Holocaust Survivor Israel “Izzy” Arbeiter Shares His Story

can you please share your story with us your story my story your story yeah [Music] my name is uh izzy israel pcr right there i was born in poland in a city called plotsk plock my mother uh she said that she has a base a basketball team you can see the picture on the wall five boys i was the middle one of course the best looking one and we were a happy family five boys you know uh there there were arguments fights between us the boys but that was at home but if a stranger would start with one of the boys he had to deal with fun and you see the little one there seven years old when he got murdered in tribunca he couldn't reach up to the uh to the fella that we were fighting but so he kicked him in the legs it was funny but um everything went was all right you know poland wasn't the richest country in the world my father was a tailor constantly he might make make custom clothes and um and prolonged there was a lot of jewish people it was non-jewish communities but then we were happy um we were living in a touring apartment that was middle class so one of the room was the kitchen my father's tailor shop in the dining room that was one of the rooms the second room was the bedroom for seven people and and the office for my father to deal with the customers so you can imagine seven people sleeping in one in one room we were sleeping four in one bed two to the head and two from the other side but this was live in poland before the war we didn't know that they're better we heard about america and the saying about america was there is money laying in the street you just gotta know how to pick it up so i was very anxious to get there and i was practicing how to pick up money from the from this industry and that was going on until september 1st 1939 when the germans attacked poland the city of plusque was located that air still is located 90 kilometers from the german border which is 90 kilometers it took the german army three days uh to enter prolonged to enter the city of florsk in other parts of poland uh poland uh capitulated after about four weeks uh so that was september 1939 in october november 1939 i a ghetto was established and all the jewish people of the city which was ten thousand strong were ordered to live in a certain section of the city it was called the jewish ghetto we were ordered to weigh the yellow star of star of david i'm sure you have probably seen that before we could not leave the ghetto you were allowed to leave only if you went to work the only place of work was for the germans food was legend only those that went to work for the germans that their ancient heart which was getting smaller and smaller every time there were certain things that were not adoration cut at all like body sugar meat bread was free i mean we could buy bread we could buy potatoes things of technician and but so life wasn't as happy as it was before in poland and compete a little uh like i said we were not the age problem wasn't a rich country but we were happy the jewish people who live in color one area it was a happy a happy life that we didn't know any better there were better places to live but we didn't know and so we were satisfied with that and like i said in november of 1939 they get was established only those that work for the germans were allowed to live together living together was without the permeate i was very strongly punished and sometimes even with the death penalty it didn't take very much for a jew to do something according to the germans wrong for them to shoot that person or hang him the people that were accused of doing something wrong to a german as a matter of fact i was in 1939 still when we were living in the ghetto all of a sudden came up a year a lie that a german soldier drunk germa soldier got lost in the jewish ghetto and he got beaten up there by the jews which was not true and therefore they are ordered 25 jews at at them from together to pick out and they were committed to that they were hung indicator for the others to see and what they were saying this is what's going to happen if you do harm to the germans at the beginning the german that came in was the regular army calling the wehrmacht but this was the frontline troops and they were just kept going forward right behind them came the bizarre that the occupation forces consisting of the gestapo i'm sure you know what the gestapo was and all different kinds of police units and they brought with them the nuremberg laws which were already employed in in germany uh the nuremberg laws uh um the laws that were existing by the local police in the ghettos and was getting more stronger and people were being picked up from the streets people disappeared and they were sent away you never see them again um people were beating up tortured and so forth and so it was getting the the laws in the ghetto were and stronger every time in 19 plus like i mentioned before 190 kilometers from the german border because of that the area around where we were living which was called massobsheik was incorporated into the third and therefore it was declared urinary of reality of jews uh the order came in february of 1941 that all the jews from the ghetto in the middle of the night without any prior warning uh the ss units are coming into the kettle in order to all the jews out from together and they give us 15 minutes to take whatever you could with them so imagine that there's families that are proper living there from generation from one generation to the other and they were giving 15 minutes to leave everything behind and take whatever only what they could what do you do in a situation like that first you try to get a loaf of bread or something to eat and everything that stays of course the polish population by and large was very impressive and during that occasion they couldn't wait the minutes to uh for the jews to be taken out of together so they could go in and and rub the the houses get in it with the jews for living and there eventually got the area in the ghetto where the jews were living for giving to the poles and we were shipped to a to whisperers in east russia to the first camp in 1941 uh it was called it was east russia so that was the name of the king over there we got the first taste of what it is to live under the nazis come and get and go from the trucks and the buses or whatever we had to run through a car in a very narrow place you know each side were staying assessment and poles with sticks with baseball bats and they were hitting us as we were running along we would those that got through good shape were placed in buttocks that belonged before to the military buttock there was nothing there except a little straw on the floor they will still impact the whole family and uh the um to start the punishment of the jews or to show what they can do they closed the excuse me the toilets were closed up in the middle of the camp they would dig with the forced us to dig a hole like like this city and this was the uh toilet whatever you had to do men or women you were staying in top of the hill and doing what you had to do so imagine we're still civilized people were being chased out from our homes we in our homes we were living a civilized life although we were tortured we were murdered that it was bad but here you gotta stay if you gotta go in the middle of the day this is where you're going men women children so that was terrible and the buttock of course like i said there was just a little straw so that's what we were sleeping on that straw thank god with warden wasn't there too long we were shipped out from there after about two or three weeks to um uh deep into prolonged uh in a pound called starakovic in was star very poor area of poland they were um people living with him boss in place were living in two room apartments there were a lot of people that had a one-room apartment in the ghetto because it was a small town and they had to get together the people and place them in that ghetto i remember there was a shoemaker called yakit mandu and he had one room isn't wasn't much bigger than this one here and had a little shop where he was fixing shoes and there was one bed he had seven children and the saying was when he needed a part to fix a pair of shoes for a customer he was trying to reach under the bed and he grabbed a kid by their legs and pulled it out because they were all over the place there and it was there there the situation was getting very serious there was an ammunition factory before the war the poles had their ammunition factory so now of course the germans took it over and they continued to produce ammunition that they needed for their army but they also needed slaves so we were the slaves and we were taken to work in the ammunition factory i was assigned to work at the artillery shelves i was in 1939 i was 14 years old and think about it at the age of 14 under the nazis i was declared a slave condemned to death for the only crime i have committed because i was born to jewish parents and that was my life from there on a 14 year old slave condemned to that so we were placed there in the um installation in the beginning there was the factory and we could go home to our families we got a room with another family that had two rooms so they forced to give up one room to my family and they moved into another family i don't think whether humanity with your families but think what i'm gonna say it was difficult enough to place to take a family of seven place somebody else had to give up a room from their two rooms and just have other people living there but the worst thing was for the two women to share the kitchen can you imagine can you just could you you can just imagine uh whether it's your mother's or your grandmother's or whatever have to share that the people that live there the woman that lives there have to share the kitchen with my mother bad enough they didn't like us they didn't invite us they didn't want us to be there but we my mother had to share she had to share the kitchen with my mother and let me tell you there was no electric heating there was no electric kitchen it was coral and wood that's what it was and we didn't have any pots or anything so we had to use their dishes and everything for them so it was terrible we were assigned to live there by the jewish by the jcrc not the ones from boston it was called the jewish community council when we arrived there they had to register to get a what's called a liam's metal type a uh relation card if you didn't register for work you didn't get addiction card so um with the duration card uh we those that were working got that whatever was on duration uh in the stores too that can be bought again no not intellectually it was just enough enough to survive for a couple of days because then in 1941 and i'm sure you heard about that at the bonsai conference the onesie conference was in berlin was a villa that was owned by rituals before they were sent down to a concentration camp before the german juices were sent out before us and and the and under the direction of himmler which got others from hitler um a group of uh assessment and high-ranking nazi were placed in that pla in that conference room and after five days of drinking and this is my interpretation for it now a bunch of drunken nazis uh were decided the faith of 11 million jewish people that were living in europe at the time the plan that was worked out by them was the 11 those people those jewish people that live under the day under the occupation of the germans will be exterminated and the other six million that live in the unoccupied year when the german army moves forward and occupies those territory they will also come on the doors under those laws and beginning in 1942 um they started to uh there was set up special unit special ss unit that will come again to the ghettos taking out the jewish people and take him to the uh concentration camps um you must keep in mind that there were three different kind of camps one was the slave labor camps uh people that were taken out from the ghettos and forced to perform slave labor the second one was cut durations cut their operations with slave labor with hard work so it was 12-hour shifts to work and very little food the third one was the extermination in the gas chambers in the certain concentration camps that were built cashews there was six camps the first one was in a place called auschwitz the germans changed it to auschwitz before the war is a polish cavalry camp where the polish army were practicing and staked in and then they the germans turned into a prison for polish prisoners of war in 1942 beginning of 1942 him that caught came there to see to visit that and he liked what he saw a prison a kim and polish prisoner survivor and he ordered and nearby another camp should be built which was called auschwitz two our stores auschwitz one in auschwitz two there were the other one was only three kilometers apart you get now every year you got the uh the march of the livings the people that are coming to auschwitz and down walking the three kilometers to girl canal because in birkenau that was the new cam and that's where the guest chambers were placed there were five guest chambers in auschwitz auschwitz bill canal actually which is was the same thing but it was called al should berger now in birkenau they built on the himalayas orders five guest chambers and crematoriums the first one there was a a banker where the polish military that was training paid was keeping their supplies so now they took that out they closed the windows they made a door from a steel door door in a little hole that's that you can look in there and see what's happening and that's when they started to experiment with their guessing and the first one that were actually killed they were the russian prisoners of war at that time before that himley brought some chemists from a company that produces chemistry chem chemicals chemicals thank you and they that they were it was cytome that it was used before on killing mice in rats and so they suggested that if it can kill human things it probably kill human beings too and so they tried in that little gesturing thing uh which was now returned like a star question and they build me by a crematorium where they can build their own ovens with a big chimney in a or in an oven where they could burn their bodies it's now 80 years since i left the place with those tall chimneys but whenever i go drive by or go by someplace and i see factories with tall chimneys i get the shoulders and um and to me in myself i say is that something where we're gonna wind up but of course they were here in america and but just to say that they'd never get out from the system seeing those chimneys around where they're now switzerland then day and night the smell they were when i was in auschwitz in 1944 there were 10 000 people imagine 10 000 and affected me for the destroying for murdering of people every day ten thousand jews were brought in by trains and open cattle trains in guests and burned in the in the crematoriums and himless over this the biggest one could hold 2 000 people at once the others were 1000 1500 but the biggest was 2 000 people at once and so this way they can exterminate 10 000 people a day the guest chambers could in 15 minutes kill a full room with with people it was just up to us to bring the bodies out bring them up to the crematoriums where again our jewish people prisoners were working at the at the ovens and burned the bodies the gas chambers can can couldn't murder more people than that but the crematoriums couldn't burn the bodies that fast so they build outside ditches with crates they put crates on top of it and they started to burn additional people that didn't catch up with the guest chambers and so they would put two um three people at the crates at one but there were several ditches and that was the although it was very bad and terrible horrible to see those people come as we came with the train in the selection by dr mendeleev by other doctors and those and they were selected into two groups one was the left wonders to the right uh you didn't know which one is which because mengele didn't say anything he was just pointing with the finger left you were walking by him and he was just pointing left or right left or right and when the this uh the group was worked out uh we didn't know which way this group is going or where this group is going my the group that i was my brothers uh the next day s didn't see the people that was that were placed on the left side but we found out afterwards that they went straight to the gas chambers we were taken to the say to the right although we didn't know which is where and we were placed on the gypsy again sure you must have heard about the chipses the egyptians had a separate cam all by themselves they were taken to outsides before before the jews did and um and they were living there with the families and they were allowed to take everything with them dogs horses uh whole families but then one night while we were where we were breaking in put excuse me and we were put in the uh guests and the buttocks on the left side they were empty on the right side the egyptians were living and so during the night we had a lot of noise uh the sun the commander you sure you know what is in the commandos it was a jewish special unit that was picked out toward the guest chambers and the crematoriums uh it was mostly i'd say 99 jewish people in the center commando and um and the ss came with the big trucks and they just took the gypsies out the whole terminal is just as it is and took them straight down to the gas chambers and gas them liquidated them and so we were living on the gypsy camphor for a little while and this is where i started to learn about life in the austrians what it was it was a tragic thing about the people i'm sure you'll probably ask me too how come how did you survive i tell you briefly you had to check chances you had to be smart and you had to have help i had all three being on the gypsy camp i don't know whether you know the layout of our switzer was it's called the kim but it's actually an area an area which you see over here that goes this way and there were products on each side there were 31 buttocks in each which were called the cam because it was all one camp austrias on the other side on the left side were the men's scan people only men they were going to work out to work every day on the other side of the gypsy camp was the what they call the hospital the hospital was for people that didn't go to work that got sick they were placed there and they could live a day or two or whatever and this was the next place today that came to the to the area there called zazenki where the people were gassed and incremented i noticed i was with two of my brothers that the people from the men's camp that were working coming back from work especially the sunday commander and the canada would come to the fencing throwing over through the fence some bread if you knew somebody i didn't know anybody but i saw that that man is coming every day a man is coming there every day into the camp to the gypsy camp and pick an out man that he takes over the other side for work that they saw capable and professional so i went to my two brothers and said see there is a man in civilian clothes coming every day i seen the pikema picks out a group of men and takes it over i say when he comes next day i'm gonna see what he's doing so the next day then that man comes and he starts picking people so he's looking for outdoor mechanics so i go to my two brothers that was staying alone on the side and i says he's looking for auto mechanics so we're going to go over and register and my brother says are you insane you're out the mechanics in our city of plots if you saw our car go through the through the states everybody opened the windows and looked out what this is and here we're going to be out the mechanics says they kill us they'll shoot us i says look they might shoot us but at least we i'll die on a full stomach because of the day you get food over here will die starving the skeleton or they will die on a full stomach so i go over to this man and i think the two brothers and they're afraid to get too close to me so they're a little in the bed and they say and i say yeah we three are auto mechanics he looks at us my younger brother is two years younger i think he must have been 14 at that time i was 16 and my other brother was two years older he looked at the three of us and they tapped me on the shoulder and says you must be good mechanics good ultra mechanics oh i said sure we can focus on we can fix alternate outdoors he says okay he got the group of us and we went over on the to the men's side and right away you got a soup but now you got a thick soup here you got a watery soup over there you got a support we said that you could just spoon stick in and it'll remain standing you know that was a thick soup and so i says to my brother see at least now we're not hungry what's gonna happen next we'll see so now we design and we get the numbers i'm sure you've seen the numbers of the slave minus mine is a 18 651 and so we got the numbers from there we're taking to a separate part of the of the empty barracks where it was the shallow room you ordered to go in and dress and we placed in a product and you see things have been hanging down from the ceiling by now we knew what's happening to the people to the other people that there is gas comes out from the ceiling and we went in we saw what's hanging down from the ceiling and of course now the product the doors were closed and we don't know what it is whether it is they say we're gonna you're gonna get a shower now whether we got to get a shower with water or a shower with gas so you could see a a room full of men and staying everybody looking up to the shooter and shaking and looking up in the ceiling what's going to come and then all of a sudden that thing opens up and water comes out cold water you should have been they see that screaming and the crying and hugging a bunch of uh naked men hugging each other because water came out not guess uh and before when we came in they told us to undress and tie up the claws because when you come out you'll get back your your own clothes it wasn't so when we came out from the other door after we got the cold shower to get the clothes you have people that it was called the uh but tried them for the clothing room and they were also prisoners working and they would throw me at you a pair of pants a jacket that's really good um if you're lucky you little close but otherwise you were short you got a long pair of pants if you're high if you're tall you got a short period of time not that they picked they just from a pile they just picked out and throw it the next next night and from there you were assigned to work i was assigned to a dismantling place and augmented place was a large area right outside the tents of the cam where platforms were coming every day open three platforms with airplanes on them it was at a place that was shut down from the frontlines it was americans british german russians people you seemed sometimes in the uh photos on the television how um uh aeroplanes that they came down some just bursts and flames others would lose a wheel or a wing but the main things what they were looking for is for the gasoline some that didn't explode had gasoline in them and the dashboards for that they have special men we called meister specialists germans that were taken out to the dashboard and trying to see fine which are damaged the good parts so that they took it off and they were shipped to germany to the factories where they were built nearly i was given a barrel and a hose and put me to a airplane that was damaged on one side but it was outside and they said to scythe out the gasoline because the germans were in great need of gas and first of all i wasn't used to that because you get that these the fumes from the gasoline and that makes you makes you drunk or makes you dizzy but i was i had no choice uh if you were staying it didn't work you got a very strong beating but i didn't do it very much because of big russia there was russians working there russians prisoners of war a big russian comes over to me and said hey what are you doing that's my job your girl give me give me this you go there i was happy to give him they were drinking that stuff there was no gas there was no vodka but that was alcohol so i was happy to give it to them and i was set uh assigned to the platform after the good parts were taken away and then it was cut the aluminum and put back on relationship to the factories to dismantling factories so i was assigned to that and i started to work with the big russian because i was a little skinny guy and it was the russians because prison is a war and so when we came back at night to the camp i said to myself i'm not going to live there very long that's a hard carrying you know schlepping lifting pieces of aluminum so i says i gotta take a chance during the day just about before we checking in just before we go on back to the cam i see an assessed woman you know there was says man and that says woman i see an assassin walking in with hair nearby walks a civilian a girl uh uh dressed in a nice blue skirt and a jacket and a white blouse with the color all over the blue and i says look at this skill she must be here somebody talking with an assessed woman and all the rest steps on us and the clothes as she walked towards when i was staying the familiar says my god i know this girl this girl is called is rachel rachel tippett i went to school with her she lived in florence next door two hours and i says oh my god if she is working with the assessment maybe she can help me and so i'm kind of climbing i'm trying to i says maybe when they get very close i can jump out and talk to her and she recognized me and so she goes like this the essentials should see to me to stay not to get out to stay they assume i could have been shot because sometimes they don't interpret that we're trying to run either to run away or to attack the assessed woman or a sex man and so she goes like that you know she walking by near the daytrees she will practice and they passed by and i said see my girl my luck i know her rachel is the she could help me nothing and she just kept working but it didn't take long about 10 minutes later i say disguiser in another girl are running towards where i'm working they run by near the ditch and one throws a loaf of bread into the ditch to me and she says when you come back to the camp go to the sun the commander you know what to say the commander is from the commanders the people that will work in the guest chambers the crematoriums go to the guest chambers your cousin elec malenka is working in the in the asunder commander and the son of the commander had everything because when the transports arriving from the people the germans were taking but the good stuff when the transporter come and especially from the rich countries from france from denmark from hungary they were bringing vine and canned goods the bread they don't want to bother with the with the dirty bread so the cinder commander took it it wasn't it was illegal but they they looked away for that and so she says when you could come back you run to the sunday commando your cousin elect malenka is working today well i couldn't wait for the group to go back to the uh come back to the to the barack to the cam the son the commander was separated from all the other people in barack 10 because they didn't want that they should share what they do during the day to the other people that might come out on the outside so um so um i went in and i went that came in we were getting when we came back from work we got my slice of bread and our little buttery soup i didn't want the soup i didn't want the piece of bread i want to get that onto sunder commando where my cousin was because i knew that there's undercommander or plenty of plenty of food so i came to the center to the door so they were they were separated from the rest of the people and there was a door near the door was saying i'm a couple you know what that couple was a couple couples that they with a baseball bat all right so i go to go over to him and i say excuse me i don't want to say you i say excuse me sir uh my cousin is inside my cousin is alex malenka i would like to see him he says oh yeah you got a cousin in there and they picked up that baseball bat and they hit me over the head over the back i turned around around and he was chasing me and kept hitting me believe me it didn't hurt so much the the beating that i got with the baseball bat that the pain that i won't be able to see my cousin that he could help me give me food but i'm crying but i'm not going away from there then a few minutes later two people come out from there in civilian clothes all the prisoners were wearing you know destroyed uniforms these two come out of them and one is a big guy and so i go over to them as i'm crying and i say yeah again excuse me and i was crying that says my cousin alex malenka is here i would like to see him he says to me elect my link as your cousin i said yes so he grabs me like this and he holds me he says to the other fella go in there and bring out eleg i want to see whether he's telling the truth or not if you're lying if you're making up then i'll kill you i says yes and i i i says i yes i i'm crying yes if it's well the other fella went in and he comes out with two men one went in three coming out now this tall guy was a couple capotes on the commander was a big was a big man it was a big thing and three of them come out and this big guy that holds me says all right show me which one is ellie and i'm crying and i says i don't know i never saw him there if he was from a different city but i knew that we have relatives in the other city in dublin and he maybe and i know about the family and so um one of those other two people says to me what did you say is the man that you're looking for i says eric malenko i says do you know alec malenka's father i says yeah i know i'm not fed up my father his name is hayan his wife and you know the names of the family what are they doing they had a big reduction and so forth after a while he says to that couple he knows he's all right and so now he takes me over and he takes me in now the guy the gate the guy that was hit me stayed standing at the door when they see them being led in by important people he doesn't say nothing my cousin takes me on his bunk listen to this and he picks up the straw zach and there is a grocery store underneath his throat sick you see this when we come home from work from the day from the crematoriums on the gas chambers we're smuggling in things and so here it is so he says right away he gave me food i ate and i said i got two brothers out he gave me bread for them also and now he says where did you work today what commander did you come with and i told him the street about the highway powers he says you're not going there anymore you're going to work with the sewer cleaners because he had a system on the woman's cam and the sewer cleaners or so there were no sewers it was toilets and so we were assigned to clean the toilets so he says when looked up the couple for this group for this commander drive him and he said in the morning you wind up over here in my group and there over there came day in my cousin told me where my cousin the girl works where she is she is working in the washroom she's hiding he pays for her because they had plenty money gold gold dollars what they what they found with people who bring them and of course so he says you're going to be the contact between me and my sister and so of course when i my my cousin the girl saw me uh she just know my name and my name was ruling in poland and she had a brother by the same name and so she was very happy and took me in the right day when they were working with a few girls that had privileges in the washroom and from now on you'll be coming here and so there was a group of twelve we had a rover again and there was a role model a barrel shape like a book that's the wagon the rover and we were 12 people there were three on this side and three over here pulling and and there were six in the in the back pushing so i was among the pushes we had a long stick with a with our own touchdown like a bucket i touched over here a smaller one and we came whenever there was a toilet excuse me we took out the vase put it in the barrel there was a draw door so let's pull it off and there was one in the back and i bet you pulled it up when we went through collecting the vase there were two places that were pretty broad either at the um either at the um fields that the germans took away from the polish farmers and they used this as fertilizer it was the season that there was not needed in the fields so there was a big cesspool a huge cesspool problem as big as this uh uh this out pt and so there now i had 20 food protection because my cousin paid the copper from that group to take care of me there was a privileged group every time we were going out so now me uh before whether i was starving for a piece of bread i had here bread to give away because in what we did in that battle we did build a wire see inside to hang in inside with every group that was going out to work there was one or two depending on the size of the group was s man book assessment working with them with us they don't want to go why the the area around the penalism the smell isn't too good they didn't want to get by in case you know spill out and get on their uniforms so they let us go as long in the morning the couple had report at the gate couple so and so with 12 people for living and when we come back the same thing now other groups or what they call you know they could check them see whether they're not bringing any contraband any smuggling thinking with us they don't get to the to the barrel the couple went to the window and reported i said again they were afraid that they might get dirty so for us it was good we brought them every day we smuggled in one day the guild that i knew from the other came said to me i need a pair of shoes could you organize a pair of shoes for me and i was going every day in the crematorium in the guest chambers and so they could see after a transport came there was a pile shoes as high as the building and there was a pile with clothing and so i i said to my cousin that was working there he says i need a pair of shoes for somebody he says pick up a pair of shoes so i picked up a nice pair of shoes and i dropped it brought it put it on her or her bangs which i do did every day for breto also and in the women's product just like in the men's product was a supervisor also a prisoner a woman she's in charge of a section so if i would put the bread on her pan on a point it wouldn't last there five minutes it would have been ripped apart but she was a supervisor and i had to share and give her some breath too and so she watched that when anna comes home the broad is the breath is there for her why because she is going to get her portion too and so this way it worked beautiful it was very good um so after the war um people that were special groups or anybody if you caught a couple or somebody that did um during indica in the in the camps to other people stealing food beating things like that they got repaid for it if you would hear them in a place and someplace oh a couple a couple that person would get a very bad payoff so here emily knows you know he was invited every year to germany to speak in germany so that must have been about four or five years ago i'm in germany and i'm invited the group there's a few couples that were in germany and we would invite that to somebody to a german family for dinner they made a dinner for the few holocaust survivors that came to germany i come in into a house and the minute i opened the door there's a man sitting there in a wheelchair and he sees me he looks at me and he goes you you you're alive you know what that meant at that penalty right away the way he screamed and said you to the to the rest of the people whether it was in that room or anyplace else meant that this person did the wrong to other prisoners and that's why either he got a beating a bad beating or he could have been killed there so i'm staying there and i'm shivering and i'm looking who's jump gonna jump on me first where am i gonna get the first hit from home and then it continues you remember when i came to auschwitz you were the first one that gave me a piece of bread you can imagine i started to breathe up to this moment i didn't breathe i started to breathe and i said yes believe me i didn't remember at that moment i was far away but i said yes i remember you i remember you came and he started he gave bread to me the first piece of bread that i got in auschwitz and to other people he gave birth to people that show everybody mainly oh yeah how did you have bread to give away everybody was hungry in our shoes you had bread to give away but then i had to explain what i'm saying now i was working at that role mode and filthy uh the breadth we kept was filthy uh we'll before we put it on the water we looked for a piece of newspaper if everything gives them to wrap around a little make it a little cleaner and when we came back to the camp we opened up the open up to the the top door and pulled out some of the bread it um it wasn't like it's coming from the world of astoria but you know people hungry people eat anything we cleaned it up washed it up and then everybody came noah know us and uh oh the robot is coming and so you give them a piece you give them bread whatever you could and they were they they were glad to get it they cleaned it up like i said it didn't smell good it didn't taste so good but once it went down into the stomach it was already it filled up the stomach and so this is how i was working in that in uh should still kill the um russians moving started to move into poland and i was shipped out with other people from that group to stutter auschwitz was bad because people were killed in the guest chambers strut of the guest chambers there was one guest chamber was already shut down as a matter of fact that a group of hungarian women naked already in the gas chamber and they were taken out from there because the order came from berlin to stop the guessing you thought that auschwitz was bad house which was good and stood off there was no work we would just sit at the outset stood up as near the dance campaign it's called it's raw it's called yesterday they held yesterday there was just a little bit of the how it was there they chased us out from the buttocks six o'clock in the morning and we were staying out cold with a little jacket and that pants that we got in our shoes this summer called the summer uniform so we got in the group it was 20 30 40 whatever we could everybody formed and bundled you know big dab and it was called the a group that we were hitting each other with their our body heat and then in the evening we went into it they let us in and we got them a slice of bread a little watery soup but at least now we were inside and inside we got the bank and there were four people four people that were working in the on the bank and then one day we were without notice without anything we just put on the train of cattle trains and shipped out from there we didn't know where we're going we know what we went through what we learned during those years and after a few days in a cattle train without food just a bucket of water in a bucket as a trailer and we were there i think it was about three days from uh stood off to um until the trains opened up and here we are in germany and not far from stuttgart a place called thai finger we held the letters out from the from the kettle cars and we had to walk the rest from the train station to an airfield where airplanes were stationed they we were supposed to build a lodge in the airfield it was close to the french border and the germans had their station knight fighters number one for the protection of the large city of stuttgart and secondly to protect germany from the airplanes that came from uh from france there wasn't even a buttock they placed us in the hunger there was no buttocks there was a little straw until they put some bunks up the food they were bringing from a kitchen from some place it was a terrible thing it was getting one was getting worse than the other and the food directioning of the food that by then the germans did not not for themselves so of course we got just very very little of it and i was assigned to work again on the um uh i am building digging like a ditch on the edge of the uh of the airfield others were building were cutting trees out um to make that where everything was needed to make the trendy thing bigger then i was transferred to a um i query you know what a query is break stones and you know break up the stones and then there's a machine put it in there and they break it to whatever size the builders need uh small pieces bigger whatever um and that's where we're working on the outside it was big day it was uh november december january it was outside and there was no excuse for snow or rain or cold or into winter they need this storm at the at the core at the airfield where they were building the highway so we got to work you came back at the night from the from work uh and had to take up your shoes you will wet and tie up the shoe laces and you use this as a pillow because there was no pillows there was just a few people in the park playing and but again i was lucky because we were walking from the camp and talking in to the place called the rush eraser through two of through two villages and although it was all nazis but there was still as and frank said despite of everything just people still have people still have a good heart for something like that so there was a one family just as we were walking through the streets on the side there was a house the first house made the inquiry that the woman that the men was in the military that she she would put out a bundle on the side in front of the house so i know that's what she was doing so i was watching already every day when we were walking there i was just watching where the guard is and if the guard was nearby i just ran out grabbed it and kept going one day she took me in into the kitchen and said sit down don't worry sit down and she gave me some leftovers from the food from the dinner there was a man from stuttgart factory built a change to airplanes so he was working for the government and so but he didn't want the family stood that because took that was being built so in that village very soon he rented a home for the family to bring the family over there so they can stay there he whenever he went down from the house he had a little brown bed so i noticed and he just threw it there in the side and i was watching him and so we were getting as a matter of fact before the uh before the end of the war uh the night that was already 45 he took my friend maurice complete out from the camp in his car away to stuttgart in the they were hiding him by his sister whose husband was in the military and he survived war he died now in in philadelphia and so this was um the war was to come to an end before that and the airfield came the americans what they called the bandits and threw some bombs on the airfield on the planes destroyed the planes destroyed the airfields we were not needed anymore so they shipped us to another place called south that closer to the swiss border and there the germans were building a um um unsheathed factory making drone give the germans when they lost romania they lost the oil they needed they didn't have any oil so they was producing we're doing it here now on a large scale oil from rocks from shell and so we were building the the factory and of course the bandage came again destroyed the factory destroyed the uh american barracks but then you know himalayan used to promise hitler he's harry gary henry in charge of the german luftwaffe of the f evo so he promised hitler if one enemy plane will cross the german border you can call me jaime jaime was a very bad name in germany a jewish name so i said to him you can call me jaime if american plans will tell me by then there was no german air force anymore they were all destroyed and so now there was no more gas chambers there were no more crematoriums and i said there is a little hope for us why we are in the heart of germany there is no question basically there is no crematoriums and the germans will not take the chance to kill thousands of people in their homeland and free from front of their houses so we have a chance here that they let us leave properly and when the americans come will be liberated but they had other other plans and they decided to take us on the dead march to be destroyed we walked the first night during the day they didn't walk us because the airplanes could see us so um during the night we were working and at night they played us in you know ban after having a big bar and replaced us in the barn and then we had an argument we had an argument outside there were two groups of between the guards one group said we're in germany now today the world is going to be over any day we could hear the shooting and the artillery fire our homes are not far from here we can kill them off earlier and we'll go home so they placed us in up in the barn and the one group that recommended that started to put gasoline underneath the underneath around the barn and they were gonna throw a mess for it and burn us kill us in the barn but there was another group which didn't allow and says no we can't do that the americans are very short distance from here when they come and they'll see what we did they'll held us responsible our orders are to bring him to that place or bring him there on the second day we came to a river there was a bridge although there was no room to go we were just walking around in circles so they were going to take us across the river to the bridge but when we came lay the bridge they were german engineers working underneath the brain placing dynamite to blow the bridge and also that's what they said the engineers you cannot cross the bridge the americans are there but what we can do put them on the bridge we'll blow the bridge they'll follow they'll kill him and they'll fall in the water and you'll be able to go home but the other said the same thing no the americans will see what we do and we'll be responsible for it and so on the third day after crossing the bridge i don't know who heard about the black forest schwarzwan the black forest uh and so we were walking through the black forest in the middle of that i um the leader of the of the assets of the guards called everybody together and he says now he's a good man he likes us he says for the first time in five years we were not left alone by the germans they were afraid that middle run away or whatever they were they didn't let us out of their eyes here now they say there's a village ahead of us and we are tired we want to go to the village refresh and get some food i order you to get out of the highway sit by the wayside and when don will come back and pick you up and we'll keep walking so we knew already what that means and what's happening as soon as they started to walk we took off into the forests and broadways and um and there was still some people were shooting were being shot because the german the military were running back from the front line and so they were running they were we here we were running across their lines and so some people got shot i got into the forest and i can could run i didn't look big or to the side i just kept running and as i was deep enough and to be able to hide in the underbrush there were four other men so we got together and they um was called april so we sat down for the night again bundled up to body in this way we stayed through the night and during the night we had a lot of the commotion on the highway but we didn't know what's going on there so in the morning one of our fellows crawled down from the forest to the highway and he came back looking like santa claus with a blanket with he said there on the end of the after forest is a truck over there he didn't know whether who was american or a french or a british he just found a blanket there so he put it all on the blanket put it on his back and he came back we sat down we had a first time and then we went down to the highway it was the french free army the girls um they stopped the trucks they stopped the tanks they put us on on their trunks and um and took us into the near to the closest village and placed us staying in our abundant school that was the school was closed for the summer and this was now closed so uh we were staying there depressing the not think but it looked like they had experience prior to come here in french because france was liberated also by the american because with them came already a field kitchen universal field kitchen and nurses and doctors and the very sick were being placed in ambulances and taken to the nearest big german city placed in the hospital the others were taken from there into the closest villages and were placed with german families so myself and another boy or place with a german family and they were ordered that they had to take care of us and uh and give us food so the first time in probably five years i'm sleeping in a clean bed and after a few days in that after a few days with the german family which they were not happy of course to have us they want to happy with us today and we weren't too happy to be with them so uh i had something had to happen i know one morning i got up and i was screaming i was crying who am i what am i doing here what is my name i had no name i had a number and then the camper was called number prison number so and so on so what am i going to do is this going to be my future i have no profession i have no education i'm not going to stay here with the germans the rest of my life and so i said i gotta i'm gonna into the world to look for maybe somebody for my family where is my mother where is my brother where's my brothers what happened to them and so i just went out and i walked walked on the highway imagine imagine the thinking here i was already 20 years old i was liberated on my 20th birthday april 25th 1945 i was born april 25th 1925 and so i was working and working and i didn't there wasn't csc nothing and i saw a heist a house and a big uh ban and the bomb and it was up in the jar a little bit i was curious so i went over to the door and i looked in there and what did i see a motorcycle a nice motorcycle staying in there so i was curious i opened the door and went in and take a look the key is still in the motorcycle i trim the from the tank the cover from the tank in this room with gasoline i says this must belong to a to a higher ranking nazi because germany didn't have gasoline civilian population have no motorized vehicles everything is taken for the for the military and uh and i pulled out that motorcycle and the only thing i knew about the motorcycle that when they go but the handle goes and then you get on it and it goes so i tried i did the same thing i turned the key and i got on the motorcycle and it went in like a bronco you know the whole sister broncos he threw me off i cut my leg i cut my beautiful pants that i was wearing and um but i said this is my lifeline i'm not giving up and so i went again on that motorcycle the second time it still threw me off i go a third time and let me tell you something i never had a motorcycle i was never sitting at the motorcycle never mind about to say i didn't have a bicycle but i said this is my lifeline this can take me places at the third time and this is and this is a um a um something which i can't understand um it's almost 80 years 70 odd years i'm 95 years old i can't figure out how the first two times it didn't do nothing it threw me off at the third time i was driving arriving on it like i was an expert as if somebody was guiding me i can't figure out what happened but i didn't go very far because there was the four sense of occupation you know german head french the american the british and the russians so next to the french border was the american and so they arrested me and then paid papers i didn't have any papers i had nothing so they took me into stuttgart to the headquarters it was general eisenhower's headquarters stuttgart was pretty badly damaged during the war but there was a building up the tall building that wasn't damaged and so the americans took it over and made this stage in the eisenhower's headquarters before it belonged to the gestapo towards the gestapo's building and so they took me up into that office and i was sitting on one side and the two of them on the other side they were questioning me and i told them what i deserved what i knew that i was just liberated from a concentration camp and um and i haven't got nothing i lost my family and i'm out looking for my family these two that investigate them now these two were wearing um fatigues you know fatigue uniforms when they left a man came in a tall man an officer wearing an eisenhower jacket a green military shirt you know a tie tents with a stripe here in the leg and he sat down at the they started to ask me and that's all i could tell i couldn't tell anything else there was nothing no i don't know i was just liberated and i'm out looking for my family so he sit for a minute and he looks at me he says i'll help you the rank i don't know from what i know now the rings that i learned in america that he was a major or a criminal something like that and so he um said i'm gonna help you i'm jewish too and that was the biggest mistake that i made that i didn't ask that man his name and the address in america i would walk barefoot to california wherever he was from if i know where he is and who he is for what he did what he did for me and so he says i'm gonna help you he just come with me went to a room he says go in there get undressed and put your clothes here i went in it's a shower you know in a building general eisenhower's headquarters before it was the gestapo headquarters so uh i went in it's a shower the first time i took a shower a nice warm shower and they came if we got the cold shower once six months or once a year was good so i got the nice shower i put the clothes outside when i opened up the door it wasn't there i said where am i gonna go naked but then a little further down there was civilian clothesline and um and then he came and he says put put on that the the um clothes that i was wearing that i put up they probably burned there let's see how filthy it was covered with lies excuse me it's not that i had lies i was covered with lies so then he took me to another room and it was a a table with a white tablecloth the only thing the problem was that the dish was not edible i was trying it was too hard to eat here i see there are things that was edible that dish wasn't edible but i can assure you there wasn't that much left in that dish and after i got to eating he gave me paper signed by general eisenhower and he says that will take you know the war was still on in this area the americans was ready but further down the war was still going on because that was april 27 there 27-28 i think the war was over uh april may or june i think it was june june june 6 wasn't it june 6. so he said um when you there's american units stationed on the highway the forest and doorways wherever you go you'll stop and you go there and it says that they should help you with food with gasoline and with safety it's a beautiful i went and i started to go and every place i went i stopped they filled it up for me and um nobody bothered me but when i but they said the man the officer said when you'll go down from here you're going in that straight around the corner there is a jewish committee you go in there and you tell them that we send you they'll help you i did i went in and there was a big room on the wall a big white wall wasn't names of the people that religiously i had to register to my name is arbeit it's with an a i took on tom in the name the first name is aaron arvada my younger brother i i am stopped i was speechless i almost faded i was crying that at least one of my brothers is alone where is he uh in another vp camp in philadelphia named munich so i planning to go in the morning and pick him up and bring him to me and we'll be together while i stay there there's a girl comes over and she says aren't you she didn't know my name aren't you the one that um you were that came and there was a guild that helped you with food you were you were sick or i didn't tell you how that happened that i was sick what happened there and i says yes he says she's alive you know she survives she's alive she is in bergen belgium oh i says i'm very happy i go back there and she says yes i'm going there tomorrow so i says would you please do me a favor when you'll see this girl please tell her that you saw me in that i'm alive and that as you can see i'm already in my life and she says i'll do that later on in the afternoon i said to myself izzy made a big mistake that was wrong what you did that girl did so much for you and you as you have a motorcycle your papers and he's asking somebody the least you could do is you should go there and then to yourself and so i checked with my secretary my scheduling secretary and so i she said my calendar was clear for tomorrow for the next day so in the morning i went to munich picked up my brother brought him to stuttgart and um and i went to bergen-belsen with a motorcycle and i remember in castle places that were destroyed and i came to bergen person and there is a camp there is a fence there is a valley offense around in our [Music] the man with the rifle i said you can't go and nobody can go in nobody can go out so i showed them the papers or they saw the signature generalization open the door and let me in and there i found out where that girl i'm not revealing yet who and where when that girl where she is and which and which room of each product and so i went there i came in and i was very happy to see you she was very happy to see me now she says no yeah yeah they were there were happy and they live in a room which which it wasn't much bigger than this one here there were five girls and there was one there was a leader the oldest i'm sure is everywhere in in organizations and schools and whatever there's always a leader and uh she didn't like me from the very beginning she saw she says um this man he cannot stay here no at first we said uh you know people couldn't go out but people were walking in the afternoon there was an all anova and so people were walking down there so i said to her would you like to go down for a walk with me or a light on the motorcycle she said yes i would go but see there's five girls here that live in this room and we have only one pair of shoes between the five of us and today is not my day to wear the shoes five five girls one pair of shoes so today she says it's not my day to wear the shoes i showed which girl has the shoes today i don't know when i bribed her my birthday she gave it to us she gave she gave her the shoes one shoes size everybody one size fits everybody yeah and so so we'll get that right on the motorcycle and here and the people they they locked up they can't go out and they say everybody is staying and who is this civilian clothes a motorcycle a head in a motorcycle head with glasses who is he what is he doing here so then we got through riding and then we went back to the room and now i asked him is there a hotel or a hotel someplace where i can sleep through the night because tomorrow i'm out of here i'm going to america i'm going back to the americas in america still it's good it's still america no matter where it is uh they've got plenty of food we're free you can see i got a motorcycle like i can go any place i want and you are still behind behind the walls behind locked fence so i says tomorrow morning i'm getting out of here back to the american to the americans so the guild the oldest says i don't like this guy he didn't come to say thank you to you he came here for something else and so i say i didn't have to travel a thousand kilometers for that something else it's available in stuttgart too [Laughter] sometimes you can get into that discount price tell me you go ahead she says she just get out but she's still dead i don't like him he can't sleep here he's not gonna sleep and not come to weapon so but the girls got together and they had a conference they say but can't put him outside it's cold he's got to sleep someplace so finally they talked her in and she agreed that i can sleep but not on the bunks with the gears i can slip on the floor i says look i slept five years on the on the plane boots on the floor so one more night isn't gonna kill me so i lay down on the floor no pillow no blanket and she took the chair and put me in my head it was so sitting there the whole night touching me that i shouldn't move thank god i had a strong bloody and i didn't have to move in the morning i got up i look out the window my motorcycle isn't there somebody took it who can take it there is two kind of people in the camp prisoners and the british so the people said it must be only the british would have taken it enough there is the office you go up there and report it i went there in the opposition charge i showed you the papers he rather he said to the sergeant go again bring him the motorcycle now it's a new capital starts so i says well i'm going you want to go with me yeah you can go if you don't want to go i'm sorry so now all the five get together and the other four says don't go with him not go he is not clear he will use you and abuse you and then leave you yeah and she took a chance yeah and now when we talk you know jokingly you know asking are you i'm too happy you came to america you didn't go to israel with the other girls because when she came and stood that we gave it a little apartment yeah and stood up and she um moved there and she was living and um living in the same city we used to bump into you know one another uh we then we started to see each other more often and we started to date and until one day i went down on both of my knees and i proposed i said would you marry me and that's again she says before i finish the sentence yes yes yes yes yes she says now it took me quite a while to decide am i saying you mean like a minute so we have found over it and the kids are i found they love and so after 73 years that we're married and they're looking for i'm still looking for those girls that told them not to go with me the tribunal so i ask everybody and i'm gonna ask you too if you come across those skills let me know lately prove them wrong so i will bring them here and show the immediate family not everybody is there so we have to thank god three children three grandchildren and four great grandchildren [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: JewishBoston

Views: 124,275

Keywords: holocaust, holocaust survivor, world war ii, ww2, world war 2, jewish, auschwitz, birkenau, auschwitz-birkenau, plock, płock, Starachowice, Oświęcim, Stutthof, Luftwaffe, Tailfingen, Stuttgart, Bergen-Belsen

Id: K55bhGttRjg

Length: 106min 6sec (6366 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 25 2020