Bernard Meier

Name of Interviewee: Bernard Mayer

Name of Interviewer: Ronit Wilder

Cassette Number: VD/487

Testimony Number: 03/

Interviewer: It is the sixth of June, 1994. This is an interview with Mr. Bernard Mayer. You were born in Drohobycs, Poland, in 1928?

Bernard Mayer: Right.

Interviewer: Can you tell me something about your family?

Bernard Mayer: Before the war, my family consisted of my father, mother, two brothers and a sister and myself. We were four children. My father was married the second time and he had three children when he married my mother. I was the youngest. The difference was twelve year-difference between my youngest brother and myself. At the time when the Russians came, in June of 1941, I lived with my mother, my brother, Jacob and my sister Klara. My oldest brother was married. He was married and lived away from home with a wife and two children.

My father died in 1937 at a young age and my mother ran the household with my sister and my brother and myself. When the Germans came, we were a family at that time.

Interviewer: What was you parents' occupation?

Bernard Mayer: My father was a cattle importer when he was working and he also was trading in oil shares because it was the area where there was oil. We lived a middle class standard. We had a maid. My mother, when my father died, opened a chocolate store and my brother worked also in a store as a salesman. My sister - in those days girls didn't go to work. They were waiting to get married so my sister was home helping out my mother.

I had a very happy childhood because I was the youngest. I was sheltered by my sister and by my brother and by everybody. I attended schools.

Interviewer: You studied in a general school, not a Jewish one?

Bernard Mayer: I studied in public schools.

Interviewer: Were you a religious family?

Bernard Mayer: We were traditional. As in those days, we were not Hasidic, but we were observing kashrut and my mother lit candles, but I spoke Polish at home. We read Polish books. We went to synagogue at times, but not very frequently.

Interviewer: Your parents spoke Polish or Yiddish?

Bernard Mayer: My parents spoke Yiddish and also my sister and brother spoke most of the time Yiddish with my mother, but I already spoke Polish, but I understood Yiddish.

Interviewer: You learned Ukrainian only outside of school?

Bernard Mayer: No, in school. I learned Ukrainian.Then the Russians came in and I learned Russian and also a foreign language - German. At one time, I was studying four languages at the same time and I was only about eleven, twelve years old that time.

Interviewer: Your parents, yourself, you had gentile friends at that time?

Bernard Mayer: We lived in a gentile area. Our neighbours were gentiles. The city was very much integrated. I had a number of gentile friends. My mother had a number of gentile people that she was friendly with.

Interviewer: Do you remember antisemitic incidents as a child?

Bernard Mayer: I didn't experience much antisemitic incidents. But at times in school some of - we called them the bad boys - they would call: "Dirty Jew". They would say: "Jew, got to Palestine". But these were very rare and I found that the teachers were very caring. Most of them were Polish teachers. We had some Jewish teachers, too. They were not antisemitic. There was sort of a feeling at times that the Polish intelligentsia and around in the late thirties, as I recall, they didn't like Jewish people, the Jews being in business. So they sort of made many remarks, but these were high school or college people. I remember that Jews were not allowed to get into medical school in Poland. As I was approaching the age to go to high school which was a Polish high school, my mother said that most likely I wouldn't be accepted because they had a quota for Jews to go into the Polish high school. So there was also a Jewish high school and I was supposed to have gone to the Jewish high school at that time.

Interviewer: You mentioned you were told to go to Palestine. Did your family, did they have any connection to Zionism at that time?

Bernard Mayer: Yes. My brother was a Zionist. He was Betar. I was too young still. He used to take me along to the meetings and when Jabotinski came to town in 1937 or 1939, I don't remember the exact date, he took me along because Menachem Begin married in my town and so he took me along to that occasion. I think it was in 1939. I'm not sure. It was '39 or '38.

Interviewer: Do you remember when the war broke out, I mean, first in '39 between Germany and Poland?

Bernard Mayer: Yes.

Interviewer: Did it affect you?

Bernard Mayer: I remember it very vividly. I was affected because when the war broke out, there were only a few days, the Germans came in for a few days and then the Russians came in immediately. It affected us because my mother lost her store and she had to go to work to a factory, a coffee factory where my brother worked also. They were not allowed to own businesses. Then personally it didn't affect me really. As a matter of fact, it enhanced my life during that time. They were very happy days for me. Number one, I was able to go to a music school which I always wanted to study. I was given free lessons under the Russians to go to a music school. I also joined a choir. I joined an orchestra. I played the mandolin. At that time, the Russians really emphasized a lot for children. They had given a lot of support. We had a Pioneer. We were busy all the time until the Germans came in in June of 1941, but during the two years, I personally, my mother maybe not have been so, she was not so happy with it, but I personally was, didn't feel any stress whatsoever.

Interviewer: Did you have uncles, grandfathers and so on in your surrounding?

Bernard Mayer: Yes. We lived in town. My family consisted of, I had one grandfather who lived with my aunt and my mother had two sisters. We were close. We lived on the same street. I had cousins I was very close to. I had two cousins. One was attending the medical school in 1941 when the Germans came in. She was attending Lvov, the medical school already. The other one was an accountant. We had a very close relationship.

Interviewer: Do you remember refugees came to you town after '39?

Bernard Mayer: We had some refugees that came to town, but not many. We had a couple of people who came from Vienna yet in 1937 or '38, I think, and then in my school, there was a couple of boys that came from the western part of Poland. What happened, the Russians considered them to be undesirables and what they did it is they deported them. I remember because all of a sudden my friend didn't show up in school. One night they came and they took him away, the entire family. I assume that this was probably a blessing for them and maybe they survived in Russia because if they would have remained, they would probably be dead.

Interviewer: But at that time you didn't hear stories about what's going on in Poland?

Bernard Mayer: We didn't hear so much We knew that the Germans have put the people into a ghetto in Warsaw, sometime during that time, as a child I remember that, but we considered Russians to be a very strong army and we thought that we would be protected from the Germans. So, therefore, there was no so much concern. As a matter of fact, when the Russians retreated on June 29, 1941, very few people retreated with them. They didn't believe...First of all, they thought this is just temporary. The Russians are going to be coming back. Second of all, they didn't believe that we were threatened with our lives. We thought it is just the Germans are not nice people, but they are not going to kill us. If we would have known that, most likely we would have run away, probably most people would have. At that time, in 1941, in June 1941, we had no idea that this would happen. It was very difficult to leave a home. We were entrenched in that. We had a family there. We had our house there. You just don't pick yourself up and just leave like that. But there were a few young people that did leave, people that were working for the Russians or youngsters in their teens. They would leave town.

Interviewer: Under the Soviet regime, your brother stopped being Zionist, active Zionist?

Bernard Mayer: Oh yes. Under the Soviet regime, you couldn't attend anymore Zionist organizations. The entire system had changed. We had to become very loyal patriotic Russian citizens. We became Russian citizens now naturally. As a matter of fact, I remember when they asked me in school what my father was doing because you had to tell what your father was doing, so I was told to say that he was a farmer, because I couldn't tell he was a businessman. We all tried to say that we were all workers and proletariat. My mother was working. I never mentioned my mother had a store. So all these things had changed at that time. It didn't really affect me because I just went along with this system and as a child, I was quite happy.

Interviewer: As a child, you liked communism?

Bernard Mayer: Yes. I mean, I didn't probably think much, but I think what affected me, the reason I did like it more is because I felt when the Polish were, there was more antisemitism and here I was able to go to school without any discrimination. At that time, the Russian brought in Jewish theatre, Yiddish theatre to our town. We felt sort of, I personally felt that it was a better life for me than being discriminated. You were no longer allowed to say "Jew" in Russia. If you would say "Jew", you had to say "Ivrei" instead of "Jid". I sort of felt comfortable, but as a child, I didn't realize then what was coming isn't really...

Interviewer: You remember your Bar Mitvah?

Bernard Mayer: The Bar Mitvah was already when the Germans came in.

Interviewer: February, '41 was your Bar Mitvah. No?

Bernard Mayer: Yes. We didn't have much of a Bar Mitvah. I went only to synagogue and said the "haftorah". I think there was some cake and wine.

Interviewer: Economically you still managed?

Bernard Mayer: We managed pretty good at that time because my mother worked and my brother worked. Life hadn't changed much for me anyway. You couldn't buy things in those days. You didn't have any...but as a child, I probably wasn't deprived of anything that I can think of.

Interviewer: Do you remember when the war began?

Bernard Mayer: I remember distinctly, yes. That was in June in 1941. We heard that the Germans, it was a Sunday morning when the Germans attacked Russia. We were very much surprised. Chaos became in our town. My brother was away on vacation at that time. He had difficulty coming back because all the transportation completely stopped. We just didn't know what to do with ourselves. Within a few days, the Germans came and here we were. We were with the Germans. Within a few days, a couple of days later, they came around our house and they dragged my brother out to do some work, some labour. We didn't know what to think. I was at that time a youngster and I was home. Within a few weeks, they notified us in the Judenrat that we need to wear white armbands and also they notified us that we have to take all the furs, radios and jewelry, all the precious things that anyone had, they had to bring it to the, I think it was the Gestapo or there was a building in town to bring it.

As time progressed, we had the problem of our community was that people didn't have any means of earning a living because anybody that worked didn't get paid. The only thing, my borther used to bring a quarter of a bread, like a pound of bread. All Jews started to trade, exchange things what they had in their house. They would barter - clothing, dishes, with the peasants. They would go out and exchange with them whatever they had, but there were some people who didn't have anything. There were some very poor people who didn't have anything. Those people started to get sick and I remember the winter of 1941-42 was a very difficult time for many, many people because they couldn't get heating material. They couldn't get food. It was a tragic time. I saw myself people on the street that died on the street and they were just left on the street. People just froze to death. It was very cold in those days, especially children suffered a lot.

Interviewer: What happened to you?

Bernard Mayer: I actually was with my mother. We were fortunate that my brother went to work back to the factory that he worked when the Russians were, the same factory. They were making coffee. The only person that went back to work was my brother. To make coffee, he was the only one in town that knew how to make coffee, how to roast. There was a roasting machine, a large roasting machine and he knew how to roast that coffee. So they hired him back and over there, they developed a scheme. The owner or the manager of the factory was a Ukrainian man, but actually he was just a manager. He was managing for the Germans. My brother and this man developed a scheme where they would cheat the Germans. They were making coffee out of grain because coffee was not available at that time. So they roasted grain. They would develop a scheme that my brother add water to the final product and remove some part of the grain and then he would bring home and they would grind it and my mother would make bread out of it and some of it was sold. So we were in a very fortunate situation in that particular time.

We helped others in my family. My mother would make bread and give it to the neighbours and so on and to my aunts and my grandfather because we were the only ones that had some things that were available to us. In December of 1941, my brother decided, I was going to be fourteen years old, approaching fourteen years of age, that I should not hang around and even though I was small and slim. I have to mention that we were completely disenfranchised. We had no right going to school. The Jewish children, we had no rights going to libraries and borrow books. We were not allowed to go to the movies and so on. I decided and my brother especially decided that I should join a camp, a labour camp even though I was not getting paid, but at least I'll be working and show that I'm a useful Jew.

Interviewer: Before December, what were you doing?

Bernard Mayer: I was doing nothing. I was still a child. I was home with my mother. I was only thirteen years old. I was helping - the grain, for example, that my brother would bring, I would carry it to my aunt. I would pick up some potatoes to bring to the house. I would go out and gather some food so we would have to eat. We were able to do that because we had this grain coming in from this factory.

Interviewer: Your sister was still home at that time?

Bernard Mayer: Yes, she was home and my mother was home, too. No, my sister went to work already. My sister went to a "garterei" which is a nursery. The Germans set up a nursery sort of. So she was working already then. She went back to work. My mother didn't. Even though she was only fory-one years old, they considered her too old to go to work for the Germans because the Germans saw an older person working, immediately they would take them away, so my mother was sheltered at home.

Interviewer: When you are talking about your brother who worked in the coffee factory, you mean your brother Jacob that was with you all the way?

Bernard Mayer: Correct. But my older brother who was married, he lived in a different town. He was working, I remember, I was told in a bakery there in that town. In September or August of 1942, they took him away immediately because he had two little children - four and two - and the family was taken away.

When I came to work on the labour camp, I was one of the youngest there because we had about three to four hundred people working there. Most of the people that worked there were like former intellectuals or people that really didn't belong to physical labour, but they had to work because otherwise, they were taken away. This camp was sort of, made of, like the brush department. They would have one or two people who were professionals from before the war, they were brush makers. They would take in a hundred, a hundred fifty people like myself and they would teach them. At one time, I was one of the fastest brush makers because you had to sit at a table and pull on the wires. It was made with wires. I became a sort of supervisor of the table. I was fast. I was the youngest. But most of the people who were there were in their thirties, I would say. They were former writers and pharmacists and people who really didn't belong there. The work wasn't really very heavy labour where you had to break your back. We made things, some wonderful things there in that factory and everything was shipped to Germany.

Interviewer: Who was your manager?

Bernard Mayer: His name was Mr. Bender. He was a former brush maker. He had a brush factory before the war and he took over. He was the whole manager.

Interviewer: He was the Polish or the Ukrainian?

Bernard Mayer: No, he was Jewish. The entire force in the labour camp was Jewish.

Interviewer: Yes, but who was the supervisor?

Bernard Mayer: There were Jewish supervisors. The Germans would only come in every day or two days and look around what we are doing, but the supervisors, even the office, the director were Jewish people, because the Germans left everything to the Jews. You just make for us the things that we want and they left us. So we didn't have any Ukrainian or German supervisor. We worked ourselves.

Interviewer: The work was hard?

Bernard Mayer: It was six days a week, six or seven days. I don't remember ever having off. In the very beginning till September of 1942, we worked in the camp and then we went home to sleep. Right after the first "aktion" which happened in 1942, in August or beginning of September, at that time, they made in the basement an area, the entire basement, they made wooden bunkbeds, communal bunkbeds and they made everybody sleep in there. Women were on one side and the men were the other side. We started sleeping in the camp.

Interviewer: So you didn't live in the ghetto?

Bernard Mayer: I went into the ghetto. I will explain to you. Let me start first, in the first "aktion'", about 50% of the Jews were taken away, among them my grandfather, my aunts, my uncles, my entire family was taken away in the first "aktion" because there was nowhere to hide. I came out of the labour camp and was hiding in that coffee factory and I went with my mother to hide in the coffee factory. That's how we survived.

The labour camp was at the time, but I didn't trust the labour camp to be in. So I ran away from the labour camp and I went to hide with my brother in that factory and my mother went along. My sister was working in that "garterei", in that nursery.

While I was in the camp, they started the ghetto. So everybody moved to the ghetto except me, but theoretically, I was going. It was theoretically, but physically I was spending a lot of time in the ghetto, too, because we didn't have a closed ghetto. In other words, the ghetto was not guarded. You could walk from the labour camp to the ghetto if you removed your armband. Naturally, if they caught you without the armband, they would shoot you, but being young, I would take a chance. So my mother was in the ghetto and my brother was in the ghetto.

Interviewer: Under the age of 14, you had to go with the armband?

Bernard Mayer: Yes. I had all the time the armband on.

Interviewer: When you say you stayed in a camp, it was really the basement of the factory?

Bernard Mayer: Yes, it was the basement of the factory. Right. Many times after work, I would remove my armband and I would go to ghetto to visit my brother and my mother and my sister. At times, I would sleep over even and then in the morning, I would go back to work.

But then came the second "aktion" in November 19, 1942 and at that time already, it was a different situation because they took more people out of the ghetto at that time. I again escaped from the camp and I went to hide with my brother in the factory with my mother and my sister. My sister was working in the "garterei". But after November, the Germans started to come into the ghetto and take out people at random. They would just go around and take out anybody they could find in the houses, every place, but my mother, when we moved into the ghetto, it is something we noticed that the ghetto, in that apartment in the ghetto, in the kitchen was a closet. Usually European homes don't have closets, not like in the United States where they have closets. But this was like an indentation in the wall. So we had an idea that we were going to close that wall, that closet and camouflage it with some clothing hanging over it so when the Germans come, my mother would be able to hide there while she is in the ghetto because I was in the labour camp, my brother was at the factory and my sister was also working. My mother was the only one that remained in that ghetto. So every morning, my brother would put my mother into that closet for the whole day and the Germans would come in and they would roam through the apartment and they could not find. She was hiding there all the time. If my brother came back home, he would take her out of the closet and then they would eat. This was going on like that till January, 1943.

Interviewer: Before that, I want to go back to the factory for awhile. Did you have to make a quota?

Bernard Mayer: Yes, we had to make a certain amount of brushes, sure. I don't remember now, but we had to produce. We had to produce for the Germans a certain amount and everybody in the factory had to produce.

Interviewer: But it wasn't something irrational?

Bernard Mayer: No.

Interviewer: You could keep it?

Bernard Mayer: We could keep it, yes, but we had to work. We worked six or seven days a week. All the time we worked. I remember working from eight in the morning and we would get just coffee and a piece of bread in the morning and then lunchtime, they made some soup. We had sort of a kitchen down in the basement and they made the soup for us and then in the evening, they had some potatoes or something like that. That's what we had some food. We worked making all these things all the time.

Interviewer: You were hungry at that time?

Bernard Mayer: I was hungry, but I had a supplement from this bread that my mother made. I think I mentioned to you before. Since my brother grinded this grain and my mother would bake the bread, so I had a supplement for food. As a matter of fact, I would bring, in the very beginning, my mother gave to the manager, Mr. Bender, she used to send him a few slices of bread so he should be nice to me, he should take care of me.

Interviewer: He was?

Bernard Mayer: He was. There was bench there that he was sitting in and I would, when I came in the morning, I would put that bread. He knew already it was my bread that I brought him there.

Interviewer: Every day?

Bernard Mayer: Every day.

Interviewer: You had problems with people there, with supervisors?

Bernard Mayer: No, we had no problems as I can remember. There were people arguing. There were people fighting. I personally didn't have any problems. I was a very small boy and I was very quiet. Whatever they told me to do, I did. I really didn't have personal problems, but I was always scared when I saw the Germans coming because at one time they killed a person in our camp. His name was Sobota. He was an SS man. He came into the camp. For no reason, he picked on one man and he was sort of a supervisor in the office and he was a lawyer by trade. He was a very handsome young man. They just walked over to him and he just walked over to him and he picked up his ear like this and put a bullet right behind his ear. After that...We were scared before then, too. I remember every time they would come around and we had a man named Landau who was a known brutal man, SS man and we had Sobota. These two people used to come very frequently to our factory and they would walk around from table to table like this. What I used to do, I would just sit and didn't look at them. I would just put my head down and work as fast as I possibly could so they could see that I'm working because you never knew when he can pick on you and just shoot you. They were coming in very frequently. We never knew when they would come. They would just come and go through every department and every table.

Interviewer: But they didn't come to take people from the factory?

Bernard Mayer: No. In the first "aktion", they took all the people to the railroad station. I wasn't there because I was hiding at that time, but when I came back, everybody was shook up because they took everybody to the station. Then came in one of the Gestapo into the station and he said: "Oh, don't take the people from the Statiche Werkstater because we need them." So they took all the people from the Statiche Werkstater and they took them back. They put them back to the factory except one man, I remember. One older man. Older, he wasn't really old. He was maybe forty-five. His name was Israel. He just got lost. They shipped him away to the death camp. Later we found out that they sent them to Belzec. We didn't know at that time. At that time, the first "aktion", they took people - my grandfather who was seventy-five years old and all these people to Belzec.

Interviewer: How did you know about the "aktion" that you could hide?

Bernard Mayer: There were rumours for a couple of days. There were some leaks from the Gestapo. On Thursday, we knew already that it was coming. Then Friday morning, we knew it was for sure. It was a Friday morning, I remember. It came. Sometimes, it was a delay of a day or two, but eventually it did come.

Going back to the ghetto, my mother, we were in a desperate situation in January of 1943. We knew that there were only maybe a couple of thousand people in the ghetto left and some people in the camps, like in my camp and a few other camps around that were part of the oil refineries and some of the services for the Germans and the "garterei", the different camps that were in town, but it didn't amount to much. We had seventeen thousand Jewish people before the war.

Interviewer: Maybe with the refugees.

Bernard Mayer: Yes, there were seventeen thousand. There must have been probably four thousand people at that time already in January.

Interviewer: There is something that I don't exactly understand. You are talking about "aktions" that were two or three "aktions" and you were hiding.

Bernard Mayer: Two "aktions" I was hiding.

Interviewer: Till it was over. But in November, there was an "aktion" that took almost a month, so you couldn't hide for a month.

Bernard Mayer: That "aktion" wasn't really an "aktion". On November, the "aktion", there was a short "aktion" that was an intense "aktion". In other words, they would go from house to house in force, during which time I was hiding, but then the second part of that "aktion" was where it wasn't intense. They would just pick you up from the ghetto if they could find you. After a few days, I went back to the labour camp and my brother went back to work which they wouldn't take him because he was making coffee and my mother was hiding in the ghetto. She was hiding in that closet.

Interviewer: You weren't vital for the Germans at that time, not like your brother?

Bernard Mayer: No.

Interviewer: If they would have caught you, they would take you?

Bernard Mayer: Oh yes. They probably would have taken me faster than they would have taken my brother, but even my brother wasn't so safe because eventually as they were taking more and more people, they kept on taking almost everybody. There was a famous artist, Bruno Schulz. He was killed. He was a friend of one of the Gestapo men. He was painting for him. As a matter of fact, he was a friend of Landau. He was painting for him paintings and then came another one who shot him on the street. So nobody was really vital. At that time even, my brother was almost killed by one of the Gestapo men even though he was a vital person. That was November, 1942. I was in hiding at that time, but my brother was not in hiding because my brother was working all through these "aktions" because he was hiding us in the factory.

Interviewer: You were hiding only with your mother?

Bernard Mayer: With my mother, yes.

Interviewer: Your sister?

Bernard Mayer: She was working in the nursery during these "aktions" and they kept her.

Interviewer: They never searched good enough to find you? They weren't even close to the place you were hiding?

Bernard Mayer: They came in and asked the manager if there was anybody, but what happened is as there were piles of grain, of sacks. My brother made a bunker underneath and he put boards on top. So we were hiding and then he put the sacks of grain over, so we were hiding inside. They could have probably found us if they would have kept on looking, but they came in, I understand, to the office and asked the manager: "Do you have anybody, any Jews here?" So they said: "We have only two Jews that are working." And he said: "Okay, if there are two Jews only working..." then they didn't go any further.

Interviewer: You're beginning to feel that the end is coming?

Bernard Mayer: Yes. By January, we had felt that this was probably the end and the symptoms were very simple. They started to come into the ghetto to remove our personal belongings and they would come in from house to house with trucks and they had some Jews helping them, the Jewish police. They would go around and they would remove everything we had. As a matter of fact, once they came to my mother's house and she put everything in her bed and covered it. She thought that she would save it. And then she took her best coat and she put it on. When they came in and they saw her in the coat standing because she figured this way thy will pick away the coat, so they ripped out the lining of the coat because they thought she hides something there, gold or whatever it is, and they left the coat on her, but all the lining was ripped out. Everything that was in the bed, they took everything away. They left only the most essential things like the bed and some pots and some dishes. The rest they would take everything out of the ghetto.

And then my mother, on day, I knew...I tried to find a place with some gentiles and I went to a place. We all three sent to a place where the Germans had there their horses. They told us that in January the ghetto is going to be liquidated. The rumours started to go on that the ghetto is going to be liquidated. There was a man that was working for the Germans, a Jewish man in the stables. We went there to stay there with him in the stables for about several days until he came out and he said: "Look, it is only a rumour, you can go back to the ghetto." So we went back to the ghetto.

Then one day, my mother goes out, a day that she looked around and she was staying outside the closet and she decided to go into the ghetto to buy some food. So there was a small grocery store, one grocery store that this man had. His name was Mr. Kopferberg. My mother came into that store. Over there, she meets a lady and this lady, her name was Mrs. Schwartz, who had a family, entire family intact. She had two daughters and a son and a husband. Till January of 1943, she was hiding in the factory that her husband used to own before the war. Over there, the manager became now a man called Keczmarek. This man was taking care of them, but he couldn't keep them too long in that factory. Next to the factory was a house that the family Schwartz owned. In that factory worked a man named Ivan Bur, a young man of twenty-two years of age and his wife. Keczmarek suggested to him that house which was Mrs. Schwartz's house, he should move in into that house. So Ivan moved into that house which was originally Mrs. Schwartz' house. He tells him: "You know what? I have here the family Schwartz. If you can hide these people in the house." Ivan was startled and then he was thinking about it. He said: "For money, I'm going to hide them." But there was a problem. First of all, Mrs. Schwartz had no money. Number two, you had to build some sort of hiding place for that. So at that particular time, by chance, Mrs. Schwartz meets my mother in the ghetto in that grocery store and she tells her: "Look, I have a man that is willing to hide us who will for money and we also need somebody to build a bunker." Well, my mother said: "Okay." We had some money. My mother had, first of all, we saved some money from the grain and besides that, my mother had some diamonds from before the war yet which she didn't spend because she had other income. She said: "Fine. I'll give everything I have as long as this man is going to hide us." She comes home and she talks to my brother and I happen to come at that time, too and she tells us.

My brother says: "Fine. Let's meet this man Ivan Bur and we will try to make a bunker and we will pay Ivan whatever we have, whatever he wants as long as we'll have somewhere to hide." Don't forget at that time, the Russians were after Stalingrad. They were about 2,000 kilometers or more from Drohobycs. It was a very long time to hide.

Interviewer: We are talking, if you are talking after Stalingrad, it is...That was close to the liquidation of the ghetto?

Bernard Mayer: Correct. That was in January, 1943 I'm talking now. My brother said: "Look, we have to hide for a long time until the Russians come." The next day Mrs. Schwartz who was a very enterprising lady and she was such a fantastic sales lady that she could talk anybody into almost anything. Mrs. Schwartz was trying to sell us this because she knew that she needed somebody who would just fit the needs that she needed. She had no money and she didn't know how to build a bunker. The only thing she had is this man, this Ivan Bur who was the man living in her former house.

But this man was the key to the entire thing because to find a gentile who would take on a project like this was very rare. It was practically impossible. So when she came with this idea that she has a man who is willing to hide us, it was like a blessing from the sky. We couldn't imagine that this would happen. The next day she went there...By the way, I want you to know in Drohobycs, as I told you before, the ghetto wasn't closed so you could get in and out of the ghetto. As long as they didn't catch you, you were fine, because they removed your armband and you walked around. She went there and she picked up this Ivan and she brought him to our ghetto apartment. When I looked at Ivan and my brother looked at Ivan, he was a tall, slim Ukrainian, very sleek, very sharp, not to be believed. He was a man who you wouldn't trust with one dime. We looked at him and we told Mrs. Schwartz: "He doesn't look like a man that we can trust. He'll take our money and he'll just give us away to the Germans. She said: "Don't worry, this Mr. Keczmarek, who was the manager of that factory, he will watch him. He'll make sure that he wouldn't do it." My mother said to my brother and to me: "Look, children, we have no choice. We have to take a chance with him. We have to take a chance. Whatever he wants, we'll give him. I will give him everything I have because we have no other way out."

My brother first had to find a man that knows how to build a bunker and he had to find a man that would get supplies to build a bunker. You needed wood. You needed all kinds of materials and I want to mention to you that by that time, my sister was not anymore with us because she left the working place and she met other people who were going to the forest to hide because she knew that we had no place to go. She knew that we were doomed all and she wanted to save her life. She figured she had a chance to go with other people and she was young and there were a group of young men and women going to the forest. She went away. A couple of months later, she was discovered. Somebody came runniung into my house in the ghetto and said that they saw my sister on a truck being taken away to Bronica Forest where she was murdered there with all the other people. Bronica was a place where they murdered next to Drohobycs.

Interviewer: In the forest?

Bernard Mayer: In the forest. There were several thousand. They say there is about 14,000 people who were murdered. Those people they didn't take to Belzec and especially in that four week "aktion", they took them to Bronica and that's where they killed her. This was already around that time when we were discussing this thing with Mrs. Schwartz.

Going back to this Ivan. My brother, the first thing he did, he knew everybody. He was older than I was. He was twelve years older than I was. He was already in his twenties and he knew everybody in town, everyone. He knew this man whose name was Aharon Shapira. Aharon Shapira was a man who had fantastic hands. He knew how to build things. He had fantastic ideas what to do. We went, me, my brother, we went to that house to show Aharon what he can do if he can build a bunker under that house. After a couple of hours, Aharon had a plan. Aharon had a plan that he is going to build a bunker underneath the part of the house that didn't have any basement. If you take a house which was built out of stone, I think, and since the house was on a slant, the front of the house was dirt and the back of the house had a basement. So he intended to build the bunker in the front of the house where he had to take out the dirt.

Interviewer: He had to dig?

Bernard Mayer: He had to dig. There was a wall. The way you dig, you removed that wall from the basement to that area and you dig out all the dirt and there was a well, there was a dry well in the back of the house. He said: "We are going to dig out all the dirt and then we are going to put a structure inside out of wood. The entire structure was wood - the sides, bottom and top. Then take some of this dirt. Most of the dirt will go into the well, into the dry well. So at night, we would carry that dirt from the...One of us would look out on the street and the rest of us would carry it on our shoulders.

Interviewer: Who were "the rest of us"?

Bernard Mayer: We had more people. We had my brother, Aharon, Mr. Schwartz and his son Arnold, and there was a cousin of Arnold. His name was Manek Berkwerk. Then there was another man called Ekstein which was a cousin of Mrs. Schwartz. We all started to dig that area. We carried it. We didn't work during the day, only at night. So we had to dig out that area and the area was thirty feet long. The length of the house and ten feet wide and six feet high. But what he did is he made it lower and at the same time, he put the dirt on the top of the bunker so there will be dirt between the floor of the house and the bunker. He put in five feet of dirt on the top. When they break in through the floor, they will see dirt. At the same time, he put five feet of dirt against the wall that was from the cellar. Then he covered the entire floor of the cellar with dirt. At the corner, he made a plate, a cement plate and that cement plate was the entrance into the bunker. Each time Ivan Bur would come to open the bunker, he would dig up the dirt and then he would lift up that cement plate, two by two feet, and this is the way there was the entrance. It was camouflaged in the basement so nobody knew which way would be the entrance.

Aharon was a genius of a person. First of all, we had to live there and at that time, we had sixteen people to go into that bunker - the families, our family and Schwartz' family, the other people. There were sixteen people. We also took Mr. Kopferberg who had that grocery store. Since he had a grocery store, he had money. So we can pay.

Interviewer: And he has groceries.

Bernard Mayer: He has groceries and money so we can pay Ivan the money. So we had sixteen people to go into that bunker. What he did, Aharon, he put a stove in the bunker, connected the gas from upstairs because the house had gas, but he connected it before the meter so it wouldn't register on the meter. The same thing he did with electricity. He connected all the wiring into the bunker through the chimney and this way it wouldn't be shown on the meter, electric meter that somebody uses electricity.

Besides that, the house had no water and the house didn't have any toilet facilities. They had an outhouse. Aharon had to devise a way for us to get water because it was impossible for Ivan to carry water for us into the bunker and it was impossible for him to carry anything else if we have to go to the toilet. He built a toilet and he built it out of wood, out of planks, narrow planks of wood that he would run underneath the basement, underneath the cellar into a sewer because there was a sewer outside and he ran that from the bathroom. He slanted it. So when he had the toilet made, we had a step.

To have water, he built two cisterns. Cisterns are holes in the group, about four feet deep, two of them. So every time it rained, these holes were filled up and we had water. Every time we had to go to the toilet, we had a pail and we would use that pail to wash down everythng.

Interviewer: He wasn't an engineer?

Bernard Mayer: He was not an engineer. He was not an educated man, but he was brilliant. Besides that, how do you get air? Through the sewer, we got the air and then he connected, there was a chimney in the house, so he extended the chimney into the basement, into the bunker. The hot air would come out and the cold air would go through. Naturally there wasn't much air. We were all sitting naked practically. We were all in shorts and women were only in panties and in bras, but still we had some air to breathe.

Through the chimney, he connected a bell with a wire so that when they pulled a lever, the chimney lever upstairs, that bell downstairs would ring when danger was coming or we had signals. One ring was danger. Two rings was fine, the danger was over. Three rings was when he was going to open the bunker.

Interviewer: How long did it take?

Bernard Mayer: It took three months to build that bunker.

Interviewer: And nobody saw you at that time?

Bernard Mayer: No. But that's not the end. When I came to build the bunker with my brother, my brother came over to me and he said: "Look, I don't want you to be here. We have enough people here to build the bunker. I want you to go back to camp and this way you can go back to see Mother," because my mother was in the ghetto and she needed help to help her out. "I will build the bunker with the rest of the people." So I went back to the camp and I worked. At the same time, I was visiting my mother. At times, I would go to that house. At night, I would remove my band and I would go and I would see them how they were building the bunker.

Now how do you get materials? My brother found a man in the ghetto who had previously had a building supply business and his name was...I just don't remember now, but I do. It doesn't matter. He paid him. Aharon gave him a list. He told him what he needs. Ivan got a horse and buggy and my brother paid everything there. Ivan came there and he picked up all this wood, all the supplies he needed and he brought it to the house and he left it in the basement, in the cellar. But to mislead the neighbours, he bought extra materials, so he can start to build a fence. He was walking around knocking and building the fence so the neighbours would think that he bought this material for the fence.

It went well. It lasted three months. And then the ghetto was about to be liquidated and the ghetto became liquidated in April of 1943.

Interviewer: May.

Bernard Mayer: May of 1943, okay. You know better because you have read this thing. It's possible. But I thought it was April. It must have been early May or something like that. Anyway, when my brother saw that the...Just before the ghetto was liquidated, my brother went into the ghetto and he picked up my mother and he brought her in.

Interviewer: You already knew that the ghetto is going to be liquidated in a few days?

Bernard Mayer: Oh yes. We anticipated the ghetto would be liquidated in January yet. We didn't know when.

Interviewer: At that time, you already knew what's going on, what are they doing with the Jews that they are taking?

Bernard Mayer: We knew we were doomed already. Anybody who had any place to go to hide, they were hiding.

Interviewer: But you knew about exterminations?

Bernard Mayer: We knew that they took away my sister to be killed. This we knew. We didn't know about the camps. We didn't know that my family was taken to Belzec. We didn't know about Belzec. We knew that they didn't take them for a ride. They didn't take my grandfather, seventy-five-year-old grandfather, for a ride. We knew, but we didn't know where. I was still in the labour camp. Right after the liquidation of the ghetto, my brother told Ivan to come to take me because he was afraid already because the ghetto was liquidated already and at that time, there were no Jews walking the streets and he was afraid I should walk by myself to the bunker. He sent Ivan. He came to my camp and he saw me and he said: "I'm going to meet you tonight at eight o'clock at a certain place." And he did meet me there.

There was a complication. He thought there was a German man following us so he took me into a Ukrainian camp that he used to work at one time and we waited there for the man to pass by and eventually I came into the bunker.

When I came into the bunker, it was finished. It was functioning and Ivan lived upstairs with his wife. His wife was very unhappy with the situation. What kind of man was Ivan? Why did he do it? Money alone? There were people who would give anything they had. I could never figure out Ivan. As a matter of fact, I still can't figure out, but Ivan was a person who, first of all, I think his age had a lot to do with it. He was not afraid. I don't think he was a lover of Jews. He didn't love Jews. I don't think he did it because he wanted to save Jews. I think he did it because it was a challenge to him.

Interviewer: He didn't have children at that time?

Bernard Mayer: He didn't have children. I don't think that he loved his wife so much so he didn't really care. At the same time, I think that the money, he was a peasant boy and he was fascinated with this amount of money and we are talking about twenty golden dollars for each person. Twenty gold dollars amounted to 100 paper dollars and that's what he wanted. Everyone that came in was giving him 20 gold dollars. He was fascinated with the gold. He wanted nice clothing. He wanted good things and he probably never thought of the danger. He would take chances.

Interviewer: But you paid him before you entered the bunker. Right?

Bernard Mayer: Sure.

Interviewer: He could get the money and then go to the Germans.

Bernard Mayer: He could.

Interviewer: If the money was the only motive.

Bernard Mayer: Right. First of all, this man Keczmarek knew about it so it was more than that. But at the same time, he didn't have to worry about Keczmarek, he could have picked us up. I mean, he didn't have to do even that either. Ivan could have just walked away from the house and leave us there. He didn't even have to call the Germans. The reason he didn't have to because we couldn't stay there too long without him. So he would bring...Most of the time, we had barley and oats that he would bring down and we cooked it. We had a stove and a big kettle and there were two women - Mrs. Schwartz and Mrs. Berkwerk and they cooked this food. At times, he would bring some bread, very seldom. At times, he would bring some potatoes.

One time, he brought a whole pile of apples that he left in the basement. But I don't think the food was really so important as I remember. Maybe to me, it wasn't. Maybe to some other people it was important. To me, we were frightened. And then we got a radio. That was a very important part of our survival because we had a shortwave radio and we could hear different reports from many different counties. We heard BBC. We heard from Russia. We heard from Germany. And we had a map on a wall and we had a crayon and we marked each time when we saw the Germans were losing and they were coming as close as the Russians were coming. We had a map. Hope was very important to us that we are going to survive.

How was life inside? First of all, When I arrived in the bunker, there was a lady, two women, two single women and Ivan became friendly with one of them. She was a lover of his. She was maybe ten years older that he was. I think this excited him. His wife, he would send to the farm for the weekend and he would open the bunker. He would have a lover.

Interviewer: It was voluntarily from her?

Bernard Mayer: I think so. It wasn't only voluntarily. I'm sure it was voluntarily or not. She was a type of a woman that probably...She was an attractive woman and he was a young handsome man. He was very handsome. Besides that, he didn't charge her any money to come in. So it was the only thing she had. She had to pay with something. I didn't see anything wrong with that.

After awhile, people that were in the bunker made some contacts with people in camp and this caused Ivan to be in touch with some people in camp and all of a sudden we got a family of six people and two little children among them - a little girl of two and a half and three and a half came to our bunker. We had to make room again. We had these bunkbeds on one side and this side we had one bunkbed and then we had a kitchen, a stove. We needed room for the food. It was a small area. And then we had to squeeze ourselves in because this family came in.

Interviewer: Also for money?

Bernard Mayer: For money. But Ivan started to smell money and Ivan...

Interviewer: He began to smell a business.

Bernard Mayer: Smell a good business going. Ivan started to hang around the camps. Those days already, we are talking in July and August. My camp was taken away in June, the Statiche Werkstaten. If I would have been in Statiche Werkstaten, I would have been gone. And then there was Herawka taken away. There were only a few camps left.

Ivan knew that those people who were in camps now, many of them had money. Ivan brought more people into that bunker. He brought a man named...as a matter of fact, this man lives right here inTel Aviv. The Haberman family. They were rich people before the war. They had the largest jewelry store. Then there was a pharmacist, Mr. Zuckerberg. As a matter of fact, the manager of our Statiche Werkstaten escaped just before they were taking everybody away and he came to our bunker.

We had already at that time, may be thirty people, thirty-five people. Ivan decided that he is going to make another row of bunkbeds. It was only six feet high. So you had to make three feet, more than three feet, because it was from the bottom...So people on the second row couldn't sit. They could only lie. Ivan made a new row of bunkbeds.

Interviewer: He himself?

Bernard Mayer: No. We did it for him, but he brought the materials and everything.

Interviewer: You didn't object?

Bernard Mayer: We asked him in a very polite way how is it possible, how we can breathe and how we can live, but he said: "Look, there are many Jews that need to be saved. Therefore, I need to bring more people." How do you argue with Ivan? You certainly don't argue with Ivan. Among the people that came was a man called Mike. Mike was a horror of a Jewish man. He would threaten everybody there with a knife. A friend of mine just told me, I spoke to him about this. He thinks he had a gun also. He would terrorize us in the bunker. But that was only about three months before we left. Eventually, we wound up being forty-five people in the bunker.

Interviewer: All the time people came in?

Bernard Mayer: Right.

Interviewer: You were there something like fifteen months?

Bernard Mayer: I was there about fifteen months, yes.

Interviewer: Every month or two, some people came in?

Bernard Mayer: Right.

Interviewer: And no one went out?

Bernard Mayer: Nobody went out. One person went out. I have to tell you something about what happened to Aharon which is a very important thing. It has to do with the bunker. Aharon built the bunker. He had another bunker built before he built our bunker for himself. They discovered that bunker right after they liquidated the ghetto. So only twenty people found their way out of that bunker and they came near our bunker and Aharon came inside. He brought his wife and child inside the bunker and the said: "I'm going with the other people to build a bunker in the forest. I'm going to leave the child and my wife here in the bunker." So he brought his wife and child into the bunker and he left. When he finished the bunker, within maybe a month or maybe two months, he came back to pick up his child. Among them was a man who was not happy in our bunker. He was just not very happy. So he said: "Oh, you built a bunker in the forest, I'm going with you to the bunker" and he left our bunker. Aharon went and he lived in the forest. They built a bunker in the forest. Within a few months later, they discovered the bunker in the forest. When they discovered the bunker, there was in the middle of the bunker inside was a hole where they used it for a toilet. So he took two of his brothers and two nephews and there was another man that jumped in into this hole and he covered it with some wood and branches and he himself didn't save himself because he couldn't save himself. He had a small child and a wife. He wanted to save his two brothers and his two nephews and that man. When the Germans said: "Everybody out" and everybody went out, and he ran away because he knew that they will torture him because they knew about him that he was building bunkers. They shot him right on the spot and then they took everybody and they took them to Bronica and they killed them all.

These five people that were in that hole came out of that hole after the Germans left and came to our bunker. Therefore, we know what happened. They survived with us. We had another bunch of people coming in. Ivan had to let them in because they knew about the bunker. They came in, too.

Then around April of 1944, March or April, 1944, Ivan Bur...I and my brother, he used to open the bunker at night sometimes to let in some fresh air. We would crawl out, me and my brother and we would lie on the ground in the basement just to cool off just a little bit. One time, one day, nobody knew that we were there. We were lying in a corner. It was dark. He calls in this pharmacist and another two people. Mr. Galica and Mrs. Galica and he takes them into the back near the steps. He takes the people there and he talks with them. Ivan, I'm talking about. Ivan called these people. He tells them: "You know, I have some idea. The people that are down there, they are over a year already and they look like that they are very, very tired and sick and it happened to be that my mother got sick. She had some illness with her stomach and she lost her hair. She was frail. We all were frail. We all lost a lot of weight because we didn't eat much. He said to them: "These people look like they are diseased and the only thing we have to do is to poison these people that are oldtimers." The oldtimers were we. We were there the longest. The new people, they used to come in. They had some connections and they would bring in food, but they ate it by themselves. They wouldn't give us any. He said: "These people are so frail and they would disease you and you will die with them. Why don't we get rid of these people? I'll call in Dr. Frumer", who was a doctor still in the camp there, "and let him come down and let him give them injections, poison injections and poison them. Then we can take these bodies and we can throw them into the well that we have, empty well." When my brother heard that, we went back into the bunker and when they closed the bunker after they came back, we started to scream. A lot of people wouldn't believe us that this was true.

Interviewer: You didn't hear the answer?

Bernard Mayer: What they said? Mr. and Mrs. Galica said: "No." But we didn't stay long enough to listen to them because once we heard that, we just went back, they shouldn't see us. The other, Mr. Zuckerberg, who was the pharmacist, people tell me now that he was collaborating with him, but if it is true, I don't know. Anyway, so my brother who was the organizer of the bunker, he was in charge of the bunker, he said: "Look, we have a problem here. What we have to do is to show when Mr. Frumer comes, he is supposed to come in a few days, let's all clean up the bunker well, and everybody will put on rouge on their faces and put on clean clothing and make sure that when he comes, Dr. Frumer, he will see us healthy.

Sure enough, Dr. Frumer came, but he was not aware that he was supposed to poison people, Dr. Frumer. Ivan, he thought that well, maybe he can get away with it. He was still a young man. When Dr. Frumer came and he saw us and he said to Ivan: "I don't see any sick people here. They seem to be healthy. They are thin, but they are healthy." We wouldn't let him touch us, especially the girls, the Schwartz girls. They were hysterical because one had a boil under her arm and she was very sick and she didn't feel good. He gave her some medicine and left.

Naturally, Ivan was disappointed that he couldn't have any more people, but eventually Ivan wasn't only satisfied with one girlfriend because he figured, things are going very well, he'll get himself another one. He went to a camp and saw a beautiful...

Interviewer: He was fed up with her?

Bernard Mayer: He didn't care for this one? No, he figured he would have two. Two is more than one. He was having both of them. He was young so he would open more frequently the bunker and each time he would open the bunker, one of the girls would go up and she would come back with a nice basket of fruit or food. But you know, really surprising, we didn't take anything. We didn't think anything bad about it because these girls wanted to save their lives and they did save their lives because if Ivan wouldn't have taken this young girl, she probably would have perished in the camp. They would have taken her away.

Interviewer:Interviewer: But it was a danger for you all?

Bernard Mayer: well, there was only one danger - if Mrs. Bur finds out about it.

Interviewer: She didn't like the whole thing from the beginning?

Bernard Mayer: She didn't care for the whole thing at all. She hated Jews as a matter of fact. She was not happy with Jews. She didn't care for them. But she loved Ivan. She loved Ivan so much that she did anything that Ivan wanted to do. There were two things about this, don't forget. There were good things that Ivan had two girlfriends because that made him...he must have had some feelings for these girls and he was not going to abandon us or do something wrong. On the other hand, if Mrs. Bur finds out, then we are all "kaput" with Ivan together.

We were living under these conditions. But then another thing happened. That was right after the Shapiro boys came. The neighbours became suspicious that something was going on. They called the Gestapo. On a Saturday morning, they came. Mrs. Bur was alone in the house. He was working.

Interviewer: In that factory?

Bernard Mayer: In that factory. When she opened the door and she saw the Gestapo, they opened wide the door and they came with guns. They put her aginst the wall and they said: "Look, we know you have Jews. Tell us where the Jews are. Otherwise, we'll kill you." She became an actress and she says: "What? Me? I should keep Jews?" It happened to be that her brother was a policeman in the German army, with the Ukrainian army. She said: "You know my brother. He is in the Ukrainian police. You think that I'm going to keep Jews in this house? You are crazy." They kept on drilling her and they kept on after her. They said: "We know you have Jews. Come on. You are a good lady, tell us where they are. We wouldn't harm you. We will just take away the Jews and you'll be fine." She said: "I have no Jews. Go ahead, look." And they started looking. They ripped the floor. She rang for us once. Then we were very quiet because that was the time we were sleeping. It was during the day. They started to break the floor and digging that dirt that we put up there. We felt already a scratch. They scratched already our ceiling and then they stopped. All of a sudden, they stopped. And then she told us, they were there for three hours and they were searching from top to bottom and they couldn't find the bunker and we survived.

Interviewer: They didn't come back again?

Bernard Mayer: No. They were satisfied. They couldn't see. They went through the whole house, into the basement and every place. They broke the wall. Everything and they couldn't see anything, it was so well made.

Then, as I told you, more Jews kept on coming. Among them was a Mr. Landau who lives in Israel and I don't know if he is still alive, I think he is not alive anymore, but he was a partner in one of the largest ice cream factories here. I forgot the name of it. Artik, that's right. He became a partner in Artik. He was the last one to arrive in the bunker. His entire family was killed. He paid him a lot of money, too. After that, he accumulated a lot of money, Ivan. As we had this radio going on and we knew that the Russians are coming closer and closer to us, do you know in your paper when the Russians came to Drohobycs? What day it was?

Interviewer: August, '44.

Bernard Mayer: You know the date? I have it in my book, August 5th. Anyway, all of a sudden, Ivan brings down, opens the bunker and brings a quarter of a pig into our bunker. Not that we were so religious, but pig is the worst thing that we could eat. We didn't eat meat for a year and a half. Ivan throws in this pig and he says: "Go ahead, eat that pig." We argue. We had a religious man, very orthodox and he said: "No." Others say yes. Anyway, they put up the pig on the stove. All of a sudden, the gas is out, the electricity is out, and we are in complete darkness. We had a couple of candles. Ivan is not upstairs. We knew that the Russians were coming closer. It was already the day before the liberation. We wait for Ivan to open the bunker, but Ivan was not in sight, neither his wife. It was completely quiet. So we waited one day. We figured Ivan will come and open the bunker if we are liberated, but he didn't come. So we had to lift up that plate. We made a lever. People went down and this one went up. Eventually we opened the bunker. It was on the fifth of August. We came out looking. We went into the house and looked through the curtains to make sure that nobody sees us. After awhile, we see a couple of Russian soldiers running down the street.

Shapiro man opened the door and jumped out in his underwear, barefoot towards the soldiers, screaming: "We are Jews, we are Jews." And we followed him. We couldn't believe it was true. It was just like a dream. And then they told us: "You know, there are still Germans here, you better watch out." Some people remained in the bunker. They didn't move, I think, for a whole day, but my mother, I and my brother and the Schwartzes, we decided to get out. We walked down where there was an artillery battery, Russian, and we went in there. They were in a building, in a factory building. We went there and they gave us some food and we slept over there that night. They were shooting the artillery right next to us. This was music to our ears. But then in the aftershock of seeing everybody, nobody survived in Drohobycs. About 150 people, I understand, have survived in Drohobycs out of the 15,000 or 17,000, as you say. I didn't have any shoes. I had to borrow a pair of shoes from a friend. Eventually, we were so frail, we couldn't practically walk. A Ukrainian man took us in for a couple of days and he gave us some food and eventually we got into an apartment that the Germans left behind and we moved in there and we stayed. We lived in town for another year till June of 1945.

We left into the West, into Poland and from there, we went to Breslau. We stayed for a year in Breslau, but when we heard that there was a pogrom in Rzeszow in Poland where 47 people were killed we decided it was time to leave. My brother and my mother made some money. We opened a couple of stores in Breslau and we gathered everything up and we went to Paris. We lived in Paris for a year and then my uncle from the United States made arrangements for us to come and that's when I went. In July of 1947, I came to the United States.

Interviewer: You said that when you went out of the bunker, you didn't see Ivan. Where was he?

Bernard Mayer: Ivan realized later that he will not be very much liked by the Ukrainians or by the neighbours because he saved Jews. In the very beginning, he thought that he is going to be a hero. We used to tell him all the time: "Ivan, when the Russians are coming, we are going to be carrying you from here into the centre of town because you are our hero. You are the person who saved our lives." And he was very enthusiastic about it all the time. He was sort of a cavalier. He was a boy. It was attractive to him. But then he realized that...He was already two years older and he realized that he is not ging to be liked. So Ivan went to his parents' house and to the village, to Stepni, with her and he left us behind. Nobody ever saw Ivan except me. The reason for that was because I went...there was an induction centre. When the Russians came, they were taking everybody into the army because the war was still going on. They called Ivan into the army. So there was an induction centre. They called me, too, by mistake. They didn't know...By mistake, I was only sixteen and they were taking at seventeen. They took me there. When I arrived in the induction centre, I see Ivan sitting on the floor with a couple of his friends from the village and I face him. I come out, I recall as today, I come into the induction centre, I see him sitting right in fromt of me. Ivan didn't blink an eye like he never knew me. I smiled to him. He just turned away his head. He didn't want to have nothing to do with the past, with us. Ivan went into war. He was taken at that time. It must have been probably in September, October, 1944. He was taken into the front.

In the beginning of 1945, my mother had a little store in town. Mrs Bur came in.

Interviewer: His wife?

Bernard Mayer: His wife. To tell that she got a notice that Ivan was killed in action. My mother gave her some food at that time and she was pregnant or she had already a baby from him. I came back to Drohobycs two years ago to look for Mrs. Bur or her son. I was there four days, but I couldn't find them. There was no trace of these people.

Interviewer: Can you tell me a little bit of details about your daily life in the bunker?

Bernard Mayer: Okay. We slept during the day and we were up during the nights and the reason for that was because we didn't want to make a commotion during the day because people walk around and they will hear something. So we decided to change our lifestyle.

The food was usually in the morning we would get black coffee, imitation coffee. We had no sugar and then we would have some, like, soup made out of oats. We also had a scale. He brought a scale into the bunker. Everybody would get the same amount of food. But as I told you before, there were people who had the money and they would pay Ivan to get extra food for them, but we had no money because when we came to the bunker, we gave all the money for the people.

Interviewer: You paid for Schwartz?

Bernard Mayer: We paid for Schwartz. We also had to pay Aharon to build the bunker. He didn't do it for free. We had to pay him. He worked. We had to pay for the materials. My family did it all. We all did it because we were the ones that built that bunker. The other people paid Ivan extra money because Ivan wasn't satisfied with us.

Our daily life, most of the time we were lying. We couldn't walk because the stove took away one meter. We had two meters for sleeping. So we had only half a meter to walk through. So if everybody would start walking through, it is impossible. So everybody was lying.

There was a man, he is now 87 years old. I spoke to him and he doesn't hide about it. He decided to sleep between two ladies and he slept between both of them. When I met him just recently, a couple of days ago, he gave me details how life was. He said I had nothing else what to do. We played cards. We listened to the radio which was important, but very sparingly because you know that radio was on tubes and if it burns out then we are out of luck. So that radio had to be sparingly listened to. But Friday night, for example, we would listen to the Jewish services from Palestine. It was a very special treat for us. It was very emotional to hear prayers from Jerusalem through the BBC at that time.

There was a lot of fighting, arguing, especially between...The people that came later with the money who had the food brought in, they didn't want to associate with us, with the oldtimers. We were the oldtimers. They were the newcomers because they came in later. They practically ignored us. They were sleeping up there and they didn't mix with us. We were two different societies in that bunker. The rich and the poor. Every place in the world. It happened even in the bunker.

I was lying next to Arnold Schwartz. He was my age. He was also at one time in the Statiche Werkstaten. We were talking to each other and we kept on repeating our stories. He was telling me about foods that his mother used to make and then some people from upstairs would come down and talk with us. Usually they would tell us what kind of lives they led before.

Interviewer: When you say upstairs, you mean...?

Bernard Mayer: The people that lived above us, not in the house, people that lived in the bunker, but we called them the upstairs people.

Interviewer: Upstairs, downstairs.

Bernard Mayer: Right. Usually they would tell us about their past. It is very interesting that we didn't dwell...We dwelled a little bit on those that we have lost, but not as much because we were even not sure if we were going to survive ourselves. I think we dwelled later after we survived that our family had not survived.

Interviewer: You remember a constant tension or worry about what's going to happen? It was an inside feeling that something is going to be worse?

Bernard Mayer: We lived from day to day. We didn't plan. We didn't know what is going to happen. We had hope. As a matter of fact, the hope was all the time. The hope was even at the time we were in the ghetto. There was always hope. I want you to know that.

Interviewer: But tension was also all the time or only from time to time when the Germans came or something like that?

Bernard Mayer: Right, then there was tension.

Interviewer: Not constantly?

Bernard Mayer: Not constantly tension, no, but we had hope though. We didn't have plans. It was sort of a very peculiar feeling that it is very difficult to describe. It was a feeling of not knowing what's going to happen tomorrow. There was a lot of argument. There were a lot of people who argued.

Interviewer: About what?

Bernard Mayer: They fought about things there all the time. For example, there was a lady. Her name was Mrs. Kenig and she was fat and very obese. Nobody liked her. One time we put in 45 potatoes. We had a little oven there to bake these potatoes. Everybody would get a potato and two potatoes were missing and we knew that she stole these potatoes because she was lying there next to that stove. She became hysterical and she started screaming because we accused her of taking the potatoes. At that time, we had no water in the cisterns. So she would jump into one of these cisterns and screaming. It was time that we had no water at all so Ivan had to carry water just for us to drink and to cook a little bit. He had to go outside on the street. That's where the pump was, the water pump, and he would carry to bring this water.

I considered Ivan as a righteous gentile. A lot of people don't, but I did. I feel the net result was such that he saved our lives. He had many opportunities of getting rid of us.

Interviewer: And many times he was endangering himself? To bring such an amount of water when people knew that he was living with his wife only.

Bernard Mayer: Right. He would go at night and carry that water. He was endangering his life all the time. All the time. And even Mrs. Bur. I think Mrs. Bur, if she knew that she could get rid of us at that time without being hurt herself, she would have probably gotten rid of us, but she knew very well, and even though the Germans told her nothing will happen to her, they probably would have dragged her and killed her, too. She knew that. She was very smart, a smart woman.

Ivan, as a matter of fact, I'm making now an application for him to become a righteous gentile because even though he is not alive, I believe that he deserves it because for eighteen months, don't forget, some people were eighteen months there. We were building the bunker too from January on. For all these months that he was with us and he endangered his life. Okay, so he liked sex. He liked money. He liked nice clothing. He was young. So he wasn't such a bad person.

Interviewer: He was wise enough not to use the money at that time that people would not suspect?

Bernard Mayer: I don't know how he used it. He was always well dressed. He was always sort of elegant young man. Even before he took us in, he was well dressed. I don't know what he used it for.

Interviewer: So he didn't do anything that people would suspect or will see that he has extra money?

Bernard Mayer: Don't forget that he was a stranger in town. He was a stranger in this house. His main house was in the village with his family. He was here only temporarily and she used to come here only once in a awhile, she used to come to the house. He didn't. He was staying around by himself because he was working. She was with her family there. Therefore, he could play around with these two girls because he knew that his wife is going to be there. And then we had occasions that this man, this Mike, he would come and he would threaten us. They were fighting. He is now a doctor, his name is Munder Kopferberg, it was the Kopferbergs' son. He lives here in Haifa. He was our barber. He was cutting our hair. Don't forget, we were into a routine life there. You have to get in the morning. You had your black water. Then you listened to the radio and then you lie down and you talked. You talked over and over the same thing, about your past. And then you discussed what happened in the world from the radio. The radio was our saviour, don't forget. Without the radio, we would have gotten insane. Then there were people...We didn't make much of a fuss over the fact that these girls had an affair with Ivan.

Interviewer: You said that people had affairs between themselves in the bunker when you were forty or more people there.

Bernard Mayer: They had sex, you mean?

Interviewer: Affairs.

Bernard Mayer: Affairs, yes. Not really. There was only this man that had an affair with these two girls and one of the girls was Ivan's girlfriend. The rest of them were families. We were families. Don't forget that the Schwartz girls were with the parents. They are not going to have an affair. Don't forget those days were different than now. And then, there was my brother who really didn't have anybody there and we were young boys. We were fourteen years old, fifteen years old. We didn't get involved. Then there were couples. The fact of the matter is that this religious man, he was very religious and he wouldn't even want to mix together the food. They had to give him his grain that he would cook by himself. So he would push his little pot next to the big pot to cook this thing and then he would stand and he would daven. He would take the room. He had to stand. So two people couldn't pass by. So he would stand in the morning and he would not let anyone pass by because he was standing and davening. He was putting on his tefillin and so on. Then Friday nights, he would remove all the bulbs because he wanted to make love to his wife and this was not really an affair. He was trying...Even though he was in his forties, but we thought he was crazy because we considered him as an old man. It was very embarrassing to his daughters, too, and his son. We were all laughing that Mr. Schwartz takes out the bulbs. Here I give you examples of life there. Naturally, the trauma of trying to be poisoned was a trauma. The trauma of being discovered and then we really tried to...We talked. This I remember, we talked to each other all the time.

Interviewer: Didn't you talk about the future?

Bernard Mayer: No. We didn't talk about the future not that I can remember. Maybe I mentioned that I would eat a lot of chocolates once I got out or something like that or I would eat some cake or something, but we really didn't plan for the future. We didn't see a future because we were in danger every day and it was sort of an abstraction for us, the future. We were so worn out sort of in a way. To lie there after a year. I would say that we were resigned to be...We really almost didn't care, sort of. We were just worn out without food. We had some hope though because we used to listen to the radio and we heard that the Russians were in Kiev and they were closer and closer, but we still didn't know. We didn't believe to the last minute that we are going to survive. We didn't trust one minute that we thought...When we got out of there, we still didn't believe. We went to the Russian artillery compound. We figured in case they have to go back, we'll go with them. But it was a traumatic...By the way, I want you to know that as far as I know, this bunker was built in a way that no other bunker was built and also this bunker is the only bunker that forty-five people survived. I mean, there were other bunkers built, but most of the people didn't survive in them, but this is a bunker that the most people ever survived amd it was built in a way that no other bunker was built.

Interviewer: Did you have anything to read?

Bernard Mayer: No. We didn't have anything to read. We didn't have anything to write on. There was something written. A Schwartz girl wrote a diary which she lost later. She gave away to somebody who didn't return to her, but I saw her in Brazil a few years ago and she passed away since then. That was six years ago I went there and I told her I'm writing the book because she wrote a poem and I asked her to give me that poem. She wrote for me the poem which I translated and put it in the book. She was the only one that was more...She was in her twenties, about twenty-one or twenty-two. She was a very sensitive girl. She was always very scared, extremely scared, more scared than anybody else. We called her the conscience of the bunker.

Interviewer: Did you have a sense of time there? You couldn't recognize between day and night?

Bernard Mayer: No.

Interviewer: Between summer and winter?

Bernard Mayer: No. Or even days. Days we knew a little bit, but not much because we used to listen to the radio. They would tell us the day. We knew between summer and winter because in the summer, it was terribly hot. The toilet smelled terrible because that's where we got the air from and it was extremely hot. Everybody was fanning himself. It was extremely hot. In the wintertime, we had more water because the water from the snow and it wasn't as hot, but it was still hot. Men wore nothing else but shorts.

Interviewer: You had enough clothes?

Bernard Mayer: We didn't need any clothes. We were just there in shorts. Women wore bras and panties.

Interviewer: Could you wash?

Bernard Mayer: Yes. Next to the toilet, the toilet was at the end, closed in with wood and a door, and a seat, a wood seat with a hole. Each time you went to the toilet then you fetched the water from the cistern, from the hole and you washed down.

Interviewer: In the summer you couldn't do that?

Bernard Mayer: If we were short of water, we couldn't do that. And then next to the toilet was a curtain and we had a basin that everybody would wash himself. The way you washed yourself was you would just wash yourself and a little bit sponged yourself. There were no showers or anything like it. Just a basin of water, you washed yourself and that's all. But surprisingly enough, nobody really got seriously sick there. We had no medication. We didn't even have aspirin in there. No medications whatsoever.

Interviewer: So if you had a headache, you just went to sleep?

Bernard Mayer: No matter what you had, you went to sleep. You slept a lot. We were up. Actually, we were waiting for food all the time. Our time was based on the food, from one meal to the other, and the news, and the radio. The radio was our main. I don't think if we would have been able to survive emotionally without the radio because Ivan couldn't give us any information and he would come whenever he wanted to pick up the girl. He didn't come on a regular basis. He would bring, like, a sack of barley once in a few weeks because barley grows. We all were very thin. This I remember. Extremely thin. We were just bones and skin. But we really didn't think we were going to survive. We didn't think of it. We didn't think of being alive, that something is going to happen in the future.We didn't think of the future at all.

Interviewer: You mentioned before that with your brother you went to the cellar to get some air. Did any one of you ever went out of the bunker?

Bernard Mayer: No. We never went out of the cellar. The cellar had a door and what I would do or anybody else, there were cracks in the door and we would look through outside to the back, but we never did go upstairs. We wouldn't take a chance going upstairs. Usually he would open the cellar early in the evening when it was dark. He wasn't very sociable with his neighbours. Maybe that's the reason they suspected something because I never heard any neighbours coming there to the house.

Interviewer: They were living in a distance? You saw their houses?

Bernard Mayer: Yes. There was a neighbour who was right next to our house. He never associated. I think the reason for that was, first of all, he didn't want to get involved even before because he was not really there. He didn't consider this a home for himself.

Interviewer: Like a hotel.

Bernard Mayer: Like a hotel, yes, for the weekend. It wasn't a weekend, for him it was during the week and she would come over the weekend to see him. But many times, he used to go away for the weekend, too. He would go for awhile and didn't show up. If he didn't have to go to work, he wouldn't be there. He would go to his farm.

Interviewer: Did you have small problems like who would clean the place, who will wash the dishes, things like that?

Bernard Mayer: Surprisingly enough, there were plenty of volunteers and the reason for that is probably because people want to be busy. It was Mrs. Berkwerk who was the real owner of the house. She was the cook. And then there was Mrs. Schwartz who was cleaning. She would clean the dishes and the silverware and then was sometimes Mrs. Badian who was a very heavy woman. She lived in Israel. She would distribute the food.

Interviewer: She was in charge?

Bernard Mayer: She wasn't really in charge. Everything was cooked and she would weigh the food on the scale so everybody would get the same amount.

For example, the Shapiro boys, there were two young boys. They were cleaning up the place because sometimes we had too much. The cisterns would overflow. We had to remove the floor and there was a ditch inside, underneath. Otherwise we would float. We would drown inside. So they would get the water out and pour it into the toilet. That toilet was used all the time for any excess water that would come into bunker, because we had some rainy seasons and there was a lot of water coming in. There were some days that we had no water, it was completely dry, in the summertime. These two boys were doing that job. They were small, young boys. They were very skinny, I remember. I didn't do anything. I was lying on that bench with my friend, Arnold. My brother was busy with managing this thing, because he had to gather together the money from everybody to pay for food, to Ivan, because Ivan was bringing the food down and every time he would buy something, we had to pay him.

Interviewer: When you were out of money?

Bernard Mayer: When we were out of money, actually we were not really out. We were almost out. We were practically out of money just at the end. We still had some money for the food. If we wouldn't have been liberated within, I would say...If we had to stay another six months there, we probably wouldn't have survived. Emotionally we wouldn't have survived. I don't think Ivan would have even bothered with us anymore. I think he would have abandoned us or something. Surprisingly enough, looking back now, it was sort of the last, for everybody, the time to be out, because the people inside, the fighting between the upper class and the lower class. We were out of money. Ivan was sick and tired already of that place. I mean, listen, he was eighteen months with us, when you start building, don't forget. He had enough.

Interviewer: When you entered, you thought it is something temporary for a few months only?

Bernard Mayer: When we entered, we didn't think. We escaped from being taken away because the ghetto was being liquidated. We had no choice. I don't think that we even though we were going to be alive, to be honest with you because the Russians were so far away and who is going to liberate us? How long can we stay there? I mean, it was some miracle. In those days, if you know that you are going to be taken away, you don't think in these terms. You only think today. As long as you are alive tomorrow, today, you don't worry about tomorrow and tomorrow, you worry about the next day. This is the way it was. You didn't plan. There was no plan for this.

Interviewer: Do you remember anything more about your daily life?

Bernard Mayer: My personal daily life? I'll tell you, it was monotonous. Every day, the same thing. I personally was a very amiable person. I don't fight. At that time, neither. I didn't argue. But there were people like Mrs. Schwartz and my brother were like fire and water. They argued about everything. Every time there was noise in the bunker, somebody would ring that bell by hand, through make aware people that it comes from upstairs, but actually it didn't. It was like calling wolf all the time. I remember that I spent a lot of time listening, talking with people, anybody that wanted to talk to me. I was listening to people's stories, people telling me how they met before they married, what they did, how they enjoyed their lives before.

Interviewer: Didn't anybody try to teach you a little bit of history, Bible, mathematics, something that you miss because you can't go to school?

Bernard Mayer: No. Nobody did. First of all, we didn't have any pens practically to write or paper to write. There were no books naturally. I don't think people really were concerned about education at that time. I noticed, in the Warsaw Ghetto they had schools, they had things, but we didn't have that. You know why? They started very much earlier. They had their ghetto in 1940. They thought maybe that they can sort of live through this, sort of a temporary thing, but when they started with us already, we knew already that this was it. There was no fooling around. When that first "aktion" came and even before that there was another "aktion". You are absolutely right, they took several hundred people away. They called it for "resettlement". These people were sent to...They told us that they were sent to some city. I forgot the name of the city. Rabaruska, I think, some place like that. I don't know if that is a city. There was a boy that came from our building, they sent him away, and what happened really is that I'm suspicious that the Judenrat had made the list because they came to the Judenrat and they asked. They said: "We need seven hundred people", whatever it was. There were a few hundred people.

Actually, our first "aktion", the true "aktion", the first "aktion" was disabled people and that happened around the fall of 1941. At that time,they sent notices to all people with disabilities and they told them to come to the square, in Drohobycs, that the Germans said you come with a doctor's paper. This way you will be excused from work. About 250 people arrived there and they surrounded them and they took them away immediately and they shot them probably in Bronica, I don't know where, but that was the first "aktion" after the pogrom. The pogrom was a couple of days after they arrived and then there was that "aktion" of disabled. They called all the disabled. My friend that was living in our building, his father wanted to be excused from work so he went. He got himself this paper and then he said instead of me going, he sent his son, sixteen-year-old son. His name was Lonnik. He was my very wonderful friend that was living with me in the same house. He took that paper and he went there and he was taken away with the other people. It was a real tragedy in the house because this was one of the first things because the father could not forgive himself that he sent his son there. They took him away. They surrounded them and took them away. That was around October, November of 1941.

Interviewer: When you were in the bunker, you used to talk about the time of the war? Not strategically where the Germans are or if they are moving in or out, but about what happened to you, to your surroundings during the war? Like what you were telling me now? Did you talk about such things in the bunker?

Bernard Mayer: We talked about our fmilies that were taken. We knew that they killed our families. We talked about it. How much can you talk about it? Once in awhile my mother especially would talk about it because they were her sisters, her father, her sisters. I, being young, I probably wasn't...I probably was more aware about it later. I was aware about it later. Even now, I feel more guilty now that I have survived and maybe I could have helped my cousins or something. I feel maybe I could have, but more likely couldn't. Under those circumstances, I couldn't do anything because I was a young fellow. I didn't have the authority, for example. I was thinking why I didn't tell my cousins to come with me to the bunker, but I was not in charge. The circumstances were such that everybody was doing whatever they could for themselves. We didn't have the means of doing more. We were just doing the best we could for ourselves. My sister, my brother. You know, it was a situation that you didn't know. For example, I didn't know that...My cousin, for example, remained in the camp. I didn't know that I was going to remain in the bunker. There was no way that anybody would know what was good and what was bad in those days. Most people like these people went to...My sister went to the woods and she thought she is going to survive there and she didn't survive. Aharon went and built a fantastic bunker in the forest and he didn't survive. So who would know? If Aharon knew he was going to survive in my bunker, I'm sure he would have come to us. He built the bunker, but he didn't think he was going to survive in our bunker, because he thought this is in town and there are neighbours and somebody is going to squeal and we are going to be discovered. So he figured he will go into the forest because nobody is there, nobody will see him and he was wrong. Somebody went there and noticed the fire or whatever they had and they discovered them there. There was no way that rich or poor was able to know what is right and what is wrong.

Interviewer: Okay, thank you very much.

Bernard Mayer: You are quite welcome.