Document

MASHA LOEN May 11, 1990

Q: Would you tell us your name and where and when you were born?

A: My name is Masha Loen. I was born in Lithuania, Kovno, 1930. I lived near Kovno in a suburb called Slobodka before the war. I came from an average home. In Yiddish they would say Balle Batish, middle class. My father was a good tailor, maybe would have called a designer here and made a good living and I had two little sisters and one older sister than I am. We were four girls. One of them was born in ghetto. There was only three girls before the war, and no boys. And what I can tell about my childhood...I went to school. I went to private school, called Kommerz Gymnasium (ph). I was thrown out of public school. It so happened that I I have a terrible temper and the teacher said something to me and I didn't like it and I took the my book and I threw at the desk. On accident I think it hit her nose. So my grandfather pushed me into a private school somehow and I enjoyed it. I went to school everyday by bus. We came back. We came back home. We played games. We played soccer ball they called in Lithuania and we made Jewish friends mostly and in the winter we were ice skating. That was the main sport of Lithuania in the winter for kids and grown-ups too, and like I said, everything was going on just as it is till 1940, when the Russians came in first to Lithuania. They gave us Vilna, the capital back and at that time when I was in Kovno, a lot...we had some refugees from Austria and from Poland that had relatives in Kovno so they came and we helped them with clothes and everything else and I had a Austrian little girl friend by the name of Levine, Anna Levine. I will never forget that and I came to my grandfather. My grandfather was better off than we were and I said, Zayde, I need a bicyclet, you know, a bicycle for my girlfriend Anna. He said you know, Maraska (ph), I can't afford to buy her a new one but we'll manage something, and you know, he found a bicycle and put on a net in the back, and matched mine...very so much that I liked hers better than mine, and she was a beautiful girl. A very well-behaved child. My mother loved her very much because she thought it was good influence on me and I don't know what happened to her.

I absolute don't know. I lost touch with her when I went into ghetto because I had so much on my mind. When the war broke up in 1941, my sister, my oldest sister that is four and a half years older than I am, was a Communist, and she somehow came to us and she said run,

01:04: because I'm running. And she disappeared and we packed up whatever we could and we ran. My little sister was, , the little...the youngest, was about six years, seven years younger than I am and we start running and before we even reached about twenty, thirty kilometers...the Germans were ahead of us, and my grandmother was running and my uncle was running, and my uncle at one time was living in Memel that was occupied by the Germans and he came back to Kovno and he said, we have to get away. We cannot stay. So we were running, but the running didn't help. They overtook us, so we snuck very quietly back into Kovno and I lived in Slobodka and what I can tell you is it it happened to me I an experience today that with that . I, we walked into our home and everything was like blood lying all over the house. Nobody was killed because nobody was in the house. I don't know how the blood get got there and then the neighbors all around the district... many many Jews got killed. In fact later on I heard from the grown-ups accidentally there was there was a head from the child and a breast from the mother standing on a piano because the Lithuanians said the pogrom before the Germans even came in, and today of all days I met a righteous Lithuanian woman and admired her more than anybody else that from so many murderers like the Lithuanians, one woman could come out and hide a one and a half year old child. I don't know if she got paid for it or what happened. I didn't want to ask questions but I did ask her and I feel badly. Maybe I hurt her, if she had more problems from her neighbors than from the Nazis, because the Lithuanians, like I said, were very very bad. They collaborated with the Germans in every way and did a lot of things that the Germans didn't do and asked them to do to the Jews. To find one that saved really a child is a miracle and I shouldn't have said it. I felt badly later on, because she answered, in every nationality and every religion are different kind of people. I wanted to tell her yes, but not so in Lithuanian but I already kept my mouth shut and didn't say anything because it happened as they said...there was the Riga Aktion, there was the Estonia Aktion. Every time they took out...first they killed a lot of...the first thing they killed is the intellectuals in Kovno. So being a child I didn't know that, learned after the war, but what I remember is the Riga Aktion. I was working, as an older child. I was always acting like...when the war started I was not going on eleven...I was going on forty, because I had to grow up. I had to grow up because of the blood that they saw and the thing that was going on and here is my mother with two...with pregnant, expecting another child and I didn't know, you know, in which world Iam. Am I forty?

Am | eleven? Am I fifteen? Sometimes I cried like a baby and sometimes I acted like a grown-up that nobody can touch me. I was untouchable, and what happened is is that my uncle, Menashke Saposhnikov, my father's brother, was one of the leaders of the underground and when the Riga ghet...and we had a bunker. It was in my grandfather's home that you went through a baker's oven and you went in there. In fact the underground some of their equipment kept in that bunker. They knew about the Kinder Aktion. I walked at night in the ghetto Werkstatten, the ghetto works, you know, what they did knitting and they did sewing and all different kind of things and they came to pick me up to run me into the bunker because they knew somehow, the underground knew there was going to be an Aktion and they are taking people to Riga. And as we get, as there was an Aktion...first it was the...no, I'm sorry, I have to go back...first there was the the Kleine Aktion. That was from the small ghetto. There was a bridge and they liquidated the small ghetto. Then there was the aktion from one section where I lived and that time they took away my grandfather...both my grandfathers, both my grandmothers, uncles, aunts and so on and I tell you something - I could have saved them, but I came too late. They came in. The Kommandatur, the German command was not far from us and I had a little cousin...my uncle and aunt live now in Vilna...it was their daughter,Dveirele, and she came in and she said: Tante Michle...German...poup, poup, poup. She saw those German near the Kommandatur, and she saw them with their rifles, whatever they had at that time - I don't remember, and my mother says, and she was, you know, the little flour that she had she was baking...it was a Friday...and she was scrubbing the floor, and said get out

01:10: of my way, and all of a sudden in about ten minutes, the Germans came in with the shotguns and pushed us out of the house and at that time my father, like I said, he was a better tailor...worked for Jordan of the ghetto...at that time he was the head of the ghetto, Kovno ghetto, and he was sewing for him and we got some sign [document] called the Lebensschein. And that is a sign to be alive and it was hanging in our kitchen in a little basket and she yells to me, Maruska, go get the , the...to be alive...the Lebensschein. So I ran into the house and I grabbed the Schein and I come out and my mother wasn't there, and then there was a big street that they took us to the field and that street was the border how many people they took out, and there were people going by the dozens, carrying children and so on, and I want my mother, so I stand up in the middle of the street and I start yelling...this is why I tell you I grew up so fast...Momma, Momma, Momma...so a German start beating me and he said get off the street. I'll shoot you right there. I said no. I have Judenschein. You cannot shoot me, like I was something special. I thought I was something special. He says get off there and all of a sudden from about I don't know how many feet away to tell you...maybe a block away...I heard my mother's voice yelling Maruska, Maruska...and I run to her. When we came to that field where they're they're separating...right, left, right, left...1 found out that one Judenschein can save one family, and I had four of them, because I had three from us and one for my father that was out to work in the brigade, so I kept running around between the people, but they already took away both my grandmothers and both my grandfathers. There were nobody left from my family that was living right there in that section, so what I did is I said Momma, what should I do. She said start grabbing people. Start giving them the Judenschein. My mother always thought of somebody else. She was a beautiful lady, not because she was my mother, but as I grow up and I don't think I'm that nice and people say I'm a nice person but I don't think so, because I don't, wouldn't have had the guts to tell my daughter to run around with life, life depends on and start grabbing people and giving them Judenschein and then you don't even know if you would get it back from them, but if people were nice enough when we came back on the right side, on the good side, they did give me back the Judenschein and this is one day part of my life, of my childhood. And that was the first aktion...that was the second one and then it was the Riga aktion. I couldn't tell you really one after another because I blank out or I may go back from time to time to tell you. Is that alright?

Q: That's fine.

A: And then came the big Aktion, October 28th, 1941. It was...I don't know...I can't tell you dates really and that was called the Grosse Aktion, the big aktion. And they went from home to home and they told everybody please leave your sick ones at home and Jordan wants to hold a speech.

We want you on this and this field. Leave your sick ones home and everybody has to be at this and this time on that field. So my mother was pregnant and one of my uncles that my aunt was taken away in the first aktion that I told you, had something very swollen on his face and we didn't know what it was. He came with us. Some of my aunts were separated. My mother's sister that we lived in the same house was separated from us, but my father's brother and my father's brother that was in the underground kept yelling at my father...he was a painter...and my father took him in and showed him how to sew and he worked with him in the Jordan Brigade as a tailor, so we came and we came on that big field and they start sorting and Jordan never showed up. They surrounded us with machine guns and they start sorting...right, left, right, left. And Hessel, I think it was Hessel his name - I don't know for sure - I can't remember. He was the right hand of Jordan. He comes up to my father and says you Bruder Schneidermeister, you brother tailor. Take your family and go. So my father started looking for people...you know for family, but there was no family around except my uncle with that big face and he said what's the matter with him. He says oh, he had a toothache. It will be pulled out, and my father saw that there's nobody from our family so he start dragging people that were behind and in front of us and my mother and me, and he had such a smirk on his face...I'll never forget...and they said all this is your family? And my father saved a lot of strangers and we all went and a lot of my aunts went away. A lot of people went away to the Ninth Fort, and what the most terrible thing about the Ninth Fort or the Seventh Fort was in Kovno is that at night we heard the shooting of the people. The machine guns were going "t-t-t-t-t-t-t" and what I found out...now these things what I'm going to tell you now I found out after the war...is that they were not shooting one person into the grave. They were shooting two or three at a time to save bullets and that were open graves and then they would put a chemical over it and burn them, and some people after it got dark ten thousand people to shoot into the graves, it took time, by the time they sorted us out and everything, so they didn't have a chance to burn them. Some of them got themselves out and came back into the ghetto, and this is how we find out what had happened, so what they called portable crematoriums in Sobibor and they called portable crematoriums in other death camps...that why when I talk about the Kovno ghetto I don't talk it as a ghetto. I talk it as the concentration camps. I talk about Stutthof as the death camp, because we did have portable crematoriums in the Ninth Fort. We did have portable crematoriums in the Seventh Fort. They didn't have to have the oven. They just shot them in. At that time they still had bullets. They shot them in and then burned them. So if they can call a portable crematorium why couldn't we call the portable crematorium on the Ninth Fort. Do you think I'm wrong? So this is what I call...when I talk to some people where they ask me about experiences, I don't talk really like a ghetto, because a ghetto is a concentration of certain people that, ethnic people and so on, and I don't call this a ghetto because being without food, being without clothes, being eliminated constantly, thousand, ten thousand, five thousand...and then buried practically alive in a portable crematorium...you couldn't call this a ghetto. You called this a concentration camp, and then we were sent to the death camps. Now I want to tell you one story that I always talk about and that's the children aktion. The children...1 was working in the ghetto works...everything happens that they, that should happen, like today I'm here in Washington with a broken leg, but that's alright. Everything happens that should happen.

I came to my father. You see the Jordan brigade, it was moved to the ghetto works and my father was working in town. You know, you would trade some things for some food and the Jordan brigade, it was well-know that it was bringing food into ghetto and would share. My mother of course shared it with with everybody before she gave it to us. My father shared it with his family. So you had food to eat, more than the average person, so what happened is when they put the Jordan brigade into the ghetto into the ghetto works, they had a separate room. They had a window into the ghetto and everything was...they had it better than anybody. The ghetto works but it still was not in to town, so that day in, very early in the morning, there's a . You know what...I would like to go out into town, in a brigade I said maybe I can bring something in because it's getting to the point that the kids are starving, you know. And they said...not starving but not enough food to...you know, we did our best. And he said you know what...I said you have protection.

You go in. You talk to the Arbeitsamt, to the Komitet in the ghetto works, so he went in and it was already late, and he said to me...that one of the men said, he says, you know, Herr Saposhnikov, he says, there is one brigade, a German and six girls to clean up a house...would you daughter be happy to do that? He said my daughter would be very happy to do it, so it happened that we left late and as we were walking out of the ghetto...of course every girl was older than I was, that worked in the ghetto works...we saw some black machines coming into the ghetto but no windows. Just painted little white windows. And I said to the girls, oh, that looks funny. There's something rotten in Den...I didn't know about Denmark...I was too young to know about, you know, Hamlet or whatever it is...and I said there's something wrong. Why are those machines coming in the ghetto. I a little panic, keep quiet...they're coming in...they're bringing some people maybe from a different ghetto or something, so I kept quiet and we went to the German's house, and we cleaned up the house and there were six girls and we were six girls...they had two Germans watching us and the brigadier, the Jewish fellow that went with us, so there was no way of us going out into the town and trade something for bread or milk or things like that, so what happened is that I ......how long does it take to clean up a house, as even if you're weak and don't eat all day and everything. Still it doesn't take long. Six girls. So what we did is we didn't know what to do...we start dancing and singing and dancing the horah and | never danced the horah in my life, but it was some older people and they knew about the horah and they start dancing the horah so the Germans walk in and said, you're through? It's time to take you back. Fine. We couldn't trade anyways so something to bring in to ghetto so they took us back and that Lithuanian woman was wrong when she said every nation or anything. When we came to the ghetto gate, there was like a Lithuanian with a gun, a machine gun on one part and a German about maybe like from here to the vase here with another machine gun. A Lithuanian and a German, and the whole thing, the whole ghetto was surrounded and we walk into the ghetto gate and there is none of our Jewish policemen. There is none of the same German when we walked out. There was different Germans, completely different, and something is very quiet on that street. The ghetto isn't moving. Everything was like in slow motion. And I and a man that was with the Arbeitsamt, the uncle Jankele Goldovsky comes out from behind that booth near the gate where the Germans were standing. He said, girls, you came at the worst time. It's twelve-thirty. They are taking away all children, all people over forty-five, fifty he says, and they don't have the quota.

They're taking everybody. And as we walk out from that booth, we saw about four White Russians, Germans, coming with machine guns...started, it was a very very long street. It went through, all through the ghetto, that street where the, where the gate was. And they surrounded us. They surrounded us and they start walking with us and I know I walked by that little Kommandatur, our little houses, and I know...oh, my God. My mother is at home. Even now I get goose pimple even if I talk about it. My mother is at home with the two kids. What can I do? Shall I run? Shall I make a run for it? Go see what happened?

And from far away I saw a friend of mine, Susa, with her mother, standing outside a door, and I couldn't do nothing and I start giggling. I didn't know what happened to me, and the , the German, he says to me, ah, laugh...in German...laugh as much as you want. In a half an hour the sun will not shine for you anymore. And I walked. We walked and they take us to this...and there were some big, big apartment houses in ghetto on that street, and they walk us to those machines that I will never forget. They tried to put us into machine and one girl practically had one foot up on it, and there was a man...I'll never forget him - Regal (ph) was his name, a German man. He had his hand in a sling and it's his house that we cleaned and he says, ah, nein, no. These girls belong to the ghetto works. Take them back. He saw us from upstairs, where all the Germans were sitting. He recognized one of the girls. I don't know what he did, and we got four people, four German again...different ones. They took us back to the ghetto works, and what I tell you is the ghetto works....there are two barracks. One on one side or like barracks or like places that work, and one on the other side and in the middle was like a big, big street, and we walked to the ghetto works and we walk in. No Jewish policemen. Not the same Germans. Completely new people, and they walk us into one of the places and I see some dead bodies, not lying on the...in between the two barracks, and some guy that I fix a sweater for him - I thought he was, you know, war, how do you call it - prisoner of war, all of a sudden is wearing a German uniform with a with a machine gun. And we walk in to that room and everybody from the people, all the people asking what is happening in ghetto, what is happening in ghetto. I said, because they had no windows out into the ghetto and I said, we don't know what's happening in the ghetto. What's happening here?

All we know is that somebody told us they are taking away...they didn't say we know...they're taking away all the children, old people over a certain age, and anybody that's sick - they're taking them away. And I know my father's on the other side, and I know my mother's home with the two kids, my two little sisters, and I didn't know what to do, and I came to him and he said, oh my, Maruska, he says, come on - I'll take you to your father. And the women that were friends of my mother and my brother are dragging me back. She says don't go. The minute somebody walks out or he beats them up or he shoots them. I said but I have to go to see my father, I said. And I fixed him - I told you I fixed him a sweater for him and I was very good to him and he says, Maruska, tell me. I know you have two little sisters. Tell me where they are. I'll go and help you. And you know, sometimes I was eleven but sometimes like I told you I was forty, and my mind start working. I said oh no. He's wearing a German uniform. He's having a gun. Even if I I tell him one word...I said you know I don't live with my mother anymore. I'm grown up.

I have my own place. He said you never told me that. He said would you like to see your father? I said, yes, very much. And again, my mother's girlfriends and my father's friends are dragging me back into the other side, and I thought to myself, what do I have to loose.

My mother and my two little sisters are not there anymore. I want to see my father.

and . And it so happened, like one time a doctor told me I have nine

lives...I have to figure out how many more times before I broke my leg again...and he took me to my father. And you know, the most God-forsaken thing I've ever seen is eight men holding their head on their...hands on their head, walking around and crying like babies because through their window, through the Jordan break out a window, you could see the way the Germans are dragging, with hand grenades...they were opening the bunkers that children were hidden. They were dragging old people and everyone in that room had somebody, had children, had a wife at home, or had somebody because they were working for the Jordan brigade and they were protected a little bit with that. And what do I do? All of a sudden I turn eleven again. I put my hand on my head and I start crying and I start following them. At three o'clock they called off the Kinderaktion and I and my father stopped running, and I told you before my Uncle Menashke Saposhnikov was one of the leaders of the underground, so they had to run by their home, so my aunt was lying and bleeding...they took away his two little boys, and my other aunts were helping her and I grabbed my father's arm and we start running in, and we run into this little house...was a peasant house where my mother was with two kids, and there is no sound, nothing. And I stopped crying. I said, Papa, they're dead. Papa, they're "toit". And all of a sudden we heard from upstairs, "knock", "knock", "knock", - knock. And my mother says quiet. They're not dead. And she opened up that little board that she had, and she dragged down the two kids, and they were completely out...I think a little bit over- dosed. She gave them sleeping tables, and she tells us what happened. I practically and my father fainted right there. And she said, the machines were driving around the ghetto and saying, everybody stay in their house. Anybody that comes out gets shot. And she didn't know what to do. So she took these sleeping tablets and she gave it to the kids, she broke open a little board in there. She, she was thinking fast. She dragged them up. She put them flat. Dragged herself up, tipped over the tables so the sand should fall off it because sand came down, and she was lying with them, so when the Germans came in to look if there's children or anybody in the house, they didn't see nothing and they were already dead asleep and my mother was still lying flat, but they had picks. They went into the floor and they went into the top with the picks. In fact one of my little sister was just grazed, and she pushed them from one side to the other, and she was also afraid to push them because in case the sand start coming down but the Germans thought the sand was coming down from their picks. I

01:32: realize it now...of course I didn't know it at that time, you know, but she was afraid at that time. And she had a little hole that she saw this machines. She saw those mothers taking the kids to the, to those to those machines. And people dragging them and the mothers, they didn't want to give the children up, was being beaten or a dog sent on her, and she saved my two little sisters. Now there was a rumor that...she was a brave lady. She was a beautiful lady. Good, brave, and that they don't have the quota. It's going to go on again.

So I said Momma, let me up with the children, up there, and you go in to the ghetto works on my papers. She said no, you go with your poppa. You're going to be missed and there's going to be something not kosher, and we went away, and she stayed with the children up there, and they called off again the aktion later on and she saved those two little sisters, and I'm selfish enough to think if my mother wouldn't have saved my two little sisters, maybe she would have been alive for a little while longer because she was a very young woman. Because when we were, when the ghetto was liquidated and we were sent into the death camp, to Stutthof, they separated her with the two kids and they took her away. At that time, to tell you the truth, I didn't know what a crematorium means. I didn't even know what a crematorium is. I know one thing is that when they were still alive and the ghetto was going on, before it was liquidated, we had to move them. Don't forget one was born in ghetto. My little sister Rosale never knew

01:34: what it means to have one piece of bread and a full glass of milk. And what we did is, those new apartments...they made the ghetto smaller again and we had to move the kids, so the little one we put in a potato sack instead of taking part of her valuables that was left over, and the middle one, the one that was younger than I, we put her hair up, we put lipstick and we put her between me and my father and my mother in front, and we slipped through because we were not far, like I told you, for the German Kommandatur. So what happened is every time they made the ghetto smaller, we had to move them, and the little one was so smart. She was one and a half years old when they liquidated the ghetto, and what she did is, when she saw a German...she knew every German by the name...and when she saw a German she would grab the seven year old and say, let's go , and they would hide themselves in the closet in a pair of laundry bags. And when they didn't touch them, when they liquidated the ghetto...we were on a field waiting to be put on the trains...they did not touch them. But when they did arrive near Stutthoff, my mother had poison tablets. How she got all of them I don't know, and she...father says let's take them because they were separating the men and sending them to Dachau, and the women and the children sending in to Stutthoff. There came out little wagons with white spots on it, went through a tunnel or something...I don't remember...everything is not so clear to me...and my mother, the first time she really put her foot down and she says no. No poison tablets. This time we go with destiny. For all the Jewish people are going to go that route. We are going to go and if one finger is left to one of my kids or if any of us is saved, it will be worth it to tell the story. And you know, something flipped through my mind when she said it, because this is the woman that was sitting at the dinner table when we had the refugees in 1941 from Poland and Austria...I'm going back again...and I was very upset with her. We were sitting at the dinner table. She just came back from taking them clothes and food, and she and my father were talking and when they didn't want us to understand what they were talking about, they were talking in Russian, and I understood Russian. I spoke Russian. And she said, you know, those people are exaggerating. Nobody can do what they are telling the Germans are doing. And you know, at, as we were dri...driving into Stutthof in those little wagons and she said, let's go where everybody's going, I remembered that Momma said this once at the table and I was feeling so sorry for Anna Levine, that little Austrian girl, and...but I don't blame her for it because a lot of us didn't believe it. Nobody...a lot of Americans don't believe it. A lot of people of the free world don't believe it, so...because she was so good when my father would bring some food from the

Jordan brigade and first it was divided between the family. Then she would take it from us and send it to one of my girlfriends, her sister had a little baby...she would take away from Rosale with some milk and give it to Gitta's sister's baby, and a piece of...a little piece of bread here and a little piece of bread here and I don't know where everything went but she was the most good-hearted person in the world and this is what happened in Stutthof. They separated us and they took me in...you know, have you every watched the movie, , that they show the gynecologist table with all the dirt and filth. I wrote to the director a letter - it was done very wrong, because at thirteen and a half, they put me on one of those tables to look for gold, and it wasn't a dirty room. The room was completely sterilized, white...like I can remember because that one thing will never come out of my mind, and the doctor was...or whoever he was...was all in white with a mask, and he was looking for gold in me, and that's why I said they were very wrong because the Germans weren't working, they wouldn't have worked in a room like that, a doctor, because everything was white. All I remember is white. White, white, white, and I remember a gynecologist table. I never knew about it. Until I got pregnant with my son, I never went to a gynecologist, and even now I have very very bad feelings when I have to go up on one. It's a terrible thing to tell it in a video, but I have to tell you that, because it's wrong. The movie was done wrong. So when J arrived in Stutthof and they took my mother away and I couldn't go with her, I didn't want to live anymore. I just said to myself whatever I do, I don't care anymore. So they said that they are going to take us to little labor camps because they need working power. Again they start sorting, you know...the strong one, the not strong ones. But before I go on I have to tell you the story why I have that mark on my head. Max, the sadist from Stutthof, one of the biggest sadists that ever existed. See, they didn't have a chance to shave our hair, because most of the Eastern European ghettos were being liquidated, so everybody was coming at one time, so they had time to give us the uniforms, our numbers, but they didn't have time to shave our hair, so I had big long braids, black braids, so at six o'clock...I don't know what time it was...it was still dark...bare-footed...we didn't have any shoes, Max yells appell, so I asked the woman that had threw us, at night they threw us into the barracks on top of other women... what do they mean. Said keep quiet and get out and stand still. So I stand still and SS and he goes through the lines like this, like a maniac. I'll never forget, and he said, "Du schwarzer Teufel Du wirdst Stubenaelteste" you black devil are going to be some kind of a post of some kind of clean the latrine or stubenaeltester, you know, the head of the barrack. And I was still braiding, I'm still trying, still braiding my braid. I don't know where my mother is. With the kids I don't know what's happening here. See, I went ahead of myself. I'm telling you back what happened to me with Max, and I said: "was". Takes me, he breaks my head and hit me on the barrack with my head, and I start bleeding. As the coming down bleeding and I was so confused I didn't know what was happening. Why is that man doing it to me? What are those people all around me doing shivering in in striped uniform? Where am I? Where is my mother? All of a sudden I turned thirteen again. What is happening to me? And I looked at him with my two black eyes...they were black and big at that time...and I said, and I looked at him and I didn't cry. I didn't move. The blood was running and I didn't do nothing. And that sadist that didn't have a mind of his own thought I was supernatural. That's what saved my life.

Every time he came into the barrack to beat up the women, every time we were standing in line, he was knocking out the soup from our hand...that little bit of water and ___ that we got. He never touched me. I didn't know why, because at that time I didn't figure it out. Now that I'm grown up and I know a little bit of psychology, I figured it out. He thought I was supernatural. How can I get help? How can I heal with a big cut like that and how can I look him straight in the face without crying. That means I didn't hurt. I was supernatural, so he was afraid to touch me again. And that's what saved my life in Stutthof and then when they were sorting out the people, stronger on one side, that he was drunk...other people did it. I think so. So we went and they put three boats to go out to those little camps to work. And I was in one of the boats and then they decided they don't need three boats and one of boats they set on fire, and the people start jumping from that boat and trying to get on the other boats, and that was dipping the other boats, and you know, I was sitting in my home and watching the boat people and I was crying and my son says to me, Mom, why are you crying? It's natural thing to people that and David. History repeats itself and I told him the story. At that time he was about already eleven and a half years old. I don't know how old he was. He was old enough that I could tell him, and I told him the story what happened, you know, in the water with the three boats when they were taking us to the little camps. It's all very not clear in my mind. I don't know how to tell it to you, which boat it was and how the people jumped, but I know when I saw the

boat people, everything was coming back to me. People jumping out of a boat. People trying to get into another boat, so something clicked in my mind. All of a sudden I realized that something like this somewhere happened to me, and that's what happened.

And they came in those little labor camps digging foxholes and I didn't care what happened to me at that time because it was so close when they took away my mother and the two little children and I don't know if they were killed in Stutthof, if they were taken away somewhere else, because I know they gave them civilian clothes. So why take them to a crematorium in Stutthof and put civilian clothes on them. But I still know that it happened in Stutthof and they...for me they died in Stutthof. Maybe they took them to Theresienstadt. I don't know where they took them. And I just didn't want to go on anymore, but you know, in back of mind was one thing - survive, survive. Take revenge.

Survive. Take revenge. Survive. Take revenge. So what I would I do is those little camps, they're always stationed near a lake and in the winter I would break open the ice and I would wash myself with the, with cold water and the tea that they gave us...the hair start growing out...I would rub into my head, the warm tea. So Mrs. Gelta (ph) and we

is alive, she lived a hundred and twenty because she saved my life...she was a lageraltester, decided that I was the young...they knew I was the youngest there, that I should work in the kitchen. Peel potatoes or clean the kettles...we had field kettles there for the little bit of soup that they gave us, but I was always clean. I always clean. I always kept myself clean, and the shoes that I got in Stutthof was already worn out, so I wore a pair of wooden shoes that they got for me and I worked in the kitchen and they would always...now I realize it...they never gave us normal people for SS people. They were people that were sick...they were people that were retarded, people that had syphilis. I found it out after this because at one time a German came to us. Eingedeutshter Pole.

You know, a Polish German and he came over and he sat on the kettle and looked at me.

Like that. And then he came to my step-mother, and later she was my step-mother but she was my mother's friend and he said, Rochele, he said. I'm going to marry the Maruska after the war, and she was thinking...you know...you should live that long. And one day he went home for...oh how to say it...for vacation and he came back and he brought back with him some shoes and some meat and bread and he brought me a whole package out to the kitchen, and there were some Jewish girls like our lageraltester that lived

01 :47:50 with the Germans, and they saved a lot of our lives in that camp, in that little camp, by doing that because the Oberscharfuerer was not bad, because they controlled him a little bit and they lived in a cell by themselve, all figured out for them, and I said to myself, they just took away my mother and my two little sisters, and I will have to do what they do - not on his life. So the Oberscharfuerer was standing downstairs with the people on appell to take them to work, and the kitchen was raised on a little hill... took the whole package and let it down the hill and it stopped right next to the Oberscharfuehrer's feet.

They put him in bunker for two weeks. When he came out, he start beating up the women, and I didn't know what to do about it, so all of a sudden the Allies start coming near, so we start walking. It was the last march, you know, that long march. And we start going and we had the black SS and with me, I always had a little bit of imagination. I don't know where I found a needle and I pulled most of my blanket out with thread and I cut off...at that little camp we were wearing red stars instead of yellow stars painted on our clothes, civilian clothes, and what I did is I took pieces out from one side and covered the star like a little pocket. I must have had the talent from my father because I was a designer out here when I came to this country...went to art school...and I, to open it and close it. And I thought to myself maybe I will be able to run away. And maybe I won't be able to run away, so I had that thing, but one of the guys...we called him Willie the Dancer...each of them had a name...he knew that I had those covered somehow. How he found out I don't know, so we were walking on the way and that German that I told you, that Poland, from Poland, you know, the Polish German, he tried and he beat a woman terrible and Willie the Dancer comes up to me and said, Maruska, he says, there is a big, you know...everybody was mixing together...the Wehrmacht, our fronts were going, and my step-mother's, my mother's friend feet, they're already frozen at that time.

Mine were frozen but not as bad because we were walking over the Weichsel, you know, the Ger...the Polish river and my heels were made out of snow, you know, because in the wooden shoes, but after it was completely frozen but one good thing about ; none of our people were shot. None of them. They couldn't walk any more. We just dragged them. Everybody dragged each other, so when we came to that...and he came out and he says to me really, let's go over to the...cover your stars, he says. I want you to go with me somewhere. I got scared to death. I thought he was going to shoot me right there, and at that time everybody was hungry. Nothing was to eat. If we got a half a potato a day, a raw potato, it was lucky. So he says come with me, but just talk as little German as you can, and I spoke a little bit so we came to that to the Wehrmacht and he introduced me as their Lithuanian Eingedeutschter, Lithuanian cook that cooks for the German, and if he can have some food from them because they took everything away from the farmers.

So what we got is we got a pig. We got potatoes and we got one of those big field kettles to cook it in. Who can open a pig? Who can do anything? We cooked up the potatoes.

The pig was already cleaned, but not very

01:52: clean. We cooked up the pig, and we cut it up in pieces and we took it out in basket to our camp, to the women, to give it to them. And as we were giving out the potatoes, that German that I told you about, that beat up the women when he came out of the bunker, that said he was going to marry me, was holding his gun to hit my step-mother, my mother's friend at that time. I grabbed the gun, with the basket I was holding with the food, and he turned around to shoot me and when he saw my face, he didn't touch me and he never touched another woman. Never. And when they took away the black SS and gave us some different Germans, because they took away the black SS to fight for them,at Danzig, whoever they can get, , they had us in like in a camp. They were afraid to kill us. They were afraid...they didn't know what to do with us. So he threw a blanket over to me so I keep warm. I don't know what was going on in his mind, but at that, that time, they left...that time I told my, my mother's friend at that time, Rochele, my step-mother, I said we'll hide you in the straw and what happens happens. You can't go on anymore. Now this is all...don't forget I am only, not even fifteen years old yet. I'm fourteen years old, and we hid her in the straw and she survived. A Polish family found her, and it was practically the...the Russians were there already so they were afraid to kill us so they kept us. One of her feet, her toes were taken off after the war. And all ofa sudden, another little story happened. In the camps are going around the rumors and I know that my two aunts, my two mother's sisters, were in the camp with Sochne??__. That was...in their house was the commandanteur. They were friends of the family, and all of a sudden those two camps meet and Sochne works there with the...works with her daughters, and I yell, ; , where is Pave (?). Where is Taivele. She said that

is dying. She's in a in a, you know, wagon, with a horse. Perele had come back to Stutthof and all of a sudden I see her daughter's feet bleeding so I drag up half of my blanket and I said bind your feet in it, and I...the childish head of mine, didn't think to do my own feet like that, so then when I told her, so I ran to the wagon where my Aunt

was lying and the German was beating me go back to your place so she was

already dead under this straw and I went back to the place and then it fall into my head to bind my feet in my blanket instead of letting them bleed to death, because during the day the snow would melt and then if you would sleep in a silo, it would freeze at night back to our feet. So we always prayed to God that we would sleep in a cow barn, because it was warm. Can I drink some water?

A: Yes. OK. We'll stop here for a minute. They're going to need to change the tape.

End of Tape #1 TAPE #2

Q: OK.

A: So we walked and we walked and finally they couldn't move us any more. And they put us put us in a silo in a village called Cheno (ph), and the two typhuses broke out and I was holding on and it's the funniest thing...you can imagine what Germans they always gave us, in the end too...that were the kapo, a German, that came to the door in the morning. He said, who is dead should say so. And you would get up in the morning and you would find dead people on each side of you. In fact one of the people that you interviewed yesterday, his mother died next to me. And I walk out...remember in the beginning of the tape I told you my mother would send milk to my friend's sister's little baby...she was a kapo in one of the camps, and she...all the kapos and all the lageraltesters slept in the village away from the silo because of the typhuses...maybe they thought they'll survive better. I don't know what happened. I couldn't account for anybody else except myself, and I came out and she was standing and the food...around the food and everything and you know, it's a blank her name for me. I can't even mention her name. This is how I blanked her out, and I said just give me a ...because I was getting already a temperature. I felt it, you know. And I said just give me a little bit of the hot water. I don't want any food. She said, well stay away from me with all that lice. And I turned around and I walked away. I couldn't even cry anymore. And all those things went through...her sister and her little baby and my mother giving the food and that minute everything went through my mind and I went into the silo and she saw that she did a mistake, and she came to the

02:02: door and she said, Maruska, come here. Here is some tea. And I turned and I covered myself with straw, that I didn't want to know about her. And they told us that they are going to burn that silo and there was a little girl next to me, Chajele, that we'd spend the time together all the time, keeping each other, and I said you know that that piece of blanket that I have left over...you still can walk. Why don't you run? I can't walk anymore, and when I heard the yelling, I though they were burning the silo so I covered myself with the straw and I slipped into unconsciousness and when I woke up, I woke up in a home that the Russians are taking care of me medically, and before I even have a chance to breath properly, they told us they have to move out of there. The front is coming near. We have to go to Laurenburg (ph), so in that German house they found some clothes they gave us, and they gave us medicine and we walked a couple of kilometers and they saw...there were two Russians officers driving in a two-horse carriage, you know, in the back just two seats and I and Chajele are walking and I said could you take us? And he says no...we shouldn't, but you know what...we'll take you.

They saw that we fall practically down but we'll leave you out right before Laurenburg and everybody was walking and the shooting was going on, and they drove us up to Laurenburg, and the first house we walked in. Now you may think I'm superstitious but now I realize what it was, you know. There was nothing in that house except one bottle of black berries and it was standing in the middle of the floor and I...so hell, I don't care if it's poisoned , if not. I'm going to drin...eat a part of it. Said I'll eat it too, and we both fell asleep and we got up and we felt better. Now I realized that it must have been fermented, and we both got drunk on it, on those black berries and we fall asleep and maybe that's what helped knock down with all the medication that we got, and they took us to a Russian hospital and they shaved our head, because it was all full of thing. They put a green solvent, and you can imagine...I was forty-five kilo when I was liberated, and I looked like hell, and in Laurenberg they said said go and look for a home. So L...about three or four girls that looked better already that were older than than me...they say come Maruska. Come and live with us, because the Russian, they're, you know, raping the Jewish girls, the German girls. They didn't care. They were going on the front. They didn't give a damn who it was. So and then you had to sign typhus...they didn't even listen, so what they did is they gave me a

little bottle of medicine that the hospital gave me, and every time a drunk Russian, no matter how drunk he was, came in or something, they send me out with my all that green stuff on my head and like this and I walked out like a dead woman, and when they saw me coming they start running. But then my hair start growing in and I start getting a little better, they said no. We can't stand it anymore, so we went to the Russian commandanteur and at that time I didn't give them no . [just wanted to go home and see if anybody's alive. And we went to the Russian. They said oh yes, we'll send you home and they put us on trucks and they sent us to farms in Pomerania, and there's a story by itself. We arrive in Pomerania and there's cows, sick cows and sick pigs and sick things, you know, and they want, needed food for Russia so what they did is they opened a cheese factory, where they couldn't use the cows and they didn't know what to do with it, so the Russian girls that went...Ukrainian Russian girl... I thought that went the Germans were playing the piano and the Jewish girls were cleaning the stalls from the cows, everything. After the concentration camp and after what they went through so in one time it comes, the captain comes to us. He says who wants to go in Rickenwald (ph).

There is a veterinarian doctor from Moscow and he wants to teach you to be a veterinarian nurse. In two weeks he wants to teach us to be a veterinarian nurse, so I am game. I'm game of anything. I said I'm going. I mean, there we were also kept like in a prison but not as bad because we had food, we had clothes, everything, but we could never walk from one village to another without a Russian soldier. So I went to Rickenwald and it so happened...I must read (ph) of my father and I told the Polkovniks [colonel]wife, I said you know, you don't wear this dress. This is a nightgown. Put on this. I said you have so much clothes and I told her all the hair, you should do it, you know, that way. I made very good friends with her, and the doctor that was supposed to teach us was a drunkard. Was very sick, very drunk, so he would teach us about two hours a day. The rest of the time he would get drunk and after two weeks, he gave us a big stamp. He said, , I'm a veterinarian nurse. So I came back to the camp, and they put...Polkovnik came to visit one time...this is during the Russian. This, I'm liberated already. And he said I want Maruska (ph), Mar...Maruska at the table. And the captain said, Maruska at the table. He said yes. I told you when I telephoned you that I want her at the table. My wife wants to talk to her. So he saw that I am good friends with Polkovnik and the Russian soldiers loved me very much because I worked where the milk was delivered and were going to the cheese factory, so the Russian soldiers wouldn't get anything to eat, and when we came back, what they did is what they did with the cows that they captured, we checked if they have tuberculosis and we would cut around the lungs...would have the German people cut around the lungs and then the rest they would cut, cook it for the Russian soldiers. The good ones they would make conserves themselves. They opened a conserve factory and send it to Russian and so the cheese, the Russian soldiers didn't get nothing, so they would come at twelve o'clock at night and I would give them the milk and I would give them whatever there was. The captain had everything at the table, but the soldier had nothing. So they liked me very much. And Polkovnik liked me, so how does he get rid of me. He makes me...now remember, this is "45 and it was beginning of "45 when I was liberated and went though it. Let's say I was fifteen years old. I wasn't even fifteen years old, and

they send me as the head of the cheese factory, and they send and a big house and I get the house of the woman that owned it, and she got to be my housekeeper but she never was because she was a beautiful lady, and I made up...one thing I forgot to tell you...I'm going to take revenge. I'm going to take revenge of the people, so I was riding a horse, being that I was a veterinarian nurse I had to go to the fields and see if the cows are clean, if the German women are taking care of it, and I saw some children on the street and I would fly by with my horse and and I was careful not to hurt them, but I thought I had and I walked into a German house and I would, with my boot I was always opening like they did our house, and you know after four weeks what I did. I stole from the Russians and I gave the medicine, because we Jewish people are compassionate people and we cannot see anybody suffer. Took medicines to them. I took food to them.

Would you believe it? And the German woman in Pommern, she was Polish-German, and she took care of me and I wouldn't let her and she was my equal. She was supposed to be my servant. She was my equal and I was fifteen years old and my mind was working and one story I have to tell you that is the most fantastic story, that | am writing about my experience after the war with the Russians. He came to me one day and he says to me, you know, he says to me I had a lot of, before that I tell you I had a

02:11: lot...there was to clean. There was a big airport not far from where I stayed in 5 and they brought...a lot of fliers, majors and captains would come to visit me. They were boar hunting, you know, and they brought vodka and there was a piano and they were playing and when they got real drunk...that that housekeeper of mine, that lady that owned the "gut"[estate], would lock me in her room that they couldn't touch me.

(Laughter) You understand what I mean. But they were very close to me, so the captain came to me and said I have a problem. I said what's your problem? He said I need seven horses. I said why? He said because the horses is in my village and my ranch and my Polkovnik and he said I want seven horses because is coming and only you can help me, because the people love you here and they'll give it to you. I said nobody gives nothing because it came out I think that the Russians cannot take anything away from the Germans, from farmers, anything. Nothing can be touched again. No cows, no horses, nothing. What's theirs belongs to them. Not far from me was also a officer, a Polish officer camp from the Pole...for the Polish people soldiers, so I said OK. On one condition. That you release every Jewish girl that wants to go out of your camp I said, and I want them sent right here. I'll stay. I said I'll stay. He says no, I'll make with you a deal. For every horse you get me, one girl can go. I'll take them to the train. I said fine, you sign it for me so I can show it to the . I said I want to have something over you. So he did. Now remember, this is all a fifteen year old talking and it's the truth, it's the honest truth with God as my witness. What I did is... had at that time I invited six, six because there were not seven, six Polish officers to a party in my home. There were the Russian, a couple of Russian officers came in with vodka and caviar and everything you can imagine. The officers had everything and what I did is, they...I said I want you to get those guys drunk, as drunk as you can. I had six Russian soldiers, seven because we can only get seven waiting on the side...I knew approximately the size of the officers because they came to visit very often, and they send me seven of them...I got them so drunk they couldn't move. We undressed them. We put the Polish uniforms on the Russian soldiers. They took, they stole six horses. They came back. we put the uniforms on. I put them on a wagon and I sent them back to the camp, and the captain had seven horses, because one I had kept for him. From then on, I was in danger. He was afraid of me. You understand what I mean. Because I had something over him. But I had the protection of the Russian soldiers. I had the protection of the German people - they like me because I didn't hurt them in any way. I had the protection of a lot of officers that knew me, the protection of the polkovnik. So one day I am going with a man from Georgia, from Russia, a soldier, riding into the fields to look over what's going on, and a short Jewish man comes up to me and said, you know somebody by the name of Maruska Saposhnikov and I said . And that man from Grushin, from Georgia, says to me, don't worry Maruska, he says. Whatever this man wants from you, nothing will be said. I said I have to leave without nothing or anything. He wants to take me. My father is alive in Lodz and he wants to take me with him. My father sent

him. Now if you want to go and tell to the captain, you're alright. Go tell him. But I have to go. He said not only will I let you go, I will take you there with that gentleman. But I said I can't let you do it, but you know what I'll do. I said I will write you a letter what happened between me and the captain. You just say to him you have a letter about the secret seven horses from Maruska, I said, and that's all...that nothing, I don't think nothing will happen to you. But I said I appreciate it. He took us to the train and we left and I met my father in Lodz. And later on, some girls escaped from there too, some Jewish girls. He kept his word. Some of them were released. They escaped and they told me that that guy lies ina hammock and it's catered to him. Masha they said... at that time I was calling myself already Masha. Maruska, what did you do? I said this is between me and that Grushin, nobody else and that's the story about the seven horses. I'll never forget it. As many things I did to him that he didn't know, you know. When I came back from Riegenwald, being a veterinarian nurse that I was not...I knew that much, all I knew is how to take analysis, a blood analysis from a horse, and somebody had to hold him, and how to cut around the lungs from the cow, and how to see that everybody, that everything is clean. And when I came back from Riegenwald after the polkovnik was there, in about a period of three weeks, the Jewish girls are playing the piano and the Russian girls were cleaning the stalls. But I was in danger from them also. So I had to run away somehow, so my father found out where I was from somebody and he sent that man to get me out of there, and this is how I came to Lodz, because my father survived Dachau and we met in Lodz. And then we had to go to, run away from the AK, from the fascists in Lodz because you couldn't go out. I didn't speak Polish. My father didn't speak Polish, so how...you couldn't even go out on the street. My father was working as a tailor. He hardly made a living, but one thing he did is he had an apartment. Everybody went to to Lodz from somewhere, one camp or another...he wouldn't let them go back to Lithuanian.

Always kept them there. It was a big, big apartment. Many people told me before I even came what my father did for them. But it was also a beautiful thing that he did and he died pretty young, and what happened is is we had to smuggle the border. So how do we smuggle the border. It costs a lot of money. So Masha went to work in a kibbutz in Lodz and made friends with the Brichah and took a transport in 1945...I wasn't even fifteen years old...in July I was fifteen. I took a transport with my father and my...at that time she was already my step-mother, Rochele, all through to Bratislava and the AK was shooting after us, and I stopped the people because my step-

02:19: mother couldn't walk that well. She just had an operation in Poland and they were shooting. The people were screaming and I said I promised you to get you across and I will get you across, and I got them across to Bratislava. But I loved Austria...and I stayed in Austria after the war and I went to school there, and my husband was , before I met my husband. And I worked for the Brichah. I helped people smuggle from sonnenfeld because I went to school. I spoke pretty good Austrian. Let my braid grow again. Put on an Austrian outfit into Sonnenfeld and smuggled people over the Innsbruck border into Italy with the Brichah. Many times were shot after. And when I got married I think I settled down a little bit. And I came to America and we lost ev...my husband lost everything we had and one thing I'll never forget. We came into New Orleans and somebody once asked me, how do you like this country? I said oh, this country is wonderful, but why...I didn't speak very good English...my husband spoke the King's English and he wanted me to go to school again. I said school again? Never. He said remember, when we come come to America, I won't help you. You'll have to go to school. Why don't you do it now? I said no. First my father, then you...school, school, school. I'm tired of school. So, but I read. He read to me a lot, and when we came in I know what hot means and I know what dog means. I said I understand everything. It's a beautiful country. I have bananas to eat. Everything is...but why do people eat hot dogs?

(Laughter) Because that's the only thing I could read. And like I said I came here and I start working and I went to school. I finished high school and I start...1 had a small degree in college that is not great, and I I had an art major so | start designing and I designed knitted clothes for a lot of movie people, because we came direct...in New Orleans we were two days. We came direct to Los Angles because my husband had a brother here.

sent us affidavits and he was broke. And we had, we didn't get from the HIAS, didn't get nothing. My husband was broke because everything was stolen that they shipped from Budapest, but we made it. We made it and I love this country and I wish it was when I came in "49 the same way it was then. But everything changes, but it's still one of the best countries in the world. Of course after Israel. I'm a...I'm an American Zionist. I always was a Zionist. And that's my story up till now. Except before I broke my leg, before I came to Washington.

Q: Is there anything else that you recall that you didn't tell us that you'd like to add?

A: I don't know because like I told you, I was a child and with

me it comes back in flashes. That's why I never will write a book. I talk into a microphone. If my husband and my son wants and I'm not here anymore, he can take it, put it together, do whatever they want, because sometimes at night...I have a little poem that I wrote. When the Memorial was built, there were some flags put up, and I have two flags of my two little sisters and the flags of my family and part of my husband's family that was killed from the Hungarians, and when they built it, it was the opening and I was co-chairing and I was the hostess at dinner opening and Hausner (ph) was our main speaker, and I couldn't sleep that night and I got up and I wrote a poem and I love that little plain poem. I write poetry from time to time. And that little plain poem I love so much, because it tells so much about me. In the couple of little words it says so much so when I was in England the last time I found a friend of mine that was an actor and I composed some works and I got permission from the Barry sisters to use their music, and we made a little tape out of it and I think your producer has it, if you wanted to play it.

Q: We'll put it on...(pause) OK. (pause) They're going to play the poem back and we'll be able to hear it and they'll be recording, looking at you, while they're playing it. So OK.

They're going to do that now. We have to sit quietly.

MUSIC 02:24

The poem that you are about to hear was written by Masha Loen, who as a child experienced and survived what is probably the most dramatic and tragic event in the history of mankind - the Holocaust. Of the six million Jews who died or who were put to death by the Nazis, one and a half million were children. This was only forty years ago, within living memory. Yet to many, the Holocaust is a distant and even forgotten episode in history. To those who may have forgotten, it is hoped that in this simple but moving poem, which was written by a child who survived the horror, the world and future generations will remember the unfortunate victims, the survivors and especially those who still have to live with the nightmare, with the sorrow of having lost loved one. Never but never must it be that people become complacent or take the attitude, oh, that was long ago. That has nothing to do with me. But worse still, let by-gones be by-gones. No. Never shall you forget, nor your children, nor your children's children. No. Never must mankind forget what heinous crime a nation committed on fellow men. The question that must be asked is, oh God, why did you let it happen?

I was a little girl, lost and sad.

My mother told me I was not bad.

Then why the agony and pain

The Nazis inflicted on me with whip and cane.

The question was unanswered,

Because mother was no more.

They took her away to settle the score.

By hiding her children, she committed a crime.

And that is why they killed her.

Oh mother of mine.

I wasn't a little girl for long any more.

[had to survive to settle that score.

The beatings did not hurt.

Hunger was forgotten,

Because the one thing in my mind

Was to take revenge on the lot.

The time came and I emerged out of hell and pain.

And the stories I will tell over and over again.

Now the time has come.

You are a statistic no more.

And Memorial is settling the score.

Rosalie and , with one and a half million

That were killed during the Holocaust years,

For the years to come when I am not here,

Somebody else will see the flag

And shed for you a tear. MUSIC

TECHNICAL CONVERSATION

A: See, the revenge I'm doing is, like I said in the poem, it should never happen again. I got also is that I lecture on the Holocaust. I go. I work. I worked very hard to open the Memorial. I will do anything for any memorial. I don't care if there's a memorial in each corner, because like I said, we are a compassionate people. We cannot go out and kill. We cannot go out and do certain things that we thought we were going to be able to do, that we learned from the Germans, but we didn't. So the only way we can do it is to prevent it from ever happening to any people, to anybody, no matter of religion, race or or or or creed or whatever it is. Those things can not be happening and that's my revenge...is staying ten days with the Mormons in Utah, in southern Southern at Southern Utah college, to go anywhere, rain or shine, if I'm called...or ten year olds in a temple. But I will talk about it till I die. And that is my revenge because I can't do it any other way.

Q: Thank you very much.