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6-Liberation, British Intelligence & Post-War Reflections

When you were liberated in April of 1945 from the camps the British army came. Was it later that you discovered that they found the camp by coincidence?

No, we knew that right away because you don't liberate a camp with a massive assortment of tanks and they admitted very freely they didn't know of our existence and what would be located in this particular area. So, that we knew right away. And this is why they were totally unprepared. They had no food, they hadn't enough water, they had not enough medication. They had nothing because they didn't expect us.

How did this make you feel that they had no idea that such a place existed, that the Jewish people were being held this way?

Well, I had become used to it, and it wasn't only Jewish people, it was a great many non-Jewish people. The world, or the politicians of the world, knew of our existence, as did Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But they didn't do anything about it. So, the reasons given nowadays are many. The war came first and we were not of importance. There are many other political reasons and you can read them in the release documents in Washington. They bombed the refinery, three or four miles away from Auschwitz, and they have aerial photographs of Auschwitz, including the gas chambers and the chimneys. They bombed the refinery but they didn't bomb us, and they would have done us a favor. There are many, many explanations ranging all the way from political expediency to anti-Semitism, you name it. Life is cheap.

I hate to go back to this, but just talking about survival mentality before we go on to liberation, I'm just wondering if you think that knowing both English and German also helped your likelihood to survive in the war.

At the end when the war was over, it didn't matter whether you knew English or not. It helped me get a job, yes. But those that were alive after April '45, except for 10,000 of them, survived. The rest of the year, or years to come, 10,000 could not be salvaged, they could not be medicated, they could not be treated. They were gone.

Could you give a description of how the British army reacted? Or I recall a description that you gave of how the British soldiers were pretty much appalled with the situation there. There was even a man in one of the bunkers in a bed with a dead body and he was attempting to eat it.

The British reaction, if you want to hear it, if you are ever in London at the British War Museum, you can hear the tapes that were sent to England by, I think, a priest, rabbi and maybe a reporter, I'm not sure. And the outcry of what they see and what they have seen – and those tapes are available now in London – it's indescribable. It's unreal how they reacted to the horror. And it was a horror if you had not been prepared.

When you were liberated, what were the first thoughts that surged through your mind?

I need to get out of here.

And did you think that that was going to happen soon?

No. I knew that they would burn the barracks, I knew that they had to burn the barracks, I knew they would house us in the former S.S. quarters. And they blocked the camp for people to come in, people to go out. We might spread disease and we might take revenge on the poor Germans and it was not legal to leave the camp. And if you left the camp, where would you go? There was no place to go.

And how did it feel to be liberated but be, in a sense, confined to the laws of another army?

You pulled all the favors and all the switches that you could pull. I used the British Military to send letters to my family because there was no mail service, and this went on Her Majesty's service or His Majesty's Service. And I notified them [of] where I was and to please hurry and get me papers. And I really did everything I could do to set the machinery in motion.

And do you think you did?

Yeah, I did. I came to New York in March 1946. It was fast.

Can you describe your physical condition at liberation?

Well, I had the remnants of typhus, I was very weak, I had a very bad stomach. I was fairly thin. I wanted to eat but I couldn't eat. And really, liberation was a let-down. It was not what I had expected.

What had you expected?

I had expected a big party with everybody being there. It was neither a party nor was anybody there. And that was hard.

How did others react?

Pretty much the same because there wasn't a single person who survived with a family intact. I remember a lady with four daughters. I don't know what happened to the husband. But she survived and the four daughters survived--and that was very unusual.

Contrasting the tone of what you thought it was with how liberation actually was, I'm wondering if you could give us a little sense of the feeling, the aura, the atmosphere of liberation.

Well, there was no atmosphere. The tanks drove through the camp main street and these little figures in British uniforms jumped out and they said "We are British, and the war for you is over." It wasn't the end of the war yet till May and I think our first question was "How about some water and some food?" That's as far as our thoughts went. Later on came showers and clothing and other things. But the first moment was food.

Did some people eat the food too quickly?

Yes. They ate those two pound cans of pork and fat and of course if you have not eaten in a few years, you cannot digest it. But that's the only food they could find in the warehouses. It most likely had been found or confiscated in Poland, it had no labels. And if you're hungry, you eat anything.

Did anybody have awareness of the danger of eating the way that they did?

No, no. If you are hungry, you are not aware of anything else. Your mind doesn't go any further.

How long did it take for a lot of the people in the camp to start focusing on things besides food and suddenly there was some sort of other life?

I can't tell you the number of days or weeks, but it took as long as we knew that we would get regular meals. We knew we could get a loaf of bread a day, even though it was black bread and not white bread, that we would get a soup a day. And I know that somebody asked for an orange and there were no oranges. But we didn't go hungry, there was food which you probably today would not eat and you didn't go hungry. But there was no egg, there was no orange, there was no banana, there was no meat. It just wasn't there.

So, what was there?

What was there? There was dark bread and a thick soup once a day--a vegetable soup. And if you knew somebody, they would send you cigarettes from England or chocolate, and then you shared it with your friends. And it took a long time, I think it took longer than I was at Bergen-Belsen, for it to become a D.P. camp and to normalize. See, I left in November '45 and it was still a camp. And it existed, I think, until 1952. And then it was a displaced person's camp and I think life normalized. But I was not there and I did not return.

So, how did you get involved helping the British find the S.S. men?

When I worked in Sasel, I worked for a few weeks in the office. And not having a typewriter, I had to write the names and addresses by hand of the S.S. people. And after awhile, I memorized it, you know, like you memorize a telephone number. And when my boss asked me "Where have you been?" and I told him about it, he didn't believe me and he said "Write it down." And he checked it out and he found that it was correct and then the British arrested all of them. I received threats against my life, probably from the families of those people. And the British drove me through Holland to Belgium and to France. And there [they] had an American embassy and I was a guest every single day.

And how long did that last?

It lasted--November, December, January, February, March--less than five months.

How did it feel to be involved in this work?

In what work?

Capturing S.S. men...

How did it feel? It felt good to see them behind bars but it really did not bring back what they had taken away.

You describe in your book that, at one point, you were brought during the night by the British soldiers to find one of the former S.S. soldiers who apparently was in hiding. And you were there to help with the interview to uncover his identity. And the captain, at one point, gave you a gun.

Yes. He pulled out a gun out of his holster and put it on the table. He released the safety and I picked up the gun and I put it back down. But I do not know if the gun was loaded or not. Normally, a soldier does not carry an unloaded gun. But, I do not know. I couldn't pull the trigger. That much I remember.

You also mentioned that you heard your fathers words, you repeated your father's words to yourself. Can you describe that feeling?

Well, it was like a voice coming from the past: "If you hate too long and too much, it will destroy you." And my father really did believe that. And I stopped hating a long time ago. I don't like the Germans, I don't respect them, I don't forgive them and I don't forget. But hate? No more.

Also talking about the threats that you received when you were helping to capture S.S. men, can you give us specific examples of what these entailed?

Well, we went to the residences of the former S.S. people. I rang the bell and I asked for Mrs. Mueller or Mr. Smith, or whoever it was. And if they came to the door, the British were behind me. I didn't have to do a thing. A couple of days later I asked that they take me to the prison and that I could walk past the prison cells. And all of them cried out "Please help us! We never did anything wrong! We only beat you when you deserved it!" and I kept walking. I did not reply.

And did you ever feel, in your head, replies or responses or did you ever have a feeling that you did want to say something back to them?

No. I wanted them to get life prison terms, which they did not get. They got between two and eight years. They worked as civil servants after they got out of prison. One, I think, got twenty years.

What was your reaction to hearing two to eight years?

I was angry. They get a pension. If they are still alive, I do not know. They work for the government, for the post office, for the customs office, etc. I am still waiting.

Did you ever wonder why they believed that you deserved the beating when you walked by the prison cells?

A distorted education. That's how they were trained. That's what they were taught to believe and they didn't think for themselves.

How did you feel when you heard them?

It wasn't worth arguing, debating or talking about. It is like if somebody says today that the Holocaust never happened. All I can say to that is "Go to the archives in Germany, and you'll have all the information you need: train numbers, transport numbers, locations, everything else. And then come back and we'll discuss it. Not before." And it's the same here. I mean, they know what they did. They were grown-up people in their thirties and forties. They were responsible for their actions.

You said in the last interview that something you learned about history is that we don't really learn about history.

No, I said that in this particular instance, we have not learned from the past.

What should we learn from the past, and how do we learn it and teach it then and eternalize it?

Well, I'll give you an example: We should not repeat the past. And look at the former Yugoslavia. We repeated the past from A to Z, except it didn't take twelve years--it went a lot faster. This subject is taught in schools but it takes a lot of civil courage and if you fight against this type of terror, you might pay with your life. Is it worth it or not? That's for you to decide. But the mere fact that the killings that happened in Africa and that happened in Yugoslavia could happen in the 1990's proves to me that humanity has not learned from the past.

So, what would your method be? What's the best way?

I don't have the answers. What I would like to see is a population that will stand up for right as much as those who stand up for wrong. And that will be your generation. I mean, we had the demonstrations now against the war, which is a huge step forward from what it used to be. But did it help? No. I wish I had the answers, but I'm not bright enough for that.

Have you ever visited Germany with your children?

No, we never visited with the children. Never. I told them about the past when they went to college. They went to Germany on their own a few years ago. And my son will be next week in Munich. And I told him "They have a new exhibit and at the entrance [there] is a huge blow-up of your grandparents." So he said "I'd rather look at a photo album than go there," and I said "Okay." And the man is fifty years old.

What kind of things go through head each time you venture back to Germany?

What goes through my mind is a phrase: "Ordinary people." And they all claimed, to this point, "We didn't know, we didn't see, we didn't hear, and we didn't smell." Well, if you lived in the proximity of a camp, you saw us marching in the streets. You saw the way we looked, in rags. How could you not have known? I talked to one German, he later on he became a minister, and he said "I saw a group of women every morning on the subway in one corner and they looked awful and they were guarded with guns by the S.S." But he was younger than I was--he was probably fourteen--and when he asked at home about it, they told him, "Oh, never mind. Forget about it." So, do you want to see or do you want to be blind? Do you want to hear and do something about it or not? It is your decision. Nobody can make it for you.

You're answering this question to the rest of the class that is not here right now. We've had a lot of discussions with the class about asking tough questions. The whole class interviewed Mr. Bill Lowenberg a few weeks ago. He talked about some really horrible things. And then we talked about it as a class in getting ready for these interviews. There is a lot of nervousness about asking such personal questions. Should we even be here asking you recount these horrible times? Can you give the class some advice on that?

Ask the question. If I don't want to answer it, I will tell you so. If I can't answer it, I will say so. But you may ask. When I was in Germany there is now a movement to plant metal plaques in front of houses where Jews used to live and have disappeared. And friends of mine thought it would be a very good idea if in front of my parents house would be three of these plaques in the pavement. There are people in Germany who say that we should not walk on the names of the victims. There are people in Germany that said, "If the plaques are in front of our house, it will lower the value of the property." I had very mixed feelings. So did my younger son. My older son said "Yes, do it." My friends said, "Yes, do it." I did it, but I still have very mixed feelings. It's one of those questions: Should we ask them and can we answer them? I can show you a photograph of these plaques. So, it's very difficult, but you can ask. And there are a lot of things that probably can't be answered or that people are unable to answer.

Thank you very, very, very, very much.

You're very welcome. And if something comes up send me an email.