their observance of religion.
    Made them soft.
    Lost their faith.
    Some people were not so firm.
    As a result of what they witnessed, what they saw,
    what they experienced in the Holocaust,
    their faith, their emunah, their belief in God
    became more firmer.
    And I belong to that category.
    That I was a believer before also, but as a result what
    I experienced, what I saw, my belief in God
    became more stronger and more firmer.
    Let me give an example.
    Somebody who was firm and became soft.
    I don't want to mention his name.
    A famous person.
    He wrote a book.
    And he was originally a very religious person.
    He came to Auschwitz with the Hungarian Jews.
    And he was in Auschwitz.
    In Auschwitz, the 99% met their death
    in the gas chambers and crematoria.
    But some were also shot to death.
    Some were also hanged on the gallows.
    The group of people from Auschwitz went to work.
    They go through the camps.
    Because Auschwitz has camp A, camp B, and so on.
    And they see a gallow.
    Now a little Yiddish boy, yingele,
    is being hung on this gallow.
    So the group of these inmates in Auschwitz,
    one person in the back of this group cries out,
    where are you, God?
    [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].
    Where are you?
    It's a little child should be hanging on the gallows.
    He says, where are you, God?
    So another person, this person who wrote this book, he says,
    you know where is God?
    Hanging on the gallows together with the child.
    That for him, God is dead.
    He lost if HaShem, God permitted.
    A million and 1/2 innocent little children.
    Six million innocent Jews.
    No crime.
    Only because they were Jews.
    He had emunah, belief, in God before,
    but afterwards he couldn't reconcile a compassion
    of the good God, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH],
    compassionate father, with all these atrocities.
    From what he saw, he lost his faith.
    He was firm before, but he melted.
    On the other hand, I saw also the same thing what he saw,
    and my emunah, and my belief, and my faith didn't weaken,
    and they became even firmer, bigger and stronger.
    Let me come back to the first story.
    And so we escaped.
    And later, I'm going to tell you what happened afterwards.
    But then, we came out from the clutches
    of seven SS who were ready to take us to the ghetto in Kosice,
    and from ghetto to Auschwitz, and all
    those Jews were sent then in April to Auschwitz.
    All were killed.
    And we were saved because we escaped from the SS.
    Now let's analyze this story a little bit.
    Why did my mother have to get up 6 o'clock in the morning, Friday
    morning, to get all her merchandise?
    What she needed for Shabbos, 6 o'clock?
    She could have gone every morning?
    Or twice, three times a week.
    She also went to the marketplace.
    She usually goes 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock.
    Why so early?
    It says in the code of Jewish law,
    the Shulchan Aruch, for the honor of the Sabbath,
    of Shabbos, a person do everything differently,
    something more, than it does it ordinarily.
    So my mother, instead of going shopping
    8 o'clock in the morning, or 9 o'clock in the morning
    to the marketplace, she took up herself
    throughout the years earlier.
    So she went shopping 6 o'clock.
    And I suppose she was gone shopping, 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock,
    what would've happened?
    My mother would have been home, and we
    would've been immediately taken to the ghetto.
    And we would've been sent to Auschwitz.
    The fact my mother wasn't there.
    Why not?
    Because the covenant of Shabbat, to give honor for Shabbat,
    that's why starts to be paying earlier than ordinarily.
    So my mother wasn't home.
    So this whole event, she wasn't home.
    The SS said, where is Mrs. Mangel?
    At the marketplace.
    The sister, and then I got out.
    And my father got out.
    Suppose she wouldn't have.
    The fact that we came out, we were saved,
    from the hands of the SS only because [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
    Shabbat.
    It's a miracle.
    Now, let me continue.
    So we were there at my parents' nephews', or my cousins' house.
    But we were sure that after a few days,
    they'd come to take the Jews from there also.
    And, yes.
    Without money, you couldn't do anything.
    We escaped, but without bribing and paying off,
    we couldn't do anything.
    So let me explain myself what I mean by that.
    So we needed money.
    Baruch HaShem, thank God, my parents
    were quite well-off in 1944.
    Although there were persecutions and the oppression,
    they couldn't keep the business so well.
    But anyways, my father had money.
    So where did he keep the money?
    In a vault in the wall.
    Hiding.
    Had one of the rooms near the ceiling.
    Made a little opening.
    They hid American dollars.
    And it was covered with wallpaper.
    And from outside, you couldn't see a thing
    that is behind these walls.
    Only if you bang it in with your hand, you saw a little opening.
    So as I mentioned before, if you belonged
    to a different neighborhood, they wouldn't take you.
    SS.
    So my father says, to his niece, to my cousin, says, please.
    Go to our house.
    And see if it's possible, somehow,
    to get out the money from this vault.
    My father's kept exactly which room, which corner, which side
    of the room.
    And maybe the SS won't watch.
    Maybe you can get the money.
    So my cousin went to our house to get the money.
    And there my father's hid tens of thousands
    of American dollars.
    And you can't imagine in 1944, during the war,
    the American dollar, what it meant.
    Even now, $10,000.
    In 1944, compared to now, is like more than $400,000.
    But imagine during the war.
    But it's tens of thousands, what has my father hid there.
    So she came in, into this room.
    And she sees the SS are all watching from the windows
    out, if they can find Mangel, who escaped.
    Slipped out from the window.
    So she had opportunity.
    She stood up on a chair, climbing up to the wall,
    to take out the money.
    But as she moved up the chair, suddenly one SS comes in.
    She jumped down fast, that he didn't see that she
    was climbing to the ceiling.
    And the SS asks her, what are you?
    Who are you?
    What are you doing here?
    She says, well the Mangels are my uncle and aunt.
    Came to visit my uncle and aunt.
    So the SS says to my cousin, the Mangels escaped.
    This is a few hours afterwards.
    The Mangels escaped.
    Tell them from the SS, nobody can escape.
    We'll catch them.
    If they come back within an hour, we won't shoot them.
    If they won't come within an hour, we'll catch them.
    They'll be shot on the spot.
    So tell them that you come back immediately.
    She comes up with such a good tiding.
    [SPEAKING YIDDISH] yes, I understand.
    That from the SS you cannot escape.
    And we are going to be caught.
    And we'll be shot on the spot.
    But my father says, once we got out, back we don't go.
    Now we're in hands of God.
    Let God guide us.
    Back, we don't go back.
    Once we got out.
    But we didn't have any money.
    The only way.
    And they are closing down, because they
    come closer every day to the outskirts of Kosice.
    They are taking the Jews.
    From the center, from this neighborhood, this neighborhood.
    Eventually they come to the outskirts.
    My mother's, as I mentioned before, two brothers--
    my uncles--
    were still in Slovakia.
    And they had this VIP paper.
    Paper certificates.
    So my mother notified, through a smuggler,
    my uncles, her brothers, we are in dire strait.
    Desperate situation.
    He should get us through the border, escape from Hungary,
    to Slovakia.
    As I said, Kosice became Hungary, yes?
    And like 10 kilometers from the border was Slovakia.
    He should only be-- we can save ourselves
    if we can get back to Slovakia.
    In Slovakia they don't take the Jews anymore,
    because they took all the Jews already in 1942.
    And now, only who remain?
    The VIPs.
    So my uncles arranged, by a team of two smugglers--
    a smuggler from Slovakia to the border,
    and a smuggler from Hungary to the border.
    This smuggler from Hungary should take us to the border,
    and after, the smuggler from Slovakia
    would take us from the border into Slovakia.
    Now, let me tell you next story.
    When they heard-- so the smuggler came.
    Says, how can you go on the streets like non-Jews?
    And especially going through the fields, the forest,
    through the border.
    You have to look like a peasant.
    Who goes in the fields and the forest?
    You have there only farmers who have fields there,
    have forests, for lumber and so on.
    You have to look like a peasant farmer.
    So he bought for us, for four people--
    my father, my mother, sister, and I--
    we got clothed, garments like a peasant.
    You know the big feather boots, yes?
    The women had skirts, not straight skirts,
    you know, skirts one on top of the other, skirts.
    And Sunday, this coming Sunday, 10 o'clock and we
    are going to go to the border, he'll deliver us to the border.
    For somebody else will come to pick us up, take us in Slovakia.
    It was Friday and Shabbos.
    The neighbors heard that we are going to go to Slovakia.
    So one member of the family for the neighbor
    comes, and mother says, Mrs. Mangel.
    I have a little child.
    You know the fate of, what would be a child.
    Why don't you take it also along with you.
    [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH].
    For God's sake, help my child.
    Save my child.
    Take my child also along with you.
    My father agreed to it.
    The next neighbor has a young mother with a little baby.
    Says, you know what to be.
    So, let me just tell you, Dr. Lustiger.
    By Sunday morning, instead of four people,
    the caravan of 16 people.
    With my father agreed to take along.
    When the smuggler, he's a farmer.
    But this one had made a lot of money taking Jews
    across the border, because he was familiar with the territory.
    When he come Sunday morning 10:00.
    And he thought, he's going to carry four people.
    So this is a caravan of 16 people, are there
    12 people in addition to US.
    Says, what?
    I can't take that.
    How can 16 people go?
    They'll immediately catch us.
    These are not farmers.
    Farmers don't go in such groups.
    And moreover, they don't have the farmers peasants clothes.
    Immediately will be recognized.
    They are Jews.
    I cannot do it.
    I will not endanger my life.
    I will not do it.
    So my father says to the smuggler, I promise you,
    you'll get extra $1,000 for each member for this 12 additional
    people if you take them across.
    Take them to the border.
    Money talks, as you know.
    And $1,000 per person.
    My father didn't have the money, but he
    knew that his brother-in-laws, my mother's brothers,
    will pay for it.
    So he agreed.
    He says, but, we can't go like this.
    He has to go home, and bring for everybody clothes
    like a peasant looks like.
    The jacket and the skirts and the boots and the hats
    and the feathers and so on.
    So this took another hour or so.
    And instead of leaving 10 o'clock,
    we left already like 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock.
    But he says, it's impossible such a group of people
    should go, going from Kosice, like 10 kilometers
    to the border.
    Because peasants, farmers don't go in such groups.
    So they have to divide this group into three groups, smaller
    groups.
    Per four people.
    So my father, this young mother with a baby, and another girl
    were the first group.
    Then was make another group.
    And the smuggler, with my mother,
    and sister, and I were the last group.
    And then, the smuggler describes exactly the route,
    how to go, for example, from here to go to Queens.
    You have to go this street, and this street, and this street.
    And give directions until we come
    to this outside of the city.
    It's a big field.
    A meadow.
    In front of a big mountain.
    Once you come outside from the city, there is this big field.
    Will there we all come together.
    From there you take us into the forest, into the border.
    And this journey to the meadow could
    have taken about an hour or so.
    So, my father left, his group.
    And he know exactly how the route
    had to go through the meadow, through the field,
    in front of this mountain, outside of Kosice.
    10 minutes later, the second group went.
    10 minutes later, our group, the third group went.
    As we walked through, actually we walked through the ghetto.
    Had to go to the mountains, had to go through the ghetto.
    We see from a distance a group of SS coming towards us.
    You just can't imagine how my heart started to beat.
    Pouncing.
    From fear.
    He we are escaping from the SS and the SS has warned us,
    from the SS, nobody can escape.
    We'll catch you.
    When we catch you, we'll shoot you on the spot.
    Here, SS are coming towards us.
    You just can't imagine the fear, the fright which I had.
    My heart was beating.
    Tremendously.
    And, eventually, they come.
    So I turned around.
    He shouldn't see the panic, the fear, which I have on my face.
    I turned around.
    And SS speak, and spoke with the leader, the smuggler.
    And he says, who are you?
    So he took out his identification papers.
    I'm a farmer, and this, and this.
    This field belongs to me.
    This forest belongs to me.
    Everything is OK.
    So then they say, we hear that Jews are smuggling them
    through the border.
    Do you know how they do it?
    We are smuggling.
    Can you imagine here that the Jews?
    Says no, no, no.
    I don't know anything, but in case I find out anything,
    we'll let you know.
    And we went on.
    So we escaped here from the clutches of the SS.
    And maybe an hour later, we arrive
    at this place, this meadow, and this field
    under a beautiful big mountain.
    The second group was there.
    The first group, my father wasn't there.
    He didn't arrive.
    So, we just went out.
    We'd been walking at least for an hour and a half, maybe
    two hours, outside of the city, till we came
    to the outskirts of the city.
    So then, we were laying there resting, maybe for an hour
    or so.
    So the smuggler, the leader, says, we can't stay--
    and here, the SS were walking up and down the whole time.
    They were walking up and down.
    And but we were resting.
    We look like farmers.
    That just dismissed us.
    Disregarded us.
    After an hour, he says, how long can we stay?
    Farmers don't stay, don't rest for two, three hours.
    Immediately becoming very suspicious.
    So he says, we have to go.
    I'll take you to the border.
    And then you go to Slovakia.
    My mother says, I will not budge.
    I won't move from here unless Tate is also here.
    He says, Mrs. Mangel.
    He's not here.
    But what can I do?
    Where can I find him?
    She says, maybe he was caught by the SS.
    Just like, remember, where we came, where we went,
    we were confronted by the SS.
    Maybe he also, and was caught.
    So my mother says, I will not move from here,
    unless I know what happened to my husband.
    So he says, what should I do?
    This only stands to reason.
    God forbid, perish the thought, that he was caught.
    But, if not, it only stands to reason, he went back.
    He lost his way, maybe.
    And he went back to the place where we came from.
    So go back to place where you picked us up.
    And from there, you'll bring us, maybe he's there.
    So he says, OK, I'm going to go there.
    So it took another hour.
    And he went.
    And maybe two, three hours later.
    He comes with the whole group.
    With my father, and this young lady and the child,
    the mother of the baby.
    So we asked him, what happened to you?
    Just exactly what happened to us.
    He went, that same route.
    And from a distance he saw the SS.
    So he didn't want to meet the SS,
    so he made a U-turn another U-turn.
    And he lost completely his way.
    Didn't know how to get there.
    So he went back.
    So anyways, so, it's already late in the afternoon.
    Late in the afternoon.
    By this time, could have been like six, seven o'clock
    at night.
    And we were supposed to be at the border 12 o'clock.
    It's already six, seven o'clock in the afternoon.
    So then, he decide he's going to take us to the border.
    Another five, six, seven kilometers.
    The border between Slovakia and Hungary.
    As I said, it was prearranged, he takes us to the border,
    and other smugglers come, take us from there.
    We came to the border, no.
    The whole border.
    You know the wall, President Trump
    wants to make a war because the poor, they come in from Mexico.
    They come in-- there also, the Jews wanted to escape,
    but every 100, 150 meters on the border, the SS
    was standing to watch if any Jews smuggled themselves
    through.
    So now, here we have 16 people.
    A caravan.
    And a dense forest, where the leaves were starting rustling.
    Yes, making noise, rustling, yes?
    Immediately they would catch us.
    So what did we do for this baby?
    The smuggler took out a big handkerchief
    and put the handkerchief in the mouth of the baby.
    The baby shouldn't cry.
    Baby almost couldn't breathe.
    But he says, that's the only way how we can go through.
    The baby shouldn't-- If a baby starts crying,
    even just a single word, and we'll be exposed.
    So he put a big handkerchief, and stuck it
    in the mouth of the baby.
    Can you imagine?
    And we went.
    I was holding the skirt of my mother.
    And my mother held the jacket of my father.
    My sister had the jacket of me.
    It was one straight line.
    Quietly, quietly.
    The trees and the leaves, yes, shouldn't make any noise.
    The rustling.
    And eventually, maybe another hour or so,
    we came to the border.
    But this time was late at night.
    Could have been 12 o'clock at night.
    All these delays, yes.
    We come to the border.
    I said it was prearranged the other people should
    come from Slovakia.
    But what was the arrangement?
    12 o'clock in the afternoon, not at night.
    There was nobody there.
    So what should we do now?
    He says, I only know my way till the border of Hungary
    to Slovakia.
    What's going on in Slovakia, I don't know anything.
    My responsibility is to here, and not any further.
    So now you are on your own.
    Can you imagine?
    The border.
    You are now on your own.
    So my father says, how could you leave us alone?
    You are at least a person that knows forests and fields.
    You know something.
    Take us into Slovakia.
    He didn't even hear of it.
    He says, no.
    My responsibility, I've fulfilled my duty to the border.
    Now you're on your own.
    So what do you think?
    My father promised another $5,000.
    I said before, money talks.
    So by this time, he could have got like $20,000.
    But anyways, my father promised another $5,000, yes,
    he's going to take us into Slovakia.
    He was the leader.
    We walk.
    We walk quietly, quietly, in the field already
    in the side of Slovakia.
    Like Mexico.
    From Mexico and United States.
    You're already in other country, yes?
    As we walked, we see from a distance little, little people.
    Because from a distance, even a caravan--
    yes?
    So the smuggler, this leader tells us, hit the ground.
    Maybe it's SS.
    They shouldn't notice us.
    So we hit the ground.
    They shouldn't notice we are walking.
    What did we notice?
    As we hit the ground, those people hit the ground.
    They went down.
    So we understood, it's our people.
    We slowly, slowly.
    It's not the SS.
    Slowly, slowly we crawled on the ground in the fields
    through a cemetery, all the way until we met those two ladies.
    Two farm ladies.
    They were the smugglers.
    And when they met up with us, they
    said, people, you just can't imagine what kind
    of miracle happened to you.
    It was prearranged you should be here 12 o'clock
    in the afternoon.
    We were here at the border in the afternoon.
    The SS caught us.
    They said, what are you doing at the border?
    You must be those people who smuggle the Jews.
    And they denied.
    They took them in the headquarters, the [NON-ENGLISH],
    the SS.
    Kept on forcing they should admit.
    They didn't want to admit anything.
    They kept on beating them.
    They forced.
    12 o'clock in the afternoon until 6 o'clock
    in the afternoon, they were in the headquarters.
    Tried to force them to admit that they are the smugglers.
    But they didn't admit anything.
    So they let them go.
    So they said, if you would have been here
    12 o'clock as was prearranged, as you should have been there,
    we would fall into the hands of ISIS.
    Remember as I said?
    There was nobody can escape.
    We'll catch them, and they'll be shot on the spot.
    So only because the delay of my father,
    et cetera, all these different delays, because everything
    delayed much later, and became one o'clock at night,
    they took us.
    For the smuggler from Hungary went back home,
    and they took us to their farm.
    We came to the farm of this type, could have been like--
    well, I guess the distance from the border to the village,
    it took us, could have been already by five,
    six o'clock in the morning.
    They took us up to the attic of their building.
    Farmer's building.
    And the attic was a storage place for the hay and straw.
    They removed the straw and the hay.
    Put us in the back of the attic, and they covered us
    with a thick layer of straw and hay,
    because they were still very afraid the SS might
    come to their house and search if there were no Jews.
    But you think what happened.
    Maybe we were there in the attic maybe an hour.
    Suddenly we see the whole building,
    the farmers' building is surrounded by SS.
    And kept on screaming, the Jews are hiding here.
    You are the smugglers.
    They started looking in every room downstairs,
    in the farmer's house.
    Found, obviously, nothing.
    Then they came to the attic.
    And they climbed up in the attic.
    Of course it was by a ladder, with a bayonet.
    And they removed the straw.
    And again, you can't imagine the fear, the fright.
    My heart was pounding, and I almost had a nervous--
    we'll be caught here now.
    They're removing the straw and the hay.
    Listen, Dr. Lustiger.
    Maybe, another, there's a big layer of straw.
    They removed it.
    But they didn't find.
    If they would've removed another 10 inches,
    they would've discovered that we are there.
    And there they stopped.
    And there how we came to Slovakia, escaping from Hungary.
    If all this is not [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] miracle
    of miracles, I don't know about miracles.
    So what I witnessed, what I saw, how can I-- yes.
    The question is, why did God not make the miracles?
    My father didn't come back from Auschwitz?
    I mean, and I'll have dear children
    come back from Auschwitz.
    Why I?
    I don't know the answer.
    Let God answer.
    But if I'm here today, it's only because [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
    miracles happen, miracles.
    And, by the way, my name is Nissen, miracles.
    We're going to take a break here, Rabbi Mangel,
    and we're going to be coming back to this interview
    momentarily.
    We're back now with the second segment and Rabbi Mangel
    ended the segment one with a really remarkable story
    of escape and rescue.
    And now we continue with this journey.
    Rabbi Mangel?
    So, as we ended we crossed from Hungary to Slovakia.
    We came to the little town, Kurima, where my uncles lived,
    my mother's two brothers.
    But there was dangerous for us.
    We didn't have any papers, any certificates for VIP.
    So we had to leave Kurima, and we
    came to the capital of Slovakia, to Bratislava.
    In April, May, they didn't take the Jews from Slovakia.
    But let me just mention that something parenthetically.
    Hitler took the Jews from all Eastern Europe
    from Poland, from Hungary, from Czechoslovakia, from Romania,
    from Bulgaria, from Yugoslavia, from France, another.
    The government, the regime allowed Hitler,
    the Germans to take the Jews.
    Slovakia was the only country during the Second World War,
    not only permitted Hitler to take the Jews,
    take them to Auschwitz, but actually paid a head tax.
    For every Jew who was taken away,
    they paid a head tax to Hitler.
    And what's even more incredible, you
    know who was the president of Slovakia?
    A priest, a cardinal, Tiso.
    We begged the pope, intervene in our behalf.
    Tried to save us.
    Nothing.
    He said he cannot fight against Hitler,
    but he could have certainly fought against his own prince
    of the clergy.
    The cardinal Tiso.
    And not only did Tiso didn't stop,
    but actually not only allowed, but even
    paid for every Jew that was taken to Auschwitz.
    It's a known historical fact.
    But anyways, this was just a parenthetical note.
    So we came to Bratislava in beginning of May,
    or the end of May.
    Slovakia under Tiso, and Hitler decided to take the Jews, even
    the remaining Jews, those VIP Jews,
    make it completely Judenrein.
    Take all the Jews, from 1942 till '44,
    certain Jews were allowed to remain in Slovakia.
    The bulk were taken to Auschwitz in 1942.
    But in middle of '44, they started to take the Jews also
    from Slovakia.
    And obviously, so everybody was taken.
    Even VIP.
    Everybody was taken to Auschwitz.
    So what did we do?
    We all got papers as Aryans, non Jews.
    To hide our identity.
    There was a certain person in Bratislava,
    a Jew was called a moser.
    Moser means an informer.
    He informed to the Germans where a Jewish person or Jewish family
    is hiding.
    And eventually this family or this person
    was taken to Auschwitz.
    He thought by helping, informing to the SS, negated himself,
    and be able to save his life.
    Because by this time, they took all the Jews from Auschwitz.
    Let me jump ahead.
    Whenever we saw on the street.
    Of course, we had to go on the street to buy food, and so on.
    But we were always avoiding this person.
    Because of course, we couldn't speak a perfect Slovak.
    We came from Hungary, now.
    So they shouldn't find out that we are Jews.
    I remember every time we saw this person from a distance,
    a shiver went down my spine from the fear
    that he might identify us.
    But anyways, let me jump ahead.
    We arrived in Auschwitz.
    Eventually we were caught.
    Which, I'll come back.
    Eventually we were caught, and we were taken to Auschwitz.
    I was sent with my mother and my father to work.
    We came to the barrack.
    The very first day, we were put in the barrack in Auschwitz.
    In Auschwitz, there were triple tier barracks.
    One tier, another tier, and a third tier near the ceiling.
    And people were jammed like sardines.
    My father, as I mentioned before,
    my father was tall, nice looking, healthy.
    I was afraid that SS will see and do something to my father.
    So we went on third tier.
    So I was there on the first, after my father was laying,
    and after, the rabbi who was also caught from Bratislava,
    was also caught in the same time.
    So we were all three together.
    Another five, six people on this.
    Now we're jammed like sardines.
    We couldn't lay down.
    We just laid on the side, because there
    was no place to lay down.
    So I was the first one on the third tier.
    By 10 o'clock, all the lights in every death camp,
    every concentration camp, went out.
    Just a dim, little light remained.
    By 10 o'clock, all lights went out.
    10 o'clock in Auschwitz, Birkenau, we were there.
    And the lights went out.
    And maybe five, 10 minutes later,
    we hear a tremendous noise.
    Screaming.
    A group of Jewish inmates.
    They're called the Sonderkommandos, which
    I'm going to explain later on.
    They came into the barrack, start to scream,
    I don't remember the name.
    I remember it started with B. Berkovich, Birrenbaum,
    or something else.
    But that came, Mr. Berkovich, come forth.
    Come forth.
    Come out.
    It was silent like a cemetery.
    Completely silent.
    And this group of the Sonderkommandos,
    the Jews, they were screaming, Mr. So-and-so, come out.
    Eventually, I looked down for my third tier.
    I said, looking down, if I fall down, I'll be crushed to death.
    Just looking down.
    And what do I see?
    I see [INAUDIBLE].
    This is the moser.
    He's the moser.
    So he walked out, the moser.
    Walked to the door, and we mustn't forget,
    these barracks had like 1,200 people.
    Huge, big barracks.
    He walked to the door.
    Those Sonderkommandos started screaming,
    You informed to the SS, Jews who were sent to Auschwitz
    to their death.
    How did you dare to do it?
    How did you do it?
    They screamed at him until they beat him to death.
    They crushed him to beat him to death.
    And they dug out a pit in front of the barrack.
    They put him in, his broken body.
    They beat him to death.
    They had big logs, wooden logs, with which they beat him.
    And they made a pit, a big hole in front of the entrance
    to the barrack.
    They covered with earth.
    And he was there buried.
    Why do I mention this?
    Crime doesn't pay.
    He thought at the expense of Jewish life,
    he'll be able to be saved.
    He was the first one from our transport.
    I'm, Baruch HaShem, here.
    I can speak to you.
    And he was immediately, as he came to Auschwitz, to barrack.
    He was immediately killed.
    He was this moser.
    But let's coming back to Bratislava.
    So we were hiding.
    Where can you hide?
    Again, the SS was continuously searching for Jews.
    So my father bought a villa.
    A most expensive, beautiful, beautiful one family house,
    in a very special neighborhood where
    only high officials, ministers, vice ministers, mayors,
    very special people.
    And the villa was very expensive.
    But my father thought, in this area, they won't come search.
    Because who can who are Jewish should live in this area?
    Very non-Jewish, and a very exclusive, high-falutin area.
    So we were hiding there.
    And of course, from time to time,
    my mother had to go out to purchase food.
    So she also dressed herself, of course, she
    took off the [YIDDISH].
    She used a kerchief, and with a kerchief
    like the non Jews, and the dresses.
    And she went out to purchase, buy food.
    Slowly, slowly, some Jews heard the Mangels
    are hiding in this very exclusive, very special, very
    high, very expensive neighborhood.
    They have there their home.
    Now, Jews were sent in the transports from Slovakia
    to Auschwitz in the trains.
    Cattle coaches.
    The cattle coaches with just a little opening for fresh air,
    but it was all locked.
    Shut.
    Some people could also break open the locks, open the door,
    and they would jump out.
    Jump out from the transports to save themselves.
    Not to go to Auschwitz.
    The majority of those who jumped out--
    there was a strong wind.
    The train is speeding fast.
    The train's speed put them under the wheels
    and they were crushed to death.
    Some jumped out and jumped into a tree or a telephone pole.
    But some were saved.
    So they came back to Bratislava.
    Where can they go?
    They have to go somewhere.
    They are Jews.
    Where can they go?
    So they heard the Mangels have a place in this villa,
    in this exclusive neighborhood.
    So they came to us, knocked on the door.
    My father opens up little the shade, to see who it is.
    Saw it.
    Opened up the door, and let them in.
    Says, Rab Laizer-- my father is a Laizer--
    will you not let us in?
    Where should I go?
    Should I go for sure death?
    I just escaped from going to Auschwitz.
    I broke open the coach, and I escaped.
    What should I?
    So my father let them into the house.
    Eventually, after two, three weeks,
    our house was filled with such people.
    Now, it was a day, the afternoon.
    Of course, we had Aryan papers.
    I wasn't called Nissen.
    I was not called Mangel.
    I had a non Jewish name, a non Jewish where I was born.
    Somewhere in Hungary, somewhere in Romania.
    Different cities.
    My sister.
    So anyways, my mother asks me, Nissen, do you know your name?
    But they're not Jewish name.
    Said, ma, no, I don't remember it.
    I don't remember the name.
    And you know where you're born?
    No.
    You know the date?
    I didn't remember.
    So my mother says, it's dangerous.
    How could you not remember?
    I've come to identify, the examiners, you have to name.
    So my mother gave me again the name,
    my name, my first name, my family name,
    completely Aryan names.
    And same, the date and the city where I was born.
    And let me tell you, that very night,
    that very night, 10 o'clock at night, the bell rings,
    and the Slovakian police comes.
    Then we didn't have so many people yet,
    because it was early.
    So we had, maybe, instead of four, we had six, eight.
    So everybody at the papers asked me what's my name.
    I said so proudly, my name is this and this.
    You know, John McMillan, recited the non Jewish names.
    I said so proudly.
    And everything went smoothly.
    If I wouldn't have known the name, [CLAPS].
    And this very afternoon, my mother asked me,
    do you know the name?
    But anyways, maybe another two, three weeks passed.
    So many people came to our house that we didn't have any more
    place for them to sleep.
    So I had to give up my bed, and I slept with my father
    in one bed.
    My sister gave up her bed and slept with my mother.
    And all other beds, all these guests, all people's refuge,
    who didn't have the beds were staying with us in the villa.
    It was a Thursday night.
    Could have been one o'clock or two o'clock in the morning.
    I was sleeping with my father, and I
    hear suddenly, the conversation, my father speaks with my mother.
    And this woke me up.
    I hear, my father, says Frieda--
    that's my mother's name, Frieda--
    do you hear what's going on outside?
    So my mother says, no.
    He says, listen carefully.
    Our house was surrounded by the SS.
    Surrounded.
    We didn't know by whom.
    Surrounded, because behind we had a beautiful garden.
    So if they come, many people jumped out for the garden
    from the window.
    So they surrounded the whole house.
    There was no way we can escape.
    And, as my father speaks my mother,
    suddenly the knock on the door.
    The father goes up in his pajamas to the door.
    Opens the door, without asking a question.
    Hi, who are you?
    What are you?
    Showing our certificate, nothing.
    He just immediately gets a punch in his face.
    My father rolls from the door, through the alley,
    all the way to the dining room.
    And he says, the SS barge in.
    And they say, Jews, get dressed.
    Let's go.
    So, we were caught by the SS.
    But this SS are in Slovakia, not in Hungary.
    So, we all got dressed.
    And my mother asked one of the SS, you said let's go.
    Where are we going?
    So the SS says, you'll find out.
    You'll find out where we are going.
    So we were taken to the headquarters of the Gestapo
    in Bratislava.
    By this time they caught a truckload of Jews also, SS.
    And they took all this truckload of Jews
    into the headquarters of the SS and the Gestapo in Bratislava.
    We were there.
    It was Thursday night, Friday, Shabbos, Sunday.
    Till Sunday, they didn't give us anything to eat.
    Whether it's Friday, Thursday night, Friday all day,
    Shabbos, and Sunday late in the afternoon.
    So almost three days.
    They didn't give us anything what to eat.
    Luckily there was this big hole, was
    a sink, so we drank the water.
    But we didn't have anything to eat.
    Sunday afternoon, one of the SS comes in with us
    a platter with salami.
    He gives everybody two slices of salami.
    So after three days not eating, everybody [INAUDIBLE].
    Of course, we have something to eat.
    But with my religious upbringing,
    and my religious level, when they gave me
    the two slices of salami, I couldn't
    take the salami to eat it.
    My mother, of course, my mother ate it.
    My father ate it.
    My sister ate it.
    But I just couldn't eat it.
    My mother started begging me, Nissen.
    If you don't eat, you'll die.
    You must eat.
    Said, mummy, I can't eat.
    For me, treyfe, something forbidden, was just like poison.
    If you are hungry, would you eat poison?
    Would you eat nails?
    So for me, treyfe was just like poison.
    I said, mummy, I cannot eat it.
    My mother started to cry, and says, HaShem, God Almighty,
    I want you should eat.
    This is the principle, pikuach nefesh.
    To save a life, you can do anything.
    I did not understand.
    I was taught, I knew treyfe is forbidden.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    I couldn't.
    But since my mother was crying so desperately,
    Nissen, don't kill yourself.
    Don't die.
    Eat.
    So I took one slice of salami, and I chewed it, I swallowed it.
    Believe me, not two, three minutes passed, I threw up.
    I vomited.
    I just couldn't eat it.
    So anyways, my mother said, in this you'll die,
    but Baruch HaShem, I did not die.
    Then from Bratislava, we were sent to the first concentration
    camp.
    The first concentration camp was in Slovakia.
    It's called Sered.
    The city of Sered.
    As a matter of fact, this winter, I was back in Slovakia.
    And when they had also a museum, Holocaust Museum, of Sered,
    the curator invited I should come.
    And the minister came, and so on.
    A whole, also, television and all these interviews
    with newspapers, with all the same shtick as now.
    And also there in Sered.
    So we were there.
    The SS, the Germans, didn't send to Poland,
    had 100 Jews sent to Poland.
    But a few thousand, there was one transport to Auschwitz.
    But we didn't suggest--
    here, 50, 60, 100.
    So Sered was one concentration camp,
    and it brought together from persons from Bratislava,
    from Kosice, different cities.
    But the Jews, so they had to transport a few thousand Jews
    that were sent to Auschwitz.
    So we Sered a few days.
    We were in Sered, and when they told
    when they told us we are going to go to Auschwitz,
    they didn't tell us Auschwitz is a death camp.
    It's a labor camp.
    So consequently, you can take along what you need.
    A quilt, a blanket, a sweater, another pair
    of shoes, or whatever you need.
    So everybody had, my sister had a valise, I had a valise,
    my mother had a valise, and so on.
    So there in Sered, but also the barracks.
    I showed them the barracks and also the courtyard.
    But for the minister and also for the curator
    of the museum on television.
    So we had little cubicles in the barrack.
    So there was no chains.
    We were sitting on our valises.
    Sitting on our valises.
    Before proceeding.
    So they called all the Jews, the 4,000 Jews,
    they made in the courtyard, I showed them where is courtyard
    where they did it.
    They made long tables.
    And on the tables, they put big baskets.
    Said, every Jew has dollars.
    Every Jew has jewelry.
    Must give it here and put it into the baskets.
    So the thousands of Jews passed by.
    I remember my mother took out her beautiful diamond earrings.
    She took off her diamonds, put it in the basket.
    My mother had also a golden watch and a gold bracelet.
    My father had so many dollars, and everything in the baskets.
    Until so many Jews, the baskets were almost full.
    All the baskets were filled with Jewish money and jewelry.
    They wanted only dollars, and also jewelry.
    Afterwards, we went back into our--
    everybody deposited what they had in the baskets.
    This was the courtyard, with long, long tables.
    And then we went back into our barracks.
    We were in the barracks in Sered.
    We're sitting on the valises, and waiting.
    What'll be?
    What'll be?
    Will we be sent to Auschwitz?
    What is meant to be?
    So, suddenly I noticed, my father gestures to my mother,
    like this.
    And to me.
    Something to me.
    So my mother grabs me, takes my hand,
    and takes me out from this cubicle.
    And takes me into the bathroom of this barrack.
    I did not understand, why does my mother do it.
    But she just grabbed me fast.
    Nervous, fast.
    And she takes me into the bathroom.
    And what does she do in the bathroom?
    She rips off the sleeve from my jacket.
    So here there's a padding.
    You know, the padding was thick.
    So instead of putting padding cloth into the padding,
    my padding was all filled with dollars.
    They took out the fabric and only the outside was fabric,
    but all filled up with dollars.
    So my mother was afraid.
    The SS will find, we didn't give, yes, he said.
    Yeah, so I should have said before.
    As we were sitting in the barrack.
    So the SS comes, he's shooting wildly.
    And says, we know you didn't give all the dollars.
    All the jewelry.
    If you didn't give up, you should
    know you will all be shot.
    So then my father when he hears this-- and he
    was shooting in the barracks.
    Shooting wildly.
    So then my father made this gesture to my mother,
    she'd take me.
    And she took me to the bathroom.
    And she rips off my sleeve, takes off this padding,
    and a whole pile of $100 bills.
    Takes out.
    And she tears it in small pieces.
    Small, small pieces.
    And she tries to flush it down the toilet.
    It could have been $5,000, $10,000, I don't know.
    But a whole pile of $10 bills.
    She tries to flush it down the toilet.
    But, you know, little, little papers, she flush it down,
    comes swimming back.
    So as she flush it down, these little pieces came back.
    And here the SS is screaming, you
    didn't give back all your money.
    You didn't give all your jewelry.
    So I see my mother is nervous, and she here, you
    see the piece of pieces of dollars floating
    in the water in the toilet.
    So my mother, in this nervousness,
    takes the hold of all this pile of little pieces of dollars,
    and she takes it in her hand, and pushes it down
    with her hand, all the deep depth in the toilet.
    And she keeps on flushing the water, until all the pieces were
    down, flushed down in the toilet.
    But Lustiger, in this second, when all the pieces of dollars
    were flushed down, we hear a knock
    on the door in the bathroom.
    My mother opens the door for the bathroom.
    Who is there?
    This SS with the rifle, shooting.
    Says, what are you doing here?
    So my mother says, my little son has diarrhea.
    He doesn't feel well.
    Has pains of his stomach, abdominal pain.
    So I brought him to the toilet.
    If he would have come 30 seconds earlier, he
    would have knocked the door 30 seconds earlier,
    what would he have seen?
    That 100 destroyed dollars.
    So I'm just telling a litany, a litany of miracles.
    Let me tell you, which many times I mention.
    You play a game.
    Let's say monopoly.
    You know, you have a dice.
    You throw the dice to get a certain number.
    What's the best number in dice?
    Number six, yes?
    So you play the game, and you get number six.
    What will you say?
    A coincidence.
    Your turn comes again around, and you
    roll the dice a second time, and get again six?
    You are lucky.
    How about you go around and you roll the dice a third time?
    You're very lucky.
    But how about if you roll the dice five times,
    seven times, 10 times, 20 times.
    Every time you get number six.
    What will you say?
    Something's going on.
    Yes.
    But I told you now.
    All miracles about miracles.
    [SPEAKING YIDDISH]
    Yes?
    So that's why this makes me, that I should
    be even more firmer in my belief,
    because what if I'm here, I can speak to you,
    and I can tell the stories of my survival,
    it's only HaShem helped me.
    Let me tell you a story.
    It was many years ago, or several years ago.
    I walked down Orchard street Friday afternoon with my wife.
    You know the famous Orchard Street?
    Every bargain you want.
    Good merchandise, a good sweater, a good shirt,
    a good trousers, a good pair of shoes, a good hat.
    Not nice, but it used to be.
    On Orchard Street you get every [YIDDISH], every bargain.
    And good merchandise at half price.
    So it was Friday afternoon.
    We went through Orchard Street.
    But we didn't go to buy anything for a bargain.
    We had to go to catch a bus.
    We were on Lower East Side.
    We had to go through Orchard Street.
    It was Friday afternoon.
    We walk through Orchard Street.
    And we book.
    A person comes over to me, and says, young man!
    Because then, it was like 30 years ago, 35 years ago.
    I still had a black beard.
    So he says to me, young man.
    Why do you come to my store?
    I have beautiful shirts, bargain prices.
    Why don't you buy a few shirts?
    So I tell him, yes, yes.
    I like nice shirts.
    I like, certainly, if I get bargain prices.
    But not now.
    Says, why not now?
    Said, now it's Friday afternoon.
    I still have to catch three buses to get to Crown Heights.
    It's late in the afternoon.
    My wife urges me, so I can't stop.
    So he says to me, young man.
    For the Sabbath, you forego beautiful shirts?
    And for such beautiful prices?
    Said, yes.
    For me Sabbath is very important,
    even if I can get a big bargain, but I will not
    desecrate Shabbos for shirts.
    So he starts to ridicule, and mock and scoff Shabbos.
    What Shabbos?
    What, so you still believe in the Torah?
    You believe in God?
    You believe in Sabbath?
    So I said, yes, I do believe in God.
    And I believe in the Torah.
    I believe on the Sabbath.
    So he says, what.
    He starts to really mock Shabbos.
    So I tell him, how can you-- and he was a Jewish young man.
    Said, how can you speak like this?
    Says to me, young man, if you would see what I saw,
    you speak the same way.
    So I tell him, my dear man.
    What did you see what I didn't see?
    What you experience what I didn't experience?
    What did you witness what I didn't witness?
    So he takes his hand.
    I don't want to--
    and starts to bang on his chest.
    I was in Auschwitz.
    What I saw in Auschwitz, after Auschwitz,
    I can't believe in God.
    That's what he says.
    If you would see what I saw, I was in Auschwitz.
    After Auschwitz, you can't believe in God.
    So what did I do?
    I pull back my sleeve, opened up my shirt.
    I show him this.
    My tattoo.
    Dr. Lustiger, he became white as my shirt.
    I tell him, tell me how old were you when you were in Auschwitz?
    He tells me, 22.
    I tell him, well, I was between 10 and 11.
    And I still believe in God.
    I tell him, I wasn't only in Auschwitz.
    I was in other six death camps.
    And he sees my tattoo, became white.
    And he goes back to his-- this was on the street--
    he goes back to his store, goes back to his office,
    sits down, slumps down in his easy chair with his head down.
    For a few minutes, I followed him,
    because I wanted to continue the conversation,
    that even after Auschwitz, I still believe in God.
    You can still believe, observe Shabbos.
    But he was completely immersed in his thoughts,
    lost in his thoughts.
    And my wife urged me, it's getting late.
    We have to go back.
    So my wife tells me, you know what.
    Because I want to continue the conversation.
    So my wife tells me, we come back again again,
    and then you continue the conversation.
    So I listen to my wife, and we went home.
    Maybe six or eight weeks later, we come back to Orchard Street.
    We come, and this time I said to my wife,
    this time I'm going to buy at least a half
    a dozen nice shirts.
    And I hope he's going to give me a bargain price.
    We go to the store.
    A new vendor.
    A new owner.
    We ask him, where is the old owner?
    He says, well, he sold the store.
    So I tell him, do you know where?
    You have his phone number?
    You have his name?
    He says, the name he knows, but now I don't remember the name.
    But he does know, where he moved.
    Yes, he sold the store.
    He moved somewhere else.
    And I don't have the name.
    So for me, this is only a conjecture.
    A guess.
    But an educated guess.
    This person was convinced after Auschwitz there's no God.
    And no Torah.
    No Sabbath.
    It's all a fairy tale.
    Nothing.
    And he said, after Auschwitz, you
    can't believe in God anymore.
    When you saw a little boy, 10 years younger,
    more than 10 years younger, was also in Auschwitz,
    with Mengele, which I'm going to mention later on.
    Still believes in God, and he forgo
    a good price, a good shirt.
    That shirt, for a good prices.
    So something changed his mind.
    Was a-- maybe a spiritual awakening, upheaval.
    And he decided he's going to close the store on Shabbos.
    But in order to stay, in those days,
    the competition was so intense he
    couldn't keep that he should have
    the store closed on Shabbos.
    Because of competition, so he sold it
    and moved somewhere else.
    But anyways, this is what some people thought.
    As I said before, the fire.
    Some people thought after Auschwitz, no God.
    But some people thought after Auschwitz, the God,
    their awareness and belief of God,
    it becomes even more convinced, and even more intense.
    Now let's come back to, from Sered.
    Eventually, we went to Auschwitz.
    You must not forget, I'm saying, like, the tip of the iceberg.
    I have to fast forward.
    Everything.
    All the details.
    Even more, this and this.
    Miracles upon miracles.
    But let me tell, we arrived in Auschwitz.
    We're taken off of the cattle coaches.
    We were lined up for the selection, who should
    go right, who should go left.
    We were lined up, and everybody had their valise.
    So, I mentioned before, the Sonderkommandos.
    Who were the Sonderkommandos?
    A group of Jews, had several functions.
    One function was, as the Jews arrived in Auschwitz, with all
    of their belongings, all their valises, luggage, first they
    confiscate.
    They take it away.
    After the SS open it up, see what's in it.
    If it's something valuable, it was sent out to Germany.
    Other ones were just destroyed.
    So the first thing what the Sonderkommandos had to do,
    take away the valises.
    Our luggage.
    Second function of the Sonderkommandos
    was, those who were condemned to the gas chamber,
    the Jews were shoved into the gas chamber
    after the bodies of the people were dead.
    Take out the dead corpse, the carcasses.
    So who took out?
    Not the SS, but the Sonderkommandos
    took out the dead corpses.
    Afterwards, they had to shove, take the dead corpses,
    put them into the ovens, the crematoria.
    And the fifth job of the Sonderkommandos
    was also to take the ashes and spread them, scatter THEM
    throughout Auschwitz.
    So this, as I said, the first function
    was to take our valises, our luggage.
    I was standing, a transport of 4,000 people, a big, big line,
    yes?
    So each line could have been five, six, seven
    people per line.
    Everybody had their valise.
    So they took the valises away.
    And after, they started the selection.
    When this person from the Sonderkommandos saw me,
    a little boy.
    Little children were automatically
    sent to the gas chamber.
    He tells my mother, give away your child.
    The elderly persons will be sent to the gas chamber anyways.
    And save your life, because Mengele
    took a mother and that child.
    Not only the child should go to the gas chamber, but also
    the mother, also.
    So save your life.
    I was holding, my mother holding my hand.
    I felt, this person says, give away your child.
    Save yourself.
    My mother was holding before my hand.
    Suddenly she holds, clutches my hand
    much stronger, as if to intimate, Nissen, my child.
    I will not give you away.
    Don't worry.
    Let me tell you, if she would have given away,
    I would have no complaint.
    Why should two people die?
    What would I benefit if I die together with my mother?
    [INAUDIBLE] to an elderly person, to a sick person.
    But anyways, my mother was holding my hand strong.
    He had to move on.
    Couldn't stay there.
    Because the SS were watching.
    They had to take the valises and the luggages.
    So maybe a few minutes later, he comes back.
    And starts looking for more valises.
    He sees still, my mother holds my hand.
    He says, [YIDDISH], for God's sake.
    Give away your child, and don't let yourself be killed.
    I feel my mother holds my hand even tighter.
    Again, like to intimate, my child, my yingele,
    my little boy.
    Don't worry, I won't give you away.
    Let me tell you again.
    I wouldn't have had any complaints.
    On the contrary.
    If my mother would have, but what would
    I benefit if both would die?
    But of course my mother didn't give me now a second time
    also now away.
    Maybe five minutes later, a huge group of people came.
    So this time, all the valises were taken away already.
    So he saw me.
    He pretended that he's looking between the legs
    of this huge group of people, maybe
    between the legs there's still a little luggage hidden.
    So he cross into the group of people.
    And he says to my mother the following story.
    One transport before, one transport
    before, there was a young mother,
    was holding her baby in her bosom.
    In her bosom.
    And of course, when it came to the selection,
    Mengele saw this mother.
    Immediately flipped his finger to the left.
    As you know, let me just say, how did Mengele
    made the selection.
    He was sitting at a table, a long table.
    But he didn't sit behind the table.
    Always in front of the table, on top of the table.
    He was continuously, continuously smoking.
    And always a cigarette in his mouth.
    And he just stretched out his finger.
    The thumb.
    If he turned flipped his thumb to the left side,
    went to the gas chamber.
    Flipped the finger to the right side, went to go to work.
    So of course, he saw this mother, the baby,
    immediately flipped it to the left side.
    She had to go to the gas chamber.
    Now, once she was on the left side
    with other people, elderly people, sick people, children.
    So Mengele, at least, when a mother goes to the gas chamber
    with her child, let the mother hold together, die, perish,
    together.
    Even this he didn't permit.
    The children were separated from their mothers.
    There were several trucks.
    So the sick people on this truck, elderly people,
    this truck, and so on.
    And this mother was holding the baby,
    as they screamed, to the mother, give your baby.
    To throw there.
    They threw children, babies, children, like dirt.
    Like garbage into the trucks.
    Give your baby to put it into this truck.
    The mother wouldn't separate herself from the baby.
    And the SS screams, give me the baby.
    She wouldn't give.
    The mother-- and everything what he says to my mother.
    And he says, the SS approaches the mother,
    grabbed the baby away.
    The baby was wrapped in a blanket.
    Unwrapped the baby from the blanket.
    Ties a rope, a heavy, thick rope, to one leg of the baby,
    to one truck.
    Ties another rope on the baby to another truck.
    And he directs the drivers to go in opposite direction.
    In other words, the baby was torn to two pieces
    in front of the mother.
    The mother got a nervous breakdown,
    and she just, on the spot, she died.
    Before she had to be thrown into the gas chamber.
    Anyway, so this Sonderkommando intimates to my mother,
    if you don't want to have the same fate, give away the child.
    But my mother didn't give away her child.
    It came to selection.
    They separate the men from the women.
    And came to selection.
    My father, as I mentioned before, was tall, very healthy.
    So usually, a child goes in front of their parents.
    Here, my father said to me, Nissen, you'll go behind me.
    When you go to selection, you have
    to pass by, pass by the table, and just like this.
    You go behind me.
    Maybe some way I'll be able to maneuver, manipulate my body,
    so he shouldn't see you.
    So, I went behind.
    But Mengele did see me.
    And as he sees me, he gets off the table, walks over to me,
    asks me how old am I. I said I was close to 11.
    10 and 1/2.
    I tell him, I'm 70 years old.
    He gives a big smile.
    He says to me in German, [SPEAKS GERMAN].
    Although I know that you are only 11, go with your father.
    Go with your father.
    Why?
    No explanation.
    He sent a million and a half children, here,
    in the course of the Holocaust.
    Why?
    Million and a half children the gas chamber.
    Not me.
    Only God knows.
    But anyways, I went--
    so getting out from the clutches of Mengele,
    as you know, the story with Abraham.
    You are thrown by Nimrod, the Babylonian emperor,
    into fiery furnace.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Came out alive.
    Was it a natural phenomenon, or some miracle?
    Everyone I said, even Nimrod.
    If you come out from a fiery furnace, you come out alive,
    it wasn't a natural, physical phenomenon.
    It's a nes.
    Let me tell you.
    Getting out of the clutches of Mengele,
    who sent a million and a half children, or a million children
    to the gas chamber.
    He spared me.
    Is it anything less than a miracle?
    Why me?
    What happened to your mother?
    My mother, she went to work, my father also,
    I'll come back later.
    My father and my sister.
    My sister was much taller than me.
    Well, she was a year and a half older,
    and she was much taller than me.
    She went through the selection without any--
    a miracle.
    But me, I was a little boy, yes?
    Anyways, I went to work.
    Now, let me tell you a second time when I
    was in the clutches of Mengele.
    I worked in Auschwitz.
    What did I do in Auschwitz?
    What did I work?
    So nowadays, if you want to explode, detonate,
    destroy a bridge, a building, you have a remote control.
    You have a little gadget, you press a button,
    and the dynamite will get.
    It wasn't like this.
    So when the Germans wanted to explode,
    destroy a bridge, or a building, or something else, tanks.
    So they had made a big, big, big string, a big rope.
    In the rope the camouflage a hidden wire.
    At the end of the wire, there was a dynamite.
    They hid the dynamite, for example, on the bridge.
    But if the bridge would explode, so the Germans
    would be there, so they would also be killed.
    Like 100 meters further away, the SS
    would be there, and press a button,
    and the electricity would go through this wire,
    and the bridge or the building or whatever
    they want to destroy, it would be destroyed.
    So they had to have these ropes.
    So they gave me all kinds of little rags of cloth, fabric,
    and I had to braid it.
    And to make it into a string.
    But anyways, let me--
    if I tell you every detail, we won't finish even this in 2018.
    So let me just--
    so, I became very sick there.
    They gave me a barrel of fabric or little cloth, which
    I had to braid them together, tightly wire them together
    to make this string.
    And so they gave me two barrels.
    One, the cloth, the fabrics.
    And when I had the string, the long string,
    put into the empty barrel.
    There was no chairs.
    A piece of rock, I was sitting on a rock.
    Which is also so painful, sitting on a rock.
    Can you imagine?
    And the barrels was taller than me.
    It was like nine.
    We'd started work, 6 o'clock.
    By 9 o'clock, at least 3/4 of the barrel had to be emptied
    already for the flares, and this barrel had to be filled with
    the strings, the ropes.
    The Kapo comes over and sees I'm just sitting.
    And all that cloth all the shmattes were untouched.
    He did not ask me why didn't I do it, why don't I work.
    There was no such in language.
    He immediately starts to punch me.
    Why didn't you work?
    He punched me until I fell down to the ground,
    then start to kick me.
    And I couldn't even answer him, that don't kick me
    because you'll kill me.
    It's not my fault.
    But they were just like this.
    Kick me, kick me, kicked me, until he left me.
    There were two other Jewish inmates
    who also worked, but had a different type of work,
    put me back on my rock, or my stone, or my seat.
    Came around at 1 o'clock and they gave us food.
    Everybody was rationed.
    Let me just tell you, what was the food in Auschwitz.
    We didn't have anything to our name.
    Nothing.
    Everything was, we stripped naked.
    Became this uniform.
    We had this grayish, blueish uniform.
    The wooden boat shoes.
    And what else do we have?
    A little ball, a tin ball, which we have,
    what kept us our pants up, a wire.
    It was attached to the wire.
    These were the bowls.
    When they give us soup, everyone to take the soup.
    What was the soup?
    A little hot water, warm water, a few berries,
    and a few drops of oil.
    But this-- and also gave us bread.
    Now let me tell you how much bread they give us.
    A slice of this, my fingers, not bigger
    than this square, the finger, and not thicker.
    And of this slice of bread, which they gave us,
    3/4 of us already moldy.
    You know moldy?
    This is grayish, yellowish mold.
    But of course, we ate everything.
    And this is what they gave us to eat.
    Everybody's rushing for the food.
    I remained there.
    And I couldn't walk anymore.
    So the Kapo realized, if somebody
    doesn't go for the food, means he's really, really, very sick.
    So then he stopped beating me anymore.
    But let me just add again, parenthetically.
    You know this moldy bread was a blessing in disguise.
    How so?
    You know, what do we make antibiotics out of?
    Penicillin.
    What penicillin from?
    From mold.
    We had organic penicillin.
    It saved many, many lives.
    We at this mold.
    It was organic penicillin.
    Yes?
    Saved many lives.
    But anyways, so it came 7 o'clock.
    I couldn't walk back to my barrack.
    People had to help me.
    I came back to our camp.
    I couldn't speak or move.
    They took me in every camp, because
    at Auschwitz itself, camp A, camp B, camp C, and so on.
    So every camp also had one barrack, which was like clinic,
    Somebody was very sick.
    So they took me to this clinic.
    They opened up my jacket, the doctors looked at my chest.
    My chest was red like red beets.
    They started to squeeze my skin, and a little blood
    spurted out from my skin.
    So they made this the diagnosis, [SPEAKS GERMAN] means
    in English--
    Germans call it [SPEAKS GERMAN].
    English it's called scarlet fever.
    It's a very contagious, you know, it takes five,
    six weeks to cure, to heal.
    And after the end, the skin comes off completely.
    It's very contagious.
    So they told me, I can't go back to my barrack.
    It's very contagious.
    They put me on a little stretcher.
    And next morning, they take me to Lager F.
    Soon I was taken to Lager F. I was on the stretcher.
    And truly I was in a delirium.
    I didn't know what's going on with me.
    I had such a high fever, burning with heat.
    That's why the skin becomes dry, like a sunburn.
    After four or five weeks, all skin comes off.
    And I had such a high fever that I didn't know what's going on.
    But my father came back also from work, inquired where I am.
    They told him, I'm in the clinic.
    He came to the clinic.
    And I was on the stretcher, and he start to say, Nissen.
    I could just open my eyes.
    I couldn't speak.
    He sat down near my stretcher and was speaking to me.
    I didn't hear what he said.
    I just heard a sound, a voice.
    By he said, Nissen, and every so often I open my eyes.
    I saw him, but I couldn't speak to him.
    Once, he says very loud, Nissen.
    I opened my eyes very big, my eyes,
    but I still couldn't speak.
    Came 10 o'clock.
    As I mentioned, in Auschwitz, in every camp,
    10 o'clock the lights went out.
    Whether this is Birkenau, or Mauthausen,
    Buchenwald, Dachau, everything.
    10 o'clock, the lights went out.
    This guy calls at 10 o'clock, the lights went out.
    Just a little dim light remained.
    The SS comes into this cubicle, and says to my father,
    now you have to leave.
    10 o'clock, everybody has to go to the barrack, go to sleep.
    So my father gives a big scream, Nissen!
    I open my eyes, and I see him.
    I see my father, tears trickling down his cheek, crying.
    But I couldn't respond.
    I couldn't say anything.
    And he walked.
    SS says, get out.
    My father didn't turn his back to me.
    But all the way to the door was facing me the whole time,
    walking and crying with tears on his cheek, and let me tell you,
    this is the last time I saw my father.
    After this, I never saw my father.
    I was taken.
    I'll come back to my father later.
    I was taken to larger E. Lager E wasn't only
    just one barrack or clinic, but a whole larger
    for medical experimentation.
    There, Dr. Mengele with a group of other doctors,
    German doctors, made experiments.
    Experiments, I'm sure, as you know, on twins.
    He made experiments on little dwarves.
    If somebody was sick, and could be cured in a few days,
    he was cured in Lager F. And if not, to the gas chamber.
    So I was taken to Lager F in Auschwitz.
    I was there for several days.
    Several days.
    Mengele comes in with a group of German generals, doctors,
    with whom he makes the experiments
    upon twins and on dwarves.
    Why did he make experiments on twins?
    By middle of 1944, Germany, Hitler,
    has so many soldiers young men, over 10 million,
    Hitler was afraid there won't be enough young men
    to be able to marry woman and impregnate the woman.
    What will be the future of Germany?
    There won't be marriages, because all young men
    were killed on the front, over 10 million.
    So he instructed Mengele, you should find out,
    when a woman conceives, how can a woman conceive
    should have not only one baby, or several babies.
    Twins, triplets, and so on.
    So he made on every twin which came to Auschwitz,
    they could be old or young, makes no difference.
    He didn't send them to gas chamber.
    They were sent to the Lager F, where he made the experiments.
    Most painful, most painful experiments.
    There was another group of Jews, little dwarves, little midgets,
    with whom he always made experiments.
    But this was his hobby.
    He wanted to find out how come a person keeps on growing
    and suddenly stops, and doesn't grow anymore.
    There was a whole colony of Jewish dwarves.
    I always thought, where can you find a dwarf, a midget?
    In a circus, not amongst yiden, in a shul.
    I saw in, amongst the dwarves, people.
    Grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren,
    with white beards, with payots, with shtreimel, religious Jews.
    Little, little dwarves.
    Little, little midgets.
    On him they also made experiments.
    But anyways, on this group.
    Now on other people, if they could be healed,
    cured fast, it's OK.
    If not, sent to the gas chamber.
    He comes into my barrack, and he sees a little boy.
    There was only two tiers.
    The bunks were only two tiers, not triple tiers.
    And he sees me.
    He sees me, Mengele.
    I'm not a twin.
    I'm not a midget.
    And he doesn't make on me experiments.
    He doesn't know, who am I?
    He calls over the Kapo, and he asks
    the Kapo, who is this child?
    Who this boy?
    So the Kapo says, a person, a child who has [SPEAKS GERMAN],
    scarlet fever.
    No such thing, sick, not sick.
    Couldn't care less what you had.
    So he gestures to me, I should come down.
    And says the Kapo, bring a stretcher.
    He brings a stretcher, and Mengele tells
    me, lay down on the stretcher.
    I laid down on the stretcher.
    He always had this magical satchel with him,
    and the other doctors.
    He says.
    He takes out a syringe.
    Like injection, a syringe.
    Says he wants to give a [INAUDIBLE] experiment.
    He wants to give injection into the veins which
    come from the heart into the brain, several veins.
    He wants to put in an injection into one of the veins
    from the heart to the brain.
    And he says as follows, if we find the vein--
    because he just doesn't see it.
    He just touches it.
    If we find the vein, and he puts the injection into the vein,
    I'll be paralyzed for the rest of my life.
    If it doesn't get the vein, it will go the my bloodstream,
    I'll be finished within an hour or so.
    That's what he tells.
    In front of me.
    He couldn't care less.
    When I hear what Mengele says about my fate, my destiny,
    my fate, that either I'll be paralyzed the rest of my life,
    or I'll be-- just experiments, he wants
    to make medical experiments-- or I'll be dead within a few hours,
    I jump up from the stretcher.
    And I start screaming at Mengele.
    Look in the face, Mengele.
    And I start screaming, experiment on monkeys, not
    on me.
    And I kept screaming.
    Experiment on monkeys, not on me.
    Believe me, he became bewildered.
    Because nobody just could imagine who
    was Mengele in Auschwitz.
    Truly, literally a demigod.
    Everybody, the biggest SS, general of the SS, the Gestapo,
    were afraid of Mengele.
    When Mengele said something, nobody defied.
    Nobody ever disobeyed.
    Whatever Mengele said, it was like a godly commandment.
    So here, suddenly, a little Jewish boy defies him.
    Disobeys him.
    Doesn't listen to him.
    He becomes white as my shirt.
    Looked at the other generals, and everybody
    was just bewildered.
    What's going on?
    And I keep on screaming, experiment on monkeys, not
    on me.
    And I jumped back to my cot, bed.
    And from the cot bed, I keep on screaming experiment
    on monkeys, not on me.
    I was certain.
    Mengele always had on his belt a revolver.
    A pistol.
    I was sure, in his rage, he going
    to take this pistol, this revolver, and he'll shoot me.
    Because nobody [INAUDIBLE] Mengele in Auschwitz.
    I was sure he would do it.
    He didn't do it.
    So after a few minutes, with these few minutes
    becoming like hours, in fear, dread, what will be now?
    I was sure he's going to send a truck
    and send me to the gas chamber.
    Because in Auschwitz there are no cars only trucks.
    A few hours passed.
    A few years passed.
    A few decades past.
    Mengele is dead.
    And Nissen Mangel is here alive, Baruch HaShem.
    So this I consider the second time in the clutches of Mengele.
    Before I said, if a person comes out alive
    from a burning furnace, it's a [YIDDISH], a miracle.
    Remember, Daniel came out of a lion's den.
    He was thrown into the lion's den.
    And he came out alive from the lion's den.
    Is it possible?
    It's a miracle.
    So I was in the burning furnace, which
    is the first time in clutches of Mengele.
    And then I was the second clutch, in the lion's den,
    and Baruch HaShem, he's gone, but I'm here.
    Rabbi Mangel, we're going to take a break here again.
    And we're going to pick up momentarily.
    Thank you.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Nissen Mangel
    Interviewer
    Dr. Henri Lustiger Thaler
    Date
    interview:  2018 May 08
    Credit Line
    This testimony was recorded through a joint project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Amud Aish Memorial Museum Kleinman Family Holocaust Education Center.

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    digital files : MPEG-4.

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    Restrictions on use. Interview may not be licensed for use in a film

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Mangel, Nissen.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in partnership with the Amud Aish Memorial Museum's Kleinman Family Holocaust Education Center, produced the interview with Nissen Mangel on May 8, 2018.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 09:26:26
    This page:
    http:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn617493

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    Oral history interviews with Orthodox Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

    Date: 2011 March 08

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    Oral history interview with Yitzchok Wargon

    Oral History

    Yitzchok Wargon (born August 28, 1922), describes his family, including his two sisters and brother (born 1930 and died 1932); his extended family; life in Radomsko, Poland; being raised and educated in a Hasidic house and community; his cherished memories of the rabbi and seder, including the music; his family receiving a healing miracle from a rabbi in Kamińsk, Poland; the rise of antisemitism; hearing Hitler on the radio; reading of Buchenwald concentration camp in a Jewish paper; the bombing in 1939 and the Nazis entering Radomsko; townspeople fleeing in fear of more bombings; his family re-entering Radomsko's destroyed town center (had been 95 percent Yiddish); how the Wargon house was still standing but became part of the Radomsko ghetto; the marking of Jewish able-bodied men with colored patches and the forced labor they were made to do, including carpentry; overcrowding in the ghetto; the severe beating of his father; how everyone was holding onto the Jewish belief, "Never lose faith"; the breakup of his family when they were deported into jam-packed cattle cars and many others in town were shot; his father's farewell to him (he told Yitzchok that he had served as a son, "not a 100 percent but a 1000 percent"); the deportation of his family to Treblinka and Majdanek concentration camps; doing nine months of forced labor at Skarzysko-Kamienna ammunition factory; life there, including beatings, lice, and starvation; being marched with the other near-dead inmates to a shooting site and escaping over a barbed wire fence into the woods; being captured, but being given a pass; being provided daily soup until the liquidation of the Skarzysko-Kamienna camp; the shootings of many inmates; arriving in Buchenwald and being counted; the Gestapo tricking men by providing bread if they would tell on Skarzysko-Kamienna soldiers; going to Schlieben concentration camp and doing forced labor; his finger being blown off in a bombing and another prisoner (a former surgeon from Warsaw) saving his life; being sent on a death march to Berlin, Germany; how those who fell were shot and only one third of the prisoners survived; liberation; the concerns about emaciated survivors eating too much; the people who helped him recover; bartering with vodka and packs of American cigarettes; staking a claim on housing and being afraid of being shot; being assaulted by an American soldier involved in black market currency trading; how six weeks after liberation, his Jewish Russian soldier friend (Max, who had been guarding Hitler's bunker) sneaked Ytizchok through a small hole into Hitler's bunker; seeing the dining room and crystal ware and getting inebriated drinking Hitler's 90 proof spirit; recovering on Hitler's couch (realizing the irony) and confiscating the silver set with Führer engraving; entering the American zone; working the black market in the DP (displaced persons) camps, (Weiden and Neu Freiman); moving to Hamburg, Germany; receiving HIAS assistance to move to New York, NY in 1949; meeting his wife who also survived the Holocaust; learning trade; being the only one of his extended family to survive the Holocaust; and his closing statement ("We Jewish people cannot give up!"). [Note he shows photographs at the end of the interview.]

    Oral history interview with Miriam Weiss

    Oral history interview with Miriam Weiss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Finkelstein

    Oral history interview with Ruth Finkelstein

    Oral History

    Ruth Finkelstein, born on October 15, 1927 in Mannheim, Germany, describes growing up in a Polish-Jewish family; her four siblings; her father, who was a store keeper; being frowned upon as Polish Jews by German Jews; experiencing antisemitism from a public-school teacher; enduring stone-throwing from non-Jewish children; exiting Hebrew school; having to blend into the crowd; being prevented from going to parks and theaters; only being allowed to shop during the German siesta (early afternoon); her father being temporarily sent to a camp and returning home physically altered; the deportation of her father to Buchenwald concentration camp (her family received a box of his ashes); Jews being blocked from shelters during air raids; being transported for three days by truck to France in 1940 and the fear and uncertainty she experienced; receiving some assistance by the Red Cross during a stop during the journey; arriving in Camp de Gurs, where they stayed for nearly four months; experiencing overcrowding, straw mattresses, malnutrition, and no medical treatment; her mother’s death from pneumonia; being assigned with her siblings to the children’s barrack and receiving a bit more food; how her older brothers gathered a crowd and provided prayers; being allowed to leave the camp along with her siblings and go to the village; going on a Kindertransport to Château de Chabannes, run by the OSE (Oeuvre de secours aux Enfants); director of the orphanage, Felix Chevrier; having play dates and schooling in the forest while the Gestapo came to the children's home; being 13 years old and providing mothering and education to her younger siblings; Chevrier allowing Shabbat and her younger brothers conducting seder; immigrating to the United States in 1941 under an Eleanor Roosevelt visa; and being taken in by her aunt and uncle.

    Oral history interview with Pearl Benisch

    Oral history interview with Pearl Benisch

    Oral History

    Pearl Benisch, born in 1917, discusses her parents, Reb Leib and Chaya Fraida Mandelker; a teacher who gave her son to non-Jewish family so he could survive and a toddler's awareness of antisemitism, even at three years old; being a protégé of Sarah Schenirer (Shnirer), who began the Bais Ya’akov movement (Orthodox Jewish girls schools, also called Beth Jacob Schools); observing Schenirer’s burial in 1935; writing a biography on Schenirer called “Carry Me In Your Heart”; her family and classmates being deported to the Krakow ghetto; accounts of the Bais Ya’akov girls' support of each other; stories of prisoners singing to cope with starvation and torturous factory labor; a prisoner risking life for a small piece of bread and tossing it to 30-40 people scrambling to receive it; the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto in 1941; the split up of her family; her brother being deported to Theresienstadt (he survived the war); saying good-bye to her parents, who did not survive; being sent with the Bais Ya’akov girls to Płaszów camp; doing forced labor, sewing soldier uniforms; being transported to Auschwitz (Birkenau); witnessing the camp guards ripping a child from a mother, then shooting both to teach others a lesson; witnessing Jews having to jump into pits to be shot (a few singing as they jumped in); enduring beatings; a prisoner sneaking shofar into Auschwitz and blowing it; Rebbetzin Tzila Sorotzkin, the “White Angel of Auschwitz” (formerly “Orlean", also known as “Tillie Rinder”); a notable Bais Yaakov teacher, who after being imprisoned, served as an Auschwitz infirmary nurse/secretary and thwarted killings of countless Jews (and also dared to light candles in the barracks); her Bais Ya’akov classmate, Rivkah Horowitz-Pinkusewitz, who stood up to Gestapo, risking her life for Pearl and others; being transported to Bergen-Belsen; how almost all the prisoners were very sick (many dying); being forced to sew six tops a day for half a piece of bread; trying to observe Shabbos by sewing extra sets on all the other days of the week and turning in those sets on Shabbos; liberation; the soldiers dusting barracks to kill lice; the assistance from Zionist organizations and various rabbis, including British Chaplain Rabbi Baumgarten; staying in a displaced persons (DP) camp; establishing a kosher kitchen; her message to young people “Love thyself; once you love yourself, you can love others”; and her memoir “To Vanquish the Dragon.”

    Oral history interview with Malka Schick

    Oral history interview with Malka Schick

    Oral History

    Malka Schick (née Korn), born in 1944 in Borgo San Dalmazzo, Italy, discusses her family’s flight from Belgium to France; her grandmother’s only son and youngest daughter dying in an air raid; her family constantly moving and hiding from Gestapo; finding safety in Italian-protected France; her family’s anticipation of the Nazi storming of Saint-Martin-Vésubie in 1943; her family fleeing with 1000 Jews, following Italian soldiers over the Alps into Italy, mistakenly believing they were seeking safety; her family being met by Enzo Cavaglion and the Cuneo Jewish community and Cuneo priests; the Fascist forces; how 350 Jews were tricked into coming out of hiding to live openly and the majority of them were killed; her father and uncle hiding with partisans in the mountains, sleeping in the elements, and experiencing starvation; hearing survivor accounts (including Walter Marx and others); the deportations of people in cattle cars; Catholics (one named Anna) sheltering Malka’s mother who was pregnant with Malka; her father being shot and killed while coming down the mountain to meet his new-born baby (Malka); her family’s move to Demonte, Italy; the Christians/Protestants who achieved “righteous Gentile status” (including Priest Raimond), who at great risk to themselves hid and fed many Jewish people; her paternal grandmother’s death in Treblinka; her great uncle’s murder in Auschwitz; life after the war; how her mother and uncle were never able to speak of the Holocaust; returning to Belgium with her grandmother; how even in post-war a Polish Jew returning to hometown to claim his home was shot; having her father’s remains transferred from Italy and reburied in Israel; her survivor documents and photographs of her family; returning to Italy to visit the tree near where her father was shot; documents associated with Enzo Cavaglion, head of Cuneo's tiny remaining Jewish community and the city's yearly memorial efforts; becoming a teacher; and her work teaching the Holocaust to children.

    Oral history interview with Mendel Leben

    Oral history interview with Mendel Leben

    Oral History

    Mendel Leben, born on July 15 (circa 1925-1930) in Konin, Poland, discusses his parents who owned a hardware store; Konin's Jewish community; the Germans marching into his hometown on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, interrupting services (September 13, 1939); the German police entering his home in November 1939 and telling his family they would be “returned in three days”; his family’s three-day cattle wagon deportation to Ostrowiec; being placed in the “Jewish section”; enduring deprivation; struggling to keep his three year old sister quiet; going into hiding with his family; being captured after 18 days; the killing of his mother and brother; spending three months in the ghetto; spending 15 months in Treblinka; his sister and her three year old being shot (his older sister survived); being deported to Auschwitz II-Birkenau; being transferred to Auschwitz III-Monowitz-Buna; his brother and father being murdered (possibly in a gas chamber); being in Buchenwald for two weeks and encountering his cousin; being wounded in a shooting; being transported to a hospital; volunteering for Nordhausen; surviving Allied bombings followed by the American liberation; learning of his brother’s plight (first Dachau, murdered at Sachsenhausen); his post-war experiences in Dora and Bergen-Belsen; the liberated dying from well-meaning but poor re-introduction of food; Buchenwald displaced persons camp, which was guided by American chaplain Herschel Schacter; resuming his studies in Lundsberg, Sweden, where he stayed for four years; immigration with his brother to the United States; and becoming an electrical engineer. (He shows personal photographs at the end of the interview.

    Oral history interview with Ava Schneck

    Oral history interview with Ava Schneck

    Oral History

    Ava Schneck, born on November 26, 1923 in Békéscsaba, Hungary, discusses growing up in an affluent family; having six brothers and one sister; living in an Orthodox Jewish community; the German invasion of Hungary in 1944; the closing of businesses; her father transferring his textile business to non-Jewish woman with the understanding that some proceeds would be sent to his family while they were in hiding; her father being taken to a forced labor camp (he survived the war but died from complications incurred from his experiences); surviving in 1944 Budapest by posing as a Christian (she had acquired false papers); her brother offering a Gestapo member a cigarette, which she believes saved his life (she says not having a cigarette could have revealed his Jewishness since there were no cigarettes in the ghetto); living in fear; witnessing deportations; the shootings; using a code word to identify fellow Jews (she has forgotten the code word); sneaking a little money from their textile business to her mother and siblings, who were hiding; her anger that no country was coming to their rescue; taking a two-week journey from Budapest to Békéscsaba (sleeping in barns) after liberation; the Christians’ fear of Russian soldiers retaliation if they did not assist the Jewish community; her family’s first Shabbat following war; seeking fresh flowers (a rarity) for a bridal bouquet; spending two years in a displaced persons camp in the American zone; receiving HIAS assistance; the food shortages; having a baby; saying goodbye to her mother before taking a two-week voyage to the United States; arriving with $10 in her pocket and weighing only 90 pounds; living in Cleveland, OH before moving to New York; starting an office furniture business; and additional memories of her war-time life, including attending public school, removing her yellow star arm band to fit in and learn, and her non-Jewish teacher walking his student home to make sure they were safe from antisemitic acts. (She shares photographs from her post-war life.)

    Oral history interview with Rabbi Zwi M. Lichtig

    Oral history interview with Rabbi Zwi M. Lichtig

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Chanie Singer

    Oral history interview with Chanie Singer

    Oral History

    Chanie Singer, born June 2, 1935 in Nyíregyháza, Hungary, discusses growing up in a poor, Orthodox Jewish family; having one brother; her father, who was forced into the army; her mother subletting their tiny Budapest space to others in hiding and the landlord threatening to send them to Auschwitz; paying a non-Jewish farmer to hide them in his hayloft and having limited food; how after two months the farmer--fearing he would be caught hiding them--put her family on train and promised they would be safe in the ghetto until the end of the war; the deplorable conditions in the Budapest ghetto; her mother being separated from her children and paced in front of the children’s barracks until a guard let her in; her memories of crying for food at age nine; the lack of drinkable liquids and having to consume urine at one point; the emotions of the people in the ghetto and the feeling that they were waiting for death; her mother sneaking out of the ghetto to find food; how people had been shooting horses for food; experiencing a surprising act of kindness from a non-Jew in the ghetto; being liberated by the Russians; Russian soldiers drinking vodka and singing drinking songs; finding happiness in a survivors orphanage; wanting to be taken in by Israel; rejecting her mother’s invitation to go to the United States, but acquiescing after her mother promised never-ending chocolate in the US; seeing her father for the last time when he came to see the family off; her mother paying gold coins to a truck driver to take them over the border; entering an Austrian hospital and then crossing into Germany at night; being housed at the Rothschild Hospital; spending three years in Kassel, Germany displaced persons camp in the American zone; living in small room and studying Hebrew; her aunt in the US sending care packages and an affidavit to bring them over; a cherished boyfriend who would leave for Palestine; immigrating to the US and arriving in Boston, MA; her aunt, who taught Chanie (then 13 years old) how to smoke; getting married and having four children; moving to New York; and dealing with manic depression but having gratitude for her religious family as well as the US.

    Oral history interview with Avrum Bichler

    Oral history interview with Avrum Bichler

    Oral History

    Dr. Avrum (Abraham) Bichler, born February 23, 1933, discusses growing up in well-to-do Jewish family in Krylow, Poland; family’s charitable endeavors; Jewish community’s superstitions; Hebrew school; antisemitism from Poles in the late 1930s; shock of German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (1939); seeing airplanes flying over and the family packing up everything; crossing the Bug River and hiding in barns that belonged to his father’s customers (from the peasantry); German tanks rolling in, then rolling out; Russians moving in (Jewish communists feeling more comfortable since Russians were feeding peasants); his family leaving once the Russians moved out; going to Volodymyr-Volynskyi, Ukraine, where Russian soldiers arrested his family as "illegal refugees" (this included 11 persons: his father, mother, sister, uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandfather); how the remainder of his extended family were never seen again; being shoved into cattle cars and waiting on the tracks for three days; encircling a blanket around a floor cutout for bathroom privacy; the atrocious stench; a peasant owing his father money and bringing two sugar sacks so his father would have something to barter; receiving only soup (mostly water) at night; the screams from those getting caught under the train when it started to move again; doing six weeks of forced labor in a camp near the Arctic Circle; his four-year-old sister dying from malaria; Jews not being allowed to bury their dead (in the evening a wagon would pick up corpses in streets); his father sneaking into the forest and digging a shallow grave for his daughter (his family always worried an animal had gotten to her body); suffering from illness (malaria and pneumonia) and being treated with superstition (giving away children’s clothes to cure him), suction cupping on body, and the family picking bed bugs off of him until he healed; the family being transported to a Siberian brick factory; working 12 hours a day, six days a week; the temperature getting to 50 degrees below zero and wrapping wet rags around bare feet to insulate inside the frozen ice; eating potatoes three times a day; doing forced work on Jewish holidays (his father was able to obtain matzo); his whole family living in one room; enduring communist propaganda; wealthy individuals being imprisoned, including anyone caught with a gold watch (his father had buried his); being transported by cattle car to Central Asia; being taken to Kyrgyzstan by truck; their realization that they had been dropped off to die (the family ran after the truck to be let back on); doing forced labor for a brickmaking operation in Turkistan, Kazakhstan; the blinding of his cousin’s daughter, who died at age two; his uncle’s wife dying at age 27; hundreds starving; eating leaves off trees; a child in town biting off his own fingertips for food; deaths in the streets; the importance of stealing to survive; his father becoming a master builder and being able to improve their living conditions; moving into a mud house; Communists interrogating school children on their parents’ black market activities and religious practices; the KGB circumcising boys; kidnappings by Russians (the victims were sent to the front and no one came back); the Turkestan market; the beatings of people caught stealing; vendors carrying sticks to defend against desperate starving people; going to the market area after it closed to search for crumbs; his grandfather’s death in 1944; the birth of his sister in 1945; his parents’ desire to return home after the war ended; Russian soldiers sneaking his family on a military transport train; traveling for 6-7 weeks on a dangerous journey West; witnessing the decapitation of a policeman; arriving in Kona, where everything was bombed out; being told that Jews were being killed by Poles; his family learning about the ghettos and concentration camps; going through Lviv, Ukraine and then Lublin, Poland; being threatened by Poles when he spoke Yiddish; receiving assistance from Jewish organizations; seeing the Majdanek concentration camp; witnessing his father’s realization of what had happened in Poland during the war (his father gave up hope that he would find their extended family alive); seeing a Polish girl from their hometown and her warning to never return because their families’ homes were now being lived in by others and they would be killed if they returned; seeing the Łódź ghetto; still feeling vulnerable; living in a kibbutz, which was heavily guarded; details about life in the kibbutz and later in Leipheim displaced persons camp; leaving Poland and staying for three days in a forest in the Russian zone; his excitement seeing Berlin for first time; openly singing Hebrew songs; marching constantly in the kibbutz but finding happiness there; going to Augsburg, Germany and being physically assessed for entry to the United States; the language barrier when they arrived in the US; experiencing hunger; seeing a movie for first time (his shock at Americans eating popcorn while watching shootings on the screen); seeing girls play soccer; his enrollment at Yeshiva University and receiving assistance from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; his appreciation of the US; and his message to others to never give up hope and draw strength from ones past. (He shows artifacts from his boyhood illness, the cupping set, as well as family photographs.)

    Oral history interview with Jeshaye Rosenberg

    Oral history interview with Jeshaye Rosenberg

    Oral History

    Jeshaye Rosenberg, born May 21, 1928 in Debrecen, Hungary, discusses being raised in an Orthodox Ashkenazi family, which included his grandfather, grandfather’s sister, parents, two brothers, aunt, uncle, and cousins; the family being able to stay together throughout deportations; the numerous rabbis in his family, including his grandfather who was the first Orthodox rabbi of Debrecen; enduring antisemitic assaults as a child; the anti-Jewish decrees; ghettoization in March 1944 and being placed with his family in the Orthodox section in a crowded apartment; enduring forced labor at age 15, cleaning-up after railroad bombings; being deported with his family in sweltering temperatures, crammed into train wagons; how many Jews from Debrecen were taken to Auschwitz, but his family was taken to Strasshof; disembarking and collapsing from dehydration after an 11-day journey without water; his coping tools to bolster his mother’s spirit; he’s thoughts that the intelligentsia seemed to die faster because many were secular and did not believe they would survive; how it was hope that kept Jeshaye going; his brothers’ forced labor in foresting (weekly allowance of one slice of bread); his mother making soup from edible mushrooms Jeshaye had found in the forest; his grandfather witnessing his sister die in a train transfer to Theresienstadt; seeing skeletal refugees arriving in Theresienstadt from other camps; many people dying and the bodies being thrown on top of trucks; the general belief that they would all be killed; surviving on grass; towards end of war, his grandfather holding a rare celebration of Seder in Theresienstadt (some matzo was obtained); talking his way into becoming a shoe repairman even though he did not have the skills needed; the 30 min walk to the town's shoe shop; the gentile ladies taking pity on him and giving him a little food, which he brought back to his family; being recruited later as a barber; his envy in seeing Red Cross rescuing Danish Jewish people two weeks before war ended; liberation; an organization distributing Sefer Torahs to rabbis; the rarity of his entire family having been able to stay intact, in spite of deportations, enslavement, and depravity (some of his extended family did die in other concentration camps); many people dying after liberation from typhus and injuries; returning to Debrecen; immigrating to the United States in 1946; his education, employment, and marriage; rebuilding Jewish communities in Somerville and Montecristo, NJ; his pride in having 25 great-grandchildren; and the importance of remembering the Holocaust. (The oral testimony closes with family photographs, including his aunt, who was killed at Auschwitz. He also shares photographs from his wife’s family, some of which, did not survive.)

    Oral history interview with Mimi Weingarten

    Oral history interview with Mimi Weingarten

    Oral History

    Mimi Weingarten, born on February 14, 1929 in Sighet, Romania, discusses her four siblings and parents (only two family members survived); growing up in pre-war Sighet; attending public and Jewish schooling); experiencing antisemitism; the forced closure of her family’s cheese shop; the invasion of their home; Jewish schools being forced to close; the arrest of her father and later her sister; a few Gentile friends sneaking food to her family; hearing rumors about labor camps; the Sighet ghetto; being deported with her family to Auschwitz on the last transport in 1944; the three-day journey in a cattle car to the camp; arriving in Auschwitz; being lined up for selection along with her sisters; being placed in Block 13; being moved to another block and her sister sneaking her into the children’s block; being in Barracks 34; being placed in the so-called "Gypsy" camp in Auschwitz (Zigeunerlager); her heartbreak at seeing her little sister taken away; enduring whipping after getting caught retrieving ditch water; being sent to Birkenau and doing forced labor; an SS officer showing her a moment of kindness; spending four months working on airplanes; going on a two-day march from a factory to northeast Germany; being liberated by Russian soldiers; sleeping in a forest; receiving warnings from American soldiers about the Russian soldiers; returning to Sighet to find her father (she never found him); a Jewish family that had moved into their home and would not take them in; her sister’s marriage; being homeless; immigrating to the United States; her thoughts on Holocaust denial; and her pride at the accomplishments of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Adele Rubinstein

    Oral history interview with Adele Rubinstein

    Oral History

    Adele Rubinstein, born in Hajdúböszörmény, Hungary in 1931, discusses being the fifth of seven children; experiencing antisemitic harassment in school; ghettoization in 1944; the draft of her father and two older brothers into a slave labor battalion; being transferred with her family to a brick factory in Debrecen, then to Strasshof; doing slave labor shoveling snow and coal; her mother bringing them extra food; fasting on Yom Kippur; a forced march to Mauthausen; seeing piles of corpses and starvation; being transferred to Gunskirchen; being liberated by United States troops; her hospitalization; escaping with others to find their families; entering a Red Cross camp; her reunion with her mother and siblings; living in Wels displaced persons camp; returning to Hajdúböszörmény; reuniting with her father and older brothers; traveling to Vienna, Austria; living in Salzburg displaced persons camp; moving to Paris, France; immigration to join her father's father in the United States in 1949; receiving assistance from the Joint; her marriage to a Hungarian survivor; the births of four daughters; her orthodoxy and her continuing faith in God; her reluctance to share her story with her children (her husband did); and participating in a survivors' club. [She shows photographs and documents.]

    Oral history interview with Helen Rubin

    Oral history interview with Helen Rubin

    Oral History

    Helen Rubin, born in 1930 in Rozwadów, Poland, discusses being the youngest of three children; living with her loving extended family; attending Polish and Jewish schools; the German invasion; the expulsion of all the Jews across the San River to Soviet territory; living with relatives in ZHovkva, Ukraine for nine months; being deported with her immediate and extended family to Siberia; briefly living in a barrack, then with a family; her father organizing her brother's clandestine bar mitzvah; being transferred to another barrack; the death of one of her aunts; doing forced labor; receiving meager rations; receiving Passover supplies from a Soviet officer; receiving a package from an uncle in the United States; their release after 14 months; traveling to Zhizzakh, Uzbekistan; the deaths of her grandparents and some cousins; moving to Samarqand, Uzbekistan; establishing a weaving business; attending a Polish school; repatriation to Łódź after the war; learning of the death camps; witnessing the destruction in Kraków; her father selling their house; living in Paris, France, while waiting to immigrate to the United States; staying in a Jewish orphanage; immigrating to the United States in 1947; learning English from the radio; becoming a speech pathologist; and attributing her family's survival to their Soviet exile. (She shows objects and photographs at the end of the interview.)

    Oral history interview with Sara Seidman

    Oral history interview with Sara Seidman

    Oral History

    Sara Seidman, born on August 29, 1922 Turda, Romania, discusses her extensive family; her mother who was a nurse; her sister surviving scarlet fever; her earliest education at a Jewish school; the rise of antisemitism; the public school forcing Jewish children to attend church; finishing high school in Czernowitz (Chernivtsi, Ukraine); teaching in a Bucharest orphanage, where all the workers and children were Jewish but pretending to be Polish refugees; Russian police entering the orphanage and interrogating the children to see if they came from the Russian part of Poland; seeing hundreds of children deported from Bucharest; her family fleeing the German/Hungarian invasion of Turda; bunkering during bombings; her father and grandfather navigating red tape to assist refugees; her brother’s death at sea; her father being assaulted by Russian soldiers; being harassed by the soldiers; going to Prague, Czech Republic a few months after the war; going to Nuremberg, Germany; being chased off a train in France for being Jewish; ending up in Augsburg, sheltered by a rabbi; working as a teacher while her mother worked as a nurse at Föhrenwald displaced persons (DP) camp; the traumatized girls and women survivors; struggling to cheer up the children who were mourning their lost mothers; conditions in the DP camp, including the clothing and lice treatments; salaries in the camp and her mother bartering to assist survivors; her memories of Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam in the DP camp; her thoughts on agunah; Chaplain Rabbi Alexander Rosenberg; teaching in Paris (Fublaines); obtaining papers for entry into the United States. (She shows family and school photographs, including photos from 1947 where children are smiling.)

    Oral history interview with Seymour Kaplan

    Oral history interview with Seymour Kaplan

    Oral History

    Seymour Kaplan, born September 6, 1926, discusses his idyllic childhood in Brooklyn, NY; his family being financially strapped; experiencing some antisemitism; his memories of having visitors to their home who relayed that Jews abroad were being killed; hearing about Pearl Harbor on the radio; being eager along with the other neighborhood kids to get into the military service (his brother served in Guadalcanal); the army induction process; leaving the US by ship in 1945; landing on Normandy beach; his combat duty in Nuremberg and Munich; his code name “Chico Blue”; hearing of Roosevelt’s death; speaking Yiddish to communicate with Germans; arriving in German towns; seeing Dachau concentration camp; his shock at seeing a pile of skeletal bodies (there was a Nazi officer on top); how the soldiers seeing Dachau for first time began crying and many threw up; speaking to the former inmates; speaking to a former Nazi guard; finding 36 box cars packed with murdered Jews; catching a SS trying to put on a striped prisoner uniform; hearing that an improper reintroduction of food could kill the emaciated survivors; returning to the US; his family’s disbelief over what he had witnessed; deciding not to speak about what he had experienced; and the 692 Tank Destroyer Battalion chart.

    Oral history interview with Mayer Glickman

    Oral history interview with Mayer Glickman

    Oral History

    Mayer Glickman, born in 1926, describes growing up Jewish in pre-war Sosnovitz, Poland; the rise of antisemitism in 1939; the German invasion and fleeing with his family; returning home in 1940; the men of the twon being forced to go to the police station to have their beards cut off (his father was given a pass since he was respected); the deportations beginning in 1941; the rumors of atrocities in Auschwitz; the gathering of all the Jews in a field in 1942; the selection process; his mother’s despair; his family not being selected because of the local esteem for his father; the deportation of his family in the middle of the night sometime in 1943; being sent to do forced labor loading sacks of cement; being sent to Katowice, where he worked in a steel mill; being transferred to Markstadt labor camp; surviving on bread made of chestnuts; enduring beatings and injuries while laying train tracks; the arrival of the Hungarian workers; going on a three-day march; sleeping in a barn; arriving at Gross-Rosen camp; being transported to Weimar, Germany, and going to Buchenwald camp; the lack of space in the barracks and staying in the shower for two days; his methods for surviving Buchenwald; liberation of the camp; being stricken with typhoid; the US Army chaplain Rabbi Herschel Schacter; going to Switzerland and being placed in Engelberg children’s home; discovering his brother had survived Auschwitz; reuniting with his brother in Belgium; immigrating to the United States in 1948 on the “SS Washington”; his experiences on Ellis Island; becoming a pattern maker; entering the diamond cutting business; living in Israel (1970-1982); returning to the US for his son’s education; photographs he received from soldiers at Buchenwald (he shows them during the interview); and his 90 year old grandfather (a rabbi) who was killed at Auschwitz.

    Oral history interview with Shmuel Wolfe

    Oral history interview with Shmuel Wolfe

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gittel Wolfe

    Oral history interview with Gittel Wolfe

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lea Greenstein Chopp

    Oral history interview with Lea Greenstein Chopp

    Oral History

    Lea Greenstein Chopp, born on October 15, 1929 in Stachy, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), discusses growing up an only child; her family owning a large department store; her mother encouraged Lea to share their wealth with others; her loving memories of her father; Jewish life in their small town; the Hungarian takeover in 1939; attending a Hungarian school; having the measles during the roundup of Jews; being transported with her family in open trucks; spending three weeks in a brick factory in Uzhgorod, Ukraine; her father paying someone off for their release and Lea’s mother refusing to leave her parents; arriving in Auschwitz and her memories of the sounds and smells; the separate lines for women and men; women’s heads being shaved; being separated from her mother; having diamonds sewn on her garments and shoes; staying in Auschwitz for four months; being transferred to another camp in Poland; doing forced labor digging trenches in frigid conditions; being transported to another part of Poland; almost giving up and being encouraged by the other female inmates; being liberated by Russians; catching a train with three other girls; returning to Czechoslovakia and finding shelter with Jews who survived in hiding; still experiencing nightmares; returning to Stachy; the destruction of her home which had been bombed; staying with a Gentile neighbor; going to Prague, where she found her uncle alive; being in a Red Cross hospital; writing to an uncle in the United States; immigrating to the US; meeting her husband; having three children and four miscarriages; and her great-grandchildren.

    Oral history interview with Hadassah Carlebach

    Oral history interview with Hadassah Carlebach

    Oral History

    Hadassah Carlebach (née Hadassa Schneerson), born in 1927 in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), Russia, discusses her father, Rabbi Schneour Zalman Schneersohn (also spelled Schneerson and Chneerson), who was active in Jewish rescue activities before and during the war; the number of children that Rabbi Schneerson saved; the challenges of being born an unregistered Hasidic Jew in antisemitic pre-war Russia; her mother, Sara, and brother; her father moving the family to Moscow; her father’s job in channeling US philanthropic funds to Jews in need; her father’s clandestine activities, sheltering people in the family’s small apartment; hiding from the Russian police (her father was arrested 16 times); how those in hiding sometimes danced and sang to transcend their difficulties; the 1935 interrogations of Jews; her family’s immigration to Palestine, assisted by Joseph A. Rosen (Russia would not allow transfer of Jews to US or Europe, only Palestine); going on a 12-day voyage; settling in Jaffa; her father being unhappy with Tel Aviv’s socialism; moving with her family in 1936 to Paris, France, where her father created the Association des Israélites Pratiquants (AIP, also called Kehillat Haharedim); her father starting a kosher soup kitchen as well as a synagogue and Hebrew school; the beginning of the war in 1939; her father being assigned by the OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants) to a kosher children’s home, the Chateau des Morelles in Brout-Vernet; her father keeping the children on a strict schedule as they carried out farm life; the German invasion and the deportation of Jews; her father moving the children's home to Marseilles, France to la Maison de Beaupin; her father forming a radio technology school for young men and a pattern-making school for young women; fleeing in 1942 to Dému, France; her father moving the children to Chateau du Manoir within Saint-Étienne-de-Crossey, France; the Italians telling her father to follow them to Nice; how the Germans were waiting in Nice and members of the party were captured; Leon Poliakov (member of resistance), who smuggled the children back to Voiron; her work as a cook for the children and also as a teacher; the capture and torture of her mother; her mother’s release; how most of the children in the home were smuggled into Switzerland; her family’s return to Paris; adjust to life after the war; her family’s immigration to the United States in 1947; getting married in 1949; and her thoughts on the lauding of non-Jewish rescuers.

    Oral history interview with Helen Weiss

    Oral history interview with Helen Weiss

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Helene Rubin

    Oral history interview with Helene Rubin

    Oral History

    Helene Rubin, born May 16, 1926 in Vișeu de Sus, Romania, discusses being in a family of eight children; her parents; one of her brothers dying as an infant from scarlet fever; growing up in a town that was part of Czechoslovakia during the interwar period; her father’s shop; her family’s thwarted plans to evacuate to Timisoara, Romania; being taken with her family to a ghetto; being deported on a train to Auschwitz when she was 18 years old; the selection process and being separated from her sister and father; the shaving of her head; being placed in Block 31; staying with her sister and aunt the entire time; the frequent selections; the birth of a baby in the camp that was then killed; being transported to Sosnowitz labor camp, where she had to dig ditches; developing a toothache and being taken to a dentist; the songs of faith they used to cope during their imprisonment; speaking about cooking with other prisoners; being marched for five weeks and going to Bergen-Belsen; the fights over food between the prisoners; being assaulted at Bergen-Belsen and the perpetrator apologizing; having lice and getting typhoid; the numerous deaths of inmates; liberation; the deaths of many of the survivors when they were reintroduced to food; being sprayed with DDT for the lice; going with her sister to Sweden; staying in a hospital for four weeks; living in a nursing home; reuniting with their aunt (her aunt discovered that her husband had survived); living in a DP camp and receiving assistance from Rabbi Jacobson; working in Sweden; and immigrating to the United States in 1946. (At the end of the interview Helene sings the melody to a song.)

    Oral history interview with Esther Peterseil

    Oral history interview with Esther Peterseil

    Oral History

    Esther (Himmelfarb) Peterseil, born December 23, 1924 in Będzin, Poland, discusses her Orthodox family; being one of nine children; her grandfather who built the first brewery in Poland; pre-war Będzin, including the coal mines, Christian Poles, Jewish life, public school, and vacations; the Nazi invasion in 1939; the synagogue burning with people in it on September 8, 1939; Jews being shot on the street; the curfew for Jews; Jews having to give up their businesses; the capture of her brother and sister, whom she never saw again; her parents being taken and her father escaping capture; wearing a yellow star armband; negotiating to bring her mother home; hiding with her family for two years in a tunnel that extended to the next door building; being discovered and sent to the town’s ghetto; doing forced sweatshop labor, making Nazi soldier uniforms; the liquidation of the ghetto and being sent with her family to Auschwitz in 1943; the journey in the cattle car; being separated from her 49-year-old mother; staying with her sister; the shaving of their heads; being quarantined in a large room for several days; conditions in the barracks; the early morning selections; meeting her brother at the barbed wire and sharing bread with him; being assaulted for begging for the guards to spare her sister and Auschwitz Commandant Höss allowing her sister to be removed from the list after a display of willpower and bravery from Esther; marching to Birkenau; living in Barrack 27 for two years; being sent on a death march to Ravensbrück; experiencing frostbite; being forced to dig ditches used to hide the dead; life after the war; finding her brother in Będzin; and her sister’s death in a displaced persons camp.

    Oral history interview with Moshe Apter

    Oral history interview with Moshe Apter

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Julius Tauber

    Oral history interview with Julius Tauber

    Oral History

    Julius Tauber, born in 1928 in Șimleu Silvaniei, Romania, describes being orphaned and raised by his grandfather; the family’s textile store; the rise of antisemitism; the forced cutting of beards; hardships in the ghetto; his brother drinking from the river and being punished for doing so; his grandfather and brother receiving 25 lashings each and surviving; his sister and step-sister and their struggles to feed their babies; being 15 years old when he was sent to Auschwitz on a cattle car; being placed in a children’s barrack; being forced to stand in the cold; forced labor; his Auschwitz number; meeting Elie Wiesel; marching to a smaller camp; working in the kitchen with his brother; obtaining matzo; sneaking out food from the kitchen; going on a death march out of Auschwitz; being liberated by Russian troops; going to an American-run displaced persons camp; his faith after enduring the Holocaust; returning with his brother to their hometown; immigrating to the United States; living with their aunt and uncle; Jewish life in the US; his work life; getting married; and his final message: “Doing good for others is the most important thing in the world.”

    Oral history interview with Vilmos Greenwald

    Oral history interview with Vilmos Greenwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Bistriz

    Oral history interview with Joseph Bistriz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bronia Brandman

    Oral history interview with Bronia Brandman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Itel Landau

    Oral history interview with Itel Landau

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Baruch Gross

    Oral history interview with Baruch Gross

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irving Roth

    Oral history interview with Irving Roth

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Arthur Schwartz

    Oral history interview with Arthur Schwartz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ernest Gelb

    Oral history interview with Ernest Gelb

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Yitzchok Baruch Schachter

    Oral history interview with Yitzchok Baruch Schachter

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Salamon

    Oral history interview with Ruth Salamon

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Avraham Zelcer

    Oral history interview with Avraham Zelcer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Chaya Small

    Oral history interview with Chaya Small

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gitty Maryl

    Oral history interview with Gitty Maryl

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lilly Veron

    Oral history interview with Lilly Veron

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with David Corn

    Oral history interview with David Corn

    Oral History

    David Corn, born in Berlin, Germany in 1930, discusses his relationship with his uncle, the esteemed Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg.

    Oral history interview with Gaston Braun

    Oral history interview with Gaston Braun

    Oral History

    Gaston Braun discusses his experiences as a childen child in France.

    Oral history interview with Tzipera Fayga Waller

    Oral history interview with Tzipera Fayga Waller

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ethel Kleinman

    Oral history interview with Ethel Kleinman

    Oral History

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