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Play MovieFebruary 3, 2008 - Part 4 of 6
Section below transcribed by: Alex B (2009)
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When you were in Bialystok you talked about eating the bacon and how Orthodox Jews do not usually eat bacon. How was that for you to go against your faith?
Well, there is one thing that is wonderful about the Jewish faith. When a person is sick, you disregard the laws and you do what's best. My brother was very undernourished, and the Rabbi told my mother that he could have a little bacon sometimes, a little nourishment.
When you said that you had no place to go, so you went back to Bialystok, do you think you were better off going to a ghetto even though it was still hard there, rather than live off of what you had?
No, we couldn't live. We would be given away by the Polish peasants. They would call the Germans, and they would come and shoot us. So, there was no escape. There was no escape.
Can you talk about a typical day in Bialystok?
Ah yes. I can talk about a typical day in Bialystok. Well, we moved into a little, tiny room. There were a few other Jewish people there. There was one Jewish lady - young lady - and what they started to do is make alcohol. You got some flour, or whatever it is, or yeast, or something, and we were doing it in the bathtub. They let me work on it. It used to go drip drip drip and I used to have like a little bottle a little ????? underneath. Wait until it got kind of full, and I would put another one under there. Then sometimes I would taste it. It tasted horrible, just like rubbing alcohol.
There was wealth in the ghetto. There was half a million people. There was food, but it was getting hard to get. And I remember, you remember that I had this big gold coin in a little suitcase, and we escaped, and I gave it to my dad. He sold it and he was able to get some cash for it. Then we were able to buy food for six months. With that little gold coin that I took. We bought donut, because the bakeries were there. It was like a city, but it was kind of shrinking down. Then they began taking everybody away. There was nothing much to do. You can just walk in the street, you can study a little bit - I think there might have been schools, I don't remember. People worked whatever they could, but you couldn't go outside the gates. Actually, I was very lucky that they didn't kill us when we got to the ghetto. Because they would ask "what are you doing out of the ghetto". I don't know. I don't know. So they put us in the ghetto. ?????. So then, so much for that.
Was it odd when you walked up to the ghetto alone - you and your father. Did people kind of look at you strangely or wonder what had happened?
No. There was nobody there. It was just the German guards. Once they threw us inside, we were just among everybody else. Then we just made some friends, we had to. We asked for a place to stay and we asked what we can do, and where we could go. We tried to familiarize ourselves with the environment. And we did. It lasted a while. And even then we didn't know they were taking everybody to the gas chamber. It wasn't until we got to Auschwitz.
Did you meet people in Bialystok? Did you meet friends or anyone? Children?
Well, yeah there were people but I hang out with my dad mostly. I remember that once there was a woman, a single woman - my dad was only in his thirties I guess - I was a little behind. He met a woman who was talking with her. My mother was gone already for a while. I remember I was walking behind her, and I just tripped her. I put my foot out so I could trip her. I didn't want to have anybody except my mother. My dad got mad at me, so I ran away and I came back. I was following him again just like a puppy.
You looked up to your dad a lot?
Yeah.
What was your relationship with your father like
We had a decent relationship. While we were in camp and he used to get very mad at me if I did something stupid. But if I did something stupid it was because I was a child. He wanted me to be an adult just like him. It wasn't easy. But when we came to this country and he married his second cousin who came along with us. That's when things became bad for me. Q::Was he understanding when you would make a mistake? Or did he really expect a lot from you?
He expected a lot from me. This one time, I lost a portion of bread in my pants. ?????. He said "How stupid can you be? To lose this place of bread?" But he shared it with me. We survived. But I felt stupid. I felt bad. Later on, my stepmother kept us apart. We lived in different cities. We saw each other seldom, at least once a year.
Was your father's expectation for you part of what made you grow up so quickly, do you think?
Yeah my father was very resourceful, too. Because I watched him take me and escape from Kelbasin. That's not [something] anybody would do. Watched him take the risk of taking off his yellow patch, which was punishable by death, and then coming back to the camp to rescue me, my mother, my brother with a white band around his left arm, driving someone else's horse and wagon. Not many people would do that. So he was smart, he was fast, he was intelligent, he was brave. Brave, yeah. So I had to be brave.
He taught you that?
Yeah.
Before Kelbasin, when you were with your entire family, were you closer with your mother or your father?
That's hard to tell. It was both. My father had to work hard, my mother worked all the time. I felt close to both of them.
You described in the book your train to Buchenwald and how your father had you up on your shoulders, and you were looking out the window. The man next to you was shot. Can you describe your fear around that? What your feelings were when that happened?
That's a horrible thing to talk about. Even now. What a miracle it was. There was ????? What a horrible thing it was. Seeing this man's head blown apart and his brains spluttered all over the wall. I mean, I hate to even talk to you about it. I mean, that is a horrible thing for anybody to see, especially a ten or eleven year old child. And then, in the same train we were all sitting. This is the car. In rows of five. A hundred people. Twenty. No room to walk around. When the train stopped to get water or coal or I forgot what it was, Germans surrounded the train. One German just picked up his riffle and shot into the train. A bullet passed one guy's ear. My elbow, and this guy's stomach. ?????. This just barely grazed my elbow, and his stomach. Had the gun been over a little tiny bit, the bullet would have gone through my elbow. So I've got a scar here.
You have a scar? Can we see it?
I don't know if you can see anything. Can you see it?
Of course I can see it!
If that isn't luck, if that isn't God's will to make me live so I can speak to students like you. Because you are the last generation that'll ever see a live Holocaust survivor. Generations after you will not.
Were you still religious? Did you still pray at this point?
I will talk to you about this in a second. I want to finish this part here. When this bullet went into this man's stomach, he didn't die right away. He couldn't move. He was sitting there. He was internally bleeding and died two or three days later. He turned white and just died. I think it was one of the first or second times I had seen a dead person all white. It was horrible for me to see. Then when the train stopped, they took him out and he was dead. The one with the bandaged ear had blood all over it, he was taken immediately to the ?????? shop. With me, nobody saw my blood. It barely touched the skin. So I was able to be with that group with 3,000, which eleven of us were able to be pulled out alive. So just miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle.
What location was that? Where the train stopped?
That was in Auschwitz, ??????. No it was on the way to Auschwitz, it was in the train.
But when the train stopped, and they took the man out, that was at Auschwitz?
That was Auschwitz, ????? God had a horrible time, dealing with God. Because the last words my mother and my brother and my grandmother said was ...Audinei Eluhanu, Audineu el heit. Your Israel, the Lord is ours, and the Lord is one. And this is something that everyone said as their last words. We say it in services now every Friday night. We say it repeatedly. I have to say it, and I say it. I was very angry at God. Very angry at God. Why would he take all of those people? And my mother and brother? They never sinned, never did anything bad in their life. Never. Why did they have to die such a horrible death? They wondered even the last minute what has happened to me and my father. They never have seen it before. I was tortured internally about it. Just tortured to the point I couldn't stand it. Every time I went to services, I did a prayer. I talked about a merciful God, a forgiving God, a wonderful God. This would be a lot of times in our prayer book. It would say a wonderful God, a marvelous God, a merciful God. Where was he? When all of those millions of people needed him? Then one day ?????? or something. I picture God different.
I picture God as something a being, or something. That has created the cosmos, the universe and all of the planets and all of the galaxies. We know from evolution that God has created everything, the animals, the birds and the fish and the bacteria and everything. And everything that is created is generically programed. Even the bacteria that live in the deepest parts of the soil were produced generically. Lions, tigers, birds, bees, produced generically. We are all built ????? same bodies. Even the big animals. Even some mammals in the water. God must have just been sitting there, just sort of visualizing, in a big chair. He says "I'm going to make one animal and make them a little bit different. I'll. call them 'people or man' and I will give them free will. I'll say you have the capacity to be good and bad. You have the capacity to be good or bad. And I'll just hang around for a few thousand years just to see how it works out".
So because God has made everyone generically, to produce, and people who can only change their way. We change our way. ?????. How can you come in during the middle and stop something that is already created? If it doesn't like it, and we are all bad, I decided well, if I was God. Next time I would make people without free will. They would be like animals. They will eat. They will build things, but they will be like animals. They won't be able to change. They will be like slaves. I'll make them like slaves. They will build buildings and skyscrapers and computers and will be able to do things. But they will not be able to change their habit. We have a habit but we can change our habit. I'll make people who won't be able to change their habit. Once I realized that and accepted it, then I can deal with it.
Can you talk about when you were a tailor in Buchenwald? Can you talk about what that was like? How the Germans treated you?
I was a tailor in Oranienburg. Well, that was how I got out of Auschwitz. They needed tailors. I was not a tailor. I was not a tailor. I was nothing. My grandfather was a tailor. But I was resourceful enough at age twelve to say that "I am a tailor, maybe I'll get out of here!" My father said "I am a tailor too". That's how we got out.
Your father amazingly stayed with you for so long. Do you think that had something to do with your age? Since you were so young? Or was it just pure luck that he was able to stay with you?
It's both ways. Many times I saved his life, sometimes he saved my life. We needed each other. For instance, in the cellar they wanted to go with the Freedom Fighters. They were all killed given away by the Polish Christians.
And you directed him not to.
Well, so I saved his life because of me. He saved my life because he was able to guide me and to be with me and to take care of me. Then when he was sick with a bad fever I was able to help him.
