Steven Nathan Montrose Rozenberg

Name of Interviewee: Stephen Montrose

Name of Interviewer: Ronit Wilder-Steiner

Cassette Number: VT-2525

Date: November 11, ‎1999

Name of Typist: Cheryl Balshayi

Names:

Lodz

Ravensbrueck

Koenigswusterhausen

Sachsenhausen

Hanover

Q: !1th of November, 1999. This is an interview with Mr. Stephen Montrose. You were born in 1938, Lodz, Poland as Nathan Stephan Rosenberg.

A: Right.

Q: We’ll talk during the interview about your life before the war, what you remember as a little child, and during the war in Lodz ghetto, in the camps till the liberation, and then what happened to you after the war. Interviewer Ronit Wilder-Steiner. Can you tell me first a little bit about your background?

A: Well, I was born May 5th, 1938 in Lodz, Poland, and my mother passed away when I was approximately seven months of age. My father at that time was in Palestine and by the time word reached him of my mother’s death, my aunt became my surrogate mother.

Q: Your mother’s sister?

A: No. My mother’s older brother’s wife. So it was a sister-in-law and she became my mother. And from the first days that I can remember this woman was my mother. I called her Mother.

Q: You were the only child of your parents?

A: I was the only child. Both my father and mother got married very late. My father was in the textile business. The whole family, my mother’s family was in the textile business also. And my first memories are of living in this beautiful apartment and I remember having plenty of food and I remember I received a lot of love and affection from my father and my mother. And in our apartment also lived my uncle and they had a daughter.

Q: You mean that your aunt at that time was married to your uncle and they stayed married and they kind of adopted you?

A: Right. And then also my father. They lived in the same apartment and as far as I know, she was my mother.

Q: So you were a big family.

A: A big family, right.

Q: Two fathers!

A: I had two fathers, right. And my father went to work everyday and so did my uncle. And I always had to stay in the house. I was never let out of the house, but I didn’t know any different. And every day my father made me drink cod liver oil. I know. I hated it. And then he used to bribe me with a little sweet. And one day he said there was no more cod liver oil and I am sure that I had to be the happiest kid around! But he said a man was coming to the apartment and bringing more cod liver oil. And when there was a knock on the door, I was told to go into my room, but I was very inquisitive and I wanted to see who this person was that was bringing me this cod liver oil. And when the man entered the room, he wore a green uniform, he had black boots and he had a black belt and he had all kinds of ribbons. I had no idea who he was, but after the war I found out that he was a German officer and my father was paying him not only for the cod liver oil, but so we could maintain our lifestyle. And when I saw the German officer I ran into the living room, and at that time my father took out a little pouch and little stones fell on the table, so he was paying him off in little stones which, of course, I didn’t know what they were until after the war. They were diamonds or whatever.

Q: But you know they were shining.

A: They were shining, yes. Then the officer left and our life continued. Like I said earlier, I remember I always had plenty of food to eat.

Q: You mean that even before the war, economically you were in a good situation?

A: Yes, my family was in an excellent situation. Like I said earlier, my father was in the textile business.

Q: Yes, but most of Lodz Jews were in the textile business and most of them weren’t rich at all.

A: Well, my family was, because he was in Palestine looking at different things, so they had money.

Q: What was the aim of his visit to Palestine?

A: I really don’t know, but when my mother died, that’s where he was, and it was in 1939 she died. The early part of 1939. We had other family members of our family come here like in the ‘20’s or early ‘30’s, I believe. I really don’t know. They moved from Lodz to Tel Aviv.

Q: What do you know about your father’s and mother’s families?

A: I really don’t know anything at all. I was so young, I really don’t know. And my father never discussed anything with me.

Q: Not even after the war?

A: No, my father never told me anything after the war. Very, very few things. Very, very few.

Q: And you didn’t ask?

A: I never asked. I was always told never to ask about anything and I shut down when I was such a little boy that I never asked about anything. And when I asked him a few times, he just wouldn’t answer me.

Q: For him, it’s like he didn’t have any family?

A: Well, all the family got killed during the war with the exception of a younger brother that left Poland and went to England, but everybody else was killed on his side. My father was a very shut down man. We never had a very strong relationship after the war. It was very, very sad.

Q: He never talked about his life before the war?

A: Never.

Q: About your mother?

A: Never discussed my mother at all. Like she never existed. The only thing I saw pictures of her and that’s all I ever had, but he never discussed my mother.

Q: And as a child you knew that there was a war going on?

A: I had no idea of what was happening. My father came home from work early one afternoon and he told us to pack our belongings and we packed as much as we could carry and we left a beautiful apartment, we had to leave, and we went to the ghetto.

Q: But you remember, before the ghetto you remember a normal life.

A: I remember normal life. My father would take the whole family, my mother, who I thought was my mother, we would go to a place where there was a lot of grass. It was like a farm, like we had land. As far as I knew there wasn’t a war going on. I mean, I had plenty of food to eat, I had nice clothes to wear, I had my own room.

Q: Toys?

A: I had toys. I had a very nice life from what I remember. But that all changed when I went from the house to the ghetto.

Q: That was the difference for you?

A: That was the main difference. And then, of course, when I went on to the camps.

Q: You were something like three, four years old when you went into the ghetto?

A: No. I had to be anywhere between four and five years of age when I went to the ghetto.

Q: Only in ’42, ’43?

A: No, no. ’44, ’45. I apologise. ’43. ’42, ’43.

Q: Before that you lived at home?

A: Yes.

Q: You didn’t go to a kindergarten, but that wasn’t so exceptional.

A: No, I didn’t go anywhere.

Q: And people came and went? You saw people, you met people?

A: I was never let out of the place. The only time we went was when my father was around, but otherwise I was in the apartment the whole time. I was never let out.

Q: But there were never people coming to the apartment?

A: The only individual I remember was the German officer that came. If there were other people I can’t remember, but I remember the German officer coming to the apartment. And why I can remember that so good is because of the cod liver oil that I hated so much.

Q: What do you remember about moving to the ghetto?

A: Well, we packed our belongings, we came to the ghetto, the Germans opened the gate for us and my father handed them a little piece of paper and we went to a very small apartment.

Q: But when you say that you kept your belongings, it contained your furniture?

A: Oh no, no, no. Just the clothing and as much food as we could carry. It mostly was clothing and food, whatever food there was in the apartment.

Q: Do you know now how was it that your father could stay out of the ghetto for so long?

A: Well, he was paying off the Germans. And he also had a special pass, I remember. He could go out at night. Because after a certain time there was a curfew, I imagine, but he was always going out in the evenings, so he had special permission.

Q: Moving to the ghetto meant that you could already go outside, or you were still in the apartment the whole time?

A: No, I was allowed to go out. We lived, I think, on the third floor and in the mornings I used to go out of the apartment building – it was a small, little apartment building – and there were other children there.

Q: For you it was a new experience to meet children?

A: It was a new experience, right. And my mother would let me go outside and play with the other children.

Q: Before that, when you were in the old apartment, do you remember yourself watching through the windows and asking to go out?

A: I don’t remember anything, looking out of the window, and I was never allowed to go out. If I did ask, I don’t remember. I’m sure that I had to, but I was never allowed to go out.

Q: So the paradox was that here in the ghetto you are suddenly free.

A: I was free. I was allowed to go out. And the first thing that I used to see when I went out in the morning was dead people lying and they were covered up, and then a little wagon would come by. It was either pulled…it was a horse or it was a man pulling it, and then they would pick up the dead bodies. That’s what I used to see when I came out. And then there were other children. And then I would run for the barbed wire fence because I saw the soldiers. They were walking where the tramcar used to go by in Lodz. It was like, there was the barbed wire, here was the tram car and there was barbed wire again on the other side. And I was fascinated by the German soldiers and my mother would call from the window and she would just say, “Stephan.” She used to call me “Natek”. “Natek, Natek,” to say away from the barbed wire because she was afraid that something would happen to me. And then instead of me going up for lunch, she would tie a little piece of bread with a string and she would lower it down from the window so I wouldn’t have to go upstairs.

Q: It means that she didn’t work during the day.

A: No, she did not work. My father went to work every day.

Q: Inside the ghetto? You know?

A: I don’t know.

Q: You don’t know what was his business. You only know he was connected to the Germans.

A: He was doing something for the Germans. I don’t know what it was. Before the war the family had textile factories, so I don’t know what they did with these factories.

Q: You came to the ghetto, you met new children. You didn’t meet children before. You said that your aunt had also a child?

A: She had a daughter.

Q: Older than you?

A: She’s about ten, eleven years older than I am.

Q: Ten, eleven years older than you, so for you it wasn’t a real child.

A: No.

Q: So you met new children outside, but they lived in different conditions. They didn’t have enough food. They had many problems. You were aware of the difference at the time?

A: Well. I don’t know about their differences, but I remember our situation. There was always a shortage of food. I used to wait for my father every afternoon because I was always so happy to see him because I knew he would be bringing always extra food. And I don’t know the name of the street in the ghetto where I lived, but all I remember was there was a wooden bridge that took you from one side of the ghetto to the other. And when I used to see him come across that bridge I would run, and I was always so excited when I saw him because there was food, always more food.

Q: But you don’t remember yourself hungry.

A: Not as hungry as later on, but still I couldn’t eat as much as I wanted to.

Q: You didn’t have enough, or you didn’t have all the things that you liked before?

A: I didn’t have all the things that I liked and what I had before and also enough. In other words, when there was food left on the table I was told not to eat it, that I couldn’t eat anymore.

Q: You obeyed?

A: Yes. I obeyed.

Q: That means that you weren’t so hungry.

A: I guess not, yes. I remember later on I didn’t obey anything. But I was still hungry. In other words, I remember my father used to bring chicken feet home and they used to cook only chicken feet and I wanted more to eat and there was some left there. They told me not to eat it. I was hungry, I wanted it, but I guess I didn’t…

Q: That was a luxury at that time.

A: To get chicken feet, yes. It was delicious.

Q: You didn’t study in the ghetto, you didn’t go to a kindergarten or school or something?

A: No.

Q: Did your parents teach you at home something?

A: Not that I remember, no. The only time that I left that apartment, which was a few times, sometimes the Germans would come by, looking for children and looking for older people. Sometimes I was hidden in the apartment and sometimes I was taken out. And one of my aunts had a position in a hospital in Lodz and I was hidden there.

Q: What do you remember you were doing with yourself the whole day?

A: The only thing that I can remember is either playing in the streets or being in the apartment or waiting for my father late in the afternoon when he came home from work.

Q: What language did you speak at home?

A: Polish.

Q: Not Yiddish.

A: No.

Q: And you don’t know if your father had gentile friends before the war?

A: No, I don’t know.

Q: You remember the talking at home?

A: They never talked in front of me. They never talked. I was always told to go out of the room. And if they talked, maybe after I went to sleep.

Q: They didn’t speak another language if they didn’t want you to understand?

A: They might have, because my father spoke about six, seven languages, and I really don’t know.

Q: And you said that the uncle that lived with you was your father’s brother?

A: In-law.

Q: He was his brother-in-law, or the aunt?

A: No, no, no. The aunt was a sister-in-law to my father.

Q: She was your mother’s…?

A: Sister-in-law. My mother’s brother’s wife.

Q: What else do you remember from the ghetto?

A: Just that…nothing much. I was taken out, I had to be hidden. In the streets the dead people. My father. My father one time brought cabbages and he was making sauerkraut and I said, “Dad, open it up. Let’s eat it.” And he said, “No. We have to wait for a rainy day.” And when he opened it, it was all rotten. I just remember him bringing extra food to us. He was a very good provider.

Q: Were you a religious family?

A: I really don’t know. I have a picture of my grandfather and he had the “yarmulke” on his head, so I would imagine at one time the family was religious.

Q: But you don’t remember yourself going to a synagogue or celebrating the holidays?

A: No.

QL What else do you know now about the life of your family before the war?

A: Very little, very little. I just knew that they were in the textile business.

Q: You didn’t hear from the relatives who came to Israel?

A: Well, the relatives who came to Israel was the woman that took care for me, that I thought was my mother, and there was another uncle and aunt, but the family never discussed anything. They never discussed anything. Very little. I got a little information from my uncle, but that was, you know, when he found me, what I looked like stuff like that – but nothing about what life was for us in Poland. I have pictures of my father and he had very beautiful clothes on him, so that means to me that he had to be quite well off.

Q: How do you have those photographs?

A: Well, what happened was, before we went into the ghetto, my father took pictures and birth certificates and jewellery and after the war he dug it up.

Q: You remember something about the children you were playing with in the ghetto?

A: No. I mean the names or anything like that, no. There is one name that stands out and that was Jacobovich. That’s all I remember. That was like a last name, I think.

Q: You remember what you played with?

A: No, I don’t remember. I don’t think we had toys.

Q: That’s why I asked.

A: I would imagine we ran around and stuff like that, but there were no toys, there were no toys.

Q: You still had enough clothes?

A: We had the clothing that we brought from our home, yes.

Q: But as a child you grew and you needed new clothes.

A: I don’t remember getting any new clothes, but I really don’t know. I really don’t know.

Q: You remember something else of the ghetto before we are coming to the end of the ghetto?

A: Well, my father again came home early one afternoon and he told us to pack our belongings and our belongings were clothing, food, they took some blankets and a few pots and pans. And we said we had to leave to where we were going, we had to get there before the curfew. I remember that it was my father, my mother, my uncle and their daughter and myself. We walked across the little bridge and we came to a very large building and my father said that it was a factory. And we climbed to the very, very top - all the workers were gone – we came to the very top and there was an attic and my father opened a trap door and he told me that this was going to be our new home. And I remember him saying to me, he said, “Natek, you have to be very quiet during the day. You can’t move around because there are workers down there. The only time you can move is at nighttime. I remember it was very hard for me to be very quiet. There were times where I just wanted to run and everybody was very frantic. They were literally holding me down. I remember we had blankets, we had pots and pans. We didn’t have a bathroom. Everything was done in a pail and then when the workers left, that’s when they exchanged the waters and cleaned up. We had a little hotplate and there was a window in the attic where I was able to look out the window. My mother didn’t want me to look out because I used to see the trucks pull up and the people running. Now I know who they were. At that time I didn’t know. And the Germans, soldiers would point a stick.

Q: That was what we know call the big “Sperre”? You don’t know.

A: I don’t know what that is.

Q: Before that, you said that a few times you were hidden. You remember yourself afraid?

A: I was very afraid. Sometimes I was hidden underneath the bed, sometimes in a closet. And they used to play a game with me, to hide me, like they were hiding me from somebody. And sometimes they had to take me out of the apartment and they took me to the hospital.

Q: You understood at that time that it was dangerous?

A: I really didn’t know, I really didn’t know. I was five and a half. I really didn’t know. I am just making a guess at the age factor. I really don’t know.

Q: But that was the first time that you came to the factory?

A: The first time.

Q: You were never hidden there before?

A: No, first time. And that’s where we lived. And my father would sleep up there at nighttime and then in the morning he would go down and sometime during the day he would always manage to get food. And that food was potatoes, I remember carrots, I remember kohlrabi, bread sometimes. And my mother would make a soup and we had hot tea. The only time we could really move around was at nighttime and then we still had to be very careful.

Q: You went down to the…?

A: No. There was a window. We still had to be careful. We had to put something over the window so the light wouldn’t shine. The only people who went down to the factory to empty the buckets and clean up the mess was my uncle and my father. And one day, while we were eating our dinner, there was a knock on the trapdoor and everybody was very startled. And when they opened the trapdoor it was one of the workers and she must have heard me running. She said, “Mr. Rosenberg, I’m hungry. Can you give me something to eat?” So my father handed her some vegetables and she left. Early the next morning we were out of there, we left.

Q: But you said that you had to put something on the window. That means you were there in the dark?

A: No, no. When we wanted to put the light on or the candle on we had to put it over the window so nobody could see the light coming in from the outside. During the daytime we had the light coming through the window. It was a little window, a small, little window, but it was enough for me to look and see what was happening on the street.

Q: What you said just now is that some of the Jewish workers discovered the place that you were hidden and your father was afraid that she’d tell about it or maybe try blackmailing or something and so you had to move.

A: I don’t know whether she was Jewish or not. She could have been gentile too. I don’t know.

Q: They weren’t so hungry.

A: Okay. I don’t know. But he was afraid.

Q: Where did you move to?

A: Okay. What happened was, I went with my father and my mother went with my uncle and their daughter. They went one way and we went the other. And I was crying for my mother all the time. I wanted my Momma. And we started living in deserted buildings. We went from deserted building to deserted building. And my father would leave me alone. He would cover me up with stuff and I would just stay there, you know. I was very much afraid. And he would go out looking for food. I remember it was chilly, it was cold, and I used to cuddle to him, but I was always crying for my mother. I couldn’t understand why my mother wasn’t with me. Until the Germans found us.

Q: When you say that you were moving from one building to another, I understand that it was after the liquidation of the ghetto?

A: I don’t know. When was the ghetto liquidated? I really don’t know.

Q: It was liquidated in August.

A: It had to be before.

Q: Before?

A: Yes.

Q: You still saw people outside?

A: I didn’t see anybody. But when the Germans found us they took us to the train station and there were other people there and my mother was there, my other uncle.

Q: How long do you thing that you lived?

A: It wasn’t a long time. I really don’t know. Days. Four days, five days. I really don’t know.

Q: And before that, in the attic?

A: I’m just going to take a guess. Maybe a couple of months. Wasn’t a very long time. It was short. When I lived in the attic days became nights and my nights became days. It was completely the opposite.

Q: You understood that there was a danger and that’s why you had to behave like that and do that and not do that? You were old enough to understand it already?

A: I was told that I had to be quiet. If I wasn’t quiet something bad would happen, but I had no idea what the bad was. They were playing like a game with me. And when I used to see the soldiers shooting at the people running away, my mother would always pull me from the window. She didn’t want me to see what was going on outside.

Q: So still you had no idea what was going on around you?

A: I had no idea. It all started in the train station.

Q: But you remember the trauma of being found by the Germans?

A: Well, we were waking up and the Germans were looking for stragglers, I guess, and they came in and they found us. And they pointed their rifles at us and they put us into a truck and they took us to the train station. And there were hundreds….I didn’t know what “hundreds” was. It was just a lot of people all lined up. And we saw my mother there and my uncle and my other uncle and his wife and we tried to get close to them as much as we could.

Q: But I didn’t understand how did they discover you.

A: The Germans? They were just looking for stragglers. They weren’t looking for us. They were just going through the deserted buildings looking for people and they just came across us.

Q: You didn’t hear them coming, or what?

A: We heard a truck pull up, but that’s all we heard.

Q: You didn’t have where to hide?

A: No other place to hide.

Q: You remember your father’s reaction at that time?

A: No. I think I was always crying. I was holding on to him. I was very afraid.

Q: They were brutal?

A: They weren’t brutal. They just pointed the rifles at us and told us to get into the truck, but they weren’t brutal. They didn’t hit me, they didn’t hit my father.

Q: So you were going to the train station and…?

A: There were my other family members and we just stood there for a long, long time. They gave us nothing to eat, nothing to drink.

Q: You remember the time of the year? It was winter, summer?

A: It wasn’t winter. It was still warm. I can’t tell you exactly what month it was. And we just stood there. The Germans used to patrol with the dogs and they told us to keep our mouths shut. If we didn’t, they would come over and they would hit you. And we just stood there for a long, long time. And finally the train came into the station and they marched us over to one side and they slid open the doors and they told us to get in. And I remember that the family tried to all be together in one cattle car. So some of the family was and some wasn’t, but my mother was there with her husband, the daughter, and my Uncle Dudek and his wife, Helen, and there was another aunt. There were two other aunts.

Q: All of them from your mother’s side?

A: Uncle Dudek was my mother’s younger brother. And the other aunts, they were either my father’s or maybe my mother’s. I don’t know.

Q: What happened on the train?

A: Well, they shoved us into the train, they closed the cattle car door, and there wasn’t any room to sit. We all had to stand. And before they closed the door, for toilet purposes they gave us one bucket. At the beginning, when a woman wanted to use the bucket to relieve herself, the other ladies made a circle around her, so she would have a little privacy, but after a while, it really made no difference because the feces and the urine were overflowing. My family members took turns at holding me up during the train ride so I wouldn’t get soiled because they were all standing in urine and feces. And the train proceeded and I really don’t know how long it took - it could have been the first night or the second night that the train stopped and all the men were taken away. We were all crying and reaching out for my father, my father was reaching out for me. My mother was crying and my uncle was being taken away and my other uncle was taken away. They slid the door shut and the train proceeded on to Ravensbrueck, was the first camp.

Q: And?

A: How long it took to get to Ravensbrueck I don’t know, but eventually we got to the camp and they slid open the door and they told us to get out. they told us to line up, and that’s when we met the “kapo”, or the woman who was in charge of us.

Q: Ravensbrueck was a women’s camp.

A: Women and children. And the woman was in a green uniform and she had black boots. She had black clothes and a black whip. And they marched us to be deloused. They sprayed some stuff on us and they cut our hair or shaved our hair. And then they marched us to our sleeping quarters and there we stood for a long, long time. And they gave us nothing to eat and nothing to drink. We had no food. All the food ran out before we even got into the cattle car. And they finally let us inside. My mother told me to go to the top bunk. Our bunks were made out of wood, of course, and our mattresses were straw, but they had a terrible odour to them. It was the same odour, you know - this wasn’t a brand new smell for me – it was the same smell as in the cattle car. I had no idea what it was, just that it smelled terrible. I remember that I cuddled up to my mother and I fell asleep. The next morning, it was very early, it was still dark when they woke us and they told us to go outside for a roll call, which lasted for hours. We used to go out there when it was still dark and we just stood there until the sun would come up. We just stood. They would take roll call and of course a lot of people were crying. Children were crying, the mothers crying. I was crying, I remember. And one time I cried and I was beaten, so I didn’t cry again until I was like forty-three years of age. I was just afraid, scared to death. I didn’t know what was…I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea. The women would go to work and the kids were left alone.

Q: Your, let’s say, sister was at that time a teenager. She also went to work?

A: No. What happened to her – and I found this out after the war. I had no idea what happened to her. She was pulled out and sent to another camp.

Q: Immediately when you arrived?

A: No. Maybe after four or five days, she said. And she wanted her mother to go with her and her mother said no, that she thought she could take care of herself, and so she stayed with me. But at this camp was my mother, there was my aunt, there were three other aunts and my mother and myself.

Q: Her sisters?

A: No. One was a sister-in-law and the other two I don’t know what side of the family they were.

Q: So you never heard about your sister?

A: Well, I met her after the war. We had no idea what happened to her. Nobody knew. But after the war, in Poland, we all got together again. Poland and Germany.

Q: Now you had again new life with very strict control. You couldn’t do what you want, and still when you mother went to work, what did you do?

A: I remember just hanging around the building. They didn’t make us do anything. There were other children my age there. I really don’t remember that much. We went running out of the buildings. The only thing that I did was when they gave us our lunch - if you want to call it that. – which was soup. It was made out of carrot peels and potato peels. It was garbage. It smelled, it stunk. Once everybody was fed I would take one side of the bucket and another kid would take the other side and we would take it back to the kitchen. And along the way we would, with our hands, lick it, clean it out. And the kitchen was on top of a hill and we used to “shlep” it up to the kitchen, so by the time we got it to the kitchen it was cleaned out. And then we used to beg the cooks and they would give us something to eat. Sometimes they would and sometimes they wouldn’t.

Q: You were definitely hungry during that time?

A: Hungry? All I thought about was food. From the minute I woke up till the minute I went to sleep, the only thing on my mind was something to eat. And even when I was sleeping, I think. Food. I was hungry all the time. Just wasn’t enough food.

Q: Didn’t you try, maybe with the other children, to steal a little?

A: Oh, I stole later. I stole food. I stole from the other women that were in the barracks, when they were sleeping. I would crawl down and steal their food. I was hungry, but it still wasn’t enough. They were small pieces of bread. It didn’t mean anything. We couldn’t steal out of the kitchen. Out of the kitchen they would give you a potato. Sometimes it was a warm potato, sometimes it was a raw potato and sometimes it was a black potato, you know, rotten potato, but when you’re hungry you’ll eat a rotten potato. It was delicious.

Q: It was still summer at that time?

A: No, it was very cold.

Q: From the time you arrived?

A: Yes. I remember it was raining. Some days it was so bad it rained and you just stood out in the rain. And there were days….because I remember my mother had frozen feet, so there was also snow. It was very cold, it was very cold. But I remember the rains. I think the rains were the worst because there was no change of clothes. We wore the same clothes. There were no baths, there were no showers or anything. We just stood there.

Q: Could you complain about the situation or you understood that that was the way it was?

A: I must have understood the way it was. I know I didn’t cry because I remember crying one time and I was beaten. I imagine I must have given my mother a very hard time, especially about the food, because I remember in the afternoons, when we used to get our night meal, which was just a slice of bread, and I would eat it right away and then I wanted hers. And sometimes she would give me a little piece and then she would hide a little piece, but I wanted that, I wanted that. I used to get angry. I hated her when she wouldn’t give it to me. I learned to hate at a very early age. There wasn’t enough food. I was always so hungry.

Q: And with the other children – did you take from one another? Food or something else?

A: I don’t remember doing that. I remember sometimes I used to push the kid away because it was my turn to lick out the pot. Or when we went into the kitchen, begging the cooks for something to eat, they would never hand you the potato. They would just throw it on the floor, on the filthy floor, and whoever got that potato first, that was yours, and if somebody grabbed it, you would grab it from them. That’s the only time, I think. We used to crawl on the floor, fighting for that potato, for that rotten potato.

Q: You understood at that time how wrong it was, or it was natural for you?

A: To fight and to steal? Well, something was stolen from me, so it was natural. It was natural. I wanted that food. I didn’t care.

Q: So the whole day you were alone with the other children and in the afternoon your mother came and then?

A: Then she would go back to work again. They came for lunch and they would go back to work. Then they would come back again after work. We got a slice of bread. And then we had another roll call and they gave us a slice of bread with a little black water to drink - it was supposed to be coffee – and then we went in to sleep. Not to sleep right away. We went into our sleeping quarters.

Q: The hunger was much stronger at that time than the cold?

A: The only thing I could think about was the food. I remember I had short pants, this little jacket, and socks that had holes in them. My shoes had holes in them. I was cold, I was sick, I had TB, I was told. I had lice underneath my skin. I didn’t care. I was hungry. I wanted to eat.

Q: And how did you warm yourself?

A: Well, we used to have straw and for blankets….it wasn’t a blanket. What do you call it? It’s made out of like a sack. They make sacks out of it. Burlap? It wasn’t a blanket. And then in the barracks they did have one stove and sometimes, when it was very, very cold, they would give us something to put in, to make it a bit warmer, but otherwise I would just cuddle up to my mother at nighttime.

Q: And during the daytime?

A: During the daytime I really don’t remember. It was cold, it was cold. I wore the same clothes. I didn’t have a change of clothes waiting for me.

Q: How were your relations with the Germans?

A: I was definitely afraid of them, the “kapo”. I only had contact with a soldier when I was coming out of the kitchen one time, eating a potato, and for no reason at all he started beating me. I have a mark underneath my chin here, but that is the only contact that I had. Blood was coming out and I ran looking for my mother. There was nothing she could do, but what she did, she tore off a piece of her dress and she urinated on it and then she applied the urine, the rag with the urine, against my….but that was the only contact. The only contact that I had also was when there was a major roll call or we had to move. That was in Ravensbrueck.

Q: You think that your aunt acted at the time as a real mother, or here you began to feel the difference, that she was not really your mother?

A: As far as I knew she was my mother. I didn’t know that she wasn’t.

Q: It wasn’t different from other children’s mothers there?

A: No. She always acted very nice to me, I mean, very loving to me. I slept with her, next to her, and she gave me her food and she took care of me. I’m sure other things happened, but I just don’t remember, I just don’t remember. I remember when I ate the soup, I had to run to the toilets, because it went right through you. And the toilets were just holes in the ground, you know. There were not showers or baths or anything like that, but in the barracks there was a like a big sink and sometimes a little drop of water would come out, but we didn’t have any soap or anything. So it is remarkable the way she kept me clean because I was filthy, I was dirty. And on top of that, I remember that before we used to go to sleep, she always wanted me to go to the toilet, and for some reason…our toilets were outside, we had to go outside. Sometimes I could oblige and sometimes I couldn’t, and when I couldn’t oblige and I would wake up in the middle of the night and I would just say, “I have to go to the bathroom,” she wouldn’t let me go. So on top of all that filth and dirt that I, then I would urinate in my pants. The smell was just disgusting. And on top of that, I was hungry, I was so hungry.

Q: That’s the only time for you that you were so hungry. It wasn’t like that the years before.

A: No. No, because the years before, if I got hungry….I don’t know what hunger really is. I guess when you think about food the whole time. I mean, the years before I didn’t have to think about it. When I was hungry I would say, “I’m hungry,” and they would give me something to eat, but it wasn’t the same type of hunger. I mean, the only thing I could think about was the food. That’s all I thought about. I would have eaten anything, and maybe I did, I don’t remember.

Q: When you said you used to steal from women in other barracks, was it alone or together, a few children together?

A: No, it was alone. What happened was one of my aunts – I don’t know which one it was – she was in a hospital in Ravensbrueck. I don’t know what kind of hospital it was, but she wanted to see me, so they let her see me. And I remember being led to her and she kissed me and this nurse handed me a piece of brown paper. And when I opened the brown paper there were five or six little cubes of sugar. So I showed them to my mother and she told me, “Don’t eat them right away. Eat just a little bit.” And so I used to guard these little pieces of sugar I had in my pocket, you know, and I made sure they were there each and every day. And like the next day or the following day, when I looked for my sugars they were gone. And I remember running up and down the barracks, telling the other ladies, “You took my sugar.” They all denied it, but I knew that one of them did. So what I used to do, when I used to watch them when they came back from work, I would watch, before they went to sleep, where they used to hide the bread, and I would lie awake, waiting until they would fall asleep. And when they went to sleep I would crawl, jump out of the bunk, and take the bread. I was stealing from…was the same barracks. I didn’t go out of the barracks.

Q: And your mother knew about it?

A: No. She was sleeping. She didn’t know. And sometimes I was caught and they would hit me, but they were so tired from working….but it still wasn’t enough. I wanted more. It didn’t do anything for me, really. I mean, I stole it and would eat it right away.

Q: What was your mother’s work?

A: She worked in a factory. There was a factory there. I found this out after the war. I did not know it at that time. But she did some type of work there.

Q: On Sundays also?

A: I didn’t know there was a Sunday.

Q: There wasn’t a day that she stayed in the barrack?

A: I don’t remember. I don’t know.

Q: Were you sick at that time?

A: I found out after the war that I had TB, and I had the lice underneath my skin, but I used to get up every day. If I would have been sick I wouldn’t be here today. Even if I was sick I would get up.

Q: The whole time in Ravensbrueck you were there in a formal way or you had to be hidden sometimes?

A: I was never hidden. Never. From the day I arrived I was assigned my barracks with my mother and we stayed there. Never hidden.

Q: Till when were you in Ravensbrueck?

A: It had to be sometime in the early part of 1945. It could have been February. Somewhere around there. There was a major roll call and the Germans told that we were going to go to another camp where the men would be. So they put us into a cattle car again and they took us to the second camp, which was Koenigswusterhausen. (end of side)

Q: What did you find in the new camp?

A: We arrived in the new camp and they told us that the men were on the other side of the fence. That meant that my father would be there and my two uncles were going to be there. But they wouldn’t let us out right away. It was days before they finally let us out. And I remember when they let us out, the ground was full of mud and I ran for the fence, looking for my father. And I finally found him and the only contact we had was just touching each other through the barbed wire. The first thing I said to him, I said, “Tata, I’m hungry.” And he would pass me his food. It was a potato, it was a cold potato, a hot potato. I knew at a certain time I could get food from him. And then when I finished with my father, I would run to my uncles, looking for food again. And if the food would fall down on the ground, I would just eat it the way it was. I didn’t wait for a place to wash it or anything like that, with the dirt and the filth. I would just eat it right away. But I knew that at twelve o’clock, or whatever time it was, that there would be extra food for me.

And then in Koenigswusterhausen there was a lot of greenery and I would dig up the ground looking for roots to eat. If I found a root I would eat it right away.

Q: With the earth?

A: With the earth, yes. It still wasn’t enough.

Q: You didn’t have problems with your stomach because of that?

A: I have problems with my stomach to this very day. I’ve always had problems. Even though the war is over fifty-four years, I still have problems with my stomach. That’s all.

Q: I suppose that you knew that it was not very healthy, but you couldn’t care less.

A: I didn’t care. I don’t even think I knew it was unhealthy. I was so hungry it didn’t make any difference. And we stayed there not a very long time. It was a short time.

Q: But for you to meet again your father was natural? You didn’t think before that maybe something terrible happened to him?

A: I never thought about my father. I mean, when I was in Ravensbrueck I wasn’t thinking about my father. If I did I don’t remember. I was thinking about food. And even in Koenigswusterhausen I knew that there was food going to be there. That’s what I thought about. Something to eat.

Q: With the other children that was the only thing you talked about? How to get more food, what to do, how hungry you were?

A: I don’t know. That I don’t remember. I don’t remember that.

Q: Did your mother go to work in this camp?

A: No. In Koenigswusterhausen, no. Our stay there was a very short time. We had a major roll call one day and all the men, women and children were lined up together. That’s the first time that my father hugged me, kissed me, or anything like that. And we were standing in line and the German soldiers were walking down the line and they started picking people out of the line. And at that time they picked me. And my father asked a “kapo” and his name was Jacobovitz and he asked him, “Where is my son going to?” And they said, “Sachsenhausen.” And my father wanted to take my place and my uncles also wanted to, but they said no, that they wanted the children. There were other grownups also and we were put into a truck.

Q: You had the time to say goodbye to your mother, to your father?

A: Yes.

Q: You were frightened?

A: I was very afraid. I was maybe six years and ten months old. I’m just taking a guess. I don’t know exactly. But I had to be somewhere around there because the day that I was freed I know how old I was then. And I was very much afraid. They put me into the truck and I didn’t know what was going to happen.

Q: But you were with other children that you knew before?

A: There were other children in the camp, yes, that I knew. I remember my father was running alongside the truck as it was leaving Koenigswusterhausen. How long it took from Koenigswusterhausen to Sachsenhausen, it wasn’t very long. Maybe a couple of hours. We arrived in Sachsenhausen and I was told to get out of the truck and we were marched over to a sleeping area, sleeping quarters. My memory there is not as good as in Ravensbrueck. I remember seeing people one day and the next day I didn’t see them. What happened next was, I was inside the barracks when I saw a few people taking the floorboards and taking them aside and (?) the floorboards. And they crawled underneath the barracks and I followed them and then they covered up the floor.

Q: You knew those people?

A: They lived in the barracks.

Q: But you didn’t know them personally.

A: No. And I started living with them underneath the barracks.

Q: How many were there?

A: There weren’t many. There was just like a handful of them. Maybe six, seven. I really don’t know.

Q: And they didn’t kick you out?

A: They let me stay. They let me stay.

Q: They didn’t ask you who are you and what you were doing there?

A: Well, I lived with them in the barracks, so I just went in there with them and I just stayed there. I don’t remember too much there.

Q: But what was it? It was only a big, dark hole or it was a cellar?

A: It was underneath the barracks. It was like…it wasn’t a cellar. It was like on the ground, underground.

Q: But what was it? It was a room?

A: No, no. It was like you were right on the soil, like an opening between the floor and the ground and so we were just lying there.

Q: You couldn’t even sit there.

A: No, we couldn’t sit, no. You had to lie. There was no sunlight or anything like that. There was nothing to eat. I have no idea how I….I don’t know. I was told many, many years after the war that I would have to go into a hypnotic state. I was, like, out of it. I don’t know what I drank. I mean, I have no idea. I have no idea how I survived.

Q: But why did you follow them when you saw them going there and taking out the tiles?

A: I have no idea. Could have been the survival instinct for all I know. I don’t know. Of course, at that time I didn’t know it was the survival instinct. I just followed them.

Q: It was only a few days after you arrived in the camp?

A: It could have been a few days, it could have been a week. I really don’t know how long I was there. My uncle says I could have been there close to a month. My father, who was in Koenigswusterhausen, was taken on a death march, so he wasn’t there when I came back, but my two uncles were in Koenigswusterhausen and they came looking for me after they were freed. So one of them said that I could have been close to a month there. So how long I was underneath the barracks I really don’t know.

Q: And you remember nothing of what….?

A: Don’t remember a thing. Don’t remember a thing. The only thing that I remember was that it had to be April the 27th when we were liberated. 1945. And then in Polish people were screaming. From outside we heard it. ‘We’re free! We’re free!”

Q: Polish?

A: Polish.

Q: Prisoners.

A: Prisoners, yes. So they took the floorboards apart, we crawled out. When we came outside the front door I couldn’t open my eyes. The sun, I couldn’t see anything at all.

Q: Could you walk?

A: Very slowly. Everybody was running past me and I could just hardly, hardly walk. I finally got into a line and I stood in the line and people were handing out - they were Russian soldiers – they were handing out food. And I took as much food as I could carry and I went to a corner of a field and I started eating it and I got tremendous pains in my stomach. The next thing that I know, I saw these two faces looking at me. These were my two uncles. They were in Koenigswusterhausen and they knew what camp I was sent to, so they found me and they took me back to Koenigswusterhausen where my mother was and my other aunt was there. And there I had to be nursed back to health because when they found me, and they told me this many, many years after – when they would speak about something, because most of the time they wouldn’t speak about anything – that I was a skeleton. There was no meat on me whatsoever. I was just skin and bones. And I remember that I had to be nursed back to health, that the only thing I could eat was soup. And I had to lie in this one bunk. I didn’t have the strength to even go to the bathroom. I used to urinate and defecate all over myself. I just didn’t have the strength to get up. Every day all I had to eat was soup and I was so hungry still that the soup wasn’t enough.

Q: You were in a regular hospital?

A: No. I was in Koenigswusterhausen.

Q: But there was no hospital after the liberation?

A: No. I was just in the barracks. And the Russian commandant made sure that my mother had the right ingredients. He came every day and he brought food for me. Until I got better, which was a long time, weeks, months.

Q: You were all the time conscious? You weren’t unconscious?

A: No, I was conscious then. I was unconscious in Sachsenhausen.

Q: Under the ground.

A: But I was conscious in Koenigswusterhausen, yes. I was conscious. I knew what was happening.

Q: When you heard the Polish people say, “We are free”, by yourself you though, “Oh, that’s the time to go out”, or because the other people went out you…Could you go by yourself out?

A: I went out because the other people…I was like sleeping. I was awakened by the screaming, “We’re free, we’re free.” I had no idea what was going on. None whatsoever.

Q: And at this moment you again thought about food, or you were too exhausted to be hungry?

A: I didn’t think about food. I came outside and everybody was running and I couldn’t run. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I just followed the crowds.

Q: You can’t say that you were happy at that time I suppose. You didn’t really understand what was going on.

A: I didn’t know what happy was. I didn’t know what was going on. All I saw was the people running and I just walked very slowly until I got into line and I got and I got food. And the Russian gave me a salami. I remember because it’s still my favourite food. And I was eating this salami and that’s all I remember until I looked up and there were these two faces looking at me.

Q: And then in the barracks you began to talk, to ask?

A: My mother, my aunt was there. My two uncles were there – my Uncle Dudek and my Uncle Bernard. They were the ones who found me. And I had to be nursed back to health. I asked for my father, I’m sure I did, but he wasn’t there. And then eventually my uncle went to the Russian commandant and…what happened was, when I got better I went to the Russian commandant, I knocked on the door, and when he saw me he picked me up and he hugged me and he kissed me and I came there everyday to eat. And then I would eat as much as I could and the rest I would take back to the family because the Russians, they weren’t good to everybody, but he liked me. He made sure that I had food everyday.

Q: He was Russian or maybe a Russian Jew?

A: Russian. Maybe a Russian Jew, I don’t know. But he made sure that I had food everyday to eat. And then it must have been my uncle went to him. I took my uncle to the commandant because he like me, and then my uncle told him that we wanted to go back to Poland. So the commandant gave us a wagon and two horses and he loaded it up with food and we went to Poland. How long it took I haven’t the slightest idea.

Q: It was something like a month after the liberation?

A: Longer. I was so sick that it took months before I was able to walk because I was a skeleton, there was nothing there. I remember the first time when I had solid food – I couldn’t stop eating. I ate, I ate, I ate as much as I could.

Q: Do you remember your family trying to stop you?

A: They were afraid because I was eating all that food, I would be sick again, but I ate. But she stopped me, my mother stopped me, “Don’t eat! Don’t eat! Don’t eat!” She was afraid. I didn’t care. I wanted to eat.Q: And your going back to Poland. Do you remember that journey?

A: I remember the journey took a very long time. At nighttime we would pull over and we continued during the day. I have no idea how many weeks it took. And we finally arrived in Lodz and we went to our home and there was another family living there.

Q: Polish family.

A: Polish family. And when we went and we told them this was our home, they said, “Jew, get out.” So my uncle didn’t want to have any problems, so he went to his factory that he owned and there was a caretaker there. And at the beginning he wouldn’t let us in, but my uncle said, “You can have these two horses,” and he let us go into one room.

Q: Inside the factory?

A: Inside the factory. It was a big factory. And that’s where we all lived, in one room, five of us. And I would play with other children and sometimes I would sit outside on the street, on the pavement. And one day as I was sitting outside, I saw this man pulling a little wagon and it was my father. And I ran up to him and I said, “Tata, Tata!” He looked at me like I wasn’t even there. I mean, he couldn’t comprehend that I was alive. And I put my hand into his hand and we walked back to the factory.

Q: That means that he was sure you were not alive anymore.

A: That I was dead, yes. He saw me leave him two times already and he never thought I’d be alive. So my father saw what was going on in Poland. He went to dig up papers and jewellery that he had and with some of the jewellery he hired two Russian officers to smuggle us out of Poland. He saw what was happening.

Q: Immediately in ’45?

A: Well, it was, I would think, about the middle of 1945. It was fast. He saw what was happening. So he hired these two Russian soldiers and we were getting into the truck and I’m getting into the truck and my father is getting into the truck and I said to my father, “Why isn’t my mother coming?” And that’s when he told me that this was not my mother, that it was my aunt. Well, I was very upset. I told him I hated him and I hated her. I mean, I was just a raving lunatic. Of course I was crying. That’s another time that I cried. I forgot. I cried because I couldn’t believe that this was not my mother. And we proceeded on to Germany.

Q: Why didn’t they come with you?

A: They stayed in Poland. They migrated to….they didn’t want to go to Germany. My uncle wanted to see what was going to happen with this property that he had. The money issue. So they stayed in Lodz.

Q: And your father didn’t care about his…?

A: No, because he saw what was happening and he wanted to get away. So in the middle of the night the Russians stopped the truck and they made a hot cup of tea and when they handed me the hot cup of tea, they took out a bottle of vodka and they poured vodka into it and I drank it and I loved the way it tasted and my hand shot out for more. And that was the beginning of another thirty-five years of a nightmare.

Q: And you were seven years old at the time.

A: About seven and a half. And when I took that drink of alcohol, all the fear that I had was gone.

Q: But it’s very strong. It’s not tasty for a child.

A: I know. It was burning my insides, but something happened. My body became addicted to alcohol. We went to Berlin, a DP camp in Berlin. We didn’t stay there a long time. He wanted to go to the northern part, so we went to Hanover, Germany. And one of the reasons why we went to Hanover was that he had a younger brother that left Poland before the war, who was a very big doctor in London, and he reached out for his brother to come to Germany because he wanted me out of there as fast as possible. So my uncle came and arrangements were made for me to leave Germany to go to London. And within months – this was 1947 now. I was nine years of age.

Q: You were two years in the DP camp?

A: No, I was in a DP camp a very short period of time, but in Hanover we lived in an apartment. My father was doing black market, so he was making money and we had a very nice apartment. So within months after my uncle’s visit I was off to London. My father put me on a train in Hanover and in Bremerhaven I was put on a ship and I was taken to England, Southampton.

Q: Alone, a nine-year-old boy?

A: On the boat, yes. And I arrived in Southampton.

Q: All the time you were an alcoholic?

A: Well, in Germany, when we were in the DP camp it was easy to get a beer because when they gave me the coupons for the food, you know, when you walked into the restaurant there was sauerkraut, potato and beer, always beer. It was easier to get beer than a cup of coffee.

Q: Instead of something else.

A: Sure. We didn’t have soda. We had beer. When we went to Hanover, when we had our dinner, I always made a fuss, I wanted beer. So my father didn’t know, I mean, you know…so I always had beer to drink. So when I arrived in London I didn’t have as much freedom to have alcohol as I had in Germany, but when I arrived in London, it was my uncle, my aunt and my cousin and they had a little dog.

Q: You never met before.

A: No, just my uncle. And where I thought would be a family that really would be nice to me, it was completely the opposite. My aunt didn’t want me and she took her misery out on me. And many a night I went to sleep hungry. She wouldn’t give me anything to eat. She fed me like if I was a dog, you know, gave me scraps. The only time she fed me was when my uncle was at home. Whenever I had the opportunity I would go to the liquor cabinet and take a little shot, not much, just a little bit. I lived in London for five years.

Q: With the family of your uncle?

A: With my uncle’s family, right. And in the meantime, we changed our name from Rosenberg to Montrose because there was a quota system and my father by this time was in the United States. So I wanted to come and so we changed our name to Montrose.

Q: How long didn’t you see your father?

A: From 1947 till 1952.

Q: And you wrote him how miserable you were?

A: My father? No, I didn’t write to him then. My father wrote to me very, very seldom. He used to send me chewing gum and comic books. So he had no idea what was going on. I finally was able to come to the United States….

Q: But before that, when you were still in London –besides the attitude of your aunt, you went finally to school and had a normal life?

A: It wasn’t normal to this degree. I mean, first of all I was always hungry, I didn’t have enough food to eat. And then I had these horrendous nightmares, which I had for many, many years before that. And I had nightmares.

Q: Before that?

A: After I was liberated. I had nightmares and I couldn’t sleep unless the lights were on and I couldn’t sleep unless there was somebody in the room. I was that afraid. And then if I would wake up in the middle of the night and I had to go to the bathroom to urinate and if I heard a little squeek from outside I would freeze and I would urinate in the bed. So here she had a situation which wasn’t the most pleasant one, you know. And I had no manners. I mean, I wasn’t used to eating with a knife and fork and spoon. All I knew was how to eat with my hands. So she had like a little animal, so she took her frustrations out on me by not giving me enough food to eat. And that went on for five years. I would occasionally be able to get a swig of alcohol in me and occasionally I would steal money from her purse when I could and go to a movie for sixpence and stay the whole day there.

Q: And at school?

A: At school it was very hard for me. The kids used to make fun of me, used to call me a Jew. At the beginning I couldn’t speak the English language, so it was very bad. It was very, very hard. It was not a very pleasant….it wasn’t nice at all. I wasn’t happy.

Q: No empathy to the time of the war that you were in the camps, no questions about the time?

A: My uncle, you mean? No. My uncle was a very big doctor in London.

Q: Which doctor?

A: My uncle was a heart specialist in London and he was very busy with his patients and with his mistress, so he didn’t care. They didn’t care. I was just a burden.

Q: He did his obligation by taking you to his place and that’s it.

A: Right, that’s it. Then he dumped me on his wife and they were having problems, so she took everything out on me.

Q: And the cousins?

A: The cousin was, she was a nice little girl. She was five years younger than I was and she didn’t know anything. She was a little baby. She is alive today. She is in London. And the only affection that I got was from a little Pekinese dog called Fifi. She used to come over and lick me and kiss me, because nobody else ever did.

Q: You understood at that time that you were miserable and that it shouldn’t be like that, or for you it was one long, continuous misery?

A: For me it was like a continuous misery. It really was. I mean, by going to London I would think that they would have been nice to me and it turned out completely the opposite way.

Q: You wanted to go to London or it was your father’s decision?

A: My father’s decision. My father wanted to…we applied. It was either England or the United States, whichever would take us first. So my father got papers for the United States.

Q: But why didn’t he come to London after you?

A: Because he couldn’t get papers. He did apply for London and the United States and America came first. He came to America in 1950.

Q: Till ’50 he was in Germany?

A: Yes. And he got remarried to a German woman who was a survivor.

Q: German Jew.

A: German Jew, whom he never told that he had a son in England. So when I arrived in the United States in 1952 it was not the most pleasant. She was a very nice lady, she really was, but she was German and when I heard the German voice, the German accent…You have to keep in mind at that time I had a lot of hate. I mean, I hated everybody and if you were German…

Q: Everything that moves.

A: Everything that moved. And if you were German, I mean, I hated you too. I mean, I hated the whole German race.

Q: And it was a stepmother, of course.

A: She was German, so she fell into that category right away. And so life was not very pleasant.

Q: What about your aunt at that time? The one that you thought was your mother?

A: Okay. She came to Israel. They lived in Tel Aviv. And my other uncle and his wife, Uncle Dudek and Hania, they also came to Tel Aviv, but they came later. I had a third or fourth cousin who came from Poland and he was already in Tel Aviv. So my life in New York was not very pleasant.

Q: But you lived with your father, you went to school?

A: I was taken to school and then the kids made fun of me.

Q: Of course. Because you had a British accent.

A: Right. So they didn’t accept me. And I was afraid to tell them that I was a Jew.

Q: You were fourteen years old at the time?

A: I was fourteen, yes. I was fourteen. I had no friends, I didn’t know how to make friends, so I was very unhappy. I still had these nightmares and I couldn’t sleep unless lights were on in the house. It was very hard. But one time when my uncle put me on a ship to come to America, that was one of the nicest experiences that I ever had. He took me to Southampton and he put me on a French ship called the “Degras”. I was on the bottom of the ship. If I was any more closer to the bottom I would have been in the water. I mean, the cheapest cabin that there was, I didn’t care. But what happened was, I never saw so much food in my life. I mean, all I did was eat for five days. I mean, the minute I finished eating breakfast I was eating lunch. I put on so much weight in a five-day period that I couldn’t even fit into my clothes. I never saw so much food in my life. I was happy then. That’s the only time in many, many years. I didn’t think about anything except eating, eating and eating.

But anyway, going back to New York, I went to school and I was very unhappy. The nightmares were horrendous. I used to wake up on the floor in a kneeling position like if I was ready to be executed. My bed used to be wet from the sweat. And I was just so unhappy and full of rage and full of hate. I hated everybody and everything, including my father, including my stepmother. I couldn’t sleep and that’s how my life was. Plus I drank. When I came home from school, instead of doing homework I would go to the liquor cabinet and have a couple of shots of liquor. That would bring me down where I could manage.

Q: They didn’t see what was going on?

A: Not really. My father never talked to me, very seldom. My stepmother, she was basically a very good woman, but she didn’t know how to cope with me and I didn’t know how to cope with her. They used to say, “If you weren’t around our life would be perfect.” So it was a nightmare. From one nightmare to another nightmare to another nightmare.

Q: I think that if I were you, the best solution for me was to join the army or something like that.

A: That’s what I did. But I couldn’t join it right away.

Q: When you were eighteen.

A: 1957 I joined it. I was nineteen. But I couldn’t join right away. I had to go to school and then I quit school and I went to work. And then even though the drinking age is much…I forget what the drinking age was. I acted more mature, so I used to take my paycheck and blow it on booze. I would live with my father. And it was bad, it was bad. But finally I joined the army and I said to them, “Listen. I was in a concentration camp. If you have to send me anywhere, send me to Korea.” So they said, “We’ll see.” So where do you think they sent me?

Q: Korea?

A: Germany. So for the next two and a half years I was in Germany and it was very, very hard. I got a lot of fights and got drunk and got into a lot of trouble because when I drank the hate came out. I mean, the hate was there anyway, but when I drank it really came out.

Q: The fights were with other American soldiers or with Germans?

A: Germans. When I used to get dressed up in civilian clothes, I had blonde hair and I spoke German very well and they would never know that I was a Jew or anything. I spoke the Hochdeutsch from Hanover and anytime I used to hear something about a “Jude” or this or that, that’s when I would go crazy. And I got into a lot of trouble. In the meantime my drinking was getting worse and worse and worse. I was a blackout drinker, where I would have a few drinks and then I wouldn’t know what I did or what I said. And that’s how my whole life was, until I became forty-one years of age. And that’s when my life changed.

Q: And you were in the army till the age of?

A: I came out of the army in 1960.

Q: After three years.

A: After three years, I did three years. I went back to New York, I saw my father and my stepmother, and within a couple of months I left New York and I went to work in Ohio, I moved to Ohio. They were refugees, also survivors, and they hired me. And then I went from job to job.

Q: Still drinking.

A: Still drinking, drinking and drinking. Then, in 1978…in 1977 I was so sick. My liver was bad. The doctor said if I drank again I would die, so I stopped drinking and during this period I met this woman who became my wife, but she never knew that I had a drinking problem.

Q: Your stepmother didn’t know that you father had a son!

A: That’s right. But I wasn’t drinking. And every month I went to the doctor and he would say to me, “The liver is a wonderful organ. If you abstain from alcohol it will get better.” So I said okay, so I didn’t drink. So during this period of time I got married to Loretta and she had no idea and then she was in for a shock.

Q: Not only about the drinking problem, but about your past also? It wasn’t something to talk about?

A: We didn’t talk about it. None of the survivors talked about it. My father never talked about it, nobody talked about it. I wouldn’t tell anybody I was a survivor. I didn’t tell anybody I was a Jew either. But she knew I was a survivor and she used to say to me, “You know, you are very lucky that you survived.” And I would say, “Why?” because I wanted to commit suicide. I thought about suicide and I thought about this. You know, I was so unhappy. And I said, “Why do you say that?” She used to say to me, “Because if it wouldn’t be for G-d you wouldn’t be here.” I used to say, “You’re crazy. There is no G-d.” I used to say, what I was always told, if there was a G-d these things wouldn’t have happened. I mean, I was forty-three years of age and I thought that G-d sat in the sky looking down at you. I didn’t know anything. I was forty-three and I didn’t know anything at all. So anyway, she used to talk to me like that, G-d this and G-d that, and I used to go crazy. And within a year my liver got better, so the doctor said I could drink again. So I left the house and when I came back I was a raving lunatic. And Loretta said to me, she knew right away I had a problem and she said, “You have to get help.” And I said, “No, I don’t want any help.” Things got worse and worse and all this time she would leave me little books about G-d this and G-d that and of course I didn’t want to hear any of this stuff.

Q: Jewish G-d or Christian G-d?

A: Just G-d. Any G-d. She’s Jewish. And I didn’t want to hear about G-d. But I finally, after two and a half years of being very abusive to her, not physically, but verbally abusive, which is just as bad, I went to a meeting, a “12-Step” meeting, to look at my alcoholism. Of course I didn’t believe I was an alcoholic because to me an alcoholic would be somebody living in the streets. And I was very successful in my business and how could I be an alcoholic when I lived in a beautiful apartment? But anyhow, I went for help and the first thing that I heard was G-d again, which I didn’t want. I thought that I would go to my “12-Step” program and spend a couple of weeks and learn how to drink again. I didn’t know anything. I really didn’t know anything at all. And something happened to me in these rooms which changed my entire thinking and I found G-d in these rooms and I turned my life over to G-d and when that happened I started changing. I became another person. First of all, the obsession for alcohol left me. It’s been over eighteen years and I haven’t had a drink or a drug. More than that, all the hate that I had, that went away. And all that rage that I had. I haven’t forgotten what happened to me, but I don’t hate anybody. I don’t hate the Germans anymore like I used to. You know, I don’t hate them at all. I don’t hate anybody.

Q: But you are not a religious person today as religious people are here?

A: Oh Lord, no. Completely. I’m not religious at all, but I do believe in G-d. I tried to go to temple, but it was pretty hard for me because I wasn’t raised with all those religious things, ways. And sometimes I say to myself, if the war wouldn’t have been, then maybe I would have been the same way because I know that my family was religious, but I have to accept what I have and I have a very strong relationship with G-d today and I’m fine the way I am. For the first time in my life…it’s been eighteen years I have no nightmares. I’m very fortunate to be alive today. I never thought like that before because I was always saying I should have been dead and I didn’t care, but today I do care. And I try to live a life, a very peaceful life. I’m into peace. I try to live in the moment. The past is gone, the past was a terrible part of my life, but it’s gone and I don’t want to think about it. And the future, I have no idea what will happen. So really all I have is now and now I want to be at peace and be peaceful.

Q: What about the relationships with your family?

A: All of my family is dead. I tried to make up with my father before he died. We started getting close again and I finally was able to have a closure at his graveside. And also with my stepmother and also with my other aunts. When I was drinking there was no relationship. And I know that my father loved me, but he just didn’t know how to express himself. And when he was dying – and he died in the United States – he thought he was back in the camps again, so his mind was never, you know…but today I understand that. You know, twenty, thirty years ago I couldn’t understand these things at all, but today I understand what was happening.

Q: What else do you want to add here before we finish?

A: Well, I just think it’s so important that the Holocaust will never be forgotten. This is 1999 and we are supposed to be living in peace and in love and there is so much hatred still on this earth. Maybe one of these days we could all live in peace. That would be nice. And I’m just grateful to be alive today. And grateful to be in Israel.

Q: Okay, thank you very much.

A: Thank you so much.

A: This is a picture of me. I was five years of age and I was told it was in the ghetto, and this was in 1943. And in 1944 I went into the camp, so this is basically what I looked like when I went into the concentration camps. And you can see the Star of David, which we all had to wear as Jews, on the right hand side of my jacket.