אמיל אפרים ריד כאץ

Name of Interviewee: Emil Reed

Name of Interviewer: Judith Soloveitchik

Cassette Number: VD-1479

Date: February 23, 1997

Name of Typist: Cheryl Balshayi

Place Names:

Leskow

Krakow

Lvov

Plaszow

Podgorze

Auschwitz

Dora

Bergen-Belsen

Zelle

Augsburg

Muenich

Sanok

Q: We have today with us Mr. Emil Reed. You were born in 1907 in Krakow?

A: No. Born in Leskow, Poland. I think it’s now Ukraine, but it was Poland at that time.

Q: When did you move to Krakow?

A: My father passed away when I was, I don’t remember, either five or five and a half years old, so a relative, my mother’s sister, took me to Krakow. That’s why I was raised all the years in Krakow.

Q: Where was your mother then?

A: My mother had twin children.

Q: How many?

A: Twins. We were four. A set of twins, a boy and a girl, and my brother, who passed away, and myself, so the brother and myself went to Krakow, and she was in Leskow, staying there with the two children.

Q: Your mother stayed in Leskow with the twins?

A: With the twins, and during the war she was evacuated to Hungary because the war, they were either fighting there what, I don’t remember what it was, and she was there as a refugee in Hungary with the two children.

Q: Do you know what was the matter with your father, why did he pass away so young?

A: I don’t know. My mother used to tell me he ate something and either didn’t agree with him and he got high temperature, something like this. Of course, in those days, even today this was maybe nothing, but they couldn’t cure him and he passed away young.

Q: When you were in Krakow would you see your mother often? She would come to visit you?

A: Not often, no. After the war, when she came back from Hungary, then she visited us, yes. And then she visited us when my younger brother got marred - he got married before me - so she also came to the wedding.

Q: When you are speaking about the war, you mean the First World War?

A: First World War I’m talking about, yes.

Q: What can you tell me about Krakow? What school did you go to?

A: Well, I went down there to “Talmud Torah”. Like a yeshiva. This was my education there. My education in private and Talmud Torah.

Q: So secular studies you did not learn there? Any secular subjects you did not learn?

A: Yes, this was the first school, you know, grammar school, whatever it is there, and the Talmud Torah. And then private lessons. Endless (?) I learned. That’s what they did for me.

Q: You were together with your brother at the same aunt? You were with your brother together by this aunt?

A: In ghetto, yes

Q: No, before, in Krakow, when you grew up.

A: Yes. We were at that aunt. They didn’t have any children.

Q: Was it a religious house, a “frum” house?

A: Religious? What do you mean “religious”? Yes.

Q: What was this uncle doing for “parnassa”?

A: He was a teacher in that...he was retired at that time, but he was also a teacher in that Talmud Torah, too. That like a yeshiva, you know.

Q: So you had a lot of friends?

A: Oh yes.

Q: Did you go to any youth organization?

A: Yes, “Tzair Mizrachi”. Like here is “Akiva” here in Israel.

Q: What did you do there? What were the activities?

A; Well, like in an organization. A lot of things. I was a secretary, I was “safran”, “bibliotech”. I was a “yoshev rosh” there, too. At times, you know.

Q: How many were there in that organization, about how many people?

A: Oh, it was quite...I don’t remember the amount how many people. Might have been fifty or sixty or less. I don’t remember.

Q: How often would you get together?

A: Oh, every week, or sometimes, every evening. And then there was something, we invited some speakers, used to come together. In addition, we visited these friends what we have. All the friends, we saw each other.

Q: When did you finish school or yeshiva? At about what age?

A: This was probably when I was eighteen. Probably when I was eighteen. I got a job at that place, that Greenfeld that I mentioned there.

Q: What was this place? This was a factory, or what was it?

A: No, this was a wholesale of building supplies and furniture ornaments, you know, where they have handles in Europe for the drawers, metal and so on. All this what they have. They have tools, mainly building supplies.

Q: And what was your work there?

A: I was there a salesman and later I became the manager in that store. Was a big company.

Q: It was a Jewish firm?

A: Yes.

Q: And only Jewish workers there?

A: Let’s see. Mostly, yes. I don’t remember if there was maybe one non-Jew. I think they all were Jewish, All Jewish workers, yes.

Q: And how was it with anti-semitism in Krakow?

A: Well, it was, of course. They used to....you know, there was “numerus clausus” at the universities and they used beat up Jewish students and they used to beat up Jews, you know, if they were walking around. You’re not familiar with the city, so we used to walk around on the alleys close to the university. They used to beat us up, so we stayed away sometimes.

Q: You’re talking about the years, now, the ‘30’s?

A: Anti-semitism was there all the time. Never stopped and never liked Jews.

Q: At job, in the business, most clients were Jews?

A: No, the clients weren’t only Jews, no. We have a lot, mostly, I would say, non-Jewish clients. It was in the heart of the city, this business, and we were dealing there with builders that needed materials, you know, for their building. That’s what we have.

Q: So there you didn’t feel yet the anit-semitism?

A: No. I used to go out to these buildings, visiting these builders and tried to get orders from them. That’s when I became a manager, so I used to do this.

Q: You were still very young then.

A: Yes, that’s right.

Q: How many Jews, approximately, lived in Krakow?

A: I think eighty or ninety thousand. I don’t know exactly. I never was interested in the “kehillah” business. I think, something like that, eighty or ninety thousand.

Q: Do you know why that didn’t interest you? The “kehillah”?

A: I belonged to an organization and I had to take care of myself. You know, I didn’t have anybody.

Q: You felt being an outsider?

A: Yes. I wouldn’t say “outsider”. We belonged to an organization, we tried to do for Israel. We had, like, people in the organization, they used to come to Krakow, like Moshe Shapiro or Shragai or Rav Halperin or Rav Fishman. We used to meet with all of them in our organization. Used to take care of them, go with them. In fact, I didn’t even know...this was, I think, a year ago. My son-in-law works in Bar Ilan University, their father (?). And there he found, in the archives, letters that I wrote as a “yoshev rosh” from “Tzair Mizrachi” here to the headquarters for “Mizrachi” here. In fact, they sent me a copy of that letter until ‘34. Until 1934 was this. And then I stopped belonging. I was more engaged in the business where I worked. I had too much to do, so I wasn’t active anymore in the organization.

Q: Did you ever think of aliyah in those years?

A: In those years I did not think of aliyah for the simple reason, the aunt that raised us and we have to take care of her. We lived with her, we worked, we supported her. What she did when we were young, that’s what she did for us. We couldn’t leave her and she wouldn’t go. She was old already there and she has her friends in Krakow and she didn’t plan to go.

Q: The uncle passed away?

A: Oh yes, he passed away. He passed away quite a few years prior to the war. He had to have an operation and he went to...his son - this was her second marriage. He had grown children. He had in Switzerland children, so from Switzerland they met him on the way to Berlin. I think in Berlin had to be the operation and he passed out on the operation, he didn’t make the operation. So since then, we are keeping up, both my brother and myself, kept up this household. Then we had...one of the brothers from the twins, she took him also to Krakow.

Q: Why? Do you know why he moved to Krakow?

A: Because my mother didn’t have any...she has her little business down there and she tried to help her. But he passed away after two or three years - I don’t remember how long he was there, but he passed away in Krakow.

Q: Your brother?

A: Yes. The younger, from the twins. He was the younger.

Q: What was his name?

A: Hillel. And the sister from the twins, it was in ‘38, we brought her to Krakow and we got her married, got her a nice husband. Had a child and during the war they were evacuated and lost in a concentration camp someplace.

Q: Did your older brother get married?

A: I’m the oldest one. I didn’t want to get married until everybody is safe, so he got married first. He was a year younger than I was, and then my sister. When she got married, I got married.

Q: In Krakow?

A: Yes.

Q: When was that? In ‘38?

A: Yes.

Q: And you continued working in the business the whole time? At Greenfeld you continued to work?

A: Yes.

Q: Your brother, too?

A: No. My brother was also working the same with me.

Q: What was your feeling about...you were seeing anti-semitism is growing? Weren’t you getting an uneasy feeling? You didn’t get an uneasy feeling, seeling anti-semitism getting worse, Hitler getting to power?

A: What?

Q: What feeling did you have in those years?

A: Well, I had a good job and make a living and I had a good position, so we didn’t think of doing something else.

Q: Hitler being in power didn’t bother you too much in those years?

A: It did. Sure it bothered us, but we didn’t plan, you know. That’s what the Polish Jews just think. We thought, “Where are we going to go? Where are we going to go?” And we got letters from Palestine at that time, from my friend, what I showed you, but you know, at that time it was very hard for everybody and I saw all these letters. What I am going, give away a job like this and here? We had also, we went our mother. Where she was living she didn’t have anybody, any of the children down there anymore because the sister got married, so she was there because she had her brother there living.

Q: In Leskow?

A: Yes. Had a brother. You know, we have friends from...she lived there. Her father was there. What is it? Her “dayan” in the community there in Leskow, her father, so she was well-known. And we supported her. We sent her money from my brother and myself. Supported her, too, when she was old.

Q: And she stayed there? She didn’t move to Krakow?

A: No, she didn’t because what would she do by herself and the apartment we were keeping up. She couldn’t find herself in Krakow. There she has a brother and he had five children, that brother, and all the friends. She was born there.

Q: So she was deported from there? What happened to your mother during the war?

A: During the war? As I found out later, after the war, like they did in every other little city, they gave an order they should all come, you know, to a gathering place. All the Jews from that city, from that place, took also if there were any villages where Jews were living, if there were any, to bring to that city, and then they took them to the forest and shot them all. That’s what they did.

Q: Nobody from the family there survived?

A: No. Not from her brother with all the children, not from my mother and not from anybody from that city, Leskow, that I know of. Of course, I didn’t know many. When I left as a child there, I didn’t know anybody.

Q: You never went there for a visit?

A: No. As far as I know, I don’t think anybody survived there unless they ran away or they were hidden between Polish people or Ukrainian people, if there were any that tried to save them, which I don’t know. In the small places they killed everybody.

Q: We’ll get to the war. 1939 war breaks out. Do you remember that day?

A: It was in ‘39. It was September 1st when the war broke out. War broke out. They bombarded a little Krakow, but not much. In that place I was working, so at the beginning we went back down there and the sons who ran this business ran away to the east, to Lvov, closer to the Russian border because they were known as rich people. So they took with themselves whatever they could, but their mother and their father were staying. So their mother was always a cashier in this business, so she came and we came and we worked there I don’t remember how long in ‘39, until a German one day walked in and told her....directed her, to the cashier, “Take out all the money that you have so far in the cash register and walk out. I take over.” “Troyhunt”. And he took over and I never saw her again and I never saw her husband again. A few of the employees that we have, we still came because it was something that the Germans needed - tools, order some building materials they wanted. They had to have “bazookscheiner”, they brought us and we took care of him. And the man who was sat in there as a “troyhunt”, means the man took over the finances and the whole business, he kept us Jews and they hired one Polish man because they did not understand German and German people came to us, they want to take care of him. So they kept us and we had special permits to go there, but we still had to wear the armbands.

Q: Right from the beginning?

A: Not at the beginning. Later, because I was working in that store....You know, I cannot remember how long I was working at that store, till what year. If I had still a permit to go from the ghetto, I don’t remember.

Q: You were saying about language. What language was your main language? What did you speak at home?

A: We spoke Yiddish and Polish. Of course, at home was Yiddish because the uncle, the step-uncle and my aunt spoke only Yiddish, but between the friends and the business it was Polish.

Q: So it was easy for you to talk with the Germans. That’s how you knew German, too.

A: Not because of this I knew German. In addition, I told you I had private teachers. There was a Hebrew high school in Krakow. It was a gymnasium, “Gymnasium Hebraiska”, Hebrew, and there was a Professor Sherach Valkovsky. And he had language letters and I bought these language letters and I learned German from these letters. So I bought and I sent him the proofs, he corrected, sent back - that’s how we did it. And this helped, being there, and I worked in that place.

Q: Something else I wanted to ask you. How come you were not taken to the Polish army?

A: Well, you know, Jews didn’t want to go to the army. Whatever we can do - I don’t want that on the film to mention - we didn’t go. We tried not to go and we didn’t go. They were getting “A”, “B” and “C”, so we got third grade and didn’t go, didn’t go.

Q: So most were able to get out of it, most Jews.

A: Yes. Tried to get out of it and didn’t go.

Q: So we’ll get back to the beginning of the war. The Germans in Krakow. In which area did you live? Before the ghetto where did you live?

A: I lived in the city, Stradom Street 16, in the same apartment that we are living all the time.

Q: Together with your aunt? The aunt, where did she live?

A: With the aunt, when the war started, at the beginning, we were in our apartment until they said we have to move...wherever somebody lives and go in these few streets. In fact, it wasn’t far away from where I lived, in there, so we moved in these apartments. In the end she got into a different apartment.

Q: So with whom did you live there? Just you, or your brother, too?

A: My brother, he was married at that time, with his wife. He was in another apartment, not together. After he got married he didn’t live anymore together with this aunt, and I was also until I got married.

Q: So then you moved, too?

A: Yes. Like anybody else I moved. We had to get out from this apartment.

Q: What other restrictions do you remember?

A: After what?

Q: After the war broke out. You had to move to a different apartment.

A: I don’t remember when we had to get out from the apartments and they took us on these few streets. I don’t know. Maybe you have somebody interviewed from Krakow, maybe they remembered when it was. I don’t remember when we moved out from there. Of course, I know that many times I had to go to work and on the way they kept catching out, shovelling snow, or to some work for the Germans. Sometimes we couldn’t reach the business there where we were working because they caught us on the way there, so this happened too. But I don’t remember when we left our apartment and we had to move to these streets, where they concentrated all the Jews. When they concentrated all the Jews, they came in the middle of the night. The whole district there they came in. First they looked for weapons, but what they took is gold, silver, money, merchandise, whoever had, because when we moved there, whoever had a store or something, they brought the merchandise from the apartment, whatever they could save. They took everything away. They robbed everybody. The pretenses were “weapons looking”.

Q: Did you manage to hide away something?

A: We did, we did away in the ceiling, built in, but I never got back there to get it, anything. Couldn’t save anything after the war. The Polish people took everything and the apartment away, you know, they took whatever we had - furniture, apartment, everything.

Q: You said you continued to go to work, for the time being?

A: Yes, for the time being. That’s as long as they needed me. They didn’t have enough people to understand.

Q: Were there restrictions on the way, not to go on the pathway? You had to go on the street or you could go on the curb? Where could you walk?

A: On the street. The streetcar was divided, half for Polish and half for others, but if they saw you, if there happened to be a German on the streetcar and he saw “Jude”, through him off.

Q: This happened to you?

A: It didn’t happen to me because...I don’t remember. It didn’t happen to me. I got beaten up many times on the way downtown, you know, because the business was downtown. Then we were wearing aready the armbands so they....Even in the business we had to wear the armbands.

Q: How was the food situation? Was there enough food to be obtained? Could you buy enough food or there was a shortage?

A: No. It was a shortage. We had to buy only wherever we could. We could help ourselves because they later gave ration cards. They gave to Polish people, but not to the Jews. The Jews had to do whatever they had to buy, wherever they could, and pay high prices, in order to survive. That’s the way it was.

Q: But you still got paid by the business?

A: Yes. While working there we got paid.

Q: So it was easier for you?

A: Yes, in this respect. As long I could go out. Yes, until they closed us up in the ghetto, this was it.

Q: Was there a curfew in the evening? A curfew, that you couldn’t leave the house?

A: Well, you could go out in the street, yes, in the ghetto itself, but everybody was afraid to go out. But people walked out.

Q: What about shuls, “minyanim”? You could continue to “daven” with a “minyan”?

A: I don’t remember this. They didn’t look for assembling. There probably were some...the real “frum”, they probably had “shteiblich” there, I imagine. I don’t know. You “davened” at home. I don’t remember.

Q: People were very much afraid? It was a big tension?

A: Sure. I remember now, I had even a permit to go out from the ghetto to that business, a special permit that the manager from that store had to get one for me because, you know, the Poles didn’t know German and they needed, because they had a lot of the Wehrmacht customers had to come down there. They needed tools, supplies, whatever.

Q: This was a wholesale. They didn’t manufacture themselves.

A: No, no manufacturing. A distributor. We bought merchandise wholesale and people came in, local people. Usually it was for the local people that came in, builders. And when the Germans came in, of course, there was no private thing, they took over everything.

Q: There was no problems in obtaining more merchandise?

A: This wasn’t my job. This was the German manager. He handled finances. They probably paid him, the Wehrmacht paid him or they gave him a ticket. Who knows?

Q: But to get from the manufacturers - there wasn’t a problem? During the war?

A: They got it. They got some merchandise maybe from Germany. In Poland there still was a factory like, I don’t remember what the city was. They used to make....I don’t know how it was in your country. Windows and doors, they had special handles, locks, and these hinges made out of copper, brass. You know, ornamentals for the windows. All this, this company carried and was using it and that’s what the people bought there. Here you don’t see any of these things, in America.

Q: So when they made the ghetto, again you had to move?

A: When they made the ghetto? Sure, in the ghetto we were assigned a small apartment and I was....a small apartment, yes, that’s where we were in the ghetto.

Q: Where was that? In which area of town?

A: This was in “Podgorze”, the other side of the “Sun”. (sp?) You know, the “Sun” cut through.

Q: The life in the ghetto - do you remember?

A: Well, it was hard. To get rations to buy, to get food and all this. Everything was hard. Hard life. Hard life in the ghetto.

Q: Did you manage to get some food from outside when you went to work?

A: People whom I knew from before the war, they came in, Polish people, to buy - they still used to come down there - so they helped.

Q: What would they do? They brought in food or what?

A: They used to bring...some food they used to bring, yes.

Q: Would they encourage, those people? Did they encourage you?

A: Well, we didn’t talk politics there, couldn’t talk, because we had so-called “volksdeutsche”, managers walking around all the time. You know, the management from the store had their own people that they understood Polish and German because they were in Poland. There were living people who were probably not loyal to the Polish government and they worked both ways. Those people worked for the Germans during the war, and positions like this they employed them.

Q: By the work itself then, you didn’t suffer? At work itself you didn’t suffer?

A: Not at work in that store, no. One accident I had. A Polish woman, a woman walked in, spoke Polish and she wanted something to buy. And I had taken care of a German soldier. He had a “bazookschein”, you know, a ticket to buy certain items. She waited and I said, “I’m sorry. I have to finish here.” She got nervous and walked out. The next day, a German officer walked in and asked for the manager, for that German, and asked him he wants to see “the man who didn’t take care of my mother”. She wanted to buy and...(not clear). So I stepped out and I said I was the one, not that didn’t take care. I had here a “bazookschein” soldier I took care and I didn’t know that she is German. She spoke Polish to me. This saved me because he came in, he wanted me to take to the Gestapo away that time. He ignored his mother. But the manager explained if she would have spoken German, so I would have maybe excused the soldier and asked him if he would allow me to answer her or to take her something. So I went by that. The manager saved me with this excuse.

Q: You had to beware the whole time, take care the whole time, nothing should happen.

A: Yes. So you never know.

Q: But on the way there and back you were beaten up? It happened?

A: This happened many times, you know. I tried to get outside, but sometimes they caught you “arbeit” on the street, you know, to clean the street or something. When they saw with armbands they...they didn’t see too many because they didn’t allow any people in business to continue. It’s only in certain businesses that they had to have somebody who understood the language and could take care. There was a small percentage of us.

Q: Your brother also continued?

A: Not. My brother worked a certain time in this and later he quit here. He had some other business. He wasn’t with me.

Q: In the ghetto itself, how was it organized? Was there police there, the ghetto police?

A: Oh no. My brother, he was taller than me and they wanted (not clear) and the ghetto police, they wanted him to be a policeman. And he had a child there that he brought up from the....this is the brother that he was on Schindler’s list. He had a child. So they wanted him to be a policeman. So he didn’t want. They put him in jail. At that time put him in jail somebody and not always he got out from there, but somehow he had friends that he knew in the Jewish police and they got him out. he wasn’t in the police and I wasn’t in the police. We didn’t want to be any kapos. Me, nobody even offered anything because I was always staying away. I didn’t push myself out no place.

Q: Although you were very capable of organizing!

A: It was hard. Sometimes it was just luck. (?) and all this, just luck. Saved from this....

Q: There was a hospital in the ghetto itself?

A: There was a hospital, yes, but I never had to go there. I was healthy. I didn’t have any problem.

Q: People wouldn’t get together. There was nothing organized.

A: Not in my (?) I was staying away from any public gathering. I stayed away from all this. I wasn’t interested. I was afraid. I didn’t want to be engaged in anything.

Q: So this continued till end of ‘42, beginning of ‘43?

A: There was a time before. While we were living in the ghetto, the Gestapo sent in their officers to check the “ausweiss”, the...what do you call it? Identification cards. And there were sitting SS men. Whomever they wanted to be taken away from the ghetto, they made a cross or a stamp. A stamp, a cross or “okay”, to stay. So they had taken away quite a few people from the.....

Q: They came from house to house or they made you come somewhere?

A: No. They had to come to bring, to evaluate the identification cards.

Q: Everybody had to do it?

A: Everybody has to come out from the house and when you’re outside in the yard - in the yard or was it in a room? Maybe it was in a room. In a certain hall we had to come and bring the card. They looked at it - what profession you had, whether you are essential for them what to do something. So they give either a cross or they get an “okay” to stay. At that time they sent a lot of people away.

Q: Do you know where to?

A: No. I didn’t get one and my brother. I had on my identification card, my specialty was “schlosser”. “Schlosser” mean a “locksmith”. It isn’t actually a locksmith. I could make a key. Just to have something metal. Because I was from this metal business so that’s what I had, so they let me go. You see, I was one of those lucky that didn’t get that stamp, so I stayed. And how long after this I stayed still in that ghetto I don’t remember.

Q: And then they took out a lot of people.

A: Then I couldn’t go out anymore. No permits anymore. Then they closed up the ghetto. That’s it. Until they evacuated to Plaszow or the cemetery they got in there.

Q: Do you remember what you were doing then, all day long, in those weeks or months when you stopped working till you were taken to Plaszow?

A: We did nothing. We just were hungry and afraid because we knew any time can be an evacuation and taken away. And we knew taken away, what that means. Never see them anymore. We knew the consequences, so whoever could stay away...and this was it. Like you put somebody in a jail, in a cell, you are not deciding your destiny. Somebody else is doing it for you.

Q: No way of trying to get to the other side?

A: I wasn’t that type of a person, I couldn’t do that. And it wasn’t to take a risk. A risk - you go and do something you don’t know they will catch you anytime. There were walls all around and SS men.

Q: Till they evacuated the ghetto.

A: The ghetto - when they liquidated the ghetto, everybody had to get out on the place, open place, and whoever didn’t get out, you know, whoever didn’t stay straight, they were killing a lot of people right there. Because a certain amount they sent to march out from the ghetto some place for transportation and the others, what they killed and they left a certain group to go to Plaszow, to the concentration camp, so we had to clean up all the corpses, what they killed there, and put them on the trucks and go with them up to the cemetery, dig the ditches for them and have them buried there. That’s what they assigned people whom they assigned to go to Plaszow.

Q: You, too? You had to do that?

A: I was one of them too, yes. We had to pick up corpses and throw them like cattle on the trucks.

Q: So that’s how you were taken to...then you already stayed in Plaszow?

A: In Plaszow they assigned us, you know, a place in the barrack and that’s what we were in and then we had to work morning (not clear), counting us. We had to bring stones from one place, put it in the other, you know, just hard work. Picking up heavy stones or they knocked down all the monuments, you know, from this here to make, you know, like...straight way to walk, with the stones. That’s what we have to do. We didn’t have to work, but they wanted us to work and to punish us.

Q: Did you manage to bring anything along from home? Could you take something along from home?

A: We didn’t have much to take. Whatever we took, you know, a few shirts maybe. Nothing else. We didn’t have any more. Pots and pans you couldn’t take what you had in the ghetto.

Q: And you were right away separated men, women? The men and the women were taken separately to Plaszow?

A: In Plaszow, yes, there were two lagers.

Q: Going from Krakow to Plaszow, you were already separated right away?

A: When we came up, they took us together and then up on the hill they separated - the women went to the women’s lager, the men went to the men’s lager. This was up there.

Q: Could you have contact when you were in Plaszow with your wife?

A: Yes, we could because, let’s see, the women were working in the...they were to make sweaters for the army. There was a factory where they were working, and the men could, it wasn’t allowed, they could, if you have some extra soup or something, we used to bring in to the wives, or if they had more they used to bring to the men. It wasn’t allowed, but you know, since it was in the same working area, was about the same. But in the evening, when the work was over, we were going in one side to this camp enclosure and they went to their side. But we saw each other there.

Q: You would work only in daytime?

A: Daytime, yes. No nighttime, only daytime.

Q: And in the barracks, you had beds, so you had a bed for yourself or there were a few on one “pricher”?

A: No, single. Single. There were one on top of the other, but each one had one single.

Q: Later on they took you for more productive work?

A: Down there, first everybody had a hard time until they organized all this here. We had to work on the outside just to punish us, bringing stones from one side to the other or whatever work there was had to be done. They took people whether they needed them or not, to take from one place and put them to the other. Just hard work. This was for a long time going on and then when it was a little more organized, they used to liquidate a lot of Jewish stores. They had all kinds of metals and building supplies from small stores and all other things, so I was assigned to a warehouse to sort this. Sort this and catalogue it.

Q: In the camps?

A: Yes, in the camp.

Q: So this wasn’t such a hard work physically?

A: Physically it wasn’t hard work, but always you were under stress because they always came in down there and depending... you see, we couldn’t have aniything like....in order to warm up in the warehouse there was a little stove there and we used to have a little old pot we put water on. If an officer came in, the first thing they did, they took it up, if it isn’t something there that we are cooking. They saw water so sometimes they threw it out and sometimes let it go.

Q: How many were you working in this warehouse?

A: There were in that warehouse I think only three of us. I think so. Three of us. Because they had paints, paints in cans, you know, oil paint, so they had one who was a painter, was in charge of these paints, you know, to sort them out. And I was in charge for these metal parts, to sort it out.

Q: There was always an SS there taking care of you or they left you alone also?

A: Well, they came in all the time and checked. It’s always that fright, you didn’t know what he is going to do. He could have sometimes....they hit just for the heck of it, hit you. So to know, “Be afraid of me,” so to say. You know, if somebody’s your boss and he can do with you whatever he wants, so he takes advantage ot it.

Q: These were only Germans who came in there?

A: Only Germans, yes.

Q: No Polish?

A: No.

Q: And those working with you were only Jews?

A: We were in the Jewish camp. There was a Polish section, too, but we were not mixed together. Separate.

Q: You didn’t meet at all?

A: No. We knew where they are, but not at work. What we were doing, we didn’t have any Polish, as far as I know, they didn’t have any Polish people to punish them like they did us. Commander Goeth, he was always walking around with two big German shepherd dogs and if he saw, if somebody was working, he looked some way at him or he thought he looked at him, took out a pistol and shot him right there, so we had to go and take away that corpse and put it away. We never knew, whoever was in the vicinity, whenever this happens, you have to do this, take him away.

Q: You met this Goeth often?

A: This happened very often.

Q: Did you meet Goeth often?

A: We saw him, but he went by. As I said, I always stayed behind, I didn’t start to show off anything when we knew he was coming or we heard the dogs barking. We were just doing whatever we had to - carrying the stones and putting them there or whatever we had to do, but he didn’t never come to the warehouse.

Q: He never came?

A: No, in the warehouse there was a “bauleiter”, you know, the one in charge of building barracks - he needed material, either to take or to bring in - he was coming in. And another officer that was in charge of it and one civilian who was always in there with me - a German civilian.

Q: How was he towards you, the civilian?

A: Well, I wouldn’t say...he never hit me. He demanded to do whatever he wants us to do, but he never hit, that particular civilian. But the officers, when they came in, no matter what you do, they always had to do something to you. Either kick you or hit you or tell them something.

Q: This civilian would talk to you or just give orders?

A: Yes, he sometimes talked.

Q: But food or a sandwich he would never bring in?

A: If they would have caught him with this, maybe they would have put him in my position.

Q: What else did you see there in the camp? People being tortured?

A: A lot tortured and we saw...What we saw, if you ask me what we saw in that camp - our windows from that warehouse was in direct sight where there was a hill. When they used to bring in a lot of Jewish women and children on open trucks that they caught on Polish papers or some Polish people pointed out “Jude” and they caught them, blonde children, they brought them, they brought them up, they had to undress and stand around that big hole and with a machine gun, they shot them down, right there. We could see this from the window of the warehouse. Of course, when anyone was there I didn’t dare look.

Q: What a feeling this must be to see this and be helpless.

A: This was the torture. This was the torture in these camps. That’s what they want, to make people like less than animals.

Q: Was there any hanging in Plaszow?

A: Oh yes. We saw this, too. There was a young boy. There was Ukrainian guards, they were singing Ukrainian songs. This young boy - I don’t remember whether he was twelve or fourteen years or fifteen - and he took a note and he sang that note and somebody reported to some of the officers, so they hanged him there. When we have a count, you know, every morning, we had to go out and stand up in lines and they counted us. That’s when they did it - they dragged him out and hanged him. This happened. They also shot one lady engineer, Jewish woman was engineer. She was in charge of building barracks and somehow, one of the walls collapsed, so Goeth just showed to the men who went with him (not clear) and right there told her to march forward and he shot her in the back.

Q: Goeth shot her?

A: Not Goeth. His helper, another officer. She was in charge of the barracks, to build. He showed him, “This is the engineer and this is what happened. One wall collapsed. It means her fault.”

Q: And with the dogs? The dogs were also chasing people? His dogs?

A: I haven’t seen this, but they told me he let sometimes the dogs chasing people. I haven’t seen.

Q: In the barrack how many were there about? How many “haeftlinge”?

A: I don’t know exactly how many people were there. I don’t know this.

Q: How was it organized? There was a “Blockaelteste” or a kapo? Who was in charge?

A: Yes, there was one kapo. I don’t know even if it was there any except for a policeman, a Jewish policeman. He came in the morning to wake us up or when it was time to go lay down, that’s what he did and they checked around. I don’t remember if there was anybody in the tent itself. I don’t remember.

Q: What about food? What did you get to eat?

A: Water from potatoes. We got soup. You had to look to find a little potato. They gave us bread, I think, one bread in two days or three days. I don’t remember now even what it was. So everybody kept it hidden and some people stole from one another, you know, that needed more to eat. It was terrible.

Q: Fighting going on between the “haeftlinge”?

A: Well, sometimes if they knew that somebody is stealing or something, they were fighting, but they were afraid to do this either in the open because with them, if they will see someone fighting, they would kill both of them. For them to kill somebody is like to kill a fly. That Goeth, that Austrin “mamser”, he was terrible. He was always walking around with two pistols in his hand. Whatever he wanted to start....they used to say from his house, he used to target shoot. He used to kill people while they were working.

Q: What kept you going?

A: I was younger, of course, and I was strong build and didn’t have any health problems, so this kept me. And if he had any toothache or something, or this here, you were afraid to say anything because if they heard, right away they pulled all the teeth out or they gave you something that you never came out from it. Nobody wanted to go to the hospital or the clinic or to complain about something. They didn’t plan to keep anybody in the hospital and feed them. There was a Dr. Gross - they used to beat him up, too, if you had too many patients on his ward.

Q: Goeth would beat him up?

A: Yes. He made an inspection and saw too many people...in other words, he shouldn’t have admitted them. He should have just let them die or whatever.

Q: A lot of people died in Plaszow.

A: Oh yes, that’s right.

Q: And were constantly taken away too, to other camps?

A: Oh yes. All kinds. There was always some “aus...” (not clear). You know, they made an “appellplatz”, they marked down this and this side, this and this side, and take away. The older people right away on one side and younger that are able to work on another side and that’s how it went. Or children.

Q: There were no children there in Plaszow.

A: There weren’t too many. There were a few. There was.....Horowitz was one. He was administrator in the office. He has two little boys. He saved them down there. And my brother was lucky, too, to save his little girl.

Q: How did he manage to get on Schindler’s List?

A: He had friends that were working in the office and they put him on the list. He was in that area. Put him on the list.

Q: But you they couldn’t put on.

A: He was in a different section, a different jurisdiction. And see, they couldn’t take me out from the warehouse. Probably, I imagine, I don’t know how it was because it would have been to my brother whom he knew down there, he would have put me for sure, but I was in a different section. Maybe they couldn’t. I never knew. I never knew the reason for it.

Q: Clothing and shoes - you had what you still brought in from the ghetto?

A: Yes, this we had in the ghetto. After we left the ghetto, liquidated the ghetto, at the end, in January, when the Russian army was close to our camp, we were from the group of liquidation, so I still have good, warm clothes on me and good shoes, and we didn’t have any tattoos on this here, only numbers. We didn’t have tattoos in Plaszow. So at the time when we had to march from Plaszow to Auschwitz, that was the time that a lot of people were killed on the road. Whoever couldn’t walk, they shot them down. But a lot of people were shot down there.

Q: From Plaszow itself do you have some more that you remember to tell?

A: From Plaszow we finally arrived in Auschwitz. There they divided women on one side, men on the other, and I have never seen my wife since they divided, never seen her anymore. And we were there one week and then they loaded us on open trucks - it was January, cold, snow - open trucks, cold, and we had, on that railroad vein, we had three young brothers, maybe seventeen, eighteen or twenty years old, and we were standing there. There was no way to sit down or something. Somehow they got some pins (?) and they went crazy, they start hurting people nearby them. So what did the SS do? Took them right down and shot them.

Q: I asked you before. In Plaszow itself, you have still more things you remember? During those two years you were there? Before you went to Auschwitz, if you still remember something from Plaszow, any incidents?

A: Let me see. They were hanging there people. You know, in addition to that young boy I mentioned to you, they brought from a small place, from Viredjka, not far from Krakow, they brought some young people. Yet they were hiding they found them. So they hanged them down there, too. In Plaszow was, we had there an old man and his wife was in the ladies’ camp, a policeman. Kilovicz was his name. And he was his righthand man and Goeth told his driver to try to sell him a gun. And he sold him a gun that didn’t work even, but he sold it to him.

Q: To whom? To this Kilovicz?

A: To that Kilovicz. So what he did? He took him, his wife and his nephew was also a policeman, and he shot them and we had all march all around to see what they did. This is what I remember from Plaszow, before we left.

Q: So killing was just there everyday?

A: Goeth wanted to select a certain group to send to some place, either to work, because they were young people. Near me was one - he selected him to go down there and when he looked on the other side for another guy, he went right back there, and he noticed it. (Yiddish?) Like a chicken, nothing to them. So everybody was so afraid to do or to say something or you looked around if it doesn’t mean me. You know? It’s a terrible feeling.

Q: But what does a person do to stay normal with this fright all day long?

A: A lot of people went crazy, went crazy. You had to....I don’t know if it’s just a matter of luck whoever survived and is normal. We had nightmares after this, plenty of them. Couldn’t sleep at night. And even in the sleep, if you have a dream, somebody is coming near you, so you sit up, you couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. You see, you asked me before if I told my family what we went through. I never told them things like this. I didn’t want to come here either to say this because they will see it later. It isn’t easy.

Q: Did you have other inmates with you who would stick especially together? Did you have other “haeftlinge” you would stick together with, like who would help each other?

A: It is only the next that sleep near you because either I knew somebody from Krakow that was there, which was only a couple of them. The rest were strangers. They had them from Chelsehov, all kind parts of Poland. Even from Krakow. We didn’t know everybody in Krakow, it’s a big city. Like you wouldn’t know everybody from Warsaw. And each other tries to survive. He looked out for himself and you couldn’t blame him.

Q: In your barrack, it kept on changing a lot, the inmates, or you were pretty much the same from the beginning till the end? In your barrack were you slept?

A: In the barrack?

Q: You were all the same?

A: Yes, pretty much the same. As long we were in Plaszow I think in the same. I don’t remember. Maybe we changed once. I don’t remember this, whether I was in the same barrack or they changed later when it reduced. I’m sure when it reduced, when they only left us a smaller group, just to finish up, liquidated this here, I’m sure that I must have gone to another one, but these details I don’t remember.

Q: Do you remember trying to get more food?

A: Well, I wasn’t aggressive enough. I just got whatever I got. I didn’t try to take from somebody or to get from somebody. This I didn’t try.

Q: You never got to the kitchen or so?

A: No. I never got to the kitchen.

Q: You didn’t feel getting weaker all the time with so little food?

A: Well, at the beginning I had. I had some valuables with me at the beginning and I used to give to somebody who had a little more food and was trading a little, so to help out. This wasn’t much. It couldn’t go out for a long time, just a short time I got this here. Here and there I got an extra help, but not much. If I have an extra good shirt and somebody wanted it, so I gave it. That’s all.

Q: “Yomim tovim”, these things, you knew when it was?

A: We always had somebody who was more “frum” than I was and they keep track, they used to tell me.

Q: There wasn’t much you could do there, could you?

A: No, there wasn’t much we could do.

Q: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur - you could fast there or there was no way?

A: Yes, we fasted most of the time, without Yom Kippur! This little water soup what they gave us, this wasn’t much. Before even you finished it you were hungry. Before we started. You were lucky if you found half a potato down there. There people that needed more food, certain people needed more food. They used to stay in the garbage cans, taking out peels from potato and eat it from the garbage cans. If they got sick, they got sick, and some of them...it looks like in times like this you don’t get even sick, not matter what you eat. But there were people like this.

Q: You never got sick during all that time?

A: No. You get plenty of headaches and I was sick, which we never mentioned, with a toothache or something like this. You didn’t call this “sick”. In wintertime you had to go out on “appellplatz”. Sometimes they had to make a count and we had to take all our clothes off. This too, they had to make a selection for the oven or for work. They took out all the people, counted them. They had to undress and there was a doctor and he showed with a finger one here and one there.

Q: Outside, in the cold?

A: In the cold, yes.

Q: What about wash facilities?

A: There was latrines down there. We could wash. We couldn’t take a bath. Showers they have. They have showers there.

Q: You were working in this warehouse till the end?

A: Yes, I was in the warehouse till the end, till we had to liquidate, clean up the camp, so of course they took away all the merchandise from the warehouse, so we had nothing to do there, so I was working whatever we needed there in the barracks, to liquidate. Help pack and prepare for the march.

Q: You were from the last ones to leave Plaszow?

A: Yes, our group was the last one to leave Plaszow. I think it was the fourteenth or the fifteenth of January. That’s we marched out. And while we were marching through the streets of Krakow, so the Poles were pointing out and laughing and cursing us and this was when they marched us. That’s how nice the Polish people were.

Q: You could hear the Russians coming nearer?

A: No. While we were marching they were, you know, because they were surrounding the city, but they didn’t start coming. They waited maybe - I don’t know what they did. But they had to evacuate the camp before the Russian army would come in.

Q: There was a group of women who stayed to the end there?

A: There were women, too, because I walked with my wife. Yes, there were women, too.

Q: You could walk together? They didn’t separate you?

A: Yes, in the march we were all together. They had separate group, you know, from behind I think, but we were together. In the end they separated us and I didn’t see her anymore.

Q: That’s already in Auschwitz that they separated you?

A: Yes, in Auschwitz. In Auschwitz we were just one week.

Q: How long did the march take you from Krakow to Auschwitz?

A: We had seventy kilometers. On the way we had to stop in a village and they took us in. In a certain village we went to the haystacks and we slept there overnight. A few people escaped. In the morning when they counted us, there were two of my friends - the ones in this picture here - escaped, too. They were brave, they escaped.

Q: And they managed to escape? They didn’t catch them back?

A: No, they didn’t catch them. They escaped and they were so brave, I think they were mixing themselves between the Polish people, forced labour people, and they worked with them, like Pollacks. They didn’t look so Jewish, you know.

Q: And they didn’t punish you for that?

A: Whom? No, no, no. The guy who went with us, the “Untersturmführer”, he knew these people from the warehouse and from the other (not clear), but he was shooting anybody that couldn’t walk.

Q: He was shooting?

A: Oh yes. Not he himself, but he had guards that went along the line, so they knew without him even giving the command. So he fell down and couldn’t walk, they shot him.

Q: Many were killed on the way to Auschwitz?

A: Oh yes. That’s right.

Q: And you had to walk fast? They made you walk fast?

A: Till Auschwitz.

Q: But at a fast pace or you could walk slowly?

A: Not fast, no. We were slow.

Q: They gave you something to eat on the way?

A: We had bread, bread we had. They gave us bread, I think. That’s what we had. No soup. They didn’t cook anything there.

Q: And to drink you had snow. And water you also didn’t have. You had snow.

A: I know, that’s right.

Q: Do you know approximately how many you were in this group?

A: A few hundred anyway. A few hundred. I don’t remember.

Q: Being in Plaszow, did you know what was going on in Auschwitz or other concentration camps?

A: They told us. You know, people were talking about, they know that they are burning people and killing. That’s why everybody tried to resist, not to be evacuated from Plaszow. That’s how these men tried to get away. We knew whomever they take away is for worse, either a lot harder work or killing. They told us “for work”. They took away older people, women or whomever they think cannot work hard enough.

Q: So you arrived in Auschwitz. What did you see there? What did you see in Auschwitz?

A: In Auschwitz we didn’t see anything because from Auschwitz - did I stay there? They kept us there in one place. I didn’t see from the inside, we didn’t see anything. We couldn’t see. They loaded us up on these open trucks and they took us Dora, near Nordhausen, which was an underground factory. They used to make the “V” weapons out of plywood. They were shooting to England, pilotless. there I was assigned to checking the vents when they sprayed paint on them, if the vents are not closed with the paint. That’s what I had to do down there.

Q: They knew you were a specialist in “...schlosser”?

A: No, they just...it so happened I was one of them that had to do this. I was one of the persons that had to check the vents when they sparyed paint on the body. You know, it’s like an airplane, you know, these weapons. So when they had enough metal to make it from metal, they didn’t have to paint it. When they had to make plywood they had to paint it. That’s what they told us down there. So we had to do this, so I had this job. And when we came there, the first thing was a shower - take off all the clothes, shoes. I came out from the shower - there are no shoes, no warm jacket, nothing. Got some rags to put on and wooden shoes, either two right or two left. It was terrible. That’s what happened. They knew if we came from Plaszow we still had good clothes, so the kapos down there knew it .

Q: But in Plaszow you didn’t get. That was what you yourself brought along. Those clothing was what you brought along from home. You didn’t get anything else.

A: No, didn’t get there. That’s what we had from home. There, this was the end of it. Down there we were three months.

Q: Working?

A: Working down there. Then the war came closer and closer. They took us from there - where did we go? From there they took us again on open trucks, we went through Czechoslovakia and the Czech people used to throw some food from the bridges when the cars went by, so the SS started shooting at them, so they stopped. They took us to Bergen-Belsen from there.

Q: In Dora...?

A: From Dora to Bergen-Belsen.

Q: In Dora, where were you sleeping there? Again in barracks?

A: In barracks there, yes.

Q: The same conditions as in Plaszow or worse?

A: No, worse than there. They had people, mechanics, who were working down there. They used to push us, you know, fast, fast, fast. Hitting wherever they wanted to do something, either kicking or hitting.

Q: Those were civilians or Jews?

A: They were civilians down there, but only Jews, “heftlinger”. All prisoners.

Q: But who was hitting and kicking?

A: Anybody who went by. You see, if you worked too fast, they looked at you, maybe you pretended just because he goes by and they hit you. And if you’re slow, they hit you anyway.

Q: And you had to work seven days a week?

A: Now that’s a good question. I don’t remember even. You know, it’s a question, I don’t remember what we did in the camp, whether they give us one day off. I don’t know. That’s a good question. I don’t remember. Have you interviewed anybody that they asked this question and they said they had any day off?

Q: There were different places. Some places yes, some places not.

A: I don’t remember. I told you, a lot of things I don’t remember.

Q: Mostly in small places within Germany they wouldn’t work on Sundays. In the barrack in Dora there was a kapo, a “Blockaelteste”?

A: This I don’t remember either. We were tired and hungry, so we just looked to lay down. We didn’t look whether there was anybody to watch and in the morning they woke us up and “appell” and counting and the same thing, routine.

Q: Did a person even still think at such a stage?

A: I think you had to be stronger than iron to go through all this here and survive. A lot of people just fell down and they just couldn’t get up. Exhausted, couldn’t do. Couldn’t cope with this.

Q: From Dora to Bergen-Belsen, it was again the same group who was in Plaszow or they were again different set of (not clear)?

A: No, they were different people. There were some from Plaszow that I knew, but there were different people, too. Yes.

Q: But they didn’t evacuate the whole camp. They didn’t take everybody from Dora. Just a group.

A: We don’t know. Probably there were other people, too.

Q: You were selected to leave again?

A: No, they just took the group that was working there in that part where I was. We didn’t know what’s down there, who works there, we didn’t know. We knew in that department where the paint was, I was staying there. What was next door, I wasn’t even to look down there. We didn’t know whom they took, if they took just our group or they took some more people there. I don’t know, I have no idea.

Q: So they took you to Bergen-Belsen?

A: In Bergen-Belsen, when we came to Bergen-Belsen, this was the only camp that they told me that they had three-story buildings because there used to be an army training camp. After liberation they told us there was a women’s camp in that part and there were skeletons up to the third floor, thrown out from the windows, whoever died in the meantime. We came in down there. Next to me and next to everybody else there were corpses laying, or people they didn’t know whether they were alive or not. In Hungary they didn’t give us anything to eat, I think for a whole week, if I’m not mistaken, didn’t eat anything. They didn’t give us to eat. We found out later the reason why we didn’t get because the commander from that camp, he received a shipment of poisoned bread and they told him, whoever his superiors were, to give us, not to leave alive any prisoners. To poison us. So he thought he will save his life if he doesn’t give us, so he explained later, as I understand, to the English army who liberated us, the reason he didn’t give us to eat and here he showed this poisoned bread. They probably tried it on dogs or on somebody, I don’t know. Anyway, what they pointed out to him, “Look at all these corpses around here.” And then we thought we are liberated, we are going to eat as much as we want. They didn’t give us either, just little by little. They were afraid a lot of people died, they started eating too fast. You know, they had an empty stomach, now they will die from the food. I was already weak by that time, very weak. I didn’t run to get food, I couldn’t food. I think I must have weighed at that time maybe forty-eight pounds. Anyway, we survived from there and that’s where we were liberated by the English army.

Q: That week, before the liberation, do you remember something? The last week you were in Bergen-Belsen, before the English came, do you remember something of that week?

A: We were there. We were laying in the barracks. I wasn’t strong enough to get down from it even. We couldn’t go out and I didn’t have the strength to go down. And so probably were others, too. And then we were afraid, we were seeing in every corner a skeleton. When they had stronger people, when they had a skeleton they threw it out the window. There were not people strong enough even to do it now.

Q: Do you remember the liberation, the English coming in?

A: I remember even while the English army was close by that camp, German Luftwaffe used to shoot - you know, they didn’t have bombs to send, but they were shooting with guns on the camp barracks. They still didn’t want to give up. But when they came in, so the English army took right all the guards to clean up all this camp. And then next to Bergen-Belsen there is a little city, Zelle, a few kilometers away. They brought in the elders to show them, “Look, look, look what’s so near.” They didn’t know anything about it. They all lied. They didn’t know that there is a camp, they didn’t know what they do to the people, they didn’t know. This was all we had after the liberation. Then when they fed us a little, I don’t remember how long I was staying in that camp while they cleaned up. I got a private apartment with a famiy. It was a family, a mother and a boy, maybe an eighteen-year-old boy. They were in that Zelle and I was moving in down there. I recuperated a little. They fed me down there and I was staying there. I don’t remember how long, maybe a few weeks. Then, when I got a little strength, so I heard other people said they are going to travel to see maybe for survivors. They told us that there is in Munich, a bigger city, maybe down there we can find out something. We can go back to Poland. You know, a lot of people wanted to go back to see because we told our relatives, whoever survives, to go back to his hometown, to meet down there. So they had a few survivors from the same camp and we took a train and we travelled towards Munich, but Augsburg was a “haup station” that everybody has to get out. It didn’t go any farther. In Augsburg. When we got out down there, so the Germans showed us we should go to the “Yiddishe Kultursgeminde”, they showed us, and there was a shul. A shul was down there, a temple, so we went down there and these two in the picture that I pointed out that these are natives from Augsburg, that they run this temple, that’s where they send us and that’s where we got a little food. And then they showed us, there was a big hall with beds and they said, “You can go down there, move in down there. You can sleep there.” And then we get in touch with the UNWRA - the UNWRA gave us some food and they told us people who come with this train, they had to get off here, they registered them, to register them. We want to register and see maybe we can find somebody that we know. And that’s what we did and while we were there, the UNWRA gave us food and gave us some clothing and we were registering people who went by, looking for their relatives. When they needed clothes we gave them, we wrote down, “Today we had so many people registered. We gave so many away of this, so many away of this and this.” Some food and this helped us. And then we were staying in Augsburg since ‘45. We were liberated in May. And then we had these friends of mine - they were very good organizers and they helped organize to invite the generals to make a “hazkara”, you know, for the six million that perished in this camp. And they accepted our invitation and they came and that’s where they assigned for us that Jewish castle on Remboldt Street, and there we had, it was a lot of rooms down there and there were regular beds down there and we had people who wanted to stay, they were looking for their relatives, they went by - so they could sleep there. We were too many, they went to the old hall where we used to be. And that’s how we stayed there in Augsburg. In Augsburg we stayed there until we went to the United States.

Q: So you were busy there organizing the camp?

A: Yes. That’s what they make me for a camp commander down there, because I studied...while I was in Augsburg, I was taking lessons from a German used to be a consul in the United States. An older man. I used to take English lessons from him, so I was the contact man between the generals and the people, so they made me commander from this here. They made me the man to take care of the food and the clothing and so on.

Q: What made you go to America and not Israel?

A: And this while we were registering - as I told you, my first wife perished then in Auschwitz, when we were there and I never seen her anymore. And in that camp, Bergen-Belsen, when I said there was before we moved in, there was a women’s camp. And one of these friends of mine, the one who escaped and he was working with the Pollacks, one of my friends - his wife had a friend who was in that camp, in Bergen-Belsen, and she said she knew my former wife and she was evacuated and killed. She couldn’t go or cope any longer and killed. And from these people that went through...(end of side)

While we were registering there in Augsburg, three girls were let off in Augsburg, too. As I said, this was the “haup station”. They had to get off that train. These three girls were on Polish papers. They worked as Polish girls, forced labour on farms or factories, whatever. One of these girls, when they came in down there, we told them, “Look, we are getting food from the UNWRA. How about staying here instead of going farther and cook a little for us and be here?” So they agreed and one of them was the girl that I married. And one of my friends who ran away from that march from Malmo, he married a second one, and so we came here. We came to America from Augsburg, together, married.

Q: But why did you decide to go to America and not to Israel?

A: Because this is another story. My wife probably will tell this about, I imagine. There were plenty of GI’s that they came to us to visit that castle. They knew that Jewish survivors, they came to visit us. There was one of the GI’s came in and kept asking, “Do you have any family in the United States?” So I said, “I don’t,” but this girl, my wife, she said, “Yes. I remember, as a child, I had an uncle who used to come to visit his mother. His name is Liep, Aryeh Liep”. And his name is Mark, “But where does he live in the United States?” She said, “I remember sometime they used to say ‘Mick’.” So when he said “Mick”, “I have a sister who lives in Michigan.” Maybe where it is she didn’t know. So he wrote to his sister and gave the name, advertised in the Jewish news in Detroit and see if there is somebody like this. And this was it. She found a friend who used to play cards with her uncle. He said, “Lou, I saw in the newspaper, in the Jewish news, that refugees from Germany are asking about your name.” “Oh,” he said, “where is it?” He took this here and he went ahead. He told the secretary, “Write a letter to that GI and tell him, ‘If you would tell me my family’.” That’s what happened. That’s why I came to America.

Q: When was that?

A: At that time Truman was running for re-election. And there was no opening, they didn’t let in anybody. Her uncle got through, somehow, through a senator, a special permit in ‘47. We married in ‘46.

Q: Where?

A: In Augsburg. In ‘47. And he got a permit for her, on a special quota, to bring her. So I was left there in Augsburg. In the meantime, we opened a business there in Augsburg to make leather jackets, together with a German partner, because we had to have a German partner. In Germany is a law, if you are a manufacturer of clothing, you have to be a master tailor. Not me and not her brother. By the way, we - of course, this is a different story. Her brother survived, too. That girl’s brother survived, too. So he was also and we opened this factory and we are running it for two years, until ‘49, until Truman was re-elected and later we got visas to come to the United States.

Q: So you left the camp in Augsburg when you got married?

A: Yes. The camp in Augsburg we left, we got married, we lived in a private apartment.

Q: And you didn’t have anything to do anymore with the camp?

A: No. This was already given up. This was given up already. The German government took the rest over, so there was no displaced person camp there in Augsburg. This was given up. It was also in ‘49. Remember, from ‘45 to ‘49 wasn’t there, because in the meantime the German government gave us some money, they changed money. They gave us every month in order to have some money to buy some food. And from there we just sailed direct to the United States and we came to her relatives. That’s how I came here to Detroit. And that uncle had, together with a son-in-law, he had a factory of medicine. They manufactured some kind of medicine. So he did us a favour and he got, through this wife that I married, so he got two in his family.

Q: Your brother-in-law came along, too?

A: Yes. He came together with me. Yes, we came altogether. And that’s how we found her brother, by registering. She was asking everybody from that region - she was helping register, my wife - “Where do you come from?” People kept travelling and travelling. He said, “From this and this region.” “Have you ever seen somebody with this and this name?” He said, “Yes, he has a store there on the Polish side, on the German territory.” He said, “Go back and bring him here,” and that’s what he did. He goes and brings him back to Augsburg. And from there we sailed. And after we learned to manufacture leather jackets in Augsburg, we came to America and I did the same thing.

Q: And that’s the business you still have today?

A: Yes, that’s right.

Q: Did you ever go back to Poland?

A: No, I only was one time from Germany to Poland to see who survived, because my brother was liberated by Schindler’s List and the Russian army didn’t let any organized DP camps in their territory. “Yes, you are from Poland. Back to Poland. You are from Hungary. Back to Hungary.” So my brother went back with his wife and his daughter to Poland, so I went there. I wanted to see and I met him there and that’s how I knew he survived and the family is there.

Q: But he came to Israel?

A: No, he came later on. He still was in Poland and from Poland he went, I think, to England or France, and later, when they allowed to go to Israel, they went to Israel. They went to Israel and I was in the United States until today.

Q: You never thought of moving here?

A: Not to Poland. I never wanted to.

Q: You never thought of moving to Israel?

A: No. In fact, I have an apartment here in Wolfson Towers. I bought an apartment here. I meant to stay here, but the business didn’t let me go. I would have get rid of this here, I would move into my apartment and be with the children here. The reason I don’t like it, I went through two world wars, don’t forget - the First World War as a child and then the Second, so I don’t like wars. I hoped that there would be “shalom” here, that I can live, but nevertheless I bought an apartment here and I said we want to be here with the children.

Q: When did you hear what happened to your mother?

A: I never heard of her. I knew this whole city, Leskow, they took all the people, they took them to a forest and shot them all.

Q: When were you told what happened?

A: This we found out, of course, after the war - how they cleaned small cities, what they did. They took from all the areas, either villages, and got it like....that Leskow is close to Sanok, which my wife is from Sanok. She is from Sanok, from the same area. And they did the same thing there.

Q: What made you decide that you do want to tell what you passed? You said you didn’t tell your children.

A: Elisheva, the older of the two, the one that just got married in May, she went after me, she said, “I want to know.” I didn’t have a heart to tell them all this what I went through. You cannot imagine. What I’m going to bother children, you know. They were still younger - now she is older, she is married - so I’m going to tell them all these stories, what I said, they wouldn’t be able to sleep. You tell them all these skeletons, what we did and what we saw, what was this here and what we went through, they couldn’t stand it. They couldn’t stand it. It’s not easy. It’s not easy for grown-ups, and especially for children. I never said. My son, him I told more or less, but not everything that I told you here. What we went through. What does it help? It doesn’t help anything.

Q: On the other hand, they want to know, and I think one should know.

A: Yes. So if we are through, I will call. She should bring my wife here and she’ll pick me up. It will be in the same room when she will be here? She was working very hard, Elisheva, my grand-daughter. She knows I’m going away to the Dead Sea tomorrow and “Then when you come back, you’ll be tired, you’ll go back home. You’ve got to do it today.”

Q: Thank you very much.

A: You’re welcome. Thank you for your trouble.