Abram Goldberg - Holocaust Survivor Testimony

i was born in poland lodge my name is ivan goldberg i was the youngest of four siblings i had three sisters i was the only boy my father was born in 1888 and at the early age of year 12 he joined all the socialist movement of the bund it was a jewish socialist organization and till the day he was murdered by the nazis by the germans and 1942 out of nearly 700 000 inhabitants a third of the population of lodge was jewish so it was a very vibrant jewish community and all aspects of normal cultural political life and this come to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the war with the outbreak of the war on the first of september 1939 it was a friday five o'clock in the morning we could hear the first bomb fell on the lodge a whole way out and this was the only bombing what occurred in lodge and only seven days afterwards the following friday that germans marched into the city of lodge and of course immediately life changed completely also law what were implemented in germany from 33 to 39 applied immediately to the use of lodge it meant that we were put outside the law and as i could as i did drag us out male or female young or old from the houses for all kinds of work of course without payment and usually many did not return late in the evening the one who returned were always black and blue for the beatings i received we had to hand in all valuables firstly all cameras and radios it was not only what jews had to hand and even paul said to hand in radius and of course jews were not allowed back to the places of employment synagogues were burned down you see in after a short while we had to put on the forces to put on a yellow armband only way we could go out was to the wires and those wires wired the barbed wire was guarded by the german schutz polizzi and those those who guarded together very often took off the rifle and make men or women or a child a moving target and so i just aimed in shock many people were murdered that way once we were enclosed in together life become impossible hunger was so great in 1940 in the middle of 1940 the bund organized the first protest and people went out into our demonstration in ghetto a few people were wounded and we realized immediately that if we would there again to openly protest and we realize it's a consequence that will be too great so we abandoned this part of our resistance everything had to be done in a different way our resistance have to be different so as we called it at the time and today it's a passive resistance and our passive resistance meant to encourage the jews of together to hold out so after 1941 when schooling was forbidden so we organized schooling for children as long as i went together in small groups we organized reading groups we collected books in small libraries what was er everything every illegal work was under the threat of debt not only for the person who will be called but families and much more because the nazis employed collective responsibility and so we organized those reading groups we read the books we discussed those books we organized recitals the other complies our cultural life and us long our side didn't kill us physically we never contemplated to in giving up before 1942 when there was the biggest action in ghetto it was called the gesture i've lost my entire family then and as far as i remember around 50 cousins uncles grandparents aunties so i was left with my mother before the liquidation of the lodge getter i was left with my mother i was sent only with my mother and i as i was in the underground and i was from the people who knew who went to know what's happening to us i went into hiding and i was able to hide out for four weeks and after four weeks my mother she was in her early 50s couldn't take it any longer because i prepared some hiding places beforehand in arctics and bunkers concealed of course and we sometime had to change those hiding places on saran and my mother wasn't capable of doing it any longer she was emaciated physically very weak and she came out with a proposition that i should go on hiding and she will present herself for deportation i couldn't let my mother go on her own i was 19 years old at the time and i they think that maybe when we arrived and i knew where we're going to virgina to auschwitz i will be able to help my mother but because it was to know our whale on arrival immediately on arrival when the those heavy doors were flanked up in the scream of the ss everybody out men one side women on the other side women and children's other side and those precious moment my mother was able to tell me that abram you should do everything humanly possible to survive and when you will survive wherever you will be wherever you will find yourself you should tell people what was happening to us and what was done to us because by knowing people will be able to prevent that anything like this will never happen again to anyone and only a short while afterwards i lost the last member of my family in the guest chambers of bergen when i was driven to tibat i was allowed only my shoe in my belt if you chew it too good it was taken away and you will give them wooden clothes fortunately i had very good shoes and so shoes were not taken away and this is particularly later on it kept me warm for all for also the next nine months and i was for over three months and i always say i was in hell for three months you can imagine when you saw 24 hours the chimneys of the crematorius bulging are smoke the chimneys of it was terrible and you could smell the burning flesh because if the crematorius could cope so i burnt the people on pius so i usually made with us gymnastics i said for our goods and usually as i choose a day where it was raining it was very muddy and sai made with us for an hour or more we couldn't tell the time but to us it's it sounds like an eternity and you can imagine we had to sit down push-ups and sometimes inside the inside ask us to take off the belt and spread it across our our hands and and the belt fell off will be will be beaten up so insist what happened how can when you have a belt across you a leather belt it had to fall off so so one who was unlucky and he picked he had a beating sometime to death and then well on a couple of occasions well we had line to line up so i again choose a couple of hundred and it's supposed to be work work it wasn't actually work so i made us carry stones from one end to the other on tehran for many hours and for anybody who fell behind a club to death well my survival is not three jewish generation ourselves my children and my grandchildren we all should remember that we all belong to the same human eye to human race no difference of the color of our skin or the shape of our eyes our ethnic or religious background what helps one human being hurts also another and you should always respect always respect other people with what a bit different than yourself hitler came to power on those presences and on source racial discrimination discriminative slogans that of a superior race no one no one of us is superior to another human being we are different but not superior you

Channel: Melbourne Holocaust Museum

Views: 23,248

Keywords: Jewish Holocaust Centre, Melbourne, Australia, Survivor Testimony, the Holocaust, Eyewitness

Id: OOj417icD2I

Length: 12min 48sec (768 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 10 2011