2022 First Person with Holocaust Survivor Emanuel “Manny” Mandel

thank you [Music] welcome thank you for joining us for first person conversations with Holocaust Survivors I'm Bill Benson and I have hosted first person since it began at the Museum in 2000 each month we bring you first-hand accounts of survival of the Holocaust each of our first person guests serves as a volunteer at the Museum Holocaust Survivors are Jews who experienced the persecution and survived the mass murder that was carried out by the Nazis and their collaborators this included those who were in concentration camps killing centers ghettos and prisons as well as refugees or those in hiding Holocaust Survivors also include people who did not self-identify as Jewish but were categorized as such by the perpetrators during our program please send us your questions and let us know where you are watching from in the live chat we are honored to have Holocaust Survivor Manny Mandel share his first person account of the Holocaust with us today Manny thank you so much for agreeing to be our first person hi Bill it's very nice to be here and thank you for the introduction Manny you have so much to share with us in a short period so we'll we'll Jump Right In you were born in Riga Latvia in 1936 before we turn to the war years please introduce us to your parents and let's start with your mother Ella my mother was born and and raised in what was Southern Hungary and then after the first world war became Yugoslavia with the Trion entry these change of landlines she was a trained to be a school teacher an elementary school teacher which she did for several years before she and my father married in 1930. and and Manny this photo obviously right you know soon after your birth I'm only a few weeks old because this will get into a little bit later we did not stay in Riga very long after my birthday we're just staying there long enough for me to arrive and I must be several weeks old here before we then left and we'll get to that a little bit later to Hungary and your father Yehuda was born into an observant Jewish Family tell us about him my father was born in what was then known as Transylvania today it's in the Ukraine it's interesting for me to always remember that he was born in what was that austro-hungary he then became Czechoslovakia today is the Ukraine the community didn't move but the the ruling party is the various authorities did as a consequence the place changed from country to Country did did your father um have a large family my father was one of seven children I would imagine there may have been more than seven my grandmother may have had as many as ten but seven became adults and tell us how did your parents meet my father all of his life was a Cantor the Canter is the man in the synagogue who chants who sings the prayers and these people were in some places major stars of their own my father's hope in life was to be one of the chief cancers in the city of Budapest which was probably one of the 10 most important positions in all of Europe he trained in Vienna and although he was offered a very prestigious position in the Enterprise graduation he chose to stay in Hungary and Vienna being in Austria and he moved to the City of Novi Sad which was then Hungary Yugoslavia and there he met my mother became their 1927 I think and maybe 28 I don't know exactly and they were married in 1930. then then chose to leave you leave navisad in 1933 in 1933-34 and he took a position again of some significance in the city of Riga uh where I was born they then waited he was looking to go to budapestra they couldn't get working papers this is the beginning of sorts of the anti-semitic kind of moves he was unable to get papers because he had been an austrian-born Czech citizen to became a check citizen because he was conscripted into the Czech army or he served for whatever a year and a half whatever the requirements were but as I say we went to Riga I was born there where they got papers in 1936 to be able to get employment in Budapest which was his dream of his life which he did and tell us a little more about the new job as Cantor he got because as you said it was the dream of his life because it was a really big deal well I mean this may sound a little bit uh you know overdone but if there's a Metropolitan Opera of the cancerous there are several of these in Europe and Hungary was one of them Berlin was another Moscow was another Vienna was another and he was able to achieve what had been his lifelong dream lifelong it was only 32 years old at the time to be a chief country of the city of Budapest with a choir of 40 male voices and he had a lifetime position lifetime until the man with a little mustache messed that up we have a photograph tell us about this Photograph Manny this is in Budapest and this is at the banks of the Danube River where we would walk out to just be outside and I don't know the name or who that youngster was who's with me but it's based on the size of his looks it must be one of my friends one of my classmates and they cleared the streets with the stone piled it up on the banks there and I decided to oh that's no with my large shovel and my large pail you're doing a really good job we can see that absolutely Manny before we go on I'd like to let you know that we have people watching and listening to you today from not only across the country but other places in the world we have people from New York Iowa Minnesota and Texas and we have international viewers today in Nicaragua New Zealand Canada and Malta I'd also like to share an audience comment that's already come in from a viewer named Lily Lily wrote I worked with Manny this summer during the Museum's Stephen Tyrone John summer youth leadership program such an amazing in Pro person thank you Manny World War II of course began September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland in 1940 Hungary formally allied with Nazi Germany and then in 1941 joined in the german-led invasions of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union please tell us what you remember about the bombing raids early in the war well Budapest where we lived in an apartment building five stories we were we were on the top floor uh the bombing was not too significant as a matter of fact the bombed the alerts the various raids were more frequent than the actual bombing we were talking about onto the basement which was the shelter once twice sometimes three times at night now some of those trips to the basement also resulted not resulted but also where were the bombings took place but it's important to note that Budapest was not severely hurt much as Warsaw in other kind of cities it was bombed but it was bombing light however very dangerous and for me as a child my recollection had to do with that being the war this is before Holocaust issues then after all if a bomb fell in the building next door to us and did some damage it could have been somewhere hurt or killed a couple of the kids who lived there with whom I may have gone to school so the frightening part was the noise and the result of craters and whatnot created by bombs and some destruction of buildings that was my first recall and connection with the war and as you said although the difficulties that you experienced and saw early on were rated more to the war like the bombing the Hungarian regime was anti-semitic and actively discriminated against Jews and there were a few anti-semitic laws passed that impacted life in your household please tell us what happened to the maid that your family employed well the Hungarian numerous Clauses which were the various guys are restrictive uh laws about who could work where and how many could work wherever were passed in the Hungarian legislature in the 20s they were not put into effect until the middle late 30s which is after the ones that came out of Nuremberg certain rules came up and said that at some point the middle class families most of whom employed some kind of domestic help we had a maid in a house who had all quarters a one bedroom and was my buddy because she was about 17 and I was seven or six and in a sense it was the closest to my age and she was a farm girl and we had a chance to at least play some games together but she was told she had to leave why because Jews could unemploy household help now she wanted to take me with her back to her Farm Village not far from Budapest my parents did not like the idea she thought that I would be safer there and she probably would have been right but my parents would not agree and I'm glad that they didn't other kinds of things began to happen most of these were minor in one sense however as time went on it became more important for example man comes to the door one given dances to whoever opened the door it wasn't me I came here to take your telephone so the question was asked now my father use a telephone not extensively I'm not sure I ever used it it's not like today but the point is he had to take the form because the law said Jews may not have telephones Now The Logical that doesn't exist but that's those are the kinds of things they did later on there were other things that happened that had to do with the Nazi government's the Hungarian Nazi government's rules and in fact um although early in the war most Hungarian Jews were initially spared deportation until the German occupation began in 1944 but that did not mean that all Jews had been safe under Hungarian rule in January 1942 while you were visiting relatives you had a horrifying experience tell us what you remember about what happened well as you said Bill the rules of Life did not become severe until later on during the war so 1941 in December actually uh my mother and my father and I decided to take a trip south of my mother's Hometown we could go there by train about two two and a half hours maybe three hours by train and spent a week or so with my grandparents my two aunts my mother's sisters and my cousin the daughter of one of my her sisters a year younger than I uh we got there we were there for a day or two I don't remember exactly how many and uh somebody was coming up the stairs with the elevator and said there's something funky going on on the street within minutes of that time knocked back on the door two uniform policemen come and said ladies and gentlemen you need to dress warmly you need to come outside now please understand this is December it's cold it's not bitter it's not blizzardy there's no seven feet of snow but there's some snow on the ground and it is winter so we got dressed up in warm clothes and boots and whatever and went outside we were told to stand on a sidewalk and then eventually after a few minutes or turn left and start walking in that direction which we did now we walked for several hours as I recall and I can tell you I'm five and a half years old I'm a little guy my mother carried me my father carried me and much of it I did walking myself until we arrived at a place which interestingly I recognized this was the scene there was a seven foot stockade fence on the left there was a sidewalker which we were walking and there was a major road to our right why did I recognize it well in European cities which are not on the sea or on the lake the folks who lived there would make beaches out of rivers the Danube River flowed about three or four hundred yards to our left inside this stockade fence and I'd been there the previously that summer maybe in August when it was warm and sunny and was able to enjoy the hot pool the cold pool the wave pool restaurants playgrounds whatever inside it was a lovely Beach setting which of course in the winter time was closed down this is December the ice was frozen I'm told about three feet thick and the place was locked down but for some reason it was opened up and as we saw ahead of us on the road the gates the entry Gates into this place which was part of The Stockade Fence more open and folks went to that point turned left towards the river we had no idea why later on we found out why walking in that direction the police officer turns to my father and says to mister what are you doing here well my father says I'm visiting my family he said well that's not my issue this was supposed to have been a census understand please that the Nazis did census if that's the word every 15 minutes I exaggerate but they thought if they knew exactly where everybody is they could control the population and they were right so they called us a census which it wasn't but he thought it was it was brought in from Budapest he said he is a foot patrolman in the neighborhood where we live and said he saw my father on the street many many times going to here going there to an office or to a grocery store or whatever and he recognized him and he said please leave the group that you're with and you and this little group of yours step aside as he told us this episode within minutes a staff car came down the main road a uniform officer came out had a discussion with his buddies and what he did at that point is in fact got on a bullhorn and said the requirements of the census have been met go home there's a school down the block there's hot chocolate and coffee you can help yourself and go ahead uh we didn't do that we went right back to my aunt's apartment where we were staying and the phone calls began to come in the other and my mother was the oldest of the three where we stayed in the apartment was the youngest of the three the middle sister causes us where were you all day and we had some plans that day to get together whatever she said we called her she said well I didn't go there because police officers came to my door asked me three questions about some senses I gave them a cup of coffee and they left and I've been here all day long as the calls began to come in we began to understand something which I couldn't understand but at least I can remember this was an event whereby everybody who made that left turn towards the river towards the Danube got to the river which had been blown open that morning by Cannon fires so that the ice was cleared people were shot in the back into the river and floated Don River to be found in March when the river thought out or took places with the river was where the ice was a little thinner but it could come up this was a pogrom this is the retaliational part of the government for some partisan activity that took place in the general area of navisad which is a city where we're talking about and this was a particular experience that obviously I wasn't a victim of what I know about and I was present when this that took place several hundred people were killed we we have a film clip of your father reflecting on this harrowing experience that you all experienced let's let's hear from your father people were crying and when they heard another few shots we knew what's happening we imagined what's happening and people were crying and hollering and and throwing themselves to the floor to the ground and as as can Well Be Imagined what happened but before we should have gone in and be the next ones to be killed the killing stopped from there we were taken into a into a gymnasium walked back and when we spoke about where we are going and what happened the one of the policemen who was walking alongside with us told me you are very lucky people um it's interesting that this video was done of my father's interview at the Holocaust Museum when he was 86 years old what's interesting is precisely what I am yeah that that really is thanks for sharing that shortly after this experience Manny you would see your father far less often the Hungarian government established a discriminatory forced Labor Service for Jewish men and your father was conscripted into a forced labor Battalion in 1942. please tell us more about these battalions and share what it meant for you and your family and also mention uh tell us a little bit about this photo well this photo is in a in a public Parkway between our house and one of the markets where we used to go my father used to go there occasionally to buy certain things hold on a major shop it was not done by him and I'm here maybe five years old of thereabouts and somebody took the picture I don't know who we have several pictures of this particular Excursion I like that I always ask them to buy some fresh green peas and I would eat them on the way home so by the time we got home half of the pizza they bought whatever a pound or so were gone but this is just an exp recollection I have of my father and I in 1942 six I'm six years old the rules were activated whereby the Hungarian male population was in the army and they were fighting actually in the Russian front so what the Hungarian Nazis the hungarians Nazis and no Nazis in fact established was a labor Battalion calling Hungarian Jewish men into these battalions they could not be eligible for the military to do certain kind of work that could have to be done by the men who were in the army now this has to do with Mining and some Road repair and other kinds of work what you see here is a picture from some place you notice that these men a couple of them have these Garrison caps on which were issued because it was actually a military type of Battalion Arrangement and they're repairing some kind of not a railroad I think this must be at a some mind because this looked like these mine carts which had to be rolled out of the mines on these rails and it looks to me like this had been damaged by probably by bombing or cannon fire and they're repairing it the work was physical and very hard and it was particularly hard because these men and men that were conscripted were none of them vast majority of them were not people who are used to physical work my father was in his early 30s he was stronger than ox but he had to get used to working with a shovel which he had not done very much over in his life uh he would receive a phone call and said on the phone or a man will come to the door or a letter that says on Tuesday at three o'clock or whatever you ought to report to this train station you will be going to a particular location you'll be gone for a day a week a month or undetermined period of time and he was away from home more than he was home however all of this was in territorial Hungary the last place he was in that we know was a city called Vats which is about 60 or so kilometers from Budapest where he was doing whatever kind of work he had his the rest of his Brigade or whatever the the Declaration was of the particular order where they were doing certain work but he was away from home much more than home and as a consequence you know between the ages of six and eight and ten when I did the same at all or I saw him as sporadically I was without a father now that has its own consequences Manny you were just seven years old when German forces occupied Hungary on March 19 1944 anti-semitic persecution increased dramatically then soon all Jews over the age of six were forced to wear the yellow star of David tell us how wearing that star affected your daily life well first of all I went to school with a star on and Oliver Coke and I thought that was terrific here I was a six-year-old a six and a half year old in first grade when I went to school and I had the star one which was a demonication just like all the adults and I guess six year olds want to be like little adults and I thought it was terrific I thought it was a mark of a distinction until I found out that it wasn't and I can mention that now or we will come back to that later no go on please yeah I went to school and the school was at number 44 of the street where we lived our apartment that was number 13. so you can imagine it was very close as a matter of fact you could see the school building from my parents bedroom on the corner of the fifth floor of the apartment the two streets yet I was told somebody would follow me the school almost every day my father or somebody why because there were incidents were by kids walking to school with the yellow star were whacked on a head nobody wanted their books nobody wanted their backpack Orca coat or their shoes they just don't go why come on ahead because this became a Target to people who wanted to do Mayhem a little later on on one of the times that my father was home from this labor camps like I said to the top would you be willing to consider to buy me a bike I had a trike but I was Big Enough by this time maybe seven or so or seven and a half to ride like an 18-inch bike I was in those days we were very much older than our years in many ways so I could write it he said well I suppose I could buy you a bike it's not a problem but there are two reasons minor and major why I will not the minor reason was that we lived on the fifth floor and the bike would have to be slept down from the fifth floor to the street to go out to the park to ride the bike and then stepped up we had an elevator but the elevator was as old as the building itself which is about 50 years old then it still stands and that's about 120 years old in any case the elevator often broke down because the mechanical parts that were needed for its repair were now made in were to be repaired in shops which were now involved in military hardware repair as a consequence it was very low on the on the role on the on the roles of repair orders and often it was not working as a consequence the bike would have to be taken down my father said you know although that's in unpleasant now remember I'm seven years older so I could not physically take a bike down five floors and up again my father says although that's a not a particularly Pleasant Prospect I will do that however when we go up into the park which was in fact very close to the house several blocks you'd go out there and you'd ride the bike if you're out of my sight with your yellow star for 12 seconds somebody might decide to whack you on a head again nobody wants to bike my shoes my coat my hat or whatever but they want to whack me on a hand I began to understand at that point that this is not a mark of Distinction but a Target Manny before we we go on I'd like to remind our audience to please share any questions you have for Manny via our chat feature in May in mid-may 1944 the Hungarian authorities began to systematically deport the Jews from the countryside in less than two months nearly 440 000 Jews were deported mainly to the Auschwitz birkenau killing Center please tell us what happened to your grandparents and other family members well as I mentioned we had visited my pet my mother's parents in 41 they both lived in Novi Sad as did by two ants and my cousin their husbands had already been taken into these these labor camps and they never made it up after the war they were killed or they died or whatever but my grandparents and ants were taken by transport with my cousin to Auschwitz and we know when they arrive because my aunts could tell us about it how well in those days there was a there was a selection process when the trains arrived at Auschwitz there were two lines one line was of young kids and older people my grandparents and my cousin Jose younger than I and they were probably murdered within 24 to 48 hours the other line was for people that were able-bodied to go to work were my aunts in their 30s could go since they were there together and since my aunt survived they knew very precisely what were the days when this took place and they could estimate that my grandparents their parents in fact were murdered within one or two or three days of the time of arrival and they had a date for that which I don't recall offhand probably in August of 1944. my father's mother was living with us in Budapest but as I said earlier there were seven adult children who grew up and she had probably two or three others and there she is my grandmother had some difficulties with her feet my father used to have to go to a special store to make shoes for her to be comfortable and my father and his youngest brother who also lived in Budapest was going to school still decided to ship her back to the village where they all were born in Transylvania while the village was primitive there were no bombings there were no need to go from the fifth floor to the basement three four two or three times a night for Air Raids well that's true there were no Air Raids but what there was is that Eichmann in fact cleared the area and she was taken to Auschwitz as well and we don't have a definitive data when that was but it was sometime in a fall probably in September uh that's the date that we have you want to remember that Hermann Gering the number two in the Nazi government issued a letter on behalf of Hitler in 1941. talking about the final solution of the Jewish problem it was not put into affect it in 1942. when there was a conference in Berlin called the vanzai conference there was a building which still stands today it's a museum called The vonzi Villa and that places where the conference took place where Adolf Eichmann was a point that is the manager of the transportation of Jews from various places to the various killing centers and the concentration camps and he cleaned all the cities Holland Belgium France the last one to be cleaned as it were was in fact Hungary because of its status as a Ally to the German government and I know this this particular photograph is is precious to you this is my grandmother and I and I'm probably five or something or maybe going on six standing there with a scooter in front of the front door to our apartment in Budapest as a family picture I knew her well and she was shipped back as I said to Transylvania and deported from there yeah Manny you your mother and your paternal Uncle David were among a group of Jews who were part of an extraordinary negotiation Jewish leaders secured refuge for 1 700 Jews from Hungary in exchange for money and other valuables Jewish leader Rudolph Kastner negotiated directly with Adolf Eichmann whom you just told us about one of the central figures in the final solution who is responsible for sending many of Europe's Jews to their deaths tell us about those negotiations on the 19th of March 1944 and establishes his headquarters in the Excelsior Hotel two men from kind of a self-generated rescue committee one to approach him to negotiate some kind of a deal for lives Now understand please that to go see iPhone in those days was about done with the same ease as if you were to go to Rome today and say I want to see the pope now but these men were able to talk their way in to see Eichmann and they negotiated an issue now why did they negotiate you want to understand that by this time although this is only March of March or April 44. most everybody with the exception of Adolf Hitler himself knew that Germany would lose the war just before Normandy but the way things were going that's the way the progress was to be Nazi leadership all the way up to Heinrich Himmler who's number three in the German government we're looking for ways to in some way either feather or establish their nests after the war because after all they all knew they couldn't go to an employment agencies say I'm highly Hitler I'm on a job so they were looking to make make arrangements some kind of negotiated deals and there were a number of these I was not the only one but I don't know about the other specifically except this one they think they began to negotiate on what they call loot for water blood for material and the deal was that icon was to release a million Jews from the concentration camp in exchange for 10 000 trucks laid in with certain material that he would order and that would be an arrangement well there was a problem the problem with this absolutely absurd he even if he wanted to release civilian Jews couldn't because by this time there were no million Jews in the camps they had been all mostly more mostly murdered there were some hundreds of thousands but not a billion as far as a ten thousand trucks these guys did not have access to a hubcap let alone 10 000 trucks as a matter of fact one of the two Joel brand was shipped to ink to Egypt the British had established in Egypt the command post for all logistical and mechanical and transportation systems throughout the European war and he was going to go to to talk to the British about trucks he was arrested at the Spy was in jail in Cairo and was there until the war ended he was released after the war ended and lived for several more years I don't know his precise situation customer remained in Budapest and negotiations continued the negotiations from glute for water blood for Wares of a material meant went from a million and ten thousand to about 1700 1680 some I don't know the precise number there's some question question as to the exact number for a amount of valuables which were negotiable after the war by the people who had them under who in suitcases because after all jewels and that kind of stuff were always of value you can always buy a meal if you want to trade a watch for a meal or a piece of diamond or Ruby or whatever else the deal was that we were to be put on trains Henry taken to a neutral port to be shipped out of Europe because Hitler said I want Jews out of Germany he got that we're going Jews out of Europe he almost got that we would use out of the whole world he did not get that would be put on in the neutral point and more than likely shipped to Palestine which was a place that would accept us iPhone available 35 35 boxcars these are freight cars of the railroad and 1700 people or so who are put into these cars to be shipped to this neutral Port possibly in Spain or possibly in Turkey after nine days on this train Manny just before you tell us about actually being on the train tell us how you your mother and your uncle were able to be part of that group future the selection process is unknown to anybody however what happened is that the this this relief organization or this rescue organization was composed of all manner of Hungarian Jewish leadership the old beyond the religious the non-religious design is the non-zionist it each was kind of allotted a certain number of people that they could put on the on the particular train I have no idea I was never able to find out and I have to admit I did not do extensive research on trying to find out what group had how many seats however in one of the groups we were able to be to find Space because my father had a position of some notoriety in the community he was known and so did my uncle who was involved with some elements of the Hungarian native kind of underground the underground here was knocked with guns but he was involved with some people who would Forge papers the bedroom where I slept in our apartment was vacated once or twice I remember and I had to go on to a couch with my parents bedroom because this the printing press that produced fake documents was to be in our house for a day or two this was a Movable Feast it went from place to place but while this was in our house we had to be away and my uncle was involved in this process so he had a certain kind of knowledge and a certain kind of um responsibility and maybe some privilege Within These groups as a consequence he and I and my mother in a very distant cousin and his future wife actually had space his future wife is the board of the Auschwitz and never joined us but she did survive the war so the four of us were in this group and we were shipped by these 35 box cars and after nine days we arrived to the place not the neutral Port but a place that none of us knew called Auschwitz I'm sorry called Bergen Bells what do you remember well two questions Manny one is your father was not with you why was that well because he was in the labor battalions and he couldn't just say I'm leaving now right 10 seconds were very very severe although it was only 60 kilometers from Budapest he could have easily transported by train but he couldn't leave he was under absolute guard and as a matter of fact anybody would tried to leave the punishment for the group was something called decimation decimation was they lined everybody up and every 10th Man was shot period as simple as that and as complicated as tragic as that you couldn't just walk away I mean right he couldn't do that and it survived obviously but not with us so without your father you go it's a nine day journey and these box cars and you end up in a place called Bergen Belson what do you remember about your arrival at bergen-belsen well again in some odd ways the uh eight-year-old almost eight-year-old that students traveling find some of this as kind of either exciting or maybe in some way uh dramatic or in some way kind of adventurous but we arrived in bergenville so we got out of the Train on a platform and we're told to march in a certain direction when we arrived at these these these uh Barracks each holding about 100 to 120 people I was not enormously crowded but it was not you know it's not leisurely either we were divided into various groups of men women and different barracks and then there was a Barrack that had to do with families which usually meant mothers and children I and my mother were infected that Barrack the barracks were sparse the bags had three-tiered bunk beds my mother and I had the three tiers and that's where we stayed that was that was home as it were Manny we have um we have a video question from a student kaya from Maryland let's let's hear from Kaya hi my name is Kaya I'm from College Park Maryland during your family's time in bergen-felson what was the community like and how did you and your mother spend your days question she asks during your family's time in bergen-belsen what was the community like and how did you and your mother spend your days well my mother and I and everybody else essentially spent their days in similar non-activities there were two things that we were concerned about every day the first we go back to something with which she talked about earlier called the census the in German it's called the Appel the counting of people the the dunk of leadership but the Nazis decided that we have to be counted every day we're told Dawn we're to be outside of the barracks lined up in a formation to be counted now the problem was that they would come not a dawn they would come at five six seven eight nine ten eleven or not twelve o'clock I think in the latest everything was eleven but for several hours every day after began to start raining it was August September uh the weather was not good we would be out there in the mire uh be waiting to be counted they would count us and then we'd go back and put a cabins that was a major stressful situation for us for some time until one of the officers said this is absurd I mean some logic did exist he said I'm going to be here at 8 o'clock in the morning I don't care if you get here five minutes of eight but be here at eight o'clock well with one that find the neighborhood then maybe at 7 30 but 25 30 minutes of waiting for him to arrive were lost a lot better than hours on end the second activity had to do with food or what you called food our food deliveries were twice a day in the morning as it happened our particular set of Barracks were across the main road for one of the many kitchens in bergen-belsen at one time Bergen does that 25 000 people so you can imagine there were various kinds of field kitchens some men from my group under guard would literally cross the road well not very far and come back but Vats kind of like garbage cans garbage can handsome but they were clean of some liquid in the morning some dark liquid and bread the bread was very good occasionally some butter came with it the dark liquid was coffee or that's what they called it I don't know what it was but the major good part of it was the fact that it was warm now we were told to bring some food with us for the train ride and people brought food and people bought thermoses and of course that was all used up and Bachelor was used up but the thermoses could be refilled with this warm liquid which gave us some warmth during the day to warm up a bed or to warm your hands or to warm your insides by drinking it was it good probably not but it was warm in the afternoon for five o'clock I know exactly when the same thing took place now what came back again was some bread no butter and some brown thing with some stuff floating in it maybe a carrot maybe a potato maybe a piece of meat maybe it was horse meat I don't know but again the people who then dealt with the food the women the mothers did miraculous things with these things that they would recreate in various Fashions and obviously we didn't starve to death now we didn't have a lot of food we were hungry all the time but we were not the skeletons that you see in Bergen bells and three or four months after we left when the camp was being liberated in April of 1945. Manny we have an audience question from Kayla Kayla asks did you have any health problems from being there well without being there was the cause of that I don't know but I developed something some form of pneumonia which is you know is a bacterial infection of your lungs now we have 35 doctors in the group of the camp and these doctors were medically trained without any equipment or they may have had handbags but no medication you know that pneumonia is an infection it's treated with antibiotics which were not yet available penicillin had just been recently discovered and I can assure you the first place that they went to was not the concentration camps and the doctor stole my mother look if the kid is strong enough physically he will survive because his body will recover and if he's not that's the end they could do nothing except give me some what today is called palliative care what's palliative care it makes you feel a little bit less sore or less hurt they found some place again I don't know how these things came about but they found burlap material they found Mustard Seed which they crushed they took some of the hot water from the morning coffee they put the Mustard Seed powder in it and then soaked the burlap back to pick up the Mustard Seed which they then draped across my chest now the function of that was to act like a mentholatum kind of thing like Vicks or Orville or or Bengay it gave a mental kind of an effect and it warmed my chest now when you breathe in with pneumonia is hurts you put something warm on the chest it makes you feel a little better did it cure anything no did it make you feel better yes Manny this is what you're describing was what you experienced along with the others that were part of the castner train how did your experience differ from other prisoners at bergen-belsen the major significant difference for all 1700 or some people was that this remember Bergen builds was not a death camp lots and lots of people died about the Christian of starvation and of typhus which is a major disease which I didn't have but the point was that they died among other regions because they were turned out to work every day in farming and agriculture in mining and whatever they would March out the morning and March back at night our group was not turned out door why because the arrangement for the Nazis to get the loot was to get the loot after we were released whatever that was and it was a per capita kind of an arrangement whereby if some of us had died the loot would be reduced There Was X amount of whatever valuables and a couple thousand dollars a person and if 10 people died it was twenty thousand dollars less and I'm making up those numbers they're close but I don't know precisely right so they were very concerned that although we did have you know major food and other things and when we went out to showers periodically we didn't know until after many years sometime later that some showers and some places didn't have water but yes we had water we didn't know that either but they were concerned that we stay alive on some condition and nobody died including me out of the entire group that's amazing yep Manny we have another audience question from Cassie Cassie asks did you manage to keep your faith while you were in the camp and after one of the fascinating things to me in fascinating you know more recently is the fact that the thing that happened at Camp was an attempt to return to normal so now how are you going to be normal in berican Belgium it's difficult to describe but what happened is the school was open lectures were open concerts were open the synagogue was built all kinds of normal relationships were established in order to to experience that which could have been normal even under these circumstances as a consequence our being Jews and being whatever we were before continued and there was no challenge to that by the Nazis or anybody else many in December 1944 after six months in bergen-belsen you and the majority of the group you arrived with were sent to Switzerland tell us about what happened after you arrived in Switzerland negotiations continued and after six weeks and back of bills on about 350 of the people I have no idea by what choice were in fact taken out of bergamels and put on German troop trains which were not first class trains but they were not boxcars and shipped to Switzerland which was able which was willing to accept that some months later the full six months that I spent I was not in the first group we all were taken out of Dragon Ball Z and taken to Switzerland now the Swiss are very clever people the gauge of the railroad and so it's something that's different than the gauge in Germany you can drive a German train into Switzerland which also means you can't invade Switzerland by Railroad clever we arrived near the city of San Galen the German part of Switzerland we came out of our troop trains also not box cars which were darken with that electricity without lights if we could cross the platform into these lit beautiful warm inviting Swiss trains which then took us into the city we were offered a chocolate other kind of chocolate that's a nice place the first thing the Swiss did to us when we arrived he's decided that after coming out of bergen-belsen but with good reason we should be fumigated so we don't bring the Vermin into Switzerland which is a very clean country we were there from there were taken to the French part of Switzerland which is near Montreux into a beautiful Resort hotel which was at that time run by the Red Cross and we were fed well a lot of potatoes somebody once asked what was our first meal I said I don't remember the first meal but I do remember with a certain amount of authority that potatoes should be part of it they thought that with potatoes and things of that nature we would gain a few pounds that we were not skeletons but we could use a few pounds we were there for a several weeks at which point the group had to be divided up some people went back to Hungary well not the Hungary but the other environments in Switzerland some were shipped elsewhere and I and 19 other kids ages 6 to 14 were shipped to a boarding school in the German body Switzerland in Harrison Province and the City of Haydn to be there for whatever length of time we don't know but we were there until September of that year and rather interestingly one of the people who were shipped with us was my mother why they knew that she had been a teacher now the 20 of us needed some kind of quote education now how you run a classroom for kids from ages 6 to 14 is difficult but she came along as a guardian as a As a caretaker as a referee because among other things and the most important Partners is my wife I had a very good German for the school she had considerable amount of French as well and none of us said anything except Hungarian now what you see here is I think that 20 or whatever number of us the group you see on the very right the woman with a hat is the nurse she didn't speak a word of Hungarian somebody had to translate for her my mother's in the Middle with the circle around her head the man on the left with the bald head as Mr Miller who was the director of the king who was a Viennese German a Viennese Jew as a consequence somebody had to be there to try and translate the most Elementary of of discussion with the people who were there I mean if we needed the toilet paper we didn't know how to say that in German or French you can see my mother has a circle on her head and I have a circle around my head on the bottom on the left Mr Miller I mean after Switzerland came actually to Philadelphia where I was where I spent most of my young high school days and became the director of an orphan's home and I had a chance to meet with him again and of course by by today he's long gone we had another picture from this uh time we passed over let's go back to it tell us this is your mom and you right yes and uh my this little cousin who was with us who at the time was by this time in 45 he was four years four five years old he is a young man who would then eventually did get to Palestine with all of a sudden stayed there and he has a family with several children he's now 82 years old I visited with him four or five years ago and we're in touch on the down regular basis but he was my brother for two years would briefly describe what was life like at the Children's Home for you what was that experience like for you well it was a boarding school experience so we ate meals together we you know did our cleanup together we went to school together I can describe precisely how I was divided because obviously the 14 year olds were not learning how to read and write with a six-year-old and he was a he was the youngest of the bunch or the seven or eight year old most of us were probably between 9 and 12. I was eight well we were in Switzerland in the school it was a lovely Place uh there were some we could go skiing go hiking we could go into the forest life was very nice as a boarding as a boarding school life would be on in any situation the fact that we were Holocaust Survivors was unimportant we had some contact with the other kids and as we learned some German a little bit of French we could communicate with them the other kids are from Belgium and Holland and German Jewish kids but as I say the permit the first problem was we couldn't talk with them so we kind of talked her own language which was with my our hands and our feet but life was very nice for the from December or so until September of the next year or August of the next year the 45. now I was there as the war ended which ended on the 5th or on 8th of May 1945 and then that happened to be your birthday right well there were three important things that happened on May the 8th 1945 we heard about this course on the radio Switzerland is close to Germany and we were very pleased with that but I don't remember anything changing the three things that are important on the fifth of on the 8th of May is that in fact the war ended on the 8th of May 1945. I was born on the 8th of May in 1936 the president of the United States who at that time was no longer Roosevelt he died in April it was Harry Truman Harry Truman was born on the 8th of May 18 something or other I don't recall the year but the date I recall so every May 8th every year I recall my birthday the end of the war and the birthday of one of my favorite historic figures namely Harry S Truman Manny tell us what happened to your family once the war ended well we discovered what parts of the family were around I mentioned earlier two ants of my mother and mother sisters who in fact uh survived the war and we're back in Yugoslavia eventually moved to the then Palestine and at Israel her youngest brother was drafted into the Yugoslav Army very shortly after the end was sent to Italy he was taken pow in Italy and survived the war as a pow also repent Yugoslavia her two older brothers both died in labor camp or some other fashion her parents died in the same way my father's two older brother no two younger brothers died in labor camps the youngest brother made it to Israel with us and was there unfortunately at the age of 35 having received a very prestigious teaching position in the city of Haifa died of a stroke or heart attack or both very suddenly in 1949 other than that their children you know if as I said to you the children who would have been with us or would have been alive cousins also were killed in various kinds of death camps Manny we have I'd like to share a question and a comment from the audience the comment is thank you for sharing your story and living to tell your history both the good and the awful and asks what was The Reunion with your father like well as we talked about earlier from 42 to 44 I saw them sporadically and irregularly from 44 to 46 I didn't see him at all by 19 we got to Palestine then in 1945 in September he was unable to get there until August of 1946 and it's a whole lot of story but the point is when we met we kind of we had now been in a different country we had a different language I was speaking Hebrew he knew some Hebrew a lot of Hebrew but it was no longer the language with which we parted in 1942. uh we had to get reacquainted I had missed four years with him kind of and there were things that I didn't understand that he didn't understand because he had not been a father for four years and there was a four formative years for his son let me also add that it was the one son that he had because excuse me because I am quite sure although we never discussed this that my parents as did the rest of the family made a decision in the 30s I was born in 36 I had a cousin born in 35 another one in 36 another one 37. they would have produced a sibling for these children in 38 39 40 41. by that time they came to the very clear decision and point that this is not the time to bring children into the world as a consequence my aunt who had a daughter who was killed the Auschwitz only had that daughter the other and had no children the uncle who was in the pow had no children didn't Berry enter after the war another Uncle lost no my other uncle's son survived and the oldest uncles two children also survived but the point is the rest of us grew up as only children put a point that of the six adults in my mother's family including her only five children were produced six adults well that's remarkable thank you for sharing that I have just one more question for you today Manny as we Face Rising anti-Semitism related conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial please tell us what we can learn from you about what you experienced during the Holocaust it's not so much what you're gonna learn from me but what you can learn from what I experienced I'm a fan of a philosopher that came up with a phrase which all of us remember although we don't remember his name he said those of us who do not learn our history well may be doomed to repeat it parts of it or elements of it his name was George santayana he said this in California as it is a professor 120 years ago of thereabouts the point I want to make is that if we don't learn what happened whether it's my experience or the experience of thousands and millions of others we are making a mistake because we cannot know what in the future unless we have a very clear understanding of what took place in the past today we talked about my past which has been helpful in my present and I hope that will be helpful in my future which I hope was around for a few more years thank you thank you Manny so much before we close I'd like to share one more comment from the audience Michelle writes so proud of you Goosebumps and I haven't heard Uncle Lewis's voice in years he and my grandmothers look so much alike Michelle is my first cousin once removed my grandmother was my father's sister my grandmother had a daughter who came to this country in 1914 who had three children the youngest of those children my first cousin is the mother of Michelle who lives in Philadelphia so glad that's wonderful Manny thank you so much for being our first person you have shared with us I I would imagine a part of the Holocaust that very few of us are acquainted with story of the castner train how remarkable beginning with a Preposterous proposal to trade one million lives for 10 000 trucks and it ends up with 1700 and you and your mom were part of that thank you very much Manny pleasure Bill see you again I'd like to also take a moment to thank our donors first person is made possible through the generous support of the Lewis Franklin Smith Foundation and I'd also like to invite you to join our next program please tune in on January 18 2023 at 1 pm eastern time for a conversation with Holocaust Survivor and Museum volunteer agita despite unimaginable challenges Auggie her sister and her mother managed to stay together during the Holocaust surviving a death march in four different camps including Auschwitz join us to hear auggie's Story of Survival thank you for watching

Channel: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Views: 22,331

Keywords: Holocaust survivor, Holocaust Museum, Bill Benson, Emanuel Mandel, Antisemitism, Star of David, Yellow Star, Hungary, Switzerland, ushmm, budapest, danube

Id: G_GZkbFClXA

Length: 61min 13sec (3673 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 14 2022