Stories of the Holocaust

[Music] if it says that the dogs clubbing Rouse Rouse these are people who live through the madness it was hell on Earth that's all I can see their memories are testimony to horror and heroism why do they join the resistance I wanted to to live some even had a chance to fight back I had a much better reason for fighting against my Fatherland I had personal experience these are local people who experience the worst but made the most of their survival these are stories of the Holocaust [Music] it gave us the courage in to first of all live for the other person I know I have to stick it out because I have to have my dad with me and that what kept me going Sam gottisman survived the Holocaust with his father Isaac their love for each other helped them endure starvation and sickness years of slave labor and two of the most horrific death camps Auschwitz and bergen-belsen I was born in the carpetian mountain region which was originally Czechoslovakia we were a family of seven children we had three brothers and four sisters and mom and dad of course the goddessman family was among the 1500 Jews living in a little town called irshava the family owned a hardware store and lived a fairly uneventful life until 1938 when the Germans annexed Czechoslovakia the hungarians members of the Axis powers along with Nazi Germany took over the part of Czechoslovakia that included irshava that all came with Hitler's blessings and Jews soon began to face restrictions we had to apply for permits to operate a business and then of course they were all rejected and so we had legally we had no way of making a living Jewish businesses were confiscated and given the hungarians to run but somehow an underground Market developed in the Jews of urshava survived until March 1944 when the Germans turned against the hungarians for holding secret peace negotiations with the allies there's a Friday night I think what first night that German soldiers came into town Sunday morning the town crier went from places to places and announced that the Jews had to pack up a bundle for themselves and take only what they can carry with them by noon a year to report to the Senegal Courtyard they ordered us into a ghetto and all those 1500 families had to move in into those few houses a week later the Jews were ordered to the train station they were sent to the nearby town of mankach a gathering point for the Jews of Czechoslovakia and Hungary 30 000 people were crammed together one day everybody had to line up a group of 80 85 90 people together families together five boroughs and we all had to stand still he came in I remember seeing a name with two young SS guards on the side of him and he walked around us I found out after the war it was Eichmann himself it was a chance encounter with Adolf Eichmann the evil mastermind behind the deportation of Jews to ghettos and concentration camps through Nazi occupied Europe that particular day when he came in and looked it over and that's when they started the first train to loading first train to Auschwitz foreign box course family together and of course we were crowded in there we were given two buckets a bucket of water and a bucket for your physical needs as bad as that was what came next was unimaginable [Music] that's when Hell broke loose he opened up in his assess the help us help us Lord the Jewish boys May the dogs clubbing Grouse don't touch anything with every day around the house men's separate women separate and don't talk don't ask any questions don't keep in her you know knocking us down [Music] oh and it was hell on Earth my mother and sisters were separated in the other line and don't see them anymore and I was together with my father at least that much we tried to hold on to each other [Music] Sam was Prisoner number 37052 his father 37051 they stayed in Auschwitz only two days before being picked to go to a slave labor camp in a little town near the Czech border we were together up to about December of 1944. Sam heard himself cutting Lumber and was sent to another Camp to recover he thought he'd never see his dad again he had problems with his legs that my dad there was some boils coming out from salvation I guess and he asked a doctor to send them off to to a hospital which usually do don't do that for some reason he was hoping to go somewhere he had no idea where I was but he succeeded in to in convincing the doctor to send him off too where did they send Isaac goddessman Sam was in the new labor camp called geester giersdorf in the hospital where they brought in new patients he never was standing and watching them Marching In and you gotta take a look at my bed I just you know I gave up actually on my dad I never thought that we will never get together again the relationship helped them remain human in an inhumane time even when a bowl of soup could tear people apart come home from work first thing we were worried about is what are we going to get for supper tonight this is very important it's the first thing we wanted to know food was such an issue for the starving prisoners that they even planned when and where to stand in line to get their best food or the biggest portions Sam loved the soup with biscuits and I asked one of the fellas who were parked from the kitchen staff asking what do we have for tonight he says we have biscotten super I says what biscotten super I just took my spoon and put it in it took a dip into it and started tasting it and it was like cookies melted cookies I says my God I could not believe that this is what it is and I I just walked in it to my bed slowly slowly tasting it I dare to not eat it all at one time and I came into the room and my dad was there and we enjoyed every spoon of it and then we came almost to the endest end of it and I said to myself I have to get another bowl of this soup Sam decided to pretend he fell and Spilled his meal he smeared a little of the precious soup on his clothes and went back near the kitchen at the risk of a terrible beating he asked for more and amazingly he received it turned around and started walking to the web back where my father is and I started debating with me this is where the uh the devil is in it as his I have a bowl of soup I'm hungry I know my dad is hungry too but he doesn't know I have it so if I don't share with him so what he he had his and I kept on debating and debating and I finally got into the Barrack and my father takes a look and he just his eyes popped open what happened where did you get that so I just told them what happened and he says you said you'd risked your life for this bonus Services I did it so and I did share the soup with my father this is this is what you have to overcome when you have a a a a a a question or a questionable behavior that you have to solve right there and then so I'm glad that I was able to overcome my desires and and hunger and shared with my dad and this is what gave us the courage to stay alive we helped each other [Music] being a Jew is being in the resistance all your life because you're always a minority and you have to resist the trend the outside Trend either to assimilate you to convert you or to kill you Musha Baron faced death many times as a member of the resistance movement against the Nazis and their collaborators there were hundreds of thousands of Fighters known as partisans people who fought mostly Behind Enemy Lines Moshe was one of the estimated twenty thousand to thirty thousand Jewish partisans he fought the Nazis for over two years I was worn in a stetho in Belarus then Poland now it's a separate independent country in 1920. we were a family of six myself my brother and two twin sisters until 1939 we lived in quiet normal without any big you know aspirations life all this has changed on September 17 1939 when the Soviets innovated my hometown moshe's town was under Soviet rule for almost two years at that time Germany and the Soviets were allies and divided up Poland but in June 1941 the Germans turned on their allies the Soviets in four or five days coming from Eastern Prussia they were in my hometown they started issuing all kinds of restrictions of movement for example you were not allowed to use the sidewalks you had to walk in the street you have to wear the style of David front and back and around November I think of December 1941 there's a new degree we have to evacuate our homes and move to an assigned area the 1500 Jews of moshe's town of horadoc were crammed into a ghetto of less than 20 houses life soon became desperate a group of young people like myself I was at that time 21 began to talk Among Us what am I going to do I wrote two suggestions you know you can escape but where do you go or we are going to resist Moshe his brother Josh and a few dozen young people were selected to work building the rail system for the Nazis they left hordock and soon met hundreds of Jews from nearby towns also serving as slave laborers the area which was heavily forested and swamps if not for that I wouldn't be sitting here and there was building up a resistance Russian soldiers who had escaped when the Nazis turned on them formed the backbone of the partisan resistance they were soon joined by thousands of local people conquered by the Germans who wanted to fight back there was a lot of weapons left by the Russian army when they retreated scattered somebody was collected by Farmers assembly was found around and there was a beginning of a resistance in the forest by minus chemists attacking individual Germans or something like that Moshe and some Jewish friends hatched a plan to steal some weapons and use them to join a partisan unit the two of my friends from the ghetto worked in a neighboring Warehouse where the Germans collected captured Russian weapons and they were sorting it out whatever they were doing when they told me that I know who started but we worked at a plan where they would carry out paths of the serpents into the yard there was a pile of junk wrap it up hide it with help from a fellow prisoner Moshe escaped from the ghetto I'm in the forest now and one morning there are two Russian officers walking through the forest that's why I stopped them I speak Russian and I introduced myself and they told me they were sent to the front line to organize the resistance movement here particularly training people in sabotage you know mining roads attacking garrisons and things like that it turned out to be two Jewish officers and I told them they would like to join the the resistance movement I have weapons hidden in the ghetto was safe for the time being and he learned most of his family was too they fled horadoc and ended up in a different ghetto in the nearby Village of krasnay finally Moshe arranged with a sympathetic farmer named Kowalski to smuggle his family out where they could hide on a farm he also arranged with Kowalski to get the weapons he and his friends had smuggled into the ghetto out of the ghetto it was arranged that I will meet him and the partisans in a certain Village and they'll accept the weapons and except me but some non-jewish partisans stole the weapons Kowalski told him they don't want to accept any Jews in the uh the parlors so they took the weapons and they gave us to locals whom they knew without weapons the Jewish boys couldn't join the partisans and all around Moshe things were getting worse in July 1942 the Nazis murdered the last remaining Jews of horadoc rounding them up into a barn machine gunning them and then setting the barn on fire and the Jews of krasni were all killed in March 1943 foreign ers I was attached to a certain group in the beginning in the 1940s to a small group doing their little just trying to survive ourselves you know some people would go out on a operation and raid a farm just take whatever we could for ourselves if we built bunkers in the forest you know it's plenty of wood for the winter it's a Russian winter it's 20 degrees below zero July 43 the Germans started harassing our groups throughout the whole territory because we were disrupting their supplies to the front line for mining roads we were ambushing their carnivores on the highways blowing up trains and they had trouble supplying the fronts they couldn't Supply and they couldn't protect their back and if they were retweeting we were menacing them too so when we knew that they are after us we would retreat in 1944 the Russian army closed in on the Germans forcing their Retreat it was the beginning of the end of moshe's nightmare one day we hear noise on the uh on the highway uh yeah the Soviet tanks and trucks and plays moving West so you were free uh like we couldn't return to my hometown because my hometown was destroyed by our own people or came back they took care of the collaborators and the head of the city hall the mayor and they burned it up but Moshe was luckier than most his mother brother and one of his twin sisters survived the war the family reunited and after a difficult Journey came to the United States and Moshe and his sister Minna settled in Pittsburgh why did I join the resistance I wanted to to live I I knew what was coming [Music] [Applause] in May of 1939 when I was 14 we got permission to come to the United States had we not gotten out just in time or had we been rejected Again by the council by the American Consul we would have been in that position of being sent to death camps and of course like most uh people who were sent to the death camp would have been killed [Music] Fritz ottenheimer his parents and sister Elsa were very lucky they got out of constance Germany just in time but six years later Fritz returned this time to help fight the Nazis [Music] I was eight years old when Hitler came to power it didn't take long before I realized that this was a very drastic change that wasn't just for the adults it wasn't just something political it affected every one of us even the kids uh because the tremendous amount of propaganda hateful speeches and then the restrictions came all kinds of laws cutting down on what we could do the restrictive laws soon were in place the people of constance weren't hostile to the 500 Jews who lived there some 200 or 300 people immigrated to constants from other parts of Germany that were more vicious they heard that Constance was a better town Jews fleeing the Nazi regime from other cities soon started pouring into Constance the city is on the Swiss border and Switzerland offered Safe Haven Fritz's dad helped one family cross a small Creek into Switzerland well it must have called their relatives and Friends immediately soon we had a stream of people coming through our house to our house for the purpose of being smuggled into Switzerland Fritz's dad was joined by a sympathetic local police officer who felt the Nazi persecution of the Jews was wrong they helped between 200 and 300 people escaped into Switzerland but then things went wrong for the ottenheimers people stopped coming to our store without customers you can't run the store very long so we had to give up our store very early after the Nazis came to power then in 1938 came Crystal now that was really the first nationally organized violence in Germany there was no doubt after that that we had to get out Constance had an SS Squad Constance had the Gestapo the secret police Constance had a fanatical Nazi mayor but the population generally didn't participate much except waving flags and things like that when christanov came the SS Squad blew up to synagogue with explosives the Gestapo arrested all the Jewish men above age 16 and transported them to Dachau concentration camp foreign 's dad was one of those arrested they held him in Dachau for a month before he was released it was just in time because if they'd kept him another week or so I don't think he would have survived so he came back and we were waiting waiting waiting finally in May of 1939 when I was 14. we got permission to come to the United States Fritz went through High School excelling as a student and then was eligible to be drafted I was accepted into the United States Army on the condition that I sign a waiver because I was not a citizen of the United States I could not be forced to serve in the army of the United States I did not enjoy the idea of joining this uh tremendous Conflict at the same time my feeling was that I had a much better reason for fighting against my Fatherland then all the other recruits had all they knew about Nazi Germany was what they read in the newspapers I had personal experience of the persecution trained as a sharpshooter Fritz soon was given a different job Along Came this other outfit which was a artillery Battalion that had been converted into a security guard and they needed someone who could speak German then the war ended and the rest of the unit I was with was sent back to the United States for discharge because they were all long Veterans of the fighting I was transferred into military government a special Branch it was called which was responsible for denosification it was responsible for screening people who had applied or were applying for jobs in the German government for jobs and the German police force in the education activity trying to keep the old Nazis out of important jobs where they could get back into power we had SS records gestapo records very important we had the Personnel records of War factories where people applied for employment and had to prove their loyalty to the Nazi regime in order to get the job and they made all these statements of how much they loved Hitler and and the government and it was signed and notarized so we had wonderful evidence for people in that area gave me a lot of satisfaction to know that I could actually get back at some of these people for things that they had done [Music] how could it happen what is the lesson that we learned from studying the Holocaust the most important lesson I think that I came up with myself was there were 65 million Germans living in Germany when Hitler came to power 65 million Germans did not become 65 million murderers they became 65 million bystanders [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: WQED Pittsburgh

Views: 40,421

Keywords: wqed, WQED Pittsburgh

Id: ta7oCPXikpI

Length: 27min 35sec (1655 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 09 2022