Yitzkhak Leo Kram

Name of Interviewee: Yitzchak Kram

Name of Interviewer: Dina Shefet

Cassette Number: VT-2246

Date: May 17, 1999

Name of Typist: Cheryl Balshayi

Names:

Buchenwald

Stutthof

Kaiserwald (Mezapars)

Riga

Niederorshel

Salapils

Rumbuli Forest

Bikernieki Forest

Dundaga

Frankfurt A/Main

Q: Today is the 17th of May, 1999. Dina Shefet is interviewing Mr. Yitzchak Kram. Yitzchak was born in Latvia. He will tell us about his life in Riga, about the ghetto. He was always in Stutthof and he was liberated by the American army in Buchenwald.

A: The same day as Elie Wiesel.

Q: Please, Yitzchak, tell me please what are your earliest memories?

A: Well, I’m telling my children and my grandchildren that I had a beautiful youth in my country and despite the fact that surroundings were anti-semitic, we didn’t pay any attention to them. I’m talking about 1925, ’26, ’27, something like this, when I started school. You can ask me questions.

Q: Go on.

A: My parents were born in little towns in Lithuania. They were first cousins. If the names of the towns are important, so I can tell you one is Scotville (sp?) for my father, and Pikeln for my mother. After the First World War they came to Riga and my grandfather had a horse and buggy business with flour, baking flour in a little shtetl in Lithuania. And probably somehow, therefore, my father knew something about the quality of flour - you know, they put the flour on a piece of paper, to see how white it is or how grey it is – and he became a salesperson for flour mills. My mother was a homemaker, was home and two years later my younger brother was born, Shimon, and in 1932 my little sister was born, by the name of Liba. At first my father put me in a religious school in Riga for one year, but then he probably decided that there was no “tachlis” and he put me in a secular school by the name of “Ivrit”, which was a very good school and a very well-known school and in fact in 1939, thanks to the schooling, I was able to get into Riga University, studying engineering.

Q: Before all that, Yitzchak, I want you to tell me more about your parents. What did they look like, who were they? About their character.

A: Well, that’s part of a little problem. I have nobody else right now to tell me more about what my mother was like and my father was like.

Q: Do you remember her?

A: Oh yes. I do remember, but I was so busy in Beitar from the age of ten to the age of nineteen that there was not too much communication with my parents. They saw that I am growing up okay, I’m growing up alright, and my father was more educated, self-educated, I would say. He read many books and he put me in this kind of school, as I mentioned to you before. Riga was a cosmopolitan city. It’s called “Little Paris”, Paris on the Baltic Sea. My father was very well in relationship with his fellow people, with his bakers, with his clients who bought these mills, and he was more interested in worldly things. He went to see me ice-skating, we went swimming together on the beach in the summer, but otherwise I don’t remember too much of any communication I had with my father or my mother.

Q: Did you have non-Jewish friends?

A: In 1939 I had acquaintances in the university and during the summers I had a few non-Jewish friends, but they were not too important in my life.

Q: Tell me about…you went to a very privileged gymnasia, high school. Will you tell me about the life in this Hebrew-speaking gymnasium?

A: Let me regress for a moment. Riga had two cross-cultures: German culture and Russian culture.

Q: What did you speak at home?

A: I have to explain. I went to one classmate that spoke only Russian. I went to another classmate that only spoke German. So in Yiddish you say, “Russiche yidden and Deutsche yidden” and I was from the “Yiddische yidden”. Why? Because my parents came from Lithuania. At home their parents spoke Yiddish and we spoke Yiddish at home.Q: What was the relation between the “Deutsche” and the “Yiddische”?

A: Well, I don’t think there was any conflict. I really cannot tell you how the German- and Russian-speaking Jews, how they interacted. I think there was no problem about that. The fact that they spoke Russian, German in their house, if they were partners in business or they were belonging to the same club and society, this I don’t think made any effect on them. It’s not like in other countries. Actually the German Jews did not like the eastern Jews. I’m talking about German Jews before Hitler. They looked down on the Jews and they called them “Ostjuden” and sometimes they made even such “Schmutzige Ostjuden”, dirty “Ostjuden”, but those who were in Latvia, either they were in Latvia a long time and they didn’t have this mentality about looking down at “Ostjuden”, or those who came as refugees from Hitler – I’m talking in the ‘30’s, ’34, ’35 – I think they had no interest to have any rivalry, “machloket” with other Jews. They were happy that they found a refuge in Latvia.

Q: And did the friends of your parents, they were all Jews or you had also gentiles?

A: No, no.

Q: You did not mix with gentiles actually.

A: No, no.

Q: Not at all?

A: Very few of the Latvian Jews. We could be friendly with the Latvians. My father was friends with Latvian bakers and there was no – how can I explain to you? – there was no hostility as such against the non-Jewish people, the goyim, but as far as mixing, very few mixed. We got along with them.

Q: If I would ask you, ask a child, did you feel you were alien to the society? I mean, did you feel anti-semitism?

A: Not much.

Q: Were you called when people saw you in the streets? Did they bully you?

A: Well, “Zhid”. “Zhid”. Oh yes, sure, here and there, but unless we got involved in fights with the “goyische” boys, we didn’t pay attention.

Q: But you got involved with fights with them?

A: Oh yes, sure.

Q: So there was a kind of anti-semitism?

A: Yes, fights. But only when we came across them going back from school or there were some other occasions when there were fights, friction, but not too frequently. They went their way, we went our way. What they felt in their hearts I don’t know. We, as Jews, thought that they were lower. This was a nation which was, I mean, the people were under Russia maybe three hundred years and under the Germans maybe less than that time, so we didn’t think much about the Latvian Christian people. They had their “intelligentsia”, small part of “intelligentsia”, but otherwise we looked down at them. Not that they should feel it, that we are degrading them, but just in our heart and in our mind we felt they were, how shall I say it, like peasants, not too intelligent. There was, of course, the “intelligentsia” of them, but the majority were just not doing.

Q: Now again about this wonderful “Gymnasia Ivrit” that you went to. Will you tell me some things about this?

A: I can tell you too much about the “Gymnasia Ivrit”.

Q: Yes, I would like to hear, because it was, after all, a very special school.

A: Well, Israelis who I meet don’t believe me that all the subjects were taught in Ivrit, and I’m talking about 1934 to 1939. In my opinion, or what I heard, that this school was one of the, perhaps the, best school in Europe. Now when I talk to, I tease some Israelis, I say, “Ata shamata? Pdoo tachmotset hapachmon, chankan, maiman, zavit keha, zavit chada, le’hotsee me hashoresh, kavim maqbilim nifgashim b’ain sof, nefach, alachson, v’cholay v’cholay” (Hebrew), so all this subject – I’m talking about mathematics, I’m talking about algebra, geometry and of course chemistry – everything was in Ivrit. “Teva”. What do I remember about “teva”? “Givol, prachim givolim” or something like this. Then history was in Ivrit, philosophy, a little bit in the higher grade, was in Ivrit and then Ivrit itself we learned. I don’t think the Israelis know about the “mishororim” from way back – started with Fischman, Yehuda Leib Gordon, Tchernichovsky, Schneor, Bialik. I don’t know the current poets or “mishororim”, but we were very much to learn all their songs, all their poems. In Europe they believed in learning “b’al peh”. Here, of course, I don’t think they have any emphasis on “b’al peh”, so of course when you had to be called before the “luach” to recite a poem, of course you were nervous. And the other subject – as I mentioned to you, everything was in “Ivrit” and when I graduated high school in ’39 and when I went into university, which was not so easy for a Jew. To get into university was “numerus clausus”. In engineering it was not so bad. The economics was not so bad, but medicine? Forget it. Maybe one was accepted. I had to take a Latvian teacher to teach me all the “munachim” from mathematics because there were three exams, three “bechinot” to get into college. There was one in English, foreign language - where you have to come back to languages. One in English and one in math and one in Latvian, the language of Latvia.

Q: But yet what other foreign languages did you learn?

A: Well, here I go. I was exposed to seven languages. Exposed to. I am not an expert in any of them, but at home we started Yiddish. Then in school we started with the Latvian language which is called “Letit”. And “Ivrit”.

Q: And what about Latvian?

A: Latvian language I only learned as a language. I didn’t learn mathematics in Latvian. So the Latvian language, what can I tell you? It’s not Spanish and not German. And in the lower grades, in “beit sefer yesodi”, we learned two years of German and two years of Russian, so you have Yiddish at home, Latvian, “Ivrit”, German and Russian. In “beit sefer tichoni” four years obligatory English and those who wanted to go for a doctor in pharmacy had to learn Latin, and I took four years of English in high school and four years of French in high school.

Q: So you know English and…you knew English and French….?

A: By now I’m pretty solid in Yiddish and fairly solid in English and in Hebrew, if I would live here three or four months, I would probably get back conversational “Ivrit”.

Q: What they put the emphasis on in this school? On Jewish writers, Jewish literature?

A: In English?

Q: No, I talk about Jewish literature.

A: Hebrew literature.

Q: Yes, Jewish or Hebrew.

A: Well, Sholom Aleichem I believe was translated into Hebrew and Peretz had also “kama sippurim” (some stories) in “Ivrit”.

Q: So you learned at that time what other….for example, what other Hebrew literature did you learn?

A: As I mentioned to you before, the “mishororim” and mostly Chaim Nachman Bialik, Tchernichovsky, Ahad Ha’am.

Q: All of them?

A: Yes, but otherwise I personally read a few Hebrew…the only one I remember is “Parash Bli Rosh”. Ever heard about it? So this I remember in Hebrew. I don’t remember what books I read in Hebrew. I read mostly in Yiddish some books. I was interested in the Russian Revolution, I was interested in Apes and Sinclair, in Babbitt, what happened in American problems here, Sacco and Vinvetti.

Q: Was it a Zionist school? Would you call it a Zionist school?

A: Zionist? Yes. I told you it was the “zionistim socialistim”, because a few of the principles were “zionistim socialistim”.

Q: You, I understand, came from an orthodox family, yes? And probably most of the pupils were not so orthodox.

A: Over in Riga?

Q: No, in this particular school, in “tarbut”.

A: No, no. There was no orthodox at all. I think we only learned “Bereshit” and “Shemot” and that’s all, “humashim”. And we learned a lot of “Tanach” and I wouldn’t be surprised that we learned it without the “kippa”. I don’t remember.

Q: And your father accepted it?

A: Yes. It was already at that time a little bit “haskala”, you know?

Q: Did you go at the same time to “cheder”, too?

A: Only one year of “cheder”.

Q: That’s all.

A: “Cheder” I wouldn’t like even to…

Q: So your parents already belonged to the “haskala”, too?

A: Yes. In a certain way. My father was not belonging, did not belong to any organization, but he, of course, accepted the “haskala”. Otherwise he wouldn’t have sent me. He could have sent me to “cheder”.

Q: In this period did people talk about the optimism in the air with the enlightenment, with the “haskala” movement and all that. Did you feel…?

A: Yes, the famous slogan, “Yehe adam betsetecha veyehudi beohalecha.” That was his “sisma”.

Q: And you felt it, too? You felt that it is possible to be a Jew in the surrounding of non-Jews or in a majority of non-Jews?

A: “Lahefech”. We were very proud of being Jews and it’s not like in France. The French Jews were very much involved with the French culture, the German Jews unfortunately were very much involved with the German culture. We didn’t have what to get involved with because we were looking down at the Latvians as peasants, you know? So there was no influence on us.

Q: What was your religious life? I mean you went to the synagogue on Saturday?

A: Well, that’s what I told my “chavura” as I remember. When it came to the “tiyulim” I never went on shabbat, I never took a trolley car and so on shabbat and so on and so forth. And “shabbos” I went with my father to synagogue. In fact, there was a picture here showing my student hat. The students in Europe had a certain hat, so my father was very proud that finally his son got into college. I don’t know how much education…my father probably had none except he was self-educated. Every night he read all kinds of books in all kinds of languages.

Q: Which synagogue did you belong to?

A: Student group? Well, I wasn’t old enough to belong to…there was “He’chaver” and there was “Hashmonaya”. “He’chaver” was “smol” (left) and “Hashmonaya” was right. I wasn’t old enough to belong to any of the student organization, but I belonged to “Beitar” as I told you.

Q: Yes, but to the synagogue. Which synagogue did you go to?

A: Well, over there all the synagogues were about the same, except the “chassidim”, but we didn’t have too many “chassidim” in Riga. The synagogues were about the same. It’s not like you go…I’m talking here about pluralism. For us it was a joke. Conservative, reform – we never heard over there.

Q: You never had, like in other countries they had the “neologues”?

A: Yes, we heard about it.

Q: You had the “neologists”, for example?

A: Yes, we heard about the reform…

Q: But you did not have in Riga?

A: No. Didn’t go there. It shouldn’t go here either. But this is off the record.

Q: So you went every Saturday to the synagogue?

A: Yes, most of them, but after the synagogue, to “Moadon Beitar”.

Q: You never had “seuda shlishit” for example on shabbat?

A: No. We didn’t bother with that.

Q: So you were not so religious.

A: Definitely not. I’m still not so religious right now. I believe in “hashgaha pratit”, that I remained alive and I decided to raise my children. I was just fortunate, I was just lucky. I have two wonderful sons, their wives are outstanding, and I have seven wonderful grandchildren. It could have gone the other way, too. There is no guarantee. There is no guarantee in Israel and there is no guarantee in the United States. No place. There is no guarantee, just “mazal”. The same with my survival. Ninety-five percent “mazal”.

Q: Do you have any dominant memory, let’s say until the years of university? Any dominant memory that you would like to share with us?

A: Just that I was very involved with “Beitar”. I finally, probably 1938 I was made a “madrich” of a “pluga” from fifteen, sixteen wonderful girls and we were very serious, very idealistic. I keep on saying that our children – maybe in Israel it’s different - our sons and grandsons could not have this kind of youth as I had because we had all kinds of…first of all we were very much trained to go to, later on, to aliyah and we were involved with all kinds of “asifot”, “sichot”, what do you call it? Jamborees in the summer, like scout jamborees.

Q: So you were happy? Happy childhood?

A: Absolutely. Very happy.

Q: You think that “Beitar” was a kind of second home for you?

A: Absolutely. My son brought a big picture of Jabotinsky – it is hanging up in the house – but since I am forty-six I went to United States – that is another story – then I told my “chevura”, (Hebrew) I told my sons, I didn’t fight in the War of Independence, I’m not deserving to be accepted in Israel. They pay five thousand dollars to be buried in Israel. I need to stay there because….I said, “I am a traitor. I didn’t fight.” “Don’t say that I am a traitor.” There are three hundred thousand Israelis who live in the United States, so that makes me feel a little bit less of a “boged” (traitor).

Q: What was the relation between “Shomer HaTzair” – that was also very, very dominant in Riga?

A: There were three organizations – “Beitar” and “Shomer HaTzair”.

Q: And the “Beitar” organization – did they interact?

A: Some fistfights with the “Shomer HaTzair” “chevrei”. It was “Shomer HaTzair”, “Beitar” and “Shomer HaDati”. I didn’t belong to “Shomer HaDati”. I belonged to “Beitar”. Here and there, of course, there were big conversations, big fights, verbal fights, some fistfights. Ben-Gurion came to Riga – he didn’t get such a “kabbalat panim” from us. And the other way around, too, of course. At that time was Stavsky and Arlosoroff.

Q: Didn’t it influence you, the famous big visit of Ben-Gurion in Riga?

A: I don’t remember exactly what kind of “kabbalat panim” he had. I don’t remember whether it was tomatoes or rotten eggs. I don’t remember. I cannot say. When Jabotinsky came to Riga, wow! Jabotinsky founded the “Beitar” movement in 1932 in Riga. He found a proper good crowd over there. Of course the “Shomer HaTzair” was maybe even bigger than “Beitar”, I don’t know for sure. But when Jabotinsky came to Riga, everybody was electrified. He was an electrifying personality.

Q: Jabotinsky.

A: Ben-Gurion, may his memory be respected (Hebrew), he did a few good things, he said a few things. What did you say? “Oom Shmoom.” ‘Not what the goyim saved, but what the Jews do.” I don’t remember exactly. I didn’t have a chance to prepare myself. Jabotinsky, “Beitar”. Yesterday I was singing in the first floor, “Birchat Hamazon” was singing the prayer in Hebrew. And yesterday I was reminded when I had the “chevura”. We took her back to Kiryat Ono. I said, “You remember we were singing “Chayalim almonim hinenu bli madim. Misaviv…..” (Hebrew) Did you hear this song?

Q: Never. What other songs you remember that you can sing for us?

A: There are a few, but I don’t remember.

Q: What do you remember?

A: “Hadar”. I cannot remember right not. I have to ask my “chevura” to remind me. Beautiful songs. Of course we sang “tov l’mut be’ad artzeneu”.

Q: Do you remember any religious tunes from home that you used to sing?

A: Yiddish songs.

Q: Like what, for example?

A: (Yiddish). Many other ones.

Q: We are talking now in the years that actually then the Nazis raised into power. All what happened to Jews in Germany, all the boycotts, all the Nuremberg laws and all that – how did you deal with it? Did you think about it or you thought here it’s too far away?

A: Unfortunately it was far away from many Jewish communities. It was far away for Hungarian Jews and Rumanian Jews.

Q: What about you?

A: We were a small community of a hundred thousand Jews and thinking back right now, I can’t understand how, when…Kristallnacht in ’38 – I think Kristallnacht was in ’38 – and in ’33 people were sent to Buchenwald. I’m sure my father knew about it, I’m sure, but I don’t think he ever spoke about it. He was so immersed – I’m talking now till 1940 when the Soviets came in – we were so immersed in our studies in school and our activities in “Beitar”, so I am really surprised how come it didn’t affect us materially. Maybe we heard far away things happening, something like this, but…

Q: It was far away.

A: In Germany. We knew about what happened with Stalin, what happened with the Jewish writers with Stalin. I knew some of…my friends probably didn’t know even that because I was a little bit more interested, like I’m interested now in the work, but I’m surprised now that ’36, ’37, ’38, ’39, I’m surprised that at that time we were kind of oblivious what’s happening around us. Maybe parents spoke to, my father spoke to his friends constantly, maybe he worried, but it was too late. It was a tragic thing happened in my family. My uncle – that means the husband of my mother’s sister – he had an old father in Minsk, White Russia. How he received - he went to Israel, to Palestine at that time – how he received a certificate for my uncle, his wife and two daughters, I don’t know what kind of “protectzia” he had here. So he sent a certificate to my uncle in 1936, ’37. In the meantime, a Russian farmer…Russian-Latvian, somebody from the Seventh Day Adventists, or something like this, took a liking to him. Otherwise, although he was a substitute “gemorra” teacher in a “cheder”, he took a liking to him because he said he is dealing here with an honest person. So he sent carloads of cucumbers and onions and potatoes from the farm to Riga and my uncle became his agent. P.S. My uncle renewed the certificate every year, renewed it. He was the first one to be killed when the Germans came in. A tragedy. I could have had here now nephews and nieces.

Q: I just want to go back to your life in the university. I mean you were actually a small minority in the university there, Jews.

A: Yes.

Q: What did you feel? Did you feel anti-semitism by the professors?

A: From the students themselves I didn’t feel, but there was one anti-semitic - my son knows his nephew – one anti-semitic professor who was in designing – I don’t even know how to tell it in English – geometry. When you cut the cone into certain sections, then you split it out so you had the big boards here and you make kind of “shirtutim”, something like this. He was very anti-semitic.

Q: In what way? What did he say?

A: He was very smart. First of all, in the middle of his lecture one of the students said, “How about Danzig?” He stopped everything and started talking about Hitler. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I remember in the middle of this study, of his study, we were not studying his subject. We were talking about politics. And then he gave every…he knew that some of the Jewish students, including myself, were copying from each other because it was easier to get by. He gave every Jewish student a five, an “A”, so somebody asked him, ‘Why do you do that? Why are you giving the students?” He said, “I know they are copying from each other. When they go out in the world I don’t want them to know the subject.” That’s how shrewd he was. And another one who I wrote an article about him – this was Herbert Cukurs. He was studying right next to me in mechanical engineering. He probably was older than me. He didn’t know me, I didn’t know him. The reason I’m mentioning his name because he was the one who was called the “Butcher of Riga”.

Q: Yes, Cukurs, of course. You talk about the same Cukurs and you went with him to university. Really. What was his….?

A: At that time he was a “tzaddik”. You don’t know what happened. He was an ace pilot. You’ll read the article – I didn’t sign my name. He was an ace pilot – I’m talking the ‘30’s, ’33, ’34 - I can’t remember exactly when. And he took a little plane and went from city to city until he reached North Africa. Why did he go to North Africa? Because he probably heard that some Latvians settled there maybe a hundred years ago. So he went to research this kind of…On the way back he stopped in Palestine, like Eichmann was living here, but he only stopped in Palestine for a few weeks and he observed the work of the “halutzim” - how they drained the swamps and so on and so forth. He came to Riga, Latvia, and he filled two or three “ulamim”, “theatron” with Jews and he told them how wonderful and so on. The Jews paid him a lot of money. He stuffed his pockets with Jewish money. This was in ’34, ’35 – I don’t remember when. In 1941 he was the first one to come into the ghetto.

Q: How do you exchange…?

A: Maybe he was anti-semite from “bettan velida” (birth). How do you know? I don’t know.

Q: Oh, I thought you were friendly with him.

A: No, I just mentioned to you. I was standing maybe five, ten feet away from him. I was never friendly with him. No, no such thing. You have plenty of Jews who were friendly with the Jew-killers, but I didn’t have this kind…

Q: No, I thought before. What he became.

A: No, no. He was just studying mechanical engineering and sometime during the intersessions, he was standing there, I was standing someplace else, maybe I was talking to my friend. I didn’t even pay much attention to him. I know he was already an ace pilot, but that’s it. Then in 1941, in November, he came into the ghetto with his big revolver – I mentioned this. But one thing is interesting. That it is assumed that five thousand Nazis escaped to South America - it is assumed – with the help of the Vatican or not. This I don’t know. So only two people were killed – Eichmann, brought to Israel and hanged, and Cukurs. And Mengele allegedly, who sent my wife to one end and her mother and her sister to another end, allegedly drowned off the coast of Brazil. So later on, when I talk about the Shoah, I will tell you what our opinion is, why Cukurs was the only one killed, why not others.

Q: What do you remember, of course later from the Russian occupation?

A: The Russian occupation was very, very tough. First of all, my father lost his job and if he found something he had to work on shabbat and he didn’t take the trolley, but he went there and the people who he worked for in the flour mill were friendly with him, so maybe he didn’t even do any work, but just went in to be noticed that he was there. And the Jewish schools were closed.

Q: What happened to the “Tarbut”? To your school, your ex-school? The “Tarbut Gymnasia”, what happened? It was closed?

A: Everything was closed, everything was liquidated.

Q: Some Jews were happy.

A: I called these Jews (?). In German “Lumpen” – “smartootim” (rags). Proletarian. So I called them the “Lumpen Proletariat”. I’m sorry, I’m not pronouncing it right. We can talk about it. So actually what has to be said here – the Germans went into Sudeten probably in ’38 – I don’t have all the data here. Then they went into Poland in 1939 and then was Molotov and Ribbentrop had a pact, non-aggression pact, and they divided the spheres of influence, so Latvia and Estonia and Lithuania remained in the sphere of influence of Russia, Soviet Russia, and Poland, part of Poland under the Germans. I’m not too sure, I’m not much of a historian. Anyway, in retrospect, when I think about it right now, there is nothing wrong that the Jewish people, hearing about Kristallnacht, hearing about Buchenwald, hearing about Dachau, there is nothing wrong with the Jewish people thinking – I’m talking about the Jewish people in Latvia – thinking that the mighty Russian army would protect them from Hitler. This has nothing whatsoever to do with sympathizing communism. On the contrary, on the contrary. There were many Latvian businessmen, there were many Latvian merchants – Latvia had an extraordinary amount of “ba’alei malacha”, craftsmen. You had jewellers and you had tailors and you had furriers and you had watchmakers, you had pocketbook makers. All this here had nothing to gain from being nationalized and put into a collective. They had nothing to gain. The “frum” people, the religious people, were certainly afraid of Communist atheism, right? I’m talking about the forty percent, forty thousand Jews in Riga – I am sure that maybe two thousand were sympathetic, maybe even actually Communist, sympathetic Communists. Later on the Latvians used this here to put us as the top list of “hashmada”. We were left only one percent. More than anybody else. So what happened was, the Russian tanks, on June 1940 the Russian tanks came into Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. When the tanks came in – I’m talking about Riga, some threw flowers at that time…(not clear). Of course later on the Latvians shouted (at) retreating Russian army. What can I tell you? People had to go to the army. All the organizations were liquidated, the schools were closed and everything else, business were nationalized, and life was very, very dreary, it was very drab. Of course a few of us met underground, “misiba”.

Q: But some people do claim that it was less anti-semitic time when the Russians were there.

A: The Russians, everybody was afraid of the Russians. The father was afraid of his son. Father was afraid to talk to the son. Suppose the son is Comsomol, a Communist, and the father says something, the son can turn him in. The walls had ears. You couldn’t talk too much. You had to be very careful.

Q: So actually you did not feel free at all? It took your independence in a way.

A: I felt miserable, I felt miserable. By that time I was already in college about that time. I went into university in ’39 when the Latvians were there, but in ’40 I was already in college under the Soviets. I had to listen to Marxism-Leninism. I studied very hard for the exam and I passed with an “A”. When I came out from the exam, I knew I got an “A”, so my friends asked me, “Spit out.” So I spat out.

Q: Did you hear what was happening to the Jews in the east? I am talking now about…we are now at 1941, ’40, ’41, yes?

A: ’41 July – that was when the Germans came back in.

Q: Before that, did you hear what is going on in Poland? Did people talk about it? Didn’t you meet some refugees who escaped and came to you?

A: That’s a good question. I don’t know how to answer you honestly. I don’t remember, I don’t remember. There were refugees from Germany, there were refugees from…I’m trying to think about it right now. I was not busy with “Beitar” anymore. I was busy with studying in college, I was hoping not to be drafted into the Russian army. I don’t remember, I don’t remember what I thought.

Q: Did you remember the early days of the German occupation?

A: I do remember.

Q: Or the retreat of the Russians?

A: I do remember too well the early days of the German occupation. The Russians were retreating. Let me, at this point, give you statistics. There were a hundred thousand Jews in Latvia, about two hundred and fifty thousand Jews in Lithuania. Talk about Latvia. Two weeks before the Nazis came in to Riga, June 14, 1940, the “NKVD” – we call it the “KGB” – the Russian secret police arrested five thousand Jews in Latvia and twelve thousand Latvians – Latvian “intelligentsia”, Latvian generals. Who were the Jews who they arrested? It’s very possible that a few Jewish Communists told them to take this, take this, take this. This is possible, I don’t know. Who did the arrests? They arrested merchants, businessmen, bankers, rabbis, Zionist leaders and so on and so forth.

Q: The elite of the society.

A: Yes, elite. Well, not so much the elite intellectually. The people who had businesses. And shipped them to Siberia. Two weeks before the Germans came in.

Q: Those people were saved, some of them.

A: Some of them were saved. For some of them it was a saving, but some of them actually died from hunger and from slave labour, terrible conditions on the tundra and so on and so forth. My friend just wrote me a letter from Riga. He is coming here on aliyah. He says, “My mother said ‘I would rather sleep in an ‘ambatia’ than sleep…’” so she doesn’t know that she would have never slept in an “ambatia”. She would have been right away taken to the forest. So when the Germans came in, the Latvians already were shooting the retreating Russian soldiers. I went to the train, I asked my parents, “Let’s move.” See, my father didn’t work in a factory where the whole factory was evacuated, so my father was home, he didn’t want to move. There was the little sister of mine, my brother, who was two years younger. I went to the train to run away from Riga myself and in the shooting of the train I remained. What happened is…so right away….you see, I’m not telling you from personal experience because I happened to be there, but right away – my personal experience comes later – but right away the Latvians and the Germans took many people to clean up, to take away the dead horses, to clean up the rubble from the bombardment. And the Latvian police - they had the green armbands – took Jews to the police headquarters – we called it “prefecture”. They took them to a very anti-semitic organization which was called (?), “Thunderbolt”. I wasn’t there. If I would have been there, I wouldn’t be here today. And they beat them and they cut off beards and they…I don’t know what they did. Maybe they raped women. I don’t know for sure. And then every minute was another decree – the Jews are not allowed to own telephones or radios, the Jews are not allowed to walk on the “midracha”, on the sidewalk, only on the street. I’m not right now prepared to tell you all kinds. Every time there was another decree. On July 4 – which is America’s independence – July 4, the Latvians burned three hundred Jews alive in Riga’s biggest synagogue. These were refugees, Jewish “plitim” from Lithuania which didn’t have their own homes, so the Latvian firemen were dousing….

Q: That was before the German occupation?

A: No, no, no. Four days after the Germans came in. The Germans came in July 1 and July 4 the firemen were dousing water on the buildings, they shouldn’t turn down.

Q: But these people that were killed, you say they were from Lithuania. How did they know about these people that came from Lithuania.

A: They didn’t care. There were Latvian people, too. Latvian people, too. As I told you, seven, eight thousand people disappeared right away.

Q: And it was in the synagogue? Where did they burn them?

A: No. They burned down synagogues. Not only synagogues. They burned down this synagogue, they burned out another synagogue with seventy-five Jews inside, with the Rabbi Kilov, was the rabbi over there. They burned every synagogue down.

Q: And that was in Riga.

A: In Riga. The only synagogue which they didn’t burn down was the synagogue where I was bar mitzvah. It was in the “ir atika”, it was in the old city and the buildings were too compact, too close to each other.

Q: It was done by the…?

A: Latvians. The Germans were too busy to go…

Q: How did they explain this anti-semitism? From a different kind.

A: No, no. The Latvians had now an excuse. The Latvians said that all the Jews were sympathetic to the Soviets, right? And therefore we are taking revenge on them, “nekama”. But it was not right.

Q: It was done by army, by what?

A: It was a military…at that time was not Latvian army, but they were militia, Latvian militia. They organized themselves right away in militia and there was one man – I don’t know. He was sentenced to death in Germany? – There were Latvian killing commanders and they went all over small towns and they killed, the Latvians killed in all the small…the Germans didn’t organize the killing yet. This was not organized yet. So the Latvians – Germans were busy. Then came the “Einsatzgruppen” later. Then they organized the Gestapo.

Q: Actually it was from one day to another. You were not prepared for all that?

A: Who was prepared? And the Hungarian Jews – my wife comes from Hungary – and they were sent to Auschwitz on May 15, 1944. Were they prepared? They were not prepared. We could never think that the Germans are capable of annihilation, or genocide. Some people especially were so…by the German culture, the German Goethe and Schiller. We couldn’t believe that they were actually going to kill. Babi Yar in Kiev was September, I believe, 26th. We figured they would put us to work. And even if we would have known, there was no….Listen, take the St. Louis. Did America let the people in? Did the British let in people in Palestine? There was nowhere to go.

Q: Yes.

A: So the Latvians killed many Jews in all the little cities.

Q: And what happened to you at that time? You personally. Where were you when all this killing took place?

A: We were working. My father was working in the city, I was working in the city. I don’t remember exactly what we did in the next few weeks, but in September 1941, two Latvian policemen rang our bell in the house and my father answered the bell. “Your name Kram?” And I was next to my father. “Come with us.” So one said, “Shall I take this one too?” He says, “Leave him alone.” So I remained with my mother, my little sister and my brother. They took my father, put him in the biggest prison in Riga, called Central Prison, and he never came out of there. I don’t know if they shot him or let him die from hunger. I don’t know. Some were shot and some were let die form hunger.

Q: In the prison?

A: In the prison. Yes, he was taken. Once I saw him going by with a truck to unload coals. Another story. I went with a piece of challah with sugar and I threw it like a hand grenade. All the hands were lifted up. I don’t know if my father got it, what I threw. This was dangerous for me too. Then the Germans started building the ghetto in Riga. At that time it was organized by the Germans and assisted by the Latvians. So I think in October – I don’t have the exact dates – October 1941 or November ’41 everybody from Riga was told to get into the ghettos, everybody who was still around was told to get into the ghettos. We took whatever we could – potatoes, little…..to heat the ovens. You know Riga was cold in November. And on the pushcart. We couldn’t use anything else. We couldn’t use trucks or so on. With a pushcart we went into the ghetto and maybe three, four families were in one apartment, in one “dira”, and it was very crowded. And over there we went outside to work in Riga. It was all kinds of groups – one group went to a German hospital, I worked for a German Luftwaffe, loading and unloading furniture. And it was all kinds of groups from the ghetto going out to work, the able-bodied men. (end of side)

We came to the point where the Latvians killed whenever they could kill the Jews. The Germans did not interfere whatsoever. And then the Germans started organizing.

Q: The ghetto.

A: The ghetto, right.

Q: What were the conditions in the ghetto?

A: Wait a minute. So we had to go into the ghetto and as I mentioned to you, three or four families were in one apartment, very crowded. Families who didn’t know each other, strangers, because they had to go suddenly, go overnight and bring a little bit potatoes and bread, whatever we could into the ghetto. By that time my father was already arrested in prison and the conditions in the ghetto were, first of all, they made sure they had some food and able-bodied men went to work. The Germans needed the able-bodied men. A - Most of us spoke German. The Latvians didn’t speak German. As far as the Germans, Latvians were peasants, you know. And secondly, the Latvians they had to pay something. They had cheap, slave labour. No pay, nothing, just food. So we had “kommandos”, we called them “kommandos”, going out. Not the killing “kommandos”, but our “kommandos”, groups, going out to work everyday to maybe thirty, forty places, and coming back to the ghetto at night.

Q: It was tightly closed, the gates?

A: Yes, yes. It was surrounded by barbed wire. Latvian guards were outside. The Germans didn’t bother. The Latvian guards were outside. We were surrounded with barbed wire. (Hebrew) How do you say it in Hebrew?

Q: “Geder tile”.

A: And it was in the poorest section of Riga where they took out the Christian people from their apartments, gave them Jewish apartments, and they put us in the Christian apartments. So we went to work. Then on November 28, 1941 – I would say November 27, 28. These dates are very important to us because these were dates of the two “aktions”. We called them “aktions”. You heard about them before.

Q: But you will tell me what you…

A: Yes. So the able-bodied men went to work in the city. Part of the big ghetto was, everybody was chased out from their houses. What do I mean “everybody”? Old men, women, children, even young men who didn’t go to work, were chased out from their houses into the street. Later on when we went to these houses, you could see the “mazleg” (fork) or the cup stuck in the soup which hardened, you know? They were not even able…..we saw little shoes around, little “bubas” or something. Everything, all of a sudden the Germans – the Latvians, not the Germans. The Germans organized it, but the Latvians came through all the houses and chased everybody through with hitting, with billy clubs, with the rifles, hitting them, kicking them, or something like this, sometimes shooting them, and chased them out on the street. And then this was “Yud Kislev”, this is my date, “Yud Kislev”, when my mother and my little sister and my mother’s sister and their two little girls and about twelve thousand people were marched seven kilometers outside of Riga.

Q: Where was it? In the woods?

A: Yes. Rumbuli forest. Now the Russians prisoners-of-war had dug trenches there before for mass graves and when the women and the elderly were brought to the mass graves….

Q: In this “aktion” was mostly women?

A: Yes, mostly women, but some men too. Some men, some husbands didn’t want to leave their wives, you know? But we were young men yet and we went to work. We didn’t know that this is going to happen. We had no idea that this is going to happen. Otherwise maybe many men would have stayed with their families, but we didn’t know what was going on. And we were sent out to work and they were marched to the trenches, they were told to undress. Everybody was told to take off their clothing and the Latvians – I’m sure the Latvians. I don’t think the Germans bothered with this that time – the Latvians shot everybody with rifles, with machine guns, with hand grenades, and two women escaped because they were lying under the shoes, under the clothing and maybe the Latvian shooters were shooting, maybe thought they were dead so they were later on….one the name was Medalia, the other one I forgot the name right now, they survived the massacre.

Q: When did you see your mother last? I mean before she was killed. In the same day?

A: In the day when I went to work, in the morning when I went to work. She had no idea that that was going to happen.

Q: There was no premonition, nobody told you anything?

A: No, no.

Q: You did not know. You thought you are going…

A: Not in the first “aktion”. The second “aktion” the Germans were very sly. They said the women are going to have a camp, resettlement.

Q: In Rumboli?

A: No, they didn’t say the word Rumbuli. We didn’t know anything about Rumbuli.

Q: And probably Rumbuli were woods that you knew them before. You knew Rumbuli before.

A: Maybe yes, but I don’t think they knew about Rumbuli too much because we were going in other directions, to the seashore, was beautiful beaches. In the summer when I grew up the beaches were wonderful. The second “aktion” maybe, because they said they are going to resettle. The men in Riga to work and the women and children are going to be resettled outside of Riga. Whether at that time they mentioned the words Rumbuli I cannot tell you, I don’t remember. So what happened was, a week passed by and of course I…somebody who was deputy – there were five members in the “Seim” it’s called. Like a parliament. There were five Jews in that parliament. One of the members of the parliament, a lawyer, Wittenberg, organized a “sled commander” – there was already snow – to bury the ones killed in the ghetto. The streets were full of blood. Those who could go, went, but those who couldn’t go were shot on the spot.

Q: And when did you hear about your mother’s and your sister’s deaths?

A: At the time I still believed that they were being resettled. At the time we sent out the German soldiers to take a look, we got the information from Russian prisoners-of-war, we got these pieces of information, but we didn’t believe that this was happening.

Q: You did not know at that time that they were shot there?

A: No.

Q: Nobody told?

A: No, no, nobody. This was their system, the Germans had a system. They probably worked the same system in every ghetto, I assume. Even if we would have known, what would have happened was that our mothers would have said, “You go, you stay here, you try to remain alive.” Right? And some wives would say the same thing to their husbands, maybe, if this is what happened. It is very possible that it happened in the second “aktion”. I really don’t know that now. I would have to talk to some other people about it. There is only a very few survivors of us – nine hundred out of eighty-three thousand. I’m sure the women were stronger than the men emotionally. They would say to the husbands, “Look here. You stay here, work. Work. Maybe you’ll bring us bread outside Riga.” But we didn’t know anything. When we came back that night – people went to work. We were not allowed to go back to the big ghetto. We had a small ghetto fenced off for the able-bodied men, small ghetto. We were not able to go back to our apartments to see what happened and so on and so forth. Yes. So with a sled I took a little boy of seven who was killed with dum-dum bullets. So we were not allowed to go back to the big ghetto at all. There was a small ghetto fenced off for four thousand able-bodied men and we had to look for new places where to put our heads down. Coming back at night we went into houses and the houses were empty already, so everybody grabbed whatever he could. One friend helped the other, “Come with me. I have a better apartment. I have a better place.” And this happened in “Yud Kislev”, 29th of November. December 8 and 9 the second “aktion” happened. Again, the able-bodied men were already fenced off. We had no contact anymore with the ghetto. Half of the ghetto was liquidated already and the other half of the ghetto was still living in their apartments. They were chased out. Same thing happened again and they were taken also to Rumbuli – that’s the second “aktion”. I’ll do a “quick forward”. German Jews and Czechoslovakian Jews an Austrian Jews were brought into these houses in the ghetto and they were killed over there because the Latvians were the most cruel killers. Why didn’t they kill the Jews from Frankfurt and Koln? Why didn’t they kill them in Poland? They took them to Riga, Latvia, but I don’t know how many thousand. I think it’s fifty thousand, somebody says, twenty thousand – I don’t know.

Q: You remember when those German Jews were brought to Riga?

A: I sure remember. They were marched in from the….some of them were sent right away to the forest. They were killed in a nearby forest. – “Bikerniek”. So the second “aktion” went and what was left in the ghetto was only…was a big ghetto, was a small ghetto, was left only four thousand able-bodied men, and we went to work. We had a little bit what to eat. We worked, for months we worked. Some people were able to barter – somebody, if you had a ring, if you had clothing, if you had this.

Q: And you still believed at that time that your family went for resettling?

A: We didn’t know. We still thought they were resettled. Only later news trickled down to us that they were killed outside Riga. Later. And as I said, if we would have know, what would have happened is that some husbands would have decided to go together with their wives, if they would have known, but they believed the Germans at that time. And this was the first, Kiev was the first killing, on the 26th of September, and Riga and Kaunas, in Lithuania were the second mass killings by machine gun – something like this here. There were no killing in Germany at that time except Kristallnacht. They were sending people to Buchenwald. People were allowed to get visas to leave the country. But the mass killings were in Kiev – Babi Yar first, then the Baltic states second. You shook your head, but that’s what happened.

Q: And what happened to you?

A: Alright, so we went to work and the Germans, instead of marching back the groups, maybe a hundred, two hundred people, to the ghetto, they found lodging in the place where they were working. For example, if there was a tank or…to repair all these tanks, to repair all these vehicles from the army. Suppose there was a place where the Jews were working, repairing them or something like this, so they quartered the Jews in a nearby situation. Anybody working for the SS “Kranken Lazaretten”, the people were sent back from the front, they were working in the hospital. I was working for a “machsan”, I was working in a warehouse for the boats. Were bringing furniture for the German Luftwaffe. So I would say sixty percent were marched everyday back to the ghetto, forty percent found lodging outside the ghetto. I think they were better off because they could barter certain things, they could take from the Germans certain things. So we worked, we worked until….and then the German Jews were brought in to the emptied houses and some of the German Jews were also allowed to remain there. Of course we felt that German Jews were gullible and stupid, you know?

Q: Why did you feel that? I heard it before.

A: Because at that time we had already an inkling that our families were killed and they came. Everybody’s name was Lisa Lotte and Hannah Lore and they came with their grandmothers. There came children, small children, women, grandmothers, and some of them were probably still imbued with the German culture.

Q: Did you feel it or there was just such a tension because for you they were…?

A: Later on there was some friction between the Latvian Jews and the German Jews in the ghetto because we felt that they killed our…I personally didn’t feel it because I kind of had a….

Q: You felt that they killed? People felt as if they killed?

A: What do you mean?

Q: You said that you felt….

A: No, many Latvian Jews in Riga ghetto, the four thousand of us, felt that the Germans ordered the killing in order to bring in German Jews to work in the east. They called it “Arbeitseinsatz Im Osten”, that they are bringing in their German Jews to work because they speak German, blah, blah, blah.

Q: So actually you did not trust the German Jews when they arrived to Riga?

A: At the end we worked together. At the very end some of them married- Riga Jews had their German girlfriends – and there were about ten couples who married later on. We felt that they were stupid, we felt they were gullible, naïve, you know. But with them order meant an order. If somebody said something….

Q: You mean, did they still, at that time, trust the Germans? They did not trust the Germans when they were pushed out of Germany.

A: They were not sent to be killed. They were sent to work in the east.

Q: Yes, but still they were pushed away from their home places.

A: I don’t know what went through their minds, but I think…we looked at the German Jews that they were stupid and they don’t know what is going on. But we got along with them fine later on.

So we were at the point where…’43, middle of ’43. This is something which has to be said here. Otherwise it wouldn’t….The Warsaw ghetto uprising, and some people in Majdanek and other concentration camps tried to bring in dynamite or something like this. I’m not prepared right now, I’m not a historian. We had the ghetto police, the inner ghetto police sometimes consisted of criminal elements. About forty-five or fifty were the cream of the crowd, elite. I didn’t volunteer. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here today. The cream of the crowd.

Q: You’re talking about the Jewish police?

A: I’m talking about the Latvian Jews in the police. I’m not talking about the Germans.

Q: The Jewish police.

A: The German police we had problems with them. They were too loyal. Then an orders is an order – no “hochma”, you know? We didn’t know how to get around things. So the Jewish police closed an eye when weapons were smuggled into the ghetto. When I speak about weapons, a revolver here and there, maybe a machine gun, maybe hand grenades – nothing big to speak of. And I translated “Neshek b’Ghetto Riga”, I translated from Hebrew into English in our book, which I have in New York. And what happened is, during the “Beitar” years we were prepared for the “Etzel”. At that time we had small groups of three and perhaps there were another ten groups of three. We didn’t know about each other. This was in case somebody was arrested, he doesn’t about the rest. Here they made a mistake and I say “they”, whoever the leaders of the uprising in Riga, made a mistake. They had a list of all kinds of names and they had bunkers dug in with food and they were hiding the weapons. I was introduced to this group and I was there once or twice when they made “emunim” with the shooting.

Q: So it was like a kind of underground.

A: Yes, sure. I had to be trusted, I had to have “protectzia” to get in there.

Q: This underground consisted only…?

A: Only Latvian Jews.

Q: Only Latvian Jews. What about German Jews?

A: Ah, forget it.

Q: Why? Is that so? You did not trust that they could be in the underground or what?

A: What can I tell you? I don’t think that German Jews would think about an underground, although they were exposed to very difficult situation. There was a camp outside of Riga - Salaspils – where the German Jews suffered much more than the Latvian Jews. My friend was very friendly with a German Jew who…horrible stories. He had to hang his own people there. The SS were standing by. He had to hang his own people.

Q: Where was that? In Riga?

A: Outside Riga. Not in Bikernieki, not in Rumbuli. It is called Salaspils.

Q: But do you think that in Riga itself, the Nazis gave more privileges to the Jews?

A: Who?

Q: The Nazis.

A: The Nazis to the German Jews? To the Latvian Jews? I doubt because they were not watchmakers and they were not furriers. All the loot, all what the German came in had to be worked over and sent to the girlfriends, to the wives, right? So the Latvian watchmakers and the Latvian furriers and the Latvian….

Q: They needed them.

A: Yes. I mean they liked them more. The German Jews they probably liked because they spoke German and you come from Bochum, you’re from Frankfurt, Köln and so on, but as far as utilizing the slave labour…

Q: As far as “tachlis”…

A: Listen, in 1943 every German has its own Jews. They can go and dwell. “Mein Juden”. They needed them. So in case somebody higher up from German SS wanted to take away the Jews, came in, even from one commander to another commander because he wanted him and needed him as a mechanic, an automobile mechanic, so they were fighting about their Jews. Every German had his own Jews. Anyway, coming back to…

Q: To your activity in the underground. What kind of “emunim” did you have?

A: There were no “emunim”. There was a basement and there was just shooting because….

Q: How many revolvers did you have?

A: I don’t know. I don’t know because I was grabbed and sent out to the “friger” to dig “kavul”. That’s another story I told my sons before. So I was grabbed like from the street to be sent outside of Riga, so I was not in this here, but when I found out that….Oh yes. So the Latvian policemen looked aside when it was smuggled in. One Jewish Latvian policeman fell in love with a German Jewess and he wanted to show off, he babbled a little bit. And somehow the German SS found out that there was “neshek”, there are armaments in the ghetto and they knew that the Jewish police, Jewish Latvian police knew about it. One day they marched forty-one policemen out in an open. The policemen didn’t realize what was happening because they figured they were getting “appell”. You know, “appell”, everyday was another “appell”. So they were marched into an open place and with machine guns went from all sides. One or two escaped and they were caught before. So since I found out that this was happening, I was outside of Riga. I heard already what happened with the police. I traded my little bread portion for “ra’al”, for “cyankali” and I kept it in my pocket and I had a little window in the barracks there. I was working, digging “kavul”, and I didn’t sleep at night, I didn’t sleep during the day. I figured if they come – because they had lists of names and they went even as far as Estonia to pick out all these people and kill them. So I held my hand on my pocket and looked. So they came, they took another man. And it’s very possible that a man who was the chief of a group, Kramer – it is possible that he was involved there, too. I don’t know. Maybe he was picked up and I was left to go. I don’t know. I really don’t know. I can’t make a hero out of myself, but I was very little involved with the underground “neshek” because I was grabbed away. That kind of saved my life to a certain degree.

So after that, after the Warsaw uprising, after the ghetto, they started liquidating all the ghetto.

Q: By the way, did you hear about the uprising?

A: In Warsaw ghetto?

Q: Did you hear about Auschwitz? Did you know at that time that Jews were being gassed?

A: Auschwitz we heard about. Yes, we knew.

Q: How did you know? Who told you about it actually? And when was the first time you heard that Jews were being gassed?

A: We heard Auschwitz, we heard about Jews being gassed. When we heard I don’t know. We knew about it, but I don’t know when I started to hear about it. I really don’t remember, I don’t remember. No. I cannot tell you exactly. We heard about Auschwitz, that it was a terrible place, and we were cut off from the world at that time. We were cut off completely from the world. Some radio came in from BBS or British radio came to out attention. I cannot give you a proper answer.

Q: If you close your eyes and you think who was more cruel in Riga, the Nazis or the Latvians, or were they the same? Didn’t you have sometimes Latvian people coming and trying to help? Never?

A: Yesterday I went to Yad Vashem and there was one Latvian who saved thirty-three Jews. I was very friendly with him. He was going to save me, too, but I was grabbed away to outside Riga.

Q: Did you yourself, did you know somebody that tried to help your family?

A: No, my family was liquidated already.

Q: Yes, but nobody before tried to give you some…?

A: My father may have had a friend which he left a watch and I don’t remember if I got back the watch. I think so.

Q: What happened at that time to Herbert Cukurs?

A: Herbert Cukurs came into the ghetto - I’m talking about November 29 and December 8 – and he was commanding, he was actually….

Q: You saw him?

A: Yes, I saw him. But after that his name disappeared. After that was another guy by the name Arajs. This was called the Arajs killing commandos. So Cukurs himself, he was in the ghetto. That’s for sure. I saw him coming in with a big revolver and I think a Russian gun, but I think after that, I don’t know, he may have gone, he may have not directed the killings all over Latvia himself. Maybe Arajs. I really don’t know. I should know, but I really don’t know exactly where Cukurs and Arajs…whether Cukurs was above Arajs. I don’t think Cukurs name appeared later on. It was mostly Arajs commandos. I should have maybe had more research on that. I don’t know. There are very few of us left. There is nobody to consult.

So the ghettos were liquidated. In the meantime, I worked in three places. I worked loading and unloading furniture for the Luftwaffe, I worked in a sugar factory, sugarbeets, unloading carloads of sugarbeets, and then I also worked on turf, digging “kavul”, and then I also worked in a place which was called “Poperval”. (?) was the worst place in Latvia.

Q: Can you spell it?

A: I’ll write it out for you.

Q: Okay, we shall do it later. Just repeat the name of the place.

A: One was “Dundaga”, which was very bad. And then was “Poperval”.

Q: When you say very bad, what were the conditions?

A: People dying, people being killed. Was a very cruel guy – they called him “Eisener Gustav”, the “Iron Gustav”. Dundaga had maybe a thousand people. We had about four hundred. Dundaga. Poperval was a satellite of Dundaga. And Dundaga was very bad because there was an SS guy – they called him “Eisener Gustav”, the “Iron Gustav”, and he was very cruel. We had somebody – I don’t remember his name – who was less…What we had there, we went “wasser commandos”. There was no water to cook food for us, so I was in the “wasser commandos”, so we went to the peasant and we were able to get some food, some bread, some potatotes.

Then after the three or four places where I worked, they had a concentration camp in Riga, Kaiserwald. And this was very miserable place.

Q: You weren’t there.

A: Yes, five or six weeks. I don’t recall much.

Q: What did you do there?

A: Nothing. Get up in the morning, stay on “appell” and I think we had some lorries with sand which we had to place from one place to another place. Nothing, just make work. We didn’t do anything constructive over there.

Q: But still, what do you remember of Kaiserwald?

A: Unfortunately I don’t remember very much. Some people remember more because they were more affected. We got up in the morning, it was cold, it was freezing, we were hungry. There was a terrible German criminal, there were a few German criminal kapos. One was Mr. X. There was a commander by the name of Sauer. It was bad, and the scary place about Kaiserwald was picking people for “Stuetzpunkt”. “Stuetzpunkt” was a “Sonderkommando” to dig up, when the Russians were nearing, to dig up the people from Rumbuli and put some kerosene on them or something like this, to decompose the bodies. And then maybe a hundred, hundred and fifty…

Q: Did you do it too?

A: I would never be alive here. Nobody who was taken for this commando came out alive. They didn’t want any witnesses.

Q: They did not want the witnesses.

A: No, that was the biggest scare over there in Kaiserwald. That was the biggest scare. If I would be in the “Stuetzpunkt kommando”, ooo, ooo.

Q: What did they give you to eat in Kaiserwald? Were you hungry?

A: I don’t remember ever being hungry, but there certainly was hunger, no question about it. A little piece of bread, cabbage soup, potatoes. Some people were really hungry. I don’t remember being too hungry. That’s what I tell. I didn’t suffer as much as other people suffered, fortunately.

From Kaiserwald we were sent by railroad cars to Stutthof. Stutthof was terrible. What do I remember from Stutthof? Very little. In the middle of the night they had an “appell” – I was there with my brother, “Shimon, where are you? Shimon?” In Yiddish. “Stay near me. Let’s be together. If we are being sent out of it, let’s be together.” Something like this here. So that happened maybe four or five weeks in Stutthof. This was south of Danzig. This was a miserable place. Some people in Stutthof suffered more. I think there was a little crematorium, too. Little!

Q: In what situation did you see the people when you met?

A: They didn’t do anything, and sometimes in a place you work, at least you work. You have a chance to talk to Christians, you get a little piece of bread or something like that. Over there was a concentration camp and it was actually a transit camp to other places. I was transferred from Stutthof to Buchenwald. Hilton. Buchenwald for me was Hilton.

Q: Still I just want to know what other memories you have from Stutthof.

A: Very little. Just being chased out of the barracks. Sleeping five, one on top of the other, you know. All kinds of shelves like this here. And being chased out in the middle of the night on “appell”. It was dark, it was freezing, it was terrible. And of course, waiting for your little bit of soup or bread. My friends would remember more about Stutthof and Kaiserwald than I.

Q: Actually, you know, always my question – you were in a very protected family before, very comfortable life. How was it for you to adjust to it?

A: My father was salesman. I wasn’t comfortable financially.

Q: No, but comfortable in the sense of family life and all that. How was it, all of a sudden, to lose, to live with this loss, the loss of parents.

A: Well, as I mentioned to you, I was twenty years old in ’41. I was single. People who had wives, people who had small children suffered much more. There were plenty of people who were thirty or forty years.

Q: You were a young man. Did you think at that time about love, about girls, or nobody thought about it? I know it’s an embarrassing question, but it is important. Was it in the mind at all? Or people even only thought about their survival? Because you were in the prime of your years.

A: Well, I had a little girlfriend, German girlfriend.

Q: Ah, you had a girlfriend.

A: Yes, a little one. For a short while. I don’t know what happened to her.

Q: Where? In Riga?

A: In “Tors”. In Riga, no. Look here, going from the Latvian ghetto to the German ghetto was the sentence of death. You got killed. I had my brother. I didn’t want to take any chances, to get myself a German girlfriend, but many Riga Jews went through the German ghetto and befriended German girls. I didn’t. There were all kinds of romances there.

Q: There were romances?

A: Yes, sure, why not?

Q: So even in this time there were romances?

A: Yes, sure, why not? People were drinking vodka, people were singing. In the city you come home from work, right, and you sit down and you drink a vodka if you have. If you have a vodka you sit down and sing all kinds of sad songs. “That’s the way it has to be.” It was a song written by (?). “We had to separate ourselves.” People were composing songs and singing. The German ghetto had performances. They had performances, the German ghetto. Sure, why not? We had a lady from Vienna who liked Latvian Jews very much and she wrote about the German Jews, that there were concerts, there were performances, and they didn’t like it, you know? They were going to sue our organization because she was the editor of this paper…

Q: Why didn’t they want that she would write about things?

A: It was not fitting…

Q: “Passt nicht”.

A: Yes. To say, but why not? And as I told you, there are still couples, Latvian Jews and German Jews that got married and are very happy and very happy, very respectful of each other. I could have a married a German girl, too. In fact, there is one in Los Angeles, Friedel. My eyes were popping out for her, she was a beauty, but somebody else got her. Listen, as I told you, I was a young man and I didn’t….the people who suffered the most, thirty- or forty-year-old men whose wives and children were killed. They suffered most. And once you were sixty, seventy, forget it. Too old to work. You had to be a certain age span, between fourteen years…if you were ten years you got killed. If you were fourteen years you still could swindle through that you were eighteen or seventeen or something. Between fourteen years and maybe fifty, something like this. I’m sure that my father physically would have survived. He was strong.

So coming from Stutthof, coming to Buchenwald. Buchenwald for me was a “Yeshua”.

Q: Why? In what way it was such a “Yeshua”? The conditions? What were the conditions?

A: Buchenwald was a showcase for German concentration camps. There was an upper Buchenwald and there was a lower Buchenwald. The upper Buchenwald – who was the upper Buchenwald? Was French generals, Belgian mayors, conscientious objectors, social democrats, so on. And Leon Blum, who was the Prime Minister from France, was in Buchenwald. Alright, Elie Wiesel at that time was nobody, so he was also in Buchenwald, but that is a different story, from the Hungarian Jews. So Buchenwald, the conditions in Buchenwald were excellent and the inner order in Buchenwald was by the German social democrats, by the German socialists, democrats, conscientious objectors. Jehovah’s Witnesses I don’t know. So the inner order was okay, but everyday there was an “appell”. They hung (?) a hundred and twenty thousand people on “appell” when they were being counted. You stayed on the “appellplatz” five or six hours in case one is missing. Terrible. So I was in Buchenwald five, six, seven, eight weeks, with my brother.

Q: What did you do there?

A: What did anybody do in Buchenwald? Nothing, nothing, nothing. You just waited for the food. So what happened was – this was upper Buchenwald. Lower Buchenwald, where we came in and the Hungarian Jews came in, was terrible. There were no barracks. We slept on the concrete. Slept if you could sleep.

Q: So why did you call it “Yeshua”?

A: Because I got sick with dysentery and that saved my life. You don’t understand it. Nobody can understand it. In any place, if you got sick meant being sent to Auschwitz, either to finish you up on the spot or to send you to Auschwitz. Buchenwald took in about a hundred or two hundred people with dysentery. Why? Because they were afraid that the whole camp would catch the epidemics. So they kept me four weeks and they fed me with farina. Farina is also here in Israel? Farina is good for the stomach. I went in just to get a piece of coal. They told me that the coal would bind my stool, whatever you call it. So once I went in there they didn’t let me go out. They said, “You have to be quarantined in this block, the dispensary block.” I sent a Hungarian “macher” to get my brother in. He couldn’t get in, it was closed. After four weeks of farina I got back my strength and they sent me to a little place in Thüringen which was wonderful. Was a little factory with wings of planes. Little planes. I don’t know – the “Junker” plane, whatever they called them – and we worked on the planes. The fusilage, the other part of the plane, was probably manufactured in a different factory. They had no boxcars to combine the wings with the fusilage, so when we came there, it was in the countryside, “b’kfar”, in a little village. And there was a factory made there. It was a machine shop. And they gave us a piece of bread for two. Our eyes popped out. I wrote about it in the book. Bread for two, after that, a bread for four, after that a bread for eight. Good soup.

Q: In Thüringen?

A: Yes, Thüringen. The name of the place was Niederorshel. We had a German communist, a kapo, Otto. He was wonderful. He probably put drinks around the SS, was an old SS man who was the commandant of that little group, and he could manage him. We had enough food and the work was not hard. Since I had two years of college, they put me as a “P”. I had a “P”, like a “prefer”, quality control. In German it is “prefer”. So all I did, I had to go…you know what a dentist has? I still have it at home. A dentist had to look in your teeth? I had a little mirror and I had to go through the wings of the plane where Jews were riveting. And I had to see whether the rivet was covered a hundred percent. In case there was a little hole there, I had to make an “x”. Of course I didn’t make too many “x’s”, but then they had to come and redo it and so on and so forth.

Q: And you slept there in Thüringen, in a camp?

A: There was a machine shop converted into a little plane factory. The problem was there – I don’t even know how to call it even in English. Lathe – when you work with the…. “Drehbank” in German. I don’t know how to explain to you. Anyway, on top of this were big pieces of metal which was turning on for the machine shop, and the British were flying during the day and the English armadas were flying at night. In Buchenwald I saw a bombardment – it was terrible. The factories around Buchenwald employed slave labour and they were manufacturing all kinds of weapons, whatever, so the Americans bombed them. So I saw the bombardments. They made a circle of smoke around Buchenwald - no bombs were falling in Buchenwald – but outside Buchenwald – this was before I went to this little factory. Anyway, this little factory – the conditions were good, the food was good. Nobody was killed, nobody was shot. And then April 1st we had…that’s what my son said. A Hungarian rabbi was able to hold onto his siddur, so I got a little notebook – I have it at home – and I copied all kinds of tefillot with “tachnonim”.

Q: What kind of “tefilla” did you have at that time for example?

A: I have at home. I don’t remember. Anything which had…. “Tishma koleinu” and “Hoshiah”…All kinds of “tachnonim”. I have this siddur at home. I want to hold onto it unless…And I copied this. So then the first day of Pesach we had one matzah for a couple of hundred people. Everybody got a little piece of matzah like this.

Q: But that was after the liberation.

A: No.

Q: What year are you talking about now?

A: The place in Thüringen, which was called Niederorshel, the little plane factory where I was in quality control.

Q: What time was it?

A: This was October ’44, November ’44. Something like this.

Q: Of course.

A: And everyone got a piece of matzah and there was a little “seder” and “Avadim haenu v’yotzeinu”. Anyways, so then came April 1. We started to march back to Buchenwald because the Russsians were coming from one side, the Americans and British were coming from the other side and the planes were flying constantly. We were marched back to Buchenwald. My luck is that we found a “machsan” of potatoes abandoned, “machsan” with potatoes outside Buchenwald, maybe ten kilometers outside Buchenwald, and we stayed there three days. That’s another “mazal”. We came into Buchenwald the last day before the liberation. If we were to come in three days before, we would have come in, shipped out, come in, shipped out. And killed on the roads. Some people were killed with American bombs, whatever it was. So we came in on the last day and we were marched in at night, April 10, marched in over there. The German SS said, “We are shovelling this “refesh” out and you are bringing this “refesh” back in.” They used the German word, “Dreck”. With a stick they were counting us and while they were counting us, they said, “Look here. We are shovelling this “refesh” out. What are you bringing this “refesh” back in.”

Q: How did they call it?

A: “Dreck” in German.

Q: And you call it how?

A: “Refesh” is Hebrew, no? “Tzoah”.

Q: It’s a beautiful word for… “hoch” word.

A: And then we were going into this barrack….And then it was an “appell”. Everybody “antreten”. Aryans “abtreten”, Jews remain standing. Well, we knew already what that means. The Aryans, Christians, go back to your barracks, Jews remain standing. P.S. We didn’t go to the “appell”. We felt already things in the air. And then all of a sudden, April 11 – this is one day I will never forget. My granddaughter was born April 11. There was “panzer alarm”, “flieger alarm”. Tank alarm – “panzer” is tank – “flieger alarm”. And “abtreten”, “antreten”. Get out on the “Appellplatz”. I talk language which you heard before, right? “Appellplatz”. If I talk to somebody else, “Appellplatz”, he doesn’t know what the “Appellplatz” means. All of a sudden, we see the inner police running with rifles, with white flags. And what happened was that somebody, the SS gave an order – Weimar was down below, Buchenwald was up on the hill – to bomb Buchenwald, to send down airplanes to bomb Buchenwald, something like this. So till the orders were picked up by an inmate, “Haeftling”, and he said, “Don’t bother, don’t send, don’t do anything. The camp has already exploded.” Then I started writing this “yoman”.

Q: When did you actually start to write that?

A: Three days after that, because I was in good condition. I didn’t have tuberculosis, I was not beaten.

Q: What actually did you feel in the first hour of the liberation?

A: I’ll tell you what I felt. I was like in a coma. I didn’t believe, didn’t believe. My friend had to give me slap in the face. I was in delirium, whatever you want to call it, two or three days. I couldn’t believe it. I was so sure that the German SS put on “madim”, uniforms from the Americans and they wanted to bring us out from the barracks and they wanted to kill us.

Q: Did you know by then that your family died?

A: Yes. I did know.

Q: Or you had the hope that you are going to see them?

A: No. What happened was, every group was categorized according to the country – Czechs, Yugoslavians, Russians, Germans – so I have at home – this I am going to mail to you – I have a certificate – they called it an “ausweis” – and when I went to them, “Where are you from?” “From Riga, Latvia,” they put down “Russki” on my certificate. When they put down “Russki” I had had enough of “Russkis”. I went to Frankfurt am Main. Hopped into an American truck with my friends and went to Frankfurt am Main and didn’t want to go back because at that time I was sure everybody was killed. Some people went back…because the Russians came back in and they couldn’t get out. (end of side)

As I said, for two or three days we were delirious, then we started kicking each other, hitting each other, out of “simcha”, out of joy. For a few hours we started kicking each other, slapping each other, hitting ourselves on the shoulders and so on. Then I started writing the “yoman” which, I don’t know, I have to make copies and leave them with you.

Q: I would like you to read to me anything you choose from your “yoman”.

A: Let me see.

Q: That you wrote three days after that day.

A: I was liberated on April 11. April 12 Roosevelt died. I said, “Oh, a new “tzura”. The American soldiers will be discouraged and will pull back.” But fortunately that didn’t happen. I can read you here. Yes, about Pesach – that was interesting. (Hebrew) “The fourth Pesach, imprisoned in the German inferno. The first Pesach in the Riga ghetto, the second Pesach, in the sugar factory outside Riga, the third Pesach in the refugee camp in Dundaga.” I was in Poperval which was part of Dunaga. “And here is the fourth, in the heart of Germany, Neiderorshel, Thüringen. Although all three times I was able with my hand to carry out the mitzah of baking matza, here, in the country of hunger, I didn’t see any chance of organizing flour for baking matza. Despite this, I decide in my heart, the first two days of Pesach, to make do without bread and ‘b’ezrat HaShem’, and I was able, with a lot of stubbornness, to carry out my decision in spite of my hunger. I pass out bread among my hungry friends and I eat with potatoes, but a big surprise, to meet in the next room, my brother in sorrow, Rav Eliahu Duman. Asitting at his table, amidst an audience of prisoners, made up of his followers. On the table, a scrap of silk, a remembrance of a tablecloth. There was not tablecloth – a remembrance of a tablecloth. And saw a miracle, from the silk cloth were bulging matza, two or three in number. The Jews are making a “seder”. A great rejoicing, the Rabbi gives me a piece of matza, a tenth of “kazayit”, with a feeling of holiness I say the blessing on eating the matza, and I am listening to the recital of the Hagada. My head is heavy, as all nights we eat chametz and matza, and this night…

Q: Very nice.

A: “The first day of Pesach we celebrated our holiday parallel to the Christians’ holiday. Three days of holiday, no work.”

Q: What did you do after the liberation?

A: So I came to Frankfurt and over there I worked….I was too honest and too afraid to get involved in the black market. They smuggled cigarettes from the American zone into Italy or something like this. So I went to work for HIAS for awhile. HIAS, of course, was sending people to the United States, but at that time if somebody would have told me….I went to work with HIAS just to get paid and not to sit around doing nothing. If someone would say I would come to the United States, I would spit him in the face. I was so sure I was going to Yisrael, with all my aspirations and all my training. But what happened, I met my future wife – she was from Hungary and she survived Auschwitz. There was a group of Hungarian girls in the hotel. We were living in one hotel. At that time everybody was afraid of the concentration camp survivors, so you could get anything. You could get clothing, you could get a hotel for nothing. So there were many Hungarian girls. I met my future wife and I wanted to start building a family and the prospect of being two years in Cyprus was very discouraging to me. So I had some family in Israel, but not in the United States. My wife had some uncles in the United States. Bottom line was that on June 24 ’46 I came to the United States. As I told you before, (Hebrew) I didn’t fight in the War of Independence. I am not proud of it, but that is the reality.

Q: How was your adjustment to the USA?

A: No problem. I spoke a little bit of English and I got a job very soon. I was looking for a “shomer shabbat” job and I worked…in parallel was HIAS was a religious organization, “Va’ad Hatzala”, so since I had experience with immigration from HIAS in Frankfurt I went to work for “Va’ad Hatzala”. I didn’t go to Ellis Island. I went to the boats to greet the “B’nai Torah”, “B’nai Yeshiva”, “rabbanim” who came to the United States at that time. So I worked there for about a year, but they didn’t have money to pay the salaries. They lived from one “magbit” to another “magbit”, when they made a big fundraising.

Q: But what I meant to ask was adjustment, mentally. It was a completely different culture after all – language.

A: I was coming with my wife, my fiancee, on the boat. We had twenty dollars – we spent everything on candy. I came with one dollar. That doesn’t mean I got rich like the Horatio Alger stories that became millionaire – very far from it, but I was with my wife and I was looking to get a “chatuna” (wedding) and to get a “dira” (apartment) and get married. As I told you, I didn’t suffer that much in concentration camp to be shaken up. I didn’t have any “chalomot” (dreams) at night, I didn’t scream at night, I didn’t have any hallucinations. Fortunately I didn’t need a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists who could no make a living, they tried to talk to Holocaust survivors, that they need adjustment. I adjusted myself okay. I have two wonderful sons - they have outstanding wives – seven grandchildren if not for my wife’s sudden illness, I’m a very happy person.

Q: She is sick, your wife?

A: About a year and a half – Alzheimer’s. (Hebrew) There is no drug for that. I left her with my other son, the doctor. I have a son a doctor and this is the son the engineer.

Q: You have two children, no daughters.

A: Two sons. We miss one daughter. I would have liked to have had one daughter in New York to help out. A daughter usually is closer to parents, but we have wonderful…(Hebrew) He is a very gifted building engineer who has a Master’s degree from MIT and an MBA from Harvard in New York. And the other son is a doctor, gastroenterologist, internal medicine, and his wife is also a pediatrician. And I was never sick in all these years except maybe a cold here and there. Now I had prostate cancer last year, so they did something, they put an implant, (Hebrew) radioactive granules around the prostrate. I feel okay, but my wife is…doesn’t talk, can’t sit. I had to take a woman from Guyana.

Q: How old is she?

A: My wife? A beauty. Seventy-five. I was so proud of her. No “haskala” (education), nothing. I got my college degree at age sixty-three. You know why? I’ll tell you why. Because my daughter-in-law, the doctor, his wife has a master’s degree in library science. I don’t know if I told you about his wife. She got a fellowship, she is here. My other daughter-in-law is a doctor. She said, “Daddy, you have two years of college in Europe. Why don’t you get your college degree? I know the dean of ‘ACE’, Adult Continued Education, in Queen’s College.” Have you been to the United States? Queen’s College. “Why don’t you go at night after work and get your college degree?” So I went at night and I took all kinds of courses which I’m not interested – music and art, philosophy. All these courses which don’t interest me, but just to get “nikudot”. So finally I got my college degree in 1963, I believe, and my two sons, who had already their degrees, came. I had this mortarboard and the gown and I called the “Purimspiel”. And they came to watch me get my college diploma.

Q: You think about your past. Actually, I will ask a different question. Without these terrible things, would you be a different person? Do you think your past shaped your…?

A: Well, in normal times my “tour” would come on Aliyah “Bet” – normal times, right? I would have come here through Poland, through Rumania, Aliyah “Bet”, and met my “besherte” here and started a family and probably be a “pakid” here. I don’t know. I think I would have been able to continue my engineering education – maybe yes, maybe no. I don’t know. It’s just something came to my mind and I forgot. This is what came to my mind. In 1984 we founded a Holocaust survivors organization in New York and our main goal was to help the Holocaust survivors who remained in Latvia, who couldn’t get out, didn’t want to get out, couldn’t get out, too sick to get out. So I became the “maskir gizbar”, secretary treasurer of this organization. And I forgot to mention to you about the statistics, so this is very important. There were a hundred thousand Jews. Five thousand were sent to Siberia, ten thousand or twelve thousand managed to run away – I’m talking about June, 1941 – managed to run away with the Russian army. Some of them survived there, some of them died from hunger. From eighty-three thousand Jews in Latvia who were caught by the Germans, in 1945, May 8, there were nine hundred survivors – one percent. I am one of them. And we felt it our duty, I mean, we felt our duty to help other survivors, so we organized and we do wonderful work. In fact, there was a sister organization here in Israel. We sent, a number of times, three thousand dollars for “olim chadashim” who come from Latvia to Israel. What do they buy? They buy a table, a chair, a pot, you know. And we sent a few times, but our biggest concentration is to help the “nitzolei Shoah” (Holocaust survivors). In 1989, with Gorbachev’s perestroika, since then we started going to Riga, Latvia. My president, my “nasi” from the organization went already eighteen times. I went back only three times. I had enough. I couldn’t look a Latvian in the eye. I went mostly to help my very good friend and to help. So he brought a hundred dollars twice a year, a hundred dollars a piece. A hundred dollars a piece was a quite a big amount over there. My highest point in my life, other than my children and when I got married, my two sons got married, seven grandchildren, my highest point in life is to stay in Riga and give an envelope with a hundred dollars and say “Seit gesundt”. So each one of us, about four or five of the committee, got about twenty envelopes and there were about a hundred and twenty-six survivors. There were only seventy survivors now. And my highest point in life, my biggest satisfaction, is to stay there in Riga and of course I went to Rumbuli and I spent sixteen thousand dollars to build a monument – not a “matzava” – a monument on the place where “Gorel” Street was burned down. We made such a monument.

Q: Did you do it because of memory or what? Why do you do all this? Why are you so active? Is it for memory’s sake?

A: I just was taken in by a few people, by a few friends, “Let’s get organized, let’s get this organization going,” and I get a tremendous satisfaction. Especially now that I am retired.

Q: When you revisited the place, Riga, did you have nostalgia for your youth? You told me you used to spend lovely times on the beaches and all that.

A: Yes and no. I went to “Ivrit” school. Of course I was nostalgic for the wonderful days I was in school. I went to the beach of Riga, Yermele – that’s a very well-known beach and it’s not the Riviera, but it’s a well-known beach. Over there I spent maybe fourteen, fifteen wonderful summers. And of course, this building, that building. Fortunately, the building where I lived was bombed out. Some people went into their apartments and of course you get a tremendous shock when you go into the apartment and you see this is your parents’ bedroom, this is your bedroom, this is where your brother, your sister. Fortunately, my building, where I lived, was the near the waterfront and it was bombed out, either by the Germans or by the Russians. I don’t know exactly which bombed. So I am even lucky in this here. I don’t have to go and see where my father was davening, where my mother was cooking.

Q: All what you saw, the “aktions” and all the suffering…

A: I didn’t see the “aktions”.

Q: Yes, but you knew about it. Did it affect your belief in “Borei Olam”?

A: As I told my sons, I decided to put up a living monument for my parents. A living monument, a living “matzava”, and this is it. I had “hashgaha pratit”. Out of eighty-three thousand, nine hundred survivors. G-d was good to me and G-d was good to me with the “mazal” with my children, with my grandchildren and so on and so forth, so I decided this is the “matzava”. As I told you, I was “shomer shabbat”, I was not “dati” and not “haredi”. Here “dati’im”, “haredim” are the whole works. But I was “shomer shabbat”.

Q: Are you still “shomer shabbat”?

A: Absolutely. No, we don’t pick up the telephone on shabbes. Of course I don’t drive on shabbes, don’t pick up a telephone on shabbes, I don’t open the mail on shabbes. So are our children. So is our son, the doctor. His wife, the doctor, put on a “sheitel”. He lives in a very small community which is “lehavdil eleph havdalot” like Bnai Brak. Outside of New York. Monsey. And all the children go to yeshiva. Look here, the other way around I can’t even think about it because mixed marriages are fifty-two percent in the United States. My president, everybody, many mixed marriages. My own wife’s brother’s two daughters married out. He is not religious. This is a lifestyle. “Borei Olam”, alright, of course I believe in “Borei Olam”. If you asked me how the world was created, I don’t want to think about. I exclude from my mind anything why the Shoah happened. This is good, because if somebody starts to think why a million children were gassed and why so many “rabbonim”, who were sitting day and night and learning Torah, and “hekimu harbeh talmidim” and so on, why it happened, then you have to hang yourself. You have to commit suicide.

Q: Can you exclude it?

A: Yes, I have to, take it out of my mind.

Q: You can do it?

A: Yes. Don’t ask question why.

Q: You never ask?

A: No, I don’t want to ask and I don’t think anybody should ask questions. Elie Wiesel, I think, said the same thing, but I am not influenced by him because I haven’t read, maybe one or two books. Our “rabbanim” have a problem with this here, why it happened. Because of our sins we have been driven from our country. Why? What kind of sins have that million children had that they had to be gassed? Right? When you start asking this question, the only way is to hang yourself. But if you want to have continuity, if you want to have “Am Yisrael Chai”, “Netzach Yisrael La Yishaker”, “Am Yisrael Chai”, you have to exclude this here.

Q: You are right. Thank you very much, Yitzchak.