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layout: transcript |
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interviewee: harry none alexander |
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rg_number: rg-50.030.0007 |
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pdf_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/rg-50.030.0007_trs_en.pdf |
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ushmm_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504525 |
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gender: m |
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birth_date: 1921-07-12 |
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birth_year: 1921.0 |
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place_of_birth: leipzig |
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country: germany |
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experience_group: survivor,resistance,soldier |
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ghetto(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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ghetto: none |
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camp(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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camp: none |
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non_ss_camp: none |
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region: none |
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needs_research: none |
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data_entry: cl |
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accession: none |
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revisit: none |
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tags: transcripts |
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--- |
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--- |
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layout: transcript |
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interviewee: harry none alexander |
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rg_number: rg-50.030.0007 |
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pdf_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/rg-50.030.0007_trs_en.pdf |
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ushmm_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504525 |
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gender: m |
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birth_date: 1921-07-12 |
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birth_year: 1921.0 |
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place_of_birth: leipzig |
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country: germany |
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experience_group: survivor,resistance,soldier |
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ghetto(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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ghetto: none |
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camp(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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camp: none |
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non_ss_camp: none |
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region: none |
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needs_research: none |
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data_entry: cl |
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accession: none |
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revisit: none |
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tags: transcripts |
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--- |
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<body><dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="1">HARRY ALEXANDER April 25, 1991</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3">Q: Please tell us your full name?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="5">A: My name is Harry Alexander.</sentence><sentence id="6">Alex for short.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="9">Q: And where and when were you born?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="11">A: I was born July 12, 1921 in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="51.332518" long="12.370244">Leipzig</span>, <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="13">Q: Could you tell us a little bit about your family life?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="15">A Yes.</sentence><sentence id="16">We were seven children, four boys, three girls, my mother, my father.</sentence><sentence id="17">We, I would say, upper middle class Jewish family.</sentence><sentence id="18">We had a good life.</sentence><sentence id="19">We had want for nothing.</sentence><sentence id="20">And uh we was just happy all around, just a happy family life.</sentence><sentence id="21">We had a good family life.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="29">Q: What kind of work did your father do?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="31">A: My father was a chemical engineer.</sentence><sentence id="32">My mother was a housewife.</sentence><sentence id="33">Uh we all went to <span class="BUILDING">school</span> and uh we had a very comfortable existence.</sentence><sentence id="34">It was good living in those days in in <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span>.</sentence><sentence id="35">It was really was a good life, a good wholesome life.</sentence><sentence id="36">And uh we had a good social life and uh my brothers were...I'm the youngest of the boys and had three little sisters, and uh we all loved one another.</sentence><sentence id="37">Everything was fine, until...until uh 1938 I really did not believe...comprehend what was going on.</sentence><sentence id="38">I remember my mother keep saying, don't be <span class="NPIP">outside</span> too long.</sentence><sentence id="39">Come on <span class="BUILDING">home</span> and and uh when you go to the <span class="BUILDING">schul</span> (ph), the <span class="BUILDING">temple</span>, come right back <span class="BUILDING">home</span> and we kept the holidays and we had a all around good life and uh people were talking and uh...about the Nazis.</sentence><sentence id="40">We saw the brown shirts (ph) and the SS and and and uh sure we weren't allowed to go to <span class="DLF">parks</span>, but we...] all...failed to understand the significance of the whole thing.</sentence><sentence id="41">Uh we weren't allowed to uh go to <span class="BUILDING">movies</span>.</sentence><sentence id="42">We weren't' allowed to go to the <span class="BUILDING">zoo</span>...Jews uh not allowed.</sentence><sentence id="43">We weren't allowed to uh go shopping in <span class="BUILDING">stores</span>.</sentence><sentence id="44">We used to go to a <span class="BUILDING">store</span> to buy something.</sentence><sentence id="45">We had to wait till everybody was served.</sentence><sentence id="46">We were always the last one to get what we want, if we were lucky enough to get it.</sentence><sentence id="47">And by by the time I was eleven, twelve years old, I was thrown out of <span class="BUILDING">school</span>.</sentence><sentence id="48">Well, there there was a <span class="BUILDING">Jewish school</span> in my uh <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">hometown</span>, in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="51.332518" long="12.370244">Leipzig</span> (ph), but there were so many Jewish kids that they didn't have enough <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> for all the kids.</sentence><sentence id="49">So we only could go to <span class="BUILDING">school</span> maybe two hours a week or three hours a week in shifts.</sentence><sentence id="50">And we had all this...I took stride.</sentence><sentence id="51">I just didn't...1 really didn't understand this whole thing, and nobody else really explained anything to us.</sentence><sentence id="52">They would try to keep it away from us...until uh 1938.</sentence><sentence id="53">The week before Kristallnacht when they start to arrest all the Jews of Polish background origin, they deported them.</sentence><sentence id="54">Uh the children were in <span class="BUILDING">school</span> and the fathers were at their place of work and the mothers were in in the <span class="BUILDING">houses</span> cooking and things, and just were arrested, one after another, put to...not not given time uh to pack anything.</sentence><sentence id="55">Took them to <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trains</span>...the father in one <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span>, the mother in the other <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span>.</sentence><sentence id="56">Nobody knew where anybody was and the children came <span class="BUILDING">home</span> from <span class="BUILDING">school</span>.</sentence><sentence id="57">The <span class="NPIP">place</span> was padlocked.</sentence><sentence id="58">They sat <span class="NPIP">outside</span>, didn't know what was happening to them.</sentence><sentence id="59">Then they grabbed the children, put them on another <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> until they they worked it out, what was happening and everybody started running for the em...consulate, the <span class="BUILDING">embassies</span>, because the <span class="BUILDING">embassies</span>...they couldn't get in.</sentence><sentence id="60">They were safe there.</sentence><sentence id="61">So they went to the <span class="BUILDING">French Embassy</span>.</sentence><sentence id="62">They went to the <span class="BUILDING">American Embassy</span>.</sentence><sentence id="63">They went to the <span class="BUILDING">Russian Embassy</span>.</sentence><sentence id="64">They went to the Danish, Norwegian, Swiss...anything that was near.</sentence><sentence id="65">So our job was to bring food to these people and take messages, because if the wife was in the <span class="BUILDING">Danish Embassy</span> and the husband was in the in the <span class="BUILDING">French Embassy</span>, we just took messages back and forth trying to seek the families out to tell them that their loved ones were alright.</sentence><sentence id="66">That went on for a couple of days, and uh the night...the 8th of November...I believe it was the 9th or the 8th...8th or 9th of November I believe...I never forgot...the uh the uh Kristallnacht.</sentence><sentence id="67">That is when I really really was hit with the uh with the happenings there.</sentence><sentence id="68">They came to our <span class="BUILDING">house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="69">They broke everything up and like that in every other <span class="BUILDING">house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="70">They were raping the young girls in the <span class="DLF">streets</span> and and dragging men by their beards through the <span class="DLF">streets</span> and burning down the <span class="BUILDING">temples</span> and and and and and threw...1 remember they threw all our <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">furniture</span> and dishes and everything out the <span class="DLF">window</span> and and and uh beat us up.</sentence><sentence id="71">They came in...the Hitler youth...with their daggers, blood and honor, and punks, bands of punks and they're beating everybody up, taking people to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camps</span>, arresting people and it was just a terrible, terrible night.</sentence><sentence id="72">It started about three o'clock in the morning.</sentence><sentence id="73">That night they arrested my brother Paul.</sentence><sentence id="74">My brother uh Bernie (ph), he had left.</sentence><sentence id="75">Of course, there was still <span class="BUILDING">home</span>...I was still <span class="BUILDING">home</span>, my three sisters.</sentence><sentence id="76">We were hiding in one of the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">beds</span> but they dragged us out, beat up my mother and the next day it was quiet.</sentence><sentence id="77">The smoke was still coming out of the <span class="BUILDING">buildings</span> of the <span class="BUILDING">temples</span> and the <span class="BUILDING">schules</span> and <span class="BUILDING">houses</span> and there was still blood in the <span class="DLF">street</span>.</sentence><sentence id="78">Now I knew...now I knew...something terrible is happening.</sentence><sentence id="79">But I didn't know what to do about it.</sentence><sentence id="80">1 had my mama.</sentence><sentence id="81">I had my mother.</sentence><sentence id="82">She was always taking care of us. (</sentence><sentence id="83">Sigh) Well, my brother Paul to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="51.021507" long="11.249238">Buchenwald</span> (ph).</sentence><sentence id="84">My other brother went to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="52.767083" long="13.261825">Sachsenhausen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="85">They were taken, and a few days later they came to our <span class="BUILDING">house</span> from a Jewish organization and they said we can save one child.</sentence><sentence id="86">Which one is going to live and which ones are going to die? (</sentence><sentence id="87">Sigh) My mother had to make a choice and by the time the choice was made and everything, the other one was arrested.</sentence><sentence id="88">Was just left me and my three little sisters.</sentence><sentence id="89">That was it.</sentence><sentence id="90">A couple of months passed and my mother sent me out for a loaf of bread and I never came back.</sentence><sentence id="91">A <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">car</span> came screeching to a halt...are you a Jew?</sentence><sentence id="92">I was sixteen years old...fifteen, sixteen years old.</sentence><sentence id="93">I said yes.</sentence><sentence id="94">I didn't know what to say.</sentence><sentence id="95">These were mean looking men.</sentence><sentence id="96">They put me into the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">car</span> and I found myself in <span class="BUILDING">prison</span>.</sentence><sentence id="97">No explanation was given.</sentence><sentence id="98">None was asked.</sentence><sentence id="99">I remember the <span class="INT_SPACE">cell</span>, cell number ten.</sentence><sentence id="100">My mother wondered what happened to me...send me out for a loaf of bread.</sentence><sentence id="101">I was in <span class="BUILDING">jail</span> about...I would say about two months, three months...till May, approximately May.</sentence><sentence id="102">Suddenly they let me go free.</sentence><sentence id="103">I had to sign a paper that I was going to leave <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span> within forty-eight hours...they will let me go, and that I was treated well.</sentence><sentence id="104">Again I didn't know what I was signing.</sentence><sentence id="105">They told me to sign.</sentence><sentence id="106">I signed.</sentence><sentence id="107">And I went <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="108">I remember to this day...my mother stay...stood at the <span class="DLF">door</span> of our apart...our <span class="BUILDING">house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="109">She had ten marks...that was all we were allowed to take.</sentence><sentence id="110">Ten marks.</sentence><sentence id="111">She must have had this in cash laying around because all our money had been confiscated by the state, and we had nothing left and she said to me, you have to leave <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="112">Don't even go into the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="113">You have to leave <span class="BUILDING">home</span> right now.</sentence><sentence id="114">Here is ten marks.</sentence><sentence id="115">She says go to <span class="COUNTRY">Italy</span>.</sentence><sentence id="116"><span class="COUNTRY">Italy</span> was the only country that had open <span class="DLF">borders</span> because they are friends with .</sentence><sentence id="117">Hitler was the leader.</sentence><sentence id="118">They were friends.</sentence><sentence id="119">They had no closed <span class="DLF">border</span>.</sentence><sentence id="120">And that was the only <span class="COUNTRY">country</span> that had an open <span class="DLF">border</span> for Germans.</sentence><sentence id="121">I had no passport.</sentence><sentence id="122">I had no papers.</sentence><sentence id="123">I had nothing.</sentence><sentence id="124">Here...take the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span>, she says.</sentence><sentence id="125">Here is a card, a railroad ticket I got for you.</sentence><sentence id="126">Take the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> and go into <span class="COUNTRY">Italy</span> and just one by one...don't ever look back.</sentence><sentence id="127">So I said to her where are my other two sisters.</sentence><sentence id="128">I had three sisters.</sentence><sentence id="129">She said they're on their way to <span class="COUNTRY">Poland</span>.</sentence><sentence id="130">I sent them with some people, with some friends to <span class="COUNTRY">Poland</span>.</sentence><sentence id="131">Only Toni (ph), the little one, she had in her arm.</sentence><sentence id="132">Must have been about...I don't know...four, three, four years old.</sentence><sentence id="133">So I said goodbye...I was a good boy so I said goodbye.</sentence><sentence id="134">Mamma said go...I go.</sentence><sentence id="135">And uh that is when my life started.</sentence><sentence id="136">I went to the <span class="BUILDING">railroad station</span>.</sentence><sentence id="137">I took a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> into <span class="COUNTRY">Italy</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="246">Q: Where was your father?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="248">A: Gone.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="250">Q: When did...where did he go?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="252">A: He went into a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="254">Q: When he was taken there...Kristallnacht?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="256">A: Yeah.</sentence><sentence id="257">Yeah.</sentence><sentence id="258">Now my mother was alone with my little sister.</sentence><sentence id="259">How my mother ever got me out of that <span class="BUILDING">jail</span> I will never know to this day.</sentence><sentence id="260">I am sure she must have bribed a lot of people to get me out.</sentence><sentence id="261">But she saved my life.</sentence><sentence id="262">So where does one go?</sentence><sentence id="263">One goes to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Milano</span> (ph), <span class="COUNTRY">Italy</span>.</sentence><sentence id="264">In <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Milano</span>, arriving in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Milan</span>...we had no <span class="NPIP">place</span> to go.</sentence><sentence id="265">I wasn't the only one.</sentence><sentence id="266">There were hundreds...men, women, children...anyone who could themselves, they went down there. (</sentence><sentence id="267">Sigh) We had no food to eat.</sentence><sentence id="268">We had no <span class="NPIP">place</span> to sleep.</sentence><sentence id="269">We slept on <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">park benches</span>, in <span class="DLF">doorways</span>, in <span class="DLF">parks</span>, and we like a <span class="DLF">hole</span>, like rats.</sentence><sentence id="270">So the Jews of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Milan</span>, they got together and they opened up <span class="INT_SPACE">soup kitchens</span> and they got organized and so at least we could have one meal a day, somewhat of a meal a day.</sentence><sentence id="271">That was done for a while, a week, two weeks.</sentence><sentence id="272">Then the Germans found out that the Jews are treated to some...to a meal a day, and they they made arrangements with the Italian authorities because we told the Italians that we were tourists, otherwise you couldn't get in.</sentence><sentence id="273">We were tourists.</sentence><sentence id="274">So they let us in.</sentence><sentence id="275">And now they said if you're tourists, then you've got to have money and if you have money, you don't need any <span class="INT_SPACE">soup kitchens</span>, and if you're not tourists, then we have to send you back where you came from.</sentence><sentence id="276">Made a lot of sense to them...didn't make any sense to us though.</sentence><sentence id="277">They closed up the <span class="INT_SPACE">soup kitchens</span>.</sentence><sentence id="278">That was the end of food.</sentence><sentence id="279">more than one meal a day.</sentence><sentence id="280">So another few days and uh like I always was, I used to climb into the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">tree</span>, some <span class="DLF">backyards</span>, and pluck some fresh figs. (</sentence><sentence id="281">Laughter) I...I stole some olives from <span class="ENV_FEATURES">trees</span>, but there was to steal.</sentence><sentence id="282">It was edible and to stay alive.</sentence><sentence id="283">Then the word got around that <span class="COUNTRY">France</span> will let anybody in.</sentence><sentence id="284">The men have to go to the French Army, because war was eminent, and the women had to volunteer for the French Red Cross.</sentence><sentence id="285">We said wonderful.</sentence><sentence id="286">We all went to the <span class="BUILDING">French Embassy</span>, and we all got that...the one day flag they call it.</sentence><sentence id="287">We got a visa to enter <span class="COUNTRY">France</span> that was good for 24 hours only.</sentence><sentence id="288">Well, there was only <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> going to the <span class="DLF">French border</span> because the war broke out quite a few weeks after that.</sentence><sentence id="289">We had to get that <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> and they gave us a train ticket so we went for that <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span>.</sentence><sentence id="290">Now what that <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> looked like you will never know.</sentence><sentence id="291">They were hanging out of the <span class="DLF">windows</span>.</sentence><sentence id="292">They were laying on the <span class="DLF">roofs</span>...<span class="NPIP">inside</span>...<span class="NPIP">outside</span>.</sentence><sentence id="293">It was unbelievable.</sentence><sentence id="294">They...they...they held children out out the <span class="DLF">windows</span>.</sentence><sentence id="295">There was <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> for them.</sentence><sentence id="296">They were suffocating <span class="NPIP">inside</span>.</sentence><sentence id="297">There must have been a thousand people or maybe fifteen hundred people on a on a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> that is good for three hundred people.</sentence><sentence id="298">The <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> took off.</sentence><sentence id="299">It couldn't go very fast because people were on the <span class="DLF">roofs</span>.</sentence><sentence id="300">They were hanging out <span class="DLF">windows</span>.</sentence><sentence id="301"><span class="NPIP">Outside</span>...inside and they were hanging on their fingernails.</sentence><sentence id="302">People fell off, actually fell off the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> while the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> was moving so the train conductor didn't go to fast because he saw what was going on.</sentence><sentence id="303">By the time we got to the Italian/<span class="DLF">French border</span>, it was too late.</sentence><sentence id="304">The French had closed the <span class="DLF">border</span> and there's a little piece of <span class="REGION">land</span> called no man's land and the Italians wouldn't let us back.</sentence><sentence id="305">And that was the end of that.</sentence><sentence id="306">So we laid on that little piece land...there was a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">fishing village</span>.</sentence><sentence id="307">.St.</sentence><sentence id="308">Reno__...it's right on the <span class="DLF">border</span>. .</sentence><sentence id="309">It's right on the <span class="DLF">border</span>, and these old fishermen with these old <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boats</span>...they saw a way to make money.</sentence><sentence id="310">Now these were impoverished people that never had anything except to catch a few fish now and then.</sentence><sentence id="311">So they said to us, we'll take you around the bent...it's a big rock...and you had to go around the bent onto the beaches of <span class="COUNTRY">France</span> if you give us everything you have and uh pay us whatever you can pay, and we'll load up the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boats</span>.</sentence><sentence id="312">We'll take you.</sentence><sentence id="313">But what they didn't tell people, that the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boats</span> were old and that the breakers in the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">ocean</span> were very strong onto the onto the uh __, unto the stone, unto the uh onto the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mountain</span>.</sentence><sentence id="314">The <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mountain</span> came back out of the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">ocean</span>.</sentence><sentence id="315">The waves were high and very strong and very uh uh dangerous.</sentence><sentence id="316">So as greedy as they were, they overloaded the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boats</span>.</sentence><sentence id="317">Some people had a wedding band, an engagement ring, maybe a few francs, maybe a few lire, maybe a little piece of jewelry that they saved, that they smuggled out.</sentence><sentence id="318">They overloaded.</sentence><sentence id="319">They gave them everything they owned.</sentence><sentence id="320">They overloaded the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boats</span>.</sentence><sentence id="321">They went out a little bit, and the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boats</span> broke in two.</sentence><sentence id="322">They capsized.</sentence><sentence id="323">They broke in two.</sentence><sentence id="324">The fishermen swam back.</sentence><sentence id="325">He has been fishing...he has been swimming since he was two years old, so there were people that couldn't swim.</sentence><sentence id="326">Now you tell me...who do you save when you're a father and and your little girl says Daddy, save me, and your little boy says Papa, save me.</sentence><sentence id="327">And your wife is drowning.</sentence><sentence id="328">Who do you save...and you can't swim, and the waves are high.</sentence><sentence id="329">The next day the the bodies came washing ashore.</sentence><sentence id="330">And there were two <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boats</span> out there, two uh <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">gun boats</span>.</sentence><sentence id="331">A French one and an <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">Italian gunboat</span>.</sentence><sentence id="332">And the the personnel on these <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boats</span>, they were looking out and they saw the whole thing.</sentence><sentence id="333">Nobody lifted their finger to help.</sentence><sentence id="334">The screams of help, please help, help my children, help my wife, uh save us...still ring into my ears to this day.</sentence><sentence id="335">Nobody cared.</sentence><sentence id="336">I met somebody there that knew my family and they said to me, you know about your brother Paul.</sentence><sentence id="337">I says what.</sentence><sentence id="338">He got out.</sentence><sentence id="339">He went to <span class="COUNTRY">Belgium</span>.</sentence><sentence id="340">The word got out.</sentence><sentence id="341">He was married.</sentence><sentence id="342">He had a twenty year old wife and he had a one year old baby.</sentence><sentence id="343">I said you know what happened to Judy (ph).</sentence><sentence id="344">Have you heard and had any word.</sentence><sentence id="345">He says yes.</sentence><sentence id="346">He tried to smuggle them out into <span class="COUNTRY">Belgium</span>.</sentence><sentence id="347">He paid smugglers to bring them out.</sentence><sentence id="348">The smugglers took all their...what they owned in the middle of the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">woods</span> and abandoned them.</sentence><sentence id="349">The baby started to cry.</sentence><sentence id="350">The Germans got them and hang them.</sentence><sentence id="351">They hang _ fromthe _ wife and baby next to her.</sentence><sentence id="352">They were found like that.</sentence><sentence id="353">I said anything you know about my brother Paul.</sentence><sentence id="354">He says yes.</sentence><sentence id="355">He went half crazy.</sentence><sentence id="356">So the word got out and he went into <span class="COUNTRY">France</span>.</sentence><sentence id="357">That's the last we heard of him.</sentence><sentence id="358">Because here and there, here and there, you found people that knew something about somebody. (</sentence><sentence id="359">Sigh) Now we're stuck there on this piece of <span class="REGION">land</span> there, and we had to...well not much of a chance to tun to...to one <span class="NPIP">side</span> you had the French with their guns looking at us, and on the other <span class="NPIP">side</span> you had the Italians with guns looking at us, and to the front you had the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">ocean</span>.</sentence><sentence id="360">There was nothing you could do with the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">ocean</span> and in the back of you, you had a <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mountain</span>.</sentence><sentence id="361">The highest <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mountain</span> we ever saw was the <span class="DLF">garbage dump</span> in our <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">city</span>.</sentence><sentence id="362">I never saw a <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mountain</span> in my life before.</sentence><sentence id="363">How do you get out?</sentence><sentence id="364">A little boy hung on to me.</sentence><sentence id="365">He was twelve years old.</sentence><sentence id="366">His name was Heinz (ph).</sentence><sentence id="367">He got lost, someplace along the the running, he got lost from his family.</sentence><sentence id="368">He says he wants to go with me.</sentence><sentence id="369">I said hang on, and then a few days passed by and the only help you got was from a few monks that used to come and used to give us a little milk and a little piece of bread, a few figs, a few uh uh olives and things.</sentence><sentence id="370">It was a pitiful sight.</sentence><sentence id="371">And yet I wasn't really worried.</sentence><sentence id="372">I just absorbed all this like matter of fact, and then said well, I'm going to do something about this.</sentence><sentence id="373">And I looked around, tried to make up my mind which way to go, and uh I said wouldn't the best approach be just go right up to the <span class="DLF">French border</span>, crawl through the <span class="DLF">barbed wire</span> there, and get <span class="NPIP">inside</span>.</sentence><sentence id="374">Now wouldn't that be just just a crazy thing to do.</sentence><sentence id="375">Said to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Heinz</span>, look...we can't take the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">ocean</span>.</sentence><sentence id="376">We can't go back to <span class="COUNTRY">Italy</span>.</sentence><sentence id="377">We can't officially go to <span class="COUNTRY">France</span>.</sentence><sentence id="378">We can't go the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mountain</span>.</sentence><sentence id="379">We'll never...never make it.</sentence><sentence id="380">I have an idea.</sentence><sentence id="381">Let's do the crazy thing that nobody expects us to do.</sentence><sentence id="382">He says, what?</sentence><sentence id="383">I said let's go right through the barbed wire into...let's go right into <span class="COUNTRY">France</span>.</sentence><sentence id="384">He said, you're crazy.</sentence><sentence id="385">I said yes, that's why...that's what everybody thinks...I'm crazy.</sentence><sentence id="386">Let's do the crazy thing.</sentence><sentence id="387">That's what we did.</sentence><sentence id="388">I said we're going to die.</sentence><sentence id="389">We're going to starve to death here, and there must have been about a thousand, maybe fourteen hundred people lying on this <span class="ENV_FEATURES">ground</span>.</sentence><sentence id="390">I don't know ever what happened to them.</sentence><sentence id="391">I don't...never found out what happened to them.</sentence><sentence id="392">We went through the <span class="DLF">wire</span>, and I said you just follow me.</sentence><sentence id="393">What happen will happen.</sentence><sentence id="394">What have we got to loose?</sentence><sentence id="395">And I wasn't worried really, not really.</sentence><sentence id="396">| was maybe too young to worry about things and too ignorant. (</sentence><sentence id="397">Laughter) We did that.</sentence><sentence id="398">Coming out on the other <span class="NPIP">side</span> I was looking up and I looked into the barrel of a gun.</sentence><sentence id="399">There was a French guard there and border guards there.</sentence><sentence id="400">He looked down at me.</sentence><sentence id="401">I looked up at him, and Heinz stopped crawling and I stopped crawling, and he had the gun aimed at us, so I said to him in German...shoot me but let him live.</sentence><sentence id="402">He's only twelve years old.</sentence><sentence id="403">So it was that somebody something in French.</sentence><sentence id="404">I could not speak it.</sentence><sentence id="405">He...he called something back in French, and he says...he spoke broken German...he said to me, see that <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> over there.</sentence><sentence id="406">I said yes.</sentence><sentence id="407">Get in it.</sentence><sentence id="408">It's going to go to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Nice</span>, into <span class="COUNTRY">France</span>.</sentence><sentence id="409">uncivilized person.</sentence><sentence id="410">We went in.</sentence><sentence id="411">We were very tired and we fell asleep, two of us.</sentence><sentence id="412">Dirty, bloody, hungry, thirsty, cold...went to sleep.</sentence><sentence id="413">We woke up in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Nice</span>.</sentence><sentence id="414">We got out in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Nice</span> and we dragged ourselves through the <span class="DLF">streets</span>.</sentence><sentence id="415">I spoke no French.</sentence><sentence id="416">We had...we'd never been in a French country.</sentence><sentence id="417">We didn't know what <span class="COUNTRY">France</span> was all about, and we went to a <span class="DLF">doorway</span> and went asleep, and they arrested us, the gendarmes.</sentence><sentence id="418">That is when I first met the gendarmes, the guard du mobile (ph), and let me assure you the gendarmes and the guard du mobile, they are not the gentlest of people.</sentence><sentence id="419">They really are nasty dogs.</sentence><sentence id="420">They grabbed us.</sentence><sentence id="421">They called us spies, spies there.</sentence><sentence id="422">I was a spy and they threw us in <span class="BUILDING">jail</span>.</sentence><sentence id="423">Now in <span class="COUNTRY">France</span> if you're caught about illegally, they...that's the law.</sentence><sentence id="424">You'll get one month in <span class="BUILDING">jail</span>, before they even talk to you.</sentence><sentence id="425">I learned to understand what <span class="BUILDING">jail</span> is in <span class="COUNTRY">France</span>.</sentence><sentence id="426"><span class="BUILDING">Jail</span> is a dirty <span class="INT_SPACE">cell</span> with roaches and rats and and you get a drink of water a day and a piece of bread full of ants.</sentence><sentence id="427">In order to eat the bread full of...and you knock out the ants as best you can...you break off a piece of bread and throw it in the corner, let the rats fight over it while they let you eat...quickly eat the other piece.</sentence><sentence id="428">That's is <span class="BUILDING">jail</span> in <span class="COUNTRY">France</span>.</sentence><sentence id="429">After one day, took me out and they put me into a open <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">car</span>, like they called that the commando, like with eight people could sit there, like a long open <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">van</span> or something...I don't know what you call it.</sentence><sentence id="430">Eight guard du mobile, eight of them...they put me in chains.</sentence><sentence id="431">My...my legs and my arm in chains, and it took eight guards du mobile...guard du mobile is the French police and gendarmes...to guard me, after they chased me down, after I was already down to nothing from lack of food and lack of sleep and and and I had no more tears left to cry.</sentence><sentence id="432">I don't know what happened to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Heinz</span>.</sentence><sentence id="433">And they took me out.</sentence><sentence id="434">Nobody told me where we were going.</sentence><sentence id="435">Nobody told me anything.</sentence><sentence id="436">We went to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Entibe</span> (ph), a <span class="NPIP">place</span> called <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Entibe</span>.</sentence><sentence id="437"><span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Entibe</span> is outside <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Nice</span>, a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="438">They call it <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">internment camp</span>, but don't you believe it.</sentence><sentence id="439">Don't you believe <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">internment camps</span>.</sentence><sentence id="440"><span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Resettlement camps</span>.</sentence><sentence id="441">Don't you believe it.</sentence><sentence id="442">These are <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camps</span>, in the sense of the word...<span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camps</span> with all their pitfalls, all their filth and all their dirt and and and and and and all their...all their nastiness and brutality.</sentence><sentence id="443">There was no <span class="NPIP">place</span> for us to sleep.</sentence><sentence id="444">We slept on <span class="INT_SPACE">floors</span> under the open <span class="DLF">sky</span>.</sentence><sentence id="445">Was___ maybe two thousand people in there.</sentence><sentence id="446">They pulled up in front of the <span class="DLF">gate</span>, opened up the <span class="DLF">gate</span>, took off the chains, grabbed me and threw me into the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="447">And I fell down on my face into into the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">dirt</span> and that was it.</sentence><sentence id="448">They did this.</sentence><sentence id="449">That's what they did.</sentence><sentence id="450">I was in that <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>, oh must have been well maybe six weeks, maybe two months and they took us back on <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">transports on trucks</span> and they put us into another <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> which was called 3 .</sentence><sentence id="451">That is <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Marseilles</span> (ph).</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="649">Q: In in the first <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>, did you have to do any labor or any work?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="651">A: No no.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="653">Q: What did you do during the day?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="655">A: Just hang around, nothing to do.</sentence><sentence id="656">Tried to stay alive.</sentence><sentence id="657">Tried to fight off the lice and the and the rats and the and the and stay away from the guards who would brutalize you.</sentence><sentence id="658">Uh some of them would uh try to get young boys and uh you know...I don't have to tell you.</sentence><sentence id="659">There was homosexuality there almost rampant by our own people and the guards.</sentence><sentence id="660">And there were always people that would uh sort of protect us.</sentence><sentence id="661">We were so innocent.</sentence><sentence id="662">I never heard the word homosexuality.</sentence><sentence id="663">I never knew what it was.</sentence><sentence id="664">I'd never had anything to do with it, but uh I met a friend of mine.</sentence><sentence id="665">He came from my <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">home town</span>.</sentence><sentence id="666">He was ten years older, a .</sentence><sentence id="667">We got to talking.</sentence><sentence id="668">He says uh we come from the same <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span> and uh they had a <span class="BUILDING">store</span> across the <span class="DLF">street</span> where we lived and we sort of got together.</sentence><sentence id="669">He sort of kept me...you know, kept an eye on me.</sentence><sentence id="670">Chased people away.</sentence><sentence id="671">When the other <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> ; was all <span class="BUILDING">brick factory</span>.</sentence><sentence id="672">They had the <span class="INT_SPACE">catacombs</span> and they would lock us into the catacombs like little <span class="DLF">tunnels</span> where they used to dry the bricks, like <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">ovens</span>.</sentence><sentence id="673">There was this straw on the <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span>.</sentence><sentence id="674">They would chase us in there by the hundreds and lock the <span class="DLF">door</span>, a big <span class="DLF">iron door</span>, and that was it.</sentence><sentence id="675">And we were lucky enough...was total darkness in there...when they stayed they put a few little bulbs and they are flickering in there and that is what...there we were.</sentence><sentence id="676">That is what we did.</sentence><sentence id="677">Honest to God...that is how we laid on the straw and and and and just uh tried to exist.</sentence><sentence id="678">After a couple of months of that kind of life...well, they took us out once a day for exercise.</sentence><sentence id="679">They let us walk around the <span class="DLF">yard</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="705">Q: What about food?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="707">A: (Sigh) Well, food...uh I wasn't a big eater anyhow in those days. (</sentence><sentence id="708">Laughter) I never thought about food that much but the food was very bad there.</sentence><sentence id="709">They gave us a cup of coffee a day, black water, and gave us some...a a half a liter of soup at lunch time and a half a liter of soup in the evening and if you are...were lucky you found a rotten onion in it or a rotten potato or a couple roaches. (</sentence><sentence id="710">Laughter) There were...this was about uh...well, there was darkness in there so you didn't really see it, you know, so it didn't matter too much.</sentence><sentence id="711">We existed.</sentence><sentence id="712">They gave you a piece of bread, gave you seventy-five gram of bread.</sentence><sentence id="713">That.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="721">Q: And sanitary facilities?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="723">A: Very bad.</sentence><sentence id="724">They had a <span class="DLF">hole</span> in the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">ground</span> and that is where you went and that is uh uh...before you know it there was dysentery and there was sickness and there was uh uh so they had to take us out of there.</sentence><sentence id="725">So after a couple of months they called all the people under twenty years of age and took us into the __ St. Charles (ph).</sentence><sentence id="726">That is in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Marseilles</span>.</sentence><sentence id="727"><span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Marseilles</span> wasn't far from there and they want us to sign up for the French Foreign Legion.</sentence><sentence id="728">So they said you sign up for the Foreign Legion and we give you uniforms and you get food and and you're free.</sentence><sentence id="729">You can go into <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span>.</sentence><sentence id="730">I said well we don't want to fight the Arabs in <span class="COUNTRY">Africa</span>.</sentence><sentence id="731">We want to fight the Nazis on the mainland.</sentence><sentence id="732">We have no quarrel with the Arabs.</sentence><sentence id="733">We don't want to sign up for the French Foreign Legion.</sentence><sentence id="734">Let us...give us uniform, put us in the French Army, and we will fight for you, but we won't fight the Arabs in <span class="REGION">Africa</span>.</sentence><sentence id="735">We want to fight the Nazis here.</sentence><sentence id="736">Well, they put us back into the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span>, back into the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="737">That went on every other day.</sentence><sentence id="738">They took us into the <span class="INT_SPACE">kitchen</span> to see the fine food you would get and you'll get money and you see the nice uniforms we give you.</sentence><sentence id="739">So I sort of...another guy and myself, we were sort of the spokesmen for the...we were the younger, you know...we the older ones, and I say it doesn't impress us.</sentence><sentence id="740">We still __.</sentence><sentence id="741">We stay...we stay in the in the <span class="BUILDING">brick factory</span>.</sentence><sentence id="742">They had to let us out sometime.</sentence><sentence id="743">We stayed till the , but we went and this went on and on.</sentence><sentence id="744">Finally...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="767">Q: What were your feelings...uh fear...could you describe it?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="769">A: No.</sentence><sentence id="770">I wouldn't say fear.</sentence><sentence id="771">We just accepted things.</sentence><sentence id="772">I don't know.</sentence><sentence id="773">We just...whether it was our age, our young years that uh...no, we weren't really afraid of anything.</sentence><sentence id="774">It's just that things happen and we had to accept it and and and uh...there were times when we cried.</sentence><sentence id="775">There were times when we...when we were a sort of scared a little bit and and but there were other people that would tell us uh uh...I would ask the guy next to me uh what's going to happen to us.</sentence><sentence id="776">He would turn around and says, .</sentence><sentence id="777">That means everything passes, even life.</sentence><sentence id="778">This shall pass too...in German.</sentence><sentence id="779">So I said come on, that doesn't tell me anything.</sentence><sentence id="780">This is something you don't appreciate for ___.</sentence><sentence id="781">You're young.</sentence><sentence id="782">You'll..-you'll make it.</sentence><sentence id="783">They have to let us out sometime, so look forward to that.</sentence><sentence id="784">Those guys, they were singing and the guys they told stories and and we had conversations and and we just sort of accepted things, knowing...hoping and knowing that someday we will...it will end.</sentence><sentence id="785">It will stop.</sentence><sentence id="786">We didn't have much time to think about our families anymore, and that's what scared me.</sentence><sentence id="787">We were so busy with things that we never thought about our our families anymore, what happened to them.</sentence><sentence id="788">We had __ what happened but nothing.</sentence><sentence id="789">We were so busy with our own trying to stay alive in in under those conditions that were us.</sentence><sentence id="790">Well, one day they put us, put people in <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span>.</sentence><sentence id="791">Says we were over-crowded there.</sentence><sentence id="792">We're going...they're going to another <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="793">I said fine.</sentence><sentence id="794">I had nothing to say.</sentence><sentence id="795">And they took my friend.</sentence><sentence id="796">I didn't want to be separated from him.</sentence><sentence id="797">I jumped on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">truck</span> too.</sentence><sentence id="798">You had no <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">luggage</span>.</sentence><sentence id="799">You had nothing.</sentence><sentence id="800">You add to the confusion.</sentence><sentence id="801">The French had a knack of confusion, of being disorganized.</sentence><sentence id="802">So we got into the other <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>, <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Monasque</span> (ph), called <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Monasque</span>.</sentence><sentence id="803">Now here was a...here was a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> that was made out ofanold <span class="BUILDING">house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="804">They put barbed wire around it and made a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> out of it.</sentence><sentence id="805">A few days later called my name out.</sentence><sentence id="806">I wasn't on the list in in the <span class="BUILDING">mill</span>.</sentence><sentence id="807">I wasn't on the list in this <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>, and they were investigating what happened to me.</sentence><sentence id="808">And they said to me, well, you have to go back to the other <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="809">You weren't on the list.</sentence><sentence id="810">I said well, there was nothing much I could do.</sentence><sentence id="811">I said goodbye to my friend and I said somehow we'll meet again.</sentence><sentence id="812">We didn't like to be separated.</sentence><sentence id="813">Well, on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">truck</span> they had a few other people from other <span class="NPIP">places</span> that they caught up with.</sentence><sentence id="814">We were going.</sentence><sentence id="815">It was late in the day, almost night.</sentence><sentence id="816">It was cold.</sentence><sentence id="817">And they were going slowly around the bend.</sentence><sentence id="818">I had no idea where I was, and the back was open.</sentence><sentence id="819">They had no guards in the back to watch us.</sentence><sentence id="820">There were two guys.</sentence><sentence id="821">They didn't want to sit in the back where it was cold.</sentence><sentence id="822">The guard was sitting up front next to the driver.</sentence><sentence id="823">Went around the bend.</sentence><sentence id="824">There was an <span class="DLF">embankment</span> there.</sentence><sentence id="825">I jumped.</sentence><sentence id="826">I got...caught the opportunity.</sentence><sentence id="827">I went out of the , the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">truck</span>.</sentence><sentence id="828">I jumped down, fell down the <span class="DLF">embankment</span>, rolled down, and I was laying in the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mud</span>.</sentence><sentence id="829">That was it.</sentence><sentence id="830">I had no idea where I was.</sentence><sentence id="831">So I saw the the lights of the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">truck</span> disappearing on the <span class="DLF">highway</span>, so I just lay still for a little while.</sentence><sentence id="832">Then I got up and I was hurt, and I walked into the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">woods</span>.</sentence><sentence id="833">I stayed the whole night, day and night.</sentence><sentence id="834">Early the next morning I heard voices...voices.</sentence><sentence id="835">I was so hungry.</sentence><sentence id="836">I was always so hungry.</sentence><sentence id="837">So I went up there.</sentence><sentence id="838">There was a bunch of guys, Jewish boys, all nationalities.</sentence><sentence id="839">Some of them had guns.</sentence><sentence id="840">Some of them didn't.</sentence><sentence id="841">Some of them had grenades.</sentence><sentence id="842">One of them had this uh knife, so they looked at me.</sentence><sentence id="843">They pointed a gun at me.</sentence><sentence id="844">I says, I am a Jew on the run.</sentence><sentence id="845">So one guy said so what else is new.</sentence><sentence id="846">Have you ever seen a Jew that's not on the run.</sentence><sentence id="847">I said__ no.</sentence><sentence id="848">He said come.</sentence><sentence id="849">Join us.</sentence><sentence id="850">So they got more guns and he said look, we do some raiding.</sentence><sentence id="851">We do some trouble.</sentence><sentence id="852">All we can do is like a big...put a sting here and a sting there to the Nazis, but that's about as far as we can go.</sentence><sentence id="853">We...we are no match for the armament of the machine guns or for the masses of those people and and their <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">tanks</span> and their and their <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">carriers</span> and whatever they have.</sentence><sentence id="854">We are...but we can give a sting here and there, now and then, so that's what we'll do.</sentence><sentence id="855">Hurt them and run.</sentence><sentence id="856">So that's what we did for a while.</sentence><sentence id="857">Then the word came out there is another group in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Langlade</span> (ph).</sentence><sentence id="858">We ought to join them, so we made our way to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Langlade</span>, traveling at night, hiding during the day.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="951">Q: How many were there of you?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="953">A: There must have been thirty, forty.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="955">Q: And what were the ages?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="957">A: Young and old.</sentence><sentence id="958">From age...from age nine, ten years old up to forty, fifty.</sentence><sentence id="959">Somehow they got out.</sentence><sentence id="960">Somehow they are lucky enough not to get caught.</sentence><sentence id="961">Somehow they were on the run for God knows how long, and somehow they found themselves in that predicament.</sentence><sentence id="962">Nobody asked questions.</sentence><sentence id="963">So when you're hungry, you know you do strange things.</sentence><sentence id="964">We went to little <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">villages</span>, <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">French villages</span>, you know where the bakers put their long breads in baskets outside the <span class="BUILDING">store</span>.</sentence><sentence id="965">I was a good runner, and I was a good thief.</sentence><sentence id="966">I learned as I went along.</sentence><sentence id="967">I was hungry.</sentence><sentence id="968">So I said to the guys, get me a few guys, good, the best runners we have.</sentence><sentence id="969">We nonchalantly walked through the little <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">village</span> there.</sentence><sentence id="970">We grab a few breads.</sentence><sentence id="971">They had these long breads, these French long breads.</sentence><sentence id="972">I mean long, not the ones we've got here.</sentence><sentence id="973">About four or five feet long.</sentence><sentence id="974">You grab a few breads and you run like <span class="NPIP">hell</span>, and then we shared and that's what we did.</sentence><sentence id="975">We went in, grabbed the bread.</sentence><sentence id="976">By the time that they had a chance to even see anything, we...we were running like the dickens.</sentence><sentence id="977">We were scared, hungry and scared.</sentence><sentence id="978">We were always hungry and scared.</sentence><sentence id="979">We shared it.</sentence><sentence id="980">Have you ever tried to go into a <span class="BUILDING">chicken house</span> and steal a few eggs.</sentence><sentence id="981">Don't ever try it.</sentence><sentence id="982">I did.</sentence><sentence id="983">We went into a <span class="BUILDING">farmhouse</span>.</sentence><sentence id="984">We said to the guys...all we could speak was German.</sentence><sentence id="985">We couldn't speak French.</sentence><sentence id="986">We couldn't speak no other language.</sentence><sentence id="987">Nobody talks because if you speak German, the French hate the _, the Germans.</sentence><sentence id="988">They're going to kill us.</sentence><sentence id="989">Nobody talked.</sentence><sentence id="990">We get caught, nobody talks.</sentence><sentence id="991">We went into the <span class="BUILDING">chicken house</span> to steal some eggs.</sentence><sentence id="992">The chickens carried on.</sentence><sentence id="993">You would not believe the noise they made.</sentence><sentence id="994">The farmer came out.</sentence><sentence id="995">Two farmers came out in fact, with pitch forks.</sentence><sentence id="996">They found us.</sentence><sentence id="997">They would have put those pitch forks right through us because food was always scarce.</sentence><sentence id="998">They didn't...they didn't appreciate anybody stealing their eggs or chickens for that matter.</sentence><sentence id="999">I tell you we never run so fast in our lives over the <span class="DLF">fields</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1000">After a few miles out there, we start eating some of the wine, the grapes that grow in the <span class="DLF">fields</span>, but the farmers put a chemical on those grapes uh so the flies and things don't uh spoil them.</sentence><sentence id="1001">They gave us diarrhea.</sentence><sentence id="1002">We got sick from them.</sentence><sentence id="1003">It was a bad situation, believe me.</sentence><sentence id="1004">We finally made it to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Neim</span> (ph), and we went to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Langlade two</span> at a time.</sentence><sentence id="1005">The others stayed in the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">woods</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1006">Only two at a time traveled.</sentence><sentence id="1007">We went to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Langlade</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1008">There was a small <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">village</span>, small <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">French village</span>, and...a deserted <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">village</span>, nobody there.</sentence><sentence id="1009">Empty...just the <span class="BUILDING">houses</span> stood there.</sentence><sentence id="1010">We went in there.</sentence><sentence id="1011">We saw a guard, one our people, one of the crowd, and they took us in.</sentence><sentence id="1012">We joined them.</sentence><sentence id="1013">They were...they already were better armed, better trained, smarter in in in the things they had to do.</sentence><sentence id="1014">After about a week or so we were surrounded...somebody must have gotten wind of it...by the gendarmes, the French gendarmes, and they asked us to give up.</sentence><sentence id="1015">Well, 0 we knew we were in the south of <span class="COUNTRY">France</span>, and you remember well that <span class="COUNTRY">France</span> was occupied only half and the other one was Vichy controlled, Marshall and 3 you know about that.</sentence><sentence id="1016">So at least we knew we were in the south of <span class="COUNTRY">France</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1017">You always had to go south.</sentence><sentence id="1018">So we got together, said look, all the young guys, guys like, you know, fifteen, sixteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two...make a run for it over the <span class="DLF">field</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1019">We're going to shoot out at the gendarmes on one <span class="NPIP">side</span>, and you run on the other <span class="NPIP">side</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1020">We keep them busy on one <span class="NPIP">side</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1021">So we said what's going to happen to you.</sentence><sentence id="1022">They said don't worry about us.</sentence><sentence id="1023">We are older guys.</sentence><sentence id="1024">We expect it...we expected this anytime to happen, so it happen now.</sentence><sentence id="1025">Maybe we'll get away too.</sentence><sentence id="1026">But we'll fight it out.</sentence><sentence id="1027">We...we're going to give them a run for their money.</sentence><sentence id="1028">In the meantime you make a run for it, all the young kids, make a run for it, because you're the ones that can run.</sentence><sentence id="1029">We can't.</sentence><sentence id="1030">And believe me, we got good at running.</sentence><sentence id="1031">Sure enough, they started the firing and he says go and we went, and we run over the <span class="DLF">fields</span> while they keep the gendarmes busy.</sentence><sentence id="1032">And the French aren't anyway.</sentence><sentence id="1033">We found that out.</sentence><sentence id="1034">They they're not too bright.</sentence><sentence id="1035">They're cruel.</sentence><sentence id="1036">They're barbaric, but they're not bright.</sentence><sentence id="1037">And where will you go?</sentence><sentence id="1038">You're running through the <span class="DLF">fields</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1039">Where will you go?</sentence><sentence id="1040">Naturally...Nice.</sentence><sentence id="1041">That's the answer...Nice, toward the <span class="DLF">Italian border</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1042"><span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Nice</span> is toward the <span class="DLF">Italian border</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1043">I end up in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Nice</span> and what the French did...they would close up a part of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1044">Suddenly three or four <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span> with gendarmes would pull up and they would close up off part of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span> and and and they would arrest anyone that they can catch that had no papers.</sentence><sentence id="1045">You had to show papers.</sentence><sentence id="1046">You had to show passports.</sentence><sentence id="1047">You had to show money that you are not a vagrant.</sentence><sentence id="1048">If you can't explain your existence, to <span class="BUILDING">jail</span> you go.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1141">Q: Were you by yourself?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1143">A: I was by myself.</sentence><sentence id="1144">I didn't know these things that they did there.</sentence><sentence id="1145">And of course I was caught.</sentence><sentence id="1146">So what they do...they put me into this .</sentence><sentence id="1147">There is a , you know, the _, a <span class="DLF">park</span>, an <span class="DLF">army park</span>, in in in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Nice</span> and they had a <span class="BUILDING">jail</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1148">And they put me in this and took me there.</sentence><sentence id="1149">The others they put in other <span class="BUILDING">jails</span> that they caught.</sentence><sentence id="1150">To...to me no papers, no money, no past, no present, no future.</sentence><sentence id="1151">I couldn't speak a word of French and I was hungry.</sentence><sentence id="1152">I said what more can happen to me.</sentence><sentence id="1153">They put into into a <span class="INT_SPACE">cell</span> by myself...one day, two days, three days, and the <span class="BUILDING">jail</span> was right...it was a <span class="BUILDING">jail</span> and a little <span class="DLF">courtyard</span> and the <span class="DLF">wall</span> and the <span class="DLF">street</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1154">The <span class="DLF">street</span> was like this.</sentence><sentence id="1155">So I was watching.</sentence><sentence id="1156">I II became observant.</sentence><sentence id="1157">I could <span class="BUILDING">shop</span> (ph).</sentence><sentence id="1158">When they put me into that <span class="BUILDING">jail</span>, I kept walking slower, I kept sizing up the <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1159">I was looking around to see how many <span class="INT_SPACE">cells</span> there, see what...where the <span class="DLF">wall</span> is, see what's behind the <span class="DLF">wall</span>, uh see how the <span class="INT_SPACE">cell</span> closes...I became very, very observant.</sentence><sentence id="1160">One day the guard came around.</sentence><sentence id="1161">He says, well, he says, one morning, tomorrow you're going to be handed over to the Gestapo.</sentence><sentence id="1162">They're going to pick all you Jews up.</sentence><sentence id="1163">Well that night I counted the time the guard would make the rounds.</sentence><sentence id="1164">It was about ten minutes.</sentence><sentence id="1165">I counted...one, two, three, four, five minute passed...one minute, two minute, three minute, four minute.</sentence><sentence id="1166">About ten minutes.</sentence><sentence id="1167">There was a <span class="DLF">hole</span> in the <span class="INT_SPACE">cell</span> with a little <span class="DLF">trap door</span> where they put that thing in where you urinate in, and that was closed with a piece of wire.</sentence><sentence id="1168">They just place...put a piece of wire through it and wrap it around.</sentence><sentence id="1169">They say you couldn't get out.</sentence><sentence id="1170">I noticed that.</sentence><sentence id="1171">He left.</sentence><sentence id="1172">I went up, pulled that thing 1 out and I worked the wire back and forth till it broke.</sentence><sentence id="1173">I worked it up.</sentence><sentence id="1174">Every time they came by, I stopped.</sentence><sentence id="1175">He went.</sentence><sentence id="1176">The moment he left I had the <span class="DLF">door</span> opened.</sentence><sentence id="1177">I'm a little skinny thing.</sentence><sentence id="1178">I went through.</sentence><sentence id="1179">There were five more <span class="INT_SPACE">cells</span>, and they had a bolt that you could open from the <span class="NPIP">outside</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1180">I opened all five <span class="INT_SPACE">cells</span> and I looked in.</sentence><sentence id="1181">It was a pathetic view.</sentence><sentence id="1182">When I tell you it was pitiful...they were loaded with people that they caught here and there, that they arrested, waiting, so I said you know, you got eight minutes to go over the <span class="DLF">wall</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1183">Eight minutes.</sentence><sentence id="1184">Now it's seven minutes.</sentence><sentence id="1185">Get the hell out.</sentence><sentence id="1186">Move.</sentence><sentence id="1187">Get over the <span class="DLF">wall</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1188">I got them all out to the <span class="DLF">courtyard</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1189">I said get out, get out.</sentence><sentence id="1190">I want to talk to you.</sentence></p><p><sentence id="1191">They all came out.</sentence><sentence id="1192">I said come on.</sentence><sentence id="1193">See that <span class="DLF">wall</span>...make it...make a go for it.</sentence><sentence id="1194">Go, go.</sentence><sentence id="1195">You had to...if you have to die, die fighting.</sentence><sentence id="1196">At least try.</sentence><sentence id="1197">They looked at me and they said where are we going to go.</sentence><sentence id="1198">Nobody wants us.</sentence><sentence id="1199">Nobody's going to help us.</sentence><sentence id="1200">Where do you want us to go?</sentence><sentence id="1201">Well, I knew I only had a few minutes left and I said look, I don't know about you but I'm going over the <span class="DLF">wall</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1202">I climbed...I went to the <span class="DLF">wall</span> which was no big deal, but they had this little piece of glass on the <span class="DLF">wall</span> like like like to cut yourself on, you know, was over every half an inch of glass.</sentence><sentence id="1203">I took what shoes I had on, if you could call it shoes.</sentence><sentence id="1204">I went in between but I cut myself anyway.</sentence><sentence id="1205">Outside the <span class="DLF">wall</span> was a lamp post and outside there was a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">car</span> going back and forth.</sentence><sentence id="1206">I looked right on top of them.</sentence><sentence id="1207">I waited until the _ walked the other way.</sentence><sentence id="1208">I jumped onto the lamp post, went down and start walking immediately.</sentence><sentence id="1209">I didn't even stay...I didn't give him a chance that he would...where this guy come.</sentence><sentence id="1210">I just...I never saw him...I just a minute ago...where'd he come from.</sentence><sentence id="1211">I walked.</sentence><sentence id="1212">He didn't say a word to me.</sentence><sentence id="1213">I nodded to him.</sentence><sentence id="1214">He smiled at me and I kept on going.</sentence><sentence id="1215">The moment I was a few hundred feet away, I started running like the dickens just to get away from that <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1216">Two guys stopped me.</sentence><sentence id="1217">One guy said to me if you're on the tun, if you're a Jew and you're on the run, three blocks down is a <span class="BUILDING">school</span>, a <span class="BUILDING">school</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1218">They have three <span class="INT_SPACE">basements</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1219">Go to the third <span class="INT_SPACE">basement</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1220">You can collect your breath for a day or two.</sentence><sentence id="1221">Get something to eat.</sentence><sentence id="1222">That's what I did.</sentence><sentence id="1223">I went into the <span class="INT_SPACE">basement</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1224">They took me in.</sentence></p><p><sentence id="1225">There must have been a hundred guys there, hiding in this <span class="BUILDING">school</span> in the <span class="INT_SPACE">basement</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1226">And he said to me you can stay maybe two days, maybe three.</sentence><sentence id="1227">Then you have to make <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> for somebody else that needs a piece of bread or that needs to get a night's sleep.</sentence><sentence id="1228">So somehow we started to get organized a little.</sentence><sentence id="1229">Somebody...you see, it was a big thing when...if you could get a night's sleep without having to worry or if you get a piece of bread without having to sleep with your with your stomach empty.</sentence><sentence id="1230">That was a big thing.</sentence></p><p><sentence id="1231">Or or if somebody gave you piece of blanket and you got warm for a change.</sentence><sentence id="1232">That was a big thing.</sentence><sentence id="1233">You could let go of fear and of and of of nerves and of and and of being so frightened, and and this so cold all the time and so hungry all the time.</sentence><sentence id="1234">You could let go of it a little bit.</sentence><sentence id="1235">You could lay down, say ah...I just want to sleep a few hours without having to worry somebody putting a bayonet in my back or a gun to my head.</sentence><sentence id="1236">It lasted a few days and said look, I have to make <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1237">I got out.</sentence><sentence id="1238">I got caught again.</sentence><sentence id="1239">Got no <span class="NPIP">place</span> to go.</sentence><sentence id="1240">There was no <span class="NPIP">place</span> to go.</sentence><sentence id="1241">This time they took me to a Ausglis Sur Mer (ph).</sentence><sentence id="1242">Well <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Ausglis</span>...naturally in chains with dozens of others.</sentence><sentence id="1243">Ausglis Sur Mer.</sentence><sentence id="1244">They put us into, into the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> and inside the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> was another <span class="BUILDING">tent</span> with barbed wire around it.</sentence><sentence id="1245">They threw us in there with maybe uh twenty, thirty kids...all kids.</sentence><sentence id="1246">Ten, twelve, fourteen, eighteen, fifteen, thirteen.</sentence><sentence id="1247">Look _.</sentence><sentence id="1248">There's two boys going to be shot.</sentence><sentence id="1249">That's your life there.</sentence><sentence id="1250">Make the most of it.</sentence><sentence id="1251">Nobody really understood the significance of being shot.</sentence><sentence id="1252">2 Somehow we didn't even...we couldn't comprehend it.</sentence><sentence id="1253">Only the fewest mentally could comprehend it. (</sentence><sentence id="1254">Pause) Next day came...nothing.</sentence><sentence id="1255">Night came...nothing.</sentence><sentence id="1256">Day came...nothing.</sentence><sentence id="1257">They threw in one bread like this was food was in for the day, and the others break a piece for this one and a piece for that one.</sentence><sentence id="1258">Threw some water in, and we waited and one morning they took us out and amongst another three, four hundred they put us onto a unto a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle boat</span> that was docked nearby and uh the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">guard du mobile</span> was on each <span class="NPIP">side</span> and we had to go through the <span class="DLF">line</span>, you know what I'm trying to say, through the <span class="DLF">line</span> between the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">guard du mobile</span>, be...between the gendarmes, and as we went through all chained together, they would beat us and kick us and spit at us.</sentence><sentence id="1259">Some fell down and we had to drag them with us because they're chained together, to get onto the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1260">It was pitiful.</sentence><sentence id="1261">It was really pathetic.</sentence><sentence id="1262">We had never seen...we had never harmed these people.</sentence><sentence id="1263">We never saw these people.</sentence><sentence id="1264">Finally the captain of the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span> came out and he told them to stop.</sentence><sentence id="1265">He said as long as I'm the captain, as long as these people come on my <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>, they are not going to be beaten anymore, not by you, not by anyone.</sentence><sentence id="1266">They're under my jurisdiction now.</sentence><sentence id="1267">Now let these people go.</sentence><sentence id="1268">He was a nice man, the captain.</sentence><sentence id="1269">We went on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span> and there was a <span class="DLF">hole</span> on the <span class="INT_SPACE">deck</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1270">We went into this <span class="DLF">hole</span>, and on the top they put some heavy machine gun onto the <span class="DLF">hole</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1271">That was the only way you could get out.</sentence><sentence id="1272">And the the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span> took off.</sentence><sentence id="1273">We had no idea where we were going.</sentence><sentence id="1274">Some people, the older guys told us...they looked through the, you know, uh <span class="DLF">openings</span> in the in the belly of the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span> there was little <span class="DLF">openings</span> that you could look through...say I see the coast of <span class="COUNTRY">Spain</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1275">Now if you see the coast of <span class="COUNTRY">Spain</span>, they're going to take us to <span class="COUNTRY">Africa</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1276">The coast of <span class="REGION">Africa</span> is not far from there.</sentence><sentence id="1277">So they took us to <span class="REGION">Africa</span>...not <span class="REGION">Africa</span>...<span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Algiers</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1278">They unloaded us in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Algiers</span> in <span class="BUILDING">prison</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1279">They were waiting for other <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">transports</span> to come.</sentence><sentence id="1280">We went to <span class="BUILDING">jail</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1281">We stayed in <span class="BUILDING">jail</span>...must have been maybe six, seven weeks, in <span class="INT_SPACE">solitary confinement</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1282">One was not allowed to talk to the other.</sentence><sentence id="1283">Let me assure you, the only way we kept our sanity was we knocked on the <span class="DLF">wall</span> and the other guy knocked back.</sentence><sentence id="1284">That was the only outside contact we had.</sentence><sentence id="1285">It was a little <span class="INT_SPACE">cell</span> that you could hardly lay down your blankets.</sentence><sentence id="1286">No <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bed</span>, no nothing.</sentence><sentence id="1287">We had to lay on stone.</sentence><sentence id="1288">We had very little water.</sentence><sentence id="1289">We had very little food, and there was just no way that we ever found out what was going to happen to us.</sentence><sentence id="1290">We lost...we lost uh uh track of time.</sentence><sentence id="1291">We didn't know what day of the week, what month we be...we just didn't any more uh uh mentally uh whether it was day or whether it was night or what.</sentence><sentence id="1292">It was dark in there with a little tiny <span class="DLF">window</span> where they pushed the stuff going and and a little pot to uh uh urinate in and and they didn't clean that out for about a month and uh that was just...there were times when you wished you just gave up.</sentence><sentence id="1293">You just...let them kill me...I don't...you didn't care anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1294">There was just so much you could absorb.</sentence><sentence id="1295">There was just so much abuse and beatings and and and starvation and and thirst and cold and heat that you could ab...that you could take.</sentence><sentence id="1296">And this was just enough.</sentence><sentence id="1297">You just...many times you thought I wished I don't get up tomorrow.</sentence><sentence id="1298">The hell with it.</sentence><sentence id="1299">I don't care anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1300">You didn't give a damn any more, but finally one day they took us out and they put us...took us to the <span class="BUILDING">railroad station</span> and put us into a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle train</span> where they transported camels and donkeys, and they packed us in there.</sentence><sentence id="1301">We had no idea where we're going.</sentence><sentence id="1302">And they said well, you'll never make it.</sentence><sentence id="1303">By the time we get through with you, there won't be much left of you.</sentence><sentence id="1304">Nobody answered.</sentence><sentence id="1305">Nobody said anything.</sentence><sentence id="1306">There was nothing...there was nothing to be said.</sentence><sentence id="1307">And the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> started going.</sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1309">Q: Let's let's stop here and then we'll continue on the next tape.</sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1310">A: Right.</sentence><sentence id="1311">Right.</sentence><sentence id="1312">4 Tape #2</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1316">Q: OK.</sentence><sentence id="1317">Can you continue your story?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1320">A: Yes.</sentence><sentence id="1321">The <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> started to move and we traveled...we must have traveled about three days.</sentence><sentence id="1322">They packed us in like sardines.</sentence><sentence id="1323">Some people died standing up.</sentence><sentence id="1324">They wouldn't let us out to use the <span class="INT_SPACE">bathroom facilities</span> or anything like that for three days.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1330">Q: Was this all men?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1332">A: Pardon me?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1334">Q: All men?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1336">A: Yeah.</sentence><sentence id="1337">Of course.</sentence><sentence id="1338">All different <span class="NPIP">nationalities</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1339">Jews from <span class="COUNTRY">Romania</span>, from <span class="COUNTRY">Poland</span>, from <span class="COUNTRY">Czechoslovakia</span>, from <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span>, from <span class="COUNTRY">Austria</span>, from <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span>...you name it...they were all there.</sentence><sentence id="1340">This was the remnants of people that escaped the persecution of their <span class="COUNTRY">countries</span> and and escaped through through <span class="ENV_FEATURES">woods</span> and and <span class="REGION">swamp land</span> and and <span class="DLF">borders</span>, and smuggled <span class="DLF">borders</span> who tried to save themselves uh uh and ended up being being uh in that...being caught and put in that predicament.</sentence><sentence id="1341">And uh once a day they threw one bread into the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">car</span>, to the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle car</span>, and a few bottles of water and that was for everybody.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1348">Q: Did people share?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1350">A: Yes.</sentence><sentence id="1351">We all kind of...you know, if you're so hungered and so thirsty that you that your tongue swells on, you know, when you're very, very thirsty.</sentence><sentence id="1352">I mean very thirsty.</sentence><sentence id="1353">Your tongue has a tendency to swell out and you choke on your own tongue.</sentence><sentence id="1354">It happened to people.</sentence><sentence id="1355">And when you see a drink of water, believe me, you go for it.</sentence><sentence id="1356">When you see a piece of bread, you go for it.</sentence><sentence id="1357">Well, after about three days in that...it's about two hundred miles into the <span class="REGION">Sahara</span>, through the <span class="DLF">desert</span>...the <span class="DLF">desert</span> as well as swamp land and nothings...I would call it a barren desert...so finally the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> stopped and everybody out.</sentence><sentence id="1358">They had the Spahice (ph) watching us now.</sentence><sentence id="1359">The Spahice is an elite Arab police force, called the Spahice.</sentence><sentence id="1360">They have sabers and they are on horseback and they are vicious.</sentence><sentence id="1361">I mean vicious.</sentence><sentence id="1362">They were guarding us.</sentence><sentence id="1363">When we were dragging ourselves, we saw a few miles down the <span class="DLF">road</span> we saw a few <span class="BUILDING">tents</span>, <span class="BUILDING">tents</span> and barbed wire around it in the middle of nowhere.</sentence><sentence id="1364">That was <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Camp Djelfa</span> (ph).</sentence><sentence id="1365">Little did we know...we dragged ourselves through the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">sand</span> to get into the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>, all chained together.</sentence><sentence id="1366">Oh the the French are famous for chaining you up.</sentence><sentence id="1367">We were real dangerous people...half-dead, half-starved...I mean half- sick...all kinds of dangerous people...so we dragged ourselves and we dragged the ones that couldn't even walk anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1368">We dragged dead ones with us that were chained to us.</sentence><sentence id="1369">They were dead.</sentence><sentence id="1370">We had to drag them along the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">sand</span>, and we could hardly ourselves walk.</sentence><sentence id="1371">We got into <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="34.672778" long="3.262778">Djelfa</span> very slowly.</sentence><sentence id="1372">They were beating us all the way down, with whips, with horse whips.</sentence><sentence id="1373">Uh on their horseback they had these long whips.</sentence><sentence id="1374">They were whipping us all the way down and if you fell down, they would beat you till you got up, 5 and it hurt.</sentence><sentence id="1375">It really hurt.</sentence><sentence id="1376">We got there into the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> and we had to stand at attention for the camp commander to come to address us, so we stood there for hours till he finally showed up.</sentence><sentence id="1377">He showed up with his German Shepherd and uh he had somebody with him and they pulled out a great big steak and they gave it to the dog and we had to watch how the dog ate that great big steak, and then you heard a speech, and I will never forget if I were to get a thousand years old which will never happen but that's just __...he says...alright, he says.</sentence><sentence id="1378">| am your camp commander.</sentence><sentence id="1379">You all came here to die.</sentence><sentence id="1380">It's just a matter of time.</sentence><sentence id="1381">If you do what you're told, you live a little longer.</sentence><sentence id="1382">If not, you die sooner.(Cough) Excuse me.</sentence><sentence id="1383">He said but you all came here to die.</sentence><sentence id="1384">Sooner or later, you all die.</sentence><sentence id="1385">None of you will come out alive.</sentence><sentence id="1386">That is my job, to see to that, and I'm very good at my job.</sentence><sentence id="1387">Now get into the <span class="BUILDING">tents</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1388">So they unchained us.</sentence><sentence id="1389">He had an adjutant with him.</sentence><sentence id="1390">Now the camp commander...let me explain this to you...he was a...the book will tell you that...the guy that wrote that book...he was a sadist and a drunk.</sentence><sentence id="1391">And the adjutant...he had an adjutant with him, his right hand...he was also a sadist.</sentence><sentence id="1392">They would put people up for no reason.</sentence><sentence id="1393">So we didn't know how bad it was.</sentence><sentence id="1394">We found out later that <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="34.672778" long="3.262778">Djelfa</span> was the the worst <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>...there were many other <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camps</span>, _, , <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="34.672778" long="3.262778">Djelfa</span>...there were many other <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camps</span> there, but <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="34.672778" long="3.262778">Djelfa</span> was the worst <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camp</span> in all of <span class="REGION">Africa</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1395">The only people that were sent to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="34.672778" long="3.262778">Djelfa</span> were the ones they rounded up in <span class="COUNTRY">France</span> and anywheres they could find them, the most dangerous people to <span class="COUNTRY">France</span>, the most dangerous.</sentence><sentence id="1396">That's the ones they sent like a .</sentence><sentence id="1397">That's the ones they sent to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="34.672778" long="3.262778">Djelfa</span>, to <span class="REGION">Africa</span>, to isolate them from the rest of the world and eventually kill them.</sentence><sentence id="1398">We found out later.</sentence><sentence id="1399">We went into the <span class="BUILDING">tents</span> and we waited, and the next day, the next day we had to work.</sentence><sentence id="1400">Now they were trying to build a trans-Saharian (ph).</sentence><sentence id="1401">They were trying to build a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">railroad</span> through the <span class="DLF">desert</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1402">The location of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> was at the foot of the Atlas (ph) Mountain.</sentence><sentence id="1403">That means that at night, the nights were so cold that your teeth would chatter, and the days were so hot that you almost died from the heat.</sentence><sentence id="1404">It must have been a hundred and forty degree heat in the day, a hundred and fifty, in the shade.</sentence><sentence id="1405">There was no shade.</sentence><sentence id="1406">And during the night you were so cold that you couldn't sleep because you had...you had no control of your teeth that would...that that would...you know, uh uh make such noise.</sentence><sentence id="1407">We had nothing to cover us ourselves with except the rags that we wore.</sentence><sentence id="1408">They gave us one bread a day for a <span class="BUILDING">tent</span>, and a cup of coffee in the morning which was black water and a half a liter of soup and a half a liter of soup at night. __--</sentence><sentence id="1409">soup.</sentence><sentence id="1410">We were full of lice, bugs, and then you started dysentery.</sentence><sentence id="1411">All your blood came out.</sentence><sentence id="1412">There were vipers that would bite you... in one hour, you're dead.</sentence><sentence id="1413">We were full of scorpions.</sentence><sentence id="1414">You know, there are bad things in the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">sand</span> there.</sentence><sentence id="1415">And we were laying in the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">sand</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1416">There were forty, fifty people in a <span class="BUILDING">tent</span> made for eight and uh you had only lay on your side, and if one had to turn around, the whole <span class="BUILDING">tent</span> had to turn around, and uh turn around...if something...something bite you, there was nothing you could do.</sentence><sentence id="1417">You you couldn't do a thing.</sentence><sentence id="1418">Even if it was a scorpion or a viper or a snake, there...then you die.</sentence><sentence id="1419">That's it, and they were building that <span class="REGION">front area</span> into the <span class="DLF">desert</span> and you had to work on it ten hours a day.</sentence><sentence id="1420">We had to drag sand from two miles down the <span class="DLF">road</span>, uh down...two miles down the other <span class="DLF">road</span> to clear the <span class="DLF">dunes</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1421">And the Spahice would keep whipping you.</sentence><sentence id="1422">You must have read about the Egyptians (ph) transferring the Jews in slavery.</sentence><sentence id="1423">That was much better.</sentence><sentence id="1424">It was the same thing...the beatings, the hunger, the thirst, the heat, the cold. (</sentence><sentence id="1425">Pause) And the beatings.</sentence><sentence id="1426">He would 6 come in the morning and he would have a dozen people striped naked and and whip them in front of the rest of them just because he likes it and he would stand there smiling.</sentence><sentence id="1427">The slightest infraction of the rules...they would bury you in the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">sand</span>, just your head sticking out and the Arabs would urinate on you, and if you moved your head, they would open your skull.</sentence><sentence id="1428">They had little tricks like that.</sentence><sentence id="1429">The adjutant would come in and just pick anyone he wanted, tie them up and beat them up and whip them.</sentence><sentence id="1430">At just...just at wiill...there was no intelligent reason for any of these things to happen, because people didn't do anything wrong.</sentence><sentence id="1431">If you made a fire, the fire...we had no firewood but we used alfa (ph)...that is a desert grass and that burned, so we used to always keep bushels of alfa that we could get a hold of and uh make a fire with it to make coffee.</sentence><sentence id="1432">How did we make coffee?</sentence><sentence id="1433">We made coffee on dates...uh the the pits of dates.</sentence><sentence id="1434">We would brown them...makes good coffee too.</sentence><sentence id="1435">The pits of dates...brown them, then with salt we would uh uh __ and and then we put them in in in hot water.</sentence><sentence id="1436">Makes good coffee.</sentence><sentence id="1437">The camp commander comes.</sentence><sentence id="1438">He sees smoke, and the first thing you would hear, .</sentence><sentence id="1439">That means take...you know, we used to eat out of of cans like what you have here, uh vegetable cans that you buy in a <span class="BUILDING">supermarket</span>...we had a can.</sentence><sentence id="1440">That was our...the extent of our...so he would say get your can and get your things together, whatever you have.</sentence><sentence id="1441">You go fifteen days.</sentence><sentence id="1442">was a a <span class="BUILDING">fortress</span> of the French Foreign Legion, the last outpost of the French Foreign Legion.</sentence><sentence id="1443">There was no longer a French Foreign Legion there, but the camp commander lived there and the adjutant lived there.</sentence><sentence id="1444">They had their <span class="INT_SPACE">quarters</span> there.</sentence><sentence id="1445">He kept his horse there and there was the <span class="BUILDING">jail</span> there.</sentence><sentence id="1446">To go to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Fort</span> for fifteen days meant water and bread, fifteen days.</sentence><sentence id="1447">Seventy-five gram of bread a day and a cup of water.</sentence><sentence id="1448">They would tie your arms behind your back and hang you on your wrists, like this and they would hang you on your arms, oh for a night, a day, two days, till finally your arms would hang out of the sockets, and then they would come in, strip you down in the middle of the night, strip you naked and put the hose on you.</sentence><sentence id="1449">And I took the cold that was at night, we got more cold.</sentence><sentence id="1450">The hose didn't do just an easy job on you.</sentence><sentence id="1451">If we were lucky...if you were lucky, they didn't turn you around and smack the back of the rifle in in to the small of your back.</sentence><sentence id="1452">That was...that was fun.</sentence><sentence id="1453">To hear you scream was music to their ears.</sentence><sentence id="1454">That was classical music to them.</sentence><sentence id="1455">We didn't give them that...no...we didn't do that favor.</sentence><sentence id="1456">Not a sound came out of us.</sentence><sentence id="1457">They were beating us and beating us and not a sound.</sentence><sentence id="1458">We would go...get unconscious, but we would not scream.</sentence><sentence id="1459">We became very hard by that time.</sentence><sentence id="1460">We became very bitter and very hard and and very unforgiving.</sentence><sentence id="1461">We would not forgive ourselves...if we would have put out a scream, we would not forgive ourselves for that, because it gave them satisfaction.</sentence><sentence id="1462">We wouldn't do that.</sentence><sentence id="1463">After fifteen days...there wasn't much left of you to begin with...after fifteen days, they had to get people to drag you back in, because you could no longer walk.</sentence><sentence id="1464">The next day, you had to go back, back to work.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
|
<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1582">Q: Did you have any communication with the other men while you were in this <span class="NPIP">place</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
|
<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1584">A: Oh yeah.</sentence><sentence id="1585">We were maybe five, six, or seven on the hook, most of them unconscious from the beatings.</sentence><sentence id="1586">Most of them didn't feel like talking.</sentence><sentence id="1587">Most of them gave up on life.</sentence><sentence id="1588">THey didn't...there was...there was just no communication...what...what was there to say.</sentence><sentence id="1589">What 7 could anyone say?</sentence><sentence id="1590">It hurts.</sentence><sentence id="1591">I'm in pain.</sentence><sentence id="1592">I'm hungry.</sentence><sentence id="1593">I'm thirsty.</sentence><sentence id="1594">I'm tired.</sentence><sentence id="1595">I want to get out.</sentence><sentence id="1596">I don't deserve this.</sentence><sentence id="1597">Why are you doing this?</sentence><sentence id="1598">Where is the world?</sentence><sentence id="1599">Where is everybody?</sentence><sentence id="1600">Where is <span class="NPIP">God</span>? _____</sentence><sentence id="1601">there was no God.</sentence><sentence id="1602">There was no world.</sentence><sentence id="1603">There was no Pope.</sentence><sentence id="1604">There was no priests.</sentence><sentence id="1605">There was nobody.</sentence><sentence id="1606">And by that time, we came to the realization that we are on our own, not to look out for help.</sentence><sentence id="1607">There was not no help coming.</sentence><sentence id="1608">We were there and unless we kept ourselves alive, we're going to die there, just like he said.</sentence><sentence id="1609">So we made ourselves a promise.</sentence><sentence id="1610">We won't do him that favor.</sentence><sentence id="1611">We'll survive, and we worked on the trans-Saharian and two years later a dune came...a wind came and the same dune was over the <span class="DLF">tracks</span> again.</sentence><sentence id="1612">The wind just put sand back on the <span class="DLF">tracks</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1613">We went back.</sentence><sentence id="1614">We had these sacks we put the sand in and that wasn't good enough.</sentence><sentence id="1615">They gave the sack that was in the front and in the back...one sack to carry was not enough yet for them.</sentence><sentence id="1616">We had to get a double sack full of sand and sand is heavy.</sentence><sentence id="1617">And when you drag yourself through the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">sand</span> with your feet, when you have no...you're barefooted and the sand is hot and you sink in...in to the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">sand</span>, it's hard to walk and you carry that weight which it just pushes you down and you have no strength left and you see, you look up and you see this Spahice from the horses looking at you.</sentence><sentence id="1618">He's...he's just waiting for a reason to to beat on you.</sentence><sentence id="1619">You'll move.</sentence><sentence id="1620">You get your last bit of strength together and you'll move.</sentence><sentence id="1621">And you hope and look forward for the end of the day when you can go back into the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> and just fall down on your face and get a drink of water.</sentence><sentence id="1622">Anyone who could no longer work, was at the end.</sentence><sentence id="1623">There were guys...people that just could no longer work, the older people that could no longer absorb that punishment...they just laid down.</sentence><sentence id="1624">They would get no ration, no bread ration and no water ration.</sentence><sentence id="1625">That was forbode.</sentence><sentence id="1626">That was...you know...a strict rule...unless they get up and work, they could get no nourishment.</sentence><sentence id="1627">So what we had to do is from the piece of bread that we got, we broke up a little piece into...well, a bowl, whatever you had there, and we collected and we gave it to them...a few pieces, just from a few pieces from the little that we had and gave them a drink of water from mine, a drink of water from the other guy's, and we we made another cup full like from the little bit that we could afford to...you know, that we gave.</sentence><sentence id="1628">And our... remember our hands would shake when when we gave that bit of water and we looked at their faces...how they would be looking at us...thank you, thank you, just wet my lips.</sentence><sentence id="1629">Then the order came down.</sentence><sentence id="1630">Anybody who can't get up, they're going to come around and cut their vein.</sentence><sentence id="1631">So they came around and with their knife...they couldn't get up anymore, and cut their vein and bled them to death.</sentence><sentence id="1632">And they were...they were looking and says we know.</sentence><sentence id="1633">We know what's happening.</sentence><sentence id="1634">We know. __</sentence><sentence id="1635">come to me.</sentence><sentence id="1636">We know.</sentence><sentence id="1637">And then all the sickness came.</sentence><sentence id="1638">By the time...the first thing you did in the morning, you deloused yourself.</sentence><sentence id="1639">I got real good at it.</sentence><sentence id="1640">We had rags.</sentence><sentence id="1641">Mostly we were naked.</sentence><sentence id="1642">We had nothing.</sentence><sentence id="1643">We deloused ourselves.</sentence><sentence id="1644">We had guys with dysentery, the other guys with malaria, with fevers, snake bites, scorpion bites...so what we did, we caught...there are the wandering Bedouins (ph)...they they wander through the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">desert</span> ___... we would get a female dog, catch a female dog, keep him at the bonfire.</sentence><sentence id="1645">The female dog would attract...they always have dogs with them...would come over to the female dog.</sentence><sentence id="1646">We would catch them, hit them on the head with a rock.</sentence><sentence id="1647">We had butchers in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>...and butcher the the dogs.</sentence><sentence id="1648">Like Mr. Sadowsky (ph) that wrote that book, he says we lived mostly on rats, snakes and dog.</sentence><sentence id="1649">That is...that's what kept us alive.</sentence><sentence id="1650">That's the desert rats.</sentence><sentence id="1651">8 They jump like kangaroos.</sentence><sentence id="1652">You've never seen one?</sentence><sentence id="1653">Yeah.</sentence><sentence id="1654">We learned to live with it...and dog.</sentence><sentence id="1655">The first time I ate dog, the guys called me in, said here, eat this.</sentence><sentence id="1656">I ate it.</sentence><sentence id="1657">It was good.</sentence><sentence id="1658">I was hungry, and I said what is it.</sentence><sentence id="1659">They said don't tell him.</sentence><sentence id="1660">You got use to it.</sentence><sentence id="1661">That's what kept us alive in there.</sentence><sentence id="1662">They would...they would just beat you up for the hell of it, just to have fun.</sentence><sentence id="1663">This <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> was about the worst bit of <span class="NPIP">hell</span> on this <span class="NPIP">God's earth</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1664">In the rainy season, the <span class="BUILDING">tents</span> would fall apart.</sentence><sentence id="1665">They would sink into the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">ground</span> and tip over.</sentence><sentence id="1666">And the rain wouldn't stop for six weeks.</sentence><sentence id="1667">There was a flood out there, and we would lay in the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mud</span> for six weeks.</sentence><sentence id="1668">Just lay in the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mud</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1669">Just no <span class="NPIP">place</span> to go.</sentence><sentence id="1670">You couldn't put a <span class="BUILDING">tent</span> back up again.</sentence><sentence id="1671">It would sink right back in again.</sentence><sentence id="1672">And we had no way to take a <span class="INT_SPACE">bath</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1673">We didn't take a <span class="INT_SPACE">bath</span> in two years.</sentence><sentence id="1674">We didn't get a haircut in two years.</sentence><sentence id="1675">We didn't get...we didn't brush our teeth in two years.</sentence><sentence id="1676">Just try to stay alive.</sentence><sentence id="1677">Some of...who worried about brushing their teeth.</sentence><sentence id="1678">It was just about like this, like he said in the book, the worst <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> in all of <span class="REGION">Africa</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1679">That's where they put the most dangerous people.</sentence><sentence id="1680">I stayed two years in that <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp,</span> from 1941 till 1943.</sentence><sentence id="1681">How I survived that <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>, I will never know.</sentence><sentence id="1682">What frightens me the most during those two years, and what I feel guilty about (coughing)...I never thought about my family.</sentence><sentence id="1683">I was so busy worrying about myself, I never worried about any of my family.</sentence><sentence id="1684">That scared me the most.</sentence><sentence id="1685">I was so detached from my family, from life, from the outside world, from life itself, that 1 never thought about them.</sentence><sentence id="1686">I never thought about my <span class="BUILDING">home</span>, until I finally got out and I took my mother's picture, and I I wrote down, .</sentence><sentence id="1687">Lescaped death.</sentence><sentence id="1688">We will meet again.</sentence><sentence id="1689">I wrote that down on that picture in 1943.</sentence><sentence id="1690">On the other <span class="NPIP">side</span> was a little <span class="INT_SPACE">space</span> and I wrote down there, luck doesn't seem to like me very much, but I'll make do.</sentence><sentence id="1691">In 1943, in 1942, if you remember well, the Americans had landed in <span class="COUNTRY">North Africa</span>, and they took over the <span class="BUILDING">Hotel</span> which was the biggest <span class="BUILDING">hotel</span> in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Algiers</span> and they were having a good time already.</sentence><sentence id="1692">They were dancing in the <span class="DLF">streets</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1693">They were eating and drinking and having...smoking cigars, and we were still in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1694">When the message got...finally got through...there's a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> over there.</sentence><sentence id="1695">Why don't you let these people out?</sentence><sentence id="1696">They're dying there everyday.</sentence><sentence id="1697">They're on their last leg, on their last bit of breathe.</sentence><sentence id="1698">The answer came from the high command...we have our own problems.</sentence><sentence id="1699">What are we going to do with these people?</sentence><sentence id="1700">Where are we going to put them?</sentence><sentence id="1701">How are we going to take care of them?</sentence><sentence id="1702">We have our own uh headaches?</sentence><sentence id="1703">We'll figure out what to do with them.</sentence><sentence id="1704">Leave them there for the time being.(Pause) Now...we stayed there another five months after <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Algiers</span> was liberated.</sentence><sentence id="1705">Five more months in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>, and died more and more and more in these five months.</sentence><sentence id="1706">Finally the British came and got us out.</sentence><sentence id="1707">They came down the <span class="DLF">dunes</span> with their their <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">tanks</span> and half-<span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span> and they saw a bunch of sick people, dragging them...themselves around, naked and half-naked with long hair, unshaven, dirty, filthy, sick, weak.</sentence><sentence id="1708">Who are they?Who are you people?</sentence><sentence id="1709">And we had a man in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp...</span>he was a professor of at the <span class="BUILDING">Vienna University</span>...Professor Dr. Pick (ph)...and he spoke oh something like ten languages, and he went forward and he told them who we are.</sentence><sentence id="1710">So...but they had their guns pointed at us and all sides surrounded the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> and the machine guns pointed at us, and the big guns pointed at us and__ with their hand guns pointed at us.</sentence><sentence id="1711">They're not...why are you pointing guns at us?</sentence><sentence id="1712">We are still dangerous people?</sentence><sentence id="1713">Look at us.</sentence><sentence id="1714">Look at us.</sentence><sentence id="1715">We are the one end of a of a persecuted people that just tried to stay alive, abused and beaten and persecuted and hunted people.</sentence><sentence id="1716">Have you no pity?</sentence><sentence id="1717">You too.</sentence><sentence id="1718">And so they 9 said alright.</sentence><sentence id="1719">By tomorrow you'll all be out, and they got the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span> down through the <span class="DLF">desert</span> and they picked us all up, on <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">stretchers</span>, carrying us.</sentence><sentence id="1720">There were still people dying.</sentence><sentence id="1721">In the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">truck</span> there were people dying and we went into <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Algiers</span>...outside <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Algiers</span>, a place called which was the <span class="BUILDING">96th General Hospital</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1722">Never forgot it.</sentence><sentence id="1723">They put us into the <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1724">At the <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span> they tried to get to us to take blood or give us blood or something.</sentence><sentence id="1725">They couldn't get needles through.</sentence><sentence id="1726">Our skin was like leather, so dried out and and thick, so hard from lack of food and lack of uh whatever you normally would have had to stay healthy, so they had to take knives and cut through with knives to give us blood.</sentence><sentence id="1727">And after a month at the <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span>, they said now what are we going to do with you people.</sentence><sentence id="1728">They had some intelligence officers talk to us.</sentence><sentence id="1729">Are you going...what do you want to do?</sentence><sentence id="1730">And they called me in.</sentence><sentence id="1731">They said I'll tell you what...you can go anywhere in the free world and you want to go.</sentence><sentence id="1732">We'll give you <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">transportation</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1733">We take care of it.</sentence><sentence id="1734">If you want to go to <span class="BUILDING">school</span>, we'll send you to <span class="BUILDING">school</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1735">If you want to go to <span class="COUNTRY">England</span>, go to <span class="COUNTRY">England</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1736">If you want to go to <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span>, go to <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span>, anywhere you want to go, go.</sentence><sentence id="1737">And we kept looking behind us because we were looking for the guards to be there.</sentence><sentence id="1738">We were so used to looking behind us because everytime in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> we had to go to the <span class="INT_SPACE">latrine</span>, we had to call out, <span class="INT_SPACE">latrine</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1739">And the guards would come with this cocked gun...go.</sentence><sentence id="1740">You went to the <span class="INT_SPACE">latrine</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1741">They would stay behind you with a cocked gun, wouldn't know whether he's going to shot you in the back or whether you fall into the you know what.</sentence><sentence id="1742">And we were so used to this, that we couldn't believe there was no one behind us.</sentence><sentence id="1743">So I said to .... couldn't speak a word of English...I said tell you what, I said I feel better now.</sentence><sentence id="1744">You give me a gun.</sentence><sentence id="1745">Now it's my turn to fight.</sentence><sentence id="1746">Now this is my time to fight.</sentence><sentence id="1747">They had...they had their fun.</sentence><sentence id="1748">Now it's my turn to have fun.</sentence><sentence id="1749">They looked at me.</sentence><sentence id="1750">After all this, you want to fight.</sentence><sentence id="1751">I said yeah.</sentence><sentence id="1752">I said look, I left <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1753">I lost my family.</sentence><sentence id="1754">I lost my <span class="COUNTRY">country</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1755">I lost my <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1756">I lost everything that was dear and close to me, everything I loved.</sentence><sentence id="1757">I was hunted like an animal.</sentence><sentence id="1758">I was persecuted.</sentence><sentence id="1759">I was beaten.</sentence><sentence id="1760">I was shot at.</sentence><sentence id="1761">I was...I was abused.</sentence><sentence id="1762">I was starved.</sentence><sentence id="1763">I was beaten half to death.</sentence><sentence id="1764">I was worked half to death.</sentence><sentence id="1765">I was hanged by my arms until they was out of their sockets.</sentence><sentence id="1766">I was hosed down with ice water in the cold of night.</sentence><sentence id="1767">I...1...I have seen just about everything.</sentence><sentence id="1768">I have absorbed just what everything that this world threw at me.</sentence><sentence id="1769">There was no help from anyone.</sentence><sentence id="1770">No help came.</sentence><sentence id="1771">Though I begged for help, no help came.</sentence><sentence id="1772">We licked the <span class="DLF">walls</span> of the <span class="BUILDING">prisons</span> for a little bit of moisture.</sentence><sentence id="1773">We knocked on the <span class="DLF">walls</span> to get the answer to keep our sanity.</sentence><sentence id="1774">They have thrown just about everything at us but the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">kitchen sink</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1775">They have taken everything from us including our dignity.</sentence><sentence id="1776">What more is there?</sentence><sentence id="1777">What more is there left to live for except having a little fun with them now?</sentence><sentence id="1778">I said can you understand that, sir?</sentence><sentence id="1779">And he just looked at me.</sentence><sentence id="1780">He says but you don't speak English.</sentence><sentence id="1781">I said I'll learn.</sentence><sentence id="1782">But you don't know how to shoot.</sentence><sentence id="1783">I'll learn.</sentence><sentence id="1784">And after I learn, not just how to use it but to use, that's all I want to do.</sentence><sentence id="1785">I want to back to Europe and I want to do my job and I want to see if any of my family has returned or is left alive.</sentence><sentence id="1786">Now that is my God... have earned that right.</sentence><sentence id="1787">Don't you think so?</sentence><sentence id="1788">He called in the other __ sergeant.</sentence><sentence id="1789">He says give this man a uniform and give him the regular gun.</sentence><sentence id="1790">I says no.</sentence><sentence id="1791">I want a machine gun.</sentence><sentence id="1792">He says why.</sentence><sentence id="1793">It kills more people in a shorter period of time.</sentence><sentence id="1794">Just give him the plain gun and teach him how to use it.</sentence><sentence id="1795">They gave me a uniform.</sentence><sentence id="1796">You saw the uniform.</sentence><sentence id="1797">I had a little training.</sentence><sentence id="1798">I started learning English, the most important words, and I went into battle.</sentence><sentence id="1799">That time we battled the German army in <span class="COUNTRY">North Africa</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1800">We 0 . [</sentence><sentence id="1801">joined the 8th Army, Montgomery's army.</sentence><sentence id="1802">They put me into an outfit all foreigners, the whole outfit, and we did the jobs that they couldn't do.</sentence><sentence id="1803">When something had to be done, they called us in because we had...by this time we had nothing but hate.</sentence><sentence id="1804">We had so much hate in us and so much resentment and so much, and so much bitterness in us by this time that we didn't care about nothing.</sentence><sentence id="1805">We didn't care to be shot at.</sentence><sentence id="1806">We didn't care whether we get .</sentence><sentence id="1807">We didn't care whether we fired at them or shoot them.</sentence><sentence id="1808">We had no pity.</sentence><sentence id="1809">We had...we just had no pity left in us, because there was no pity for us.</sentence><sentence id="1810">Nobody gave us an ounce of pity when we needed it most.</sentence><sentence id="1811">So they called us in for big jobs and bad jobs and we did it.</sentence><sentence id="1812">After about a year or so, a year and a half, they called me out and said we're going to send you to the <span class="BUILDING">office</span> in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">London</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1813">That is fine.</sentence><sentence id="1814">Sent me there and I went through a course of intelligence, army intelligence.</sentence><sentence id="1815">So I said what am I to do?He says well, we don't need you so much shooting up the Germans in <span class="REGION">Africa</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1816">We need you going after war criminals.</sentence><sentence id="1817">That's more your speed isn't it?</sentence><sentence id="1818">I said is it ever.</sentence><sentence id="1819">Is it ever.</sentence><sentence id="1820">Sure enough.</sentence><sentence id="1821">They educated me in intelligence work.</sentence><sentence id="1822">They attached me to the FSS which is the Field Security Service, branch of the Intelligence, un Investigations, and uh they said...they had a big map on the <span class="DLF">wall</span> and said to me where do you want to go in <span class="REGION">British occupied Germany</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1823">I said well, pick the...pick the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">city</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1824">Well, my <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">home town</span> was occupied by the Russians, so I couldn't go there, so I said well, give me <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Dusseldorf</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1825">They said you've got it.</sentence><sentence id="1826">You got the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">city</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1827">Do a good job now.</sentence><sentence id="1828">Here are your papers.</sentence><sentence id="1829">Report to <span class="BUILDING">headquarters</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1830">I went to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Dusseldorf</span>, report to <span class="BUILDING">headquarters</span>, and they said go out to , outside <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Dusseldorf</span> and there's an <span class="BUILDING">office</span> waiting for you, and do what you have to do.</sentence><sentence id="1831">Get those Nazis.</sentence><sentence id="1832">I said you bet.</sentence><sentence id="1833">And we traveled in crews of three, a German Jew, a Polish Jew and a Hungarian Jew or Romanian Jew, whatever.</sentence><sentence id="1834">Between us we spoke ten languages.</sentence><sentence id="1835">By that time I spoke French.</sentence><sentence id="1836">By that time I spoke English.</sentence><sentence id="1837">By the time, you know, I picked this up from the .</sentence><sentence id="1838">We're not all that stupid.</sentence><sentence id="1839">And we went, we traveled.</sentence><sentence id="1840">And did we ever do a job.</sentence><sentence id="1841">Did we ever do a job.</sentence><sentence id="1842">We started investigating the mayor and the chief of the police.</sentence><sentence id="1843">We started way, way on top.</sentence><sentence id="1844">Said never mind the little fish.</sentence><sentence id="1845">Get the big fish.</sentence><sentence id="1846">And we got a lot of them.</sentence><sentence id="1847">And then they called us in and said look, you are too tough.</sentence><sentence id="1848">They said if we are as the Nazis then we are no better.</sentence><sentence id="1849">That's what he said to me, my major said that to me.</sentence><sentence id="1850">Then we are no better than they were.</sentence><sentence id="1851">We have to stop hating and we have to stop being bitter and learn to forget.</sentence><sentence id="1852">I said Major, how do you do that?</sentence><sentence id="1853">You have to .</sentence><sentence id="1854">How do you forget?</sentence><sentence id="1855">He said, I know it's hard.</sentence><sentence id="1856">It'll take a long, long time.</sentence><sentence id="1857">He said so what.</sentence><sentence id="1858">What are you going to do?</sentence><sentence id="1859">We used to do bad things.</sentence><sentence id="1860">I mean, you know, we used to get them and used to blow their brains out and tried...they tried to escape.</sentence><sentence id="1861">We used to put them and they beg us to...1 1 remember in <span class="COUNTRY">Holland</span> we caught one.</sentence><sentence id="1862">He was hiding in a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">baker's oven</span>. (</sentence><sentence id="1863">cough) We caught him and we gave him a choice...you stay there.</sentence><sentence id="1864">We put the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">oven</span> on.</sentence><sentence id="1865">If you come out, I'll blow your brains out.</sentence><sentence id="1866">He said that's no choice.</sentence><sentence id="1867">I said that's more the choice you gave our people.</sentence><sentence id="1868">Our people didn't even have a choice.</sentence><sentence id="1869">You threw two hundred thousand children in open fires then burned them alive.</sentence><sentence id="1870">They had no choice.</sentence><sentence id="1871">You gassed our people.</sentence><sentence id="1872">Did you give them a choice?</sentence><sentence id="1873">They had no...not even a choice how to die, just make them die.</sentence><sentence id="1874">You murdered them in cold blood.</sentence><sentence id="1875">Did you give them a choice?</sentence><sentence id="1876">No.</sentence><sentence id="1877">We are good to you.</sentence><sentence id="1878">We let you say your prayers.</sentence><sentence id="1879">He came out.</sentence><sentence id="1880">I said we give you five minutes.</sentence><sentence id="1881">Talk to your God.(cough) That's more than you give our people.</sentence><sentence id="1882">And that's the kind of things we did.</sentence><sentence id="1883">I 1 mean we pulled in very few, and they found out.</sentence><sentence id="1884">And they said...the Major said look, I think you've had enough.</sentence><sentence id="1885">I think...I think this is enough for you...no more.</sentence><sentence id="1886">Go <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1887">I said where's that?</sentence><sentence id="1888">Go to <span class="COUNTRY">England</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1889">Go to <span class="BUILDING">school</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1890">You're being discharged.</sentence><sentence id="1891">After four years and three months, I lost my usefulness.</sentence><sentence id="1892">He said no, we could use you.</sentence><sentence id="1893">You speak German, but you're too brutal.</sentence><sentence id="1894">I says brutality is something that they taught me.</sentence><sentence id="1895">I wasn't born with that.</sentence><sentence id="1896">OK.</sentence><sentence id="1897">I go.</sentence><sentence id="1898">Perhaps you're right.</sentence><sentence id="1899">And just gave me my discharge and uh I went to <span class="COUNTRY">England</span> and after a year I couldn't just found myself...I had nothing and I went to the American Counselor.</sentence><sentence id="1900">I said I'd like to go to <span class="COUNTRY">America</span>, start a new life.</sentence><sentence id="1901">So the American Ambassador just looked at me.</sentence><sentence id="1902">Come back tomorrow.</sentence><sentence id="1903">The next day he had all my life in front of him.</sentence><sentence id="1904">He told me everything that...that he could possibly know, from the day I left <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1905">He said is that you.</sentence><sentence id="1906">I said to the teeth.</sentence><sentence id="1907">And he said, alright, he says.</sentence><sentence id="1908">Here is your papers.</sentence><sentence id="1909">Take your papers.</sentence><sentence id="1910">Go to <span class="COUNTRY">America</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1911">Good luck.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2246">Q: Do you know about your family now?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2248">A: Never found out.</sentence><sentence id="2249">I found out one thing.</sentence><sentence id="2250">During the occupation with Intelligence, I found out that my brother Paul was gassed in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>, that my mother and three sisters lost their lives in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Wiegar</span> (ph) concentration camp in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">ovens</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2251">Some say they hang them...some say they put them in <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">ovens</span>, and that's all I ever found out.</sentence><sentence id="2252">Well, I say, it's II did things and I tried to put that in the back of my mind, but let me tell you...to describe the cruelty and the barbaric cruelty of the...of the French people, of the French gendarmes and the French guard du mobiles, believe me when I tell you, when I tell you that the French, they're eager to please their German masters.</sentence><sentence id="2253">They were...they were brutal.</sentence><sentence id="2254">They treated us poorly.</sentence><sentence id="2255">When they made their rounds, they beat up children.</sentence><sentence id="2256">They beat up women.</sentence><sentence id="2257">They beat...they were thrown onto the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span> like garbage and and and and it was just so sad.</sentence><sentence id="2258">I was on top of the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">truck</span> and I helped them pull them in.</sentence><sentence id="2259">They beat up little boys and girls and the mothers and that they arrested in the <span class="DLF">streets</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2260">The cruelty displayed by these people, by the gendarmes and the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">guard du mobile</span> is next to none.</sentence><sentence id="2261">I mean they really pleased their German masters, let me tell you, and very little was said about that, the brutality of these people.</sentence><sentence id="2262">And I went back to my <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">home town</span> once hoping to find someone...nothing.</sentence><sentence id="2263">So I retraced my steps and I put all these years in the back of my head, but let me tell you something...this comes straight from my <span class="NPIP">inside</span>...there isn't a day in the last fifty years, a day of my life...there is not one day, even in <span class="COUNTRY">America</span>, that I don't think back.</sentence><sentence id="2264">Not just my family.</sentence><sentence id="2265">Look what happened to me, and there is more and more details are coming out, more and more heroics is coming out and more and more suffering is coming out, and I ask myself...I keep asking myself, how did I ever survive this brutality, this sickness, these sick people?</sentence><sentence id="2266">How...how could I ever absorb this punishment, so much for so long and how I will ever understand the indifference of the world?</sentence><sentence id="2267">They say...they say that the biggest tragedy (clearing throat) of the 20th century was the Holocaust.</sentence><sentence id="2268">I don't say that.</sentence><sentence id="2269">I say the biggest tragedy of the 20th century was the indifference of the world.</sentence><sentence id="2270">That is what I say, and nobody came to our aid.</sentence><sentence id="2271">Nobody helped us.</sentence><sentence id="2272">Nobody raised a word of protest, not the Pope, not the kings, not the presidents, not governments.</sentence><sentence id="2273">In this whole world...Hitler held a speech in 1938.</sentence><sentence id="2274">I heard the speech.</sentence><sentence id="2275">He said take the Jews as he spoke to the world...or we will kill them.</sentence><sentence id="2276">That's what he said.</sentence><sentence id="2277">Not 2 only did they not help us, not only did they not give us a hand, but they closed the <span class="DLF">borders</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2278">They rejected us.</sentence><sentence id="2279">They didn't want us.</sentence><sentence id="2280">They pushed us back.</sentence><sentence id="2281">In other words, they said to Adolph Hitler, kill them.</sentence><sentence id="2282">We don't want them.</sentence><sentence id="2283">We don't want to help them.</sentence><sentence id="2284">We have other things to do.</sentence><sentence id="2285">Do with them what you want.</sentence><sentence id="2286">When they asked the Allies to bomb the <span class="DLF">tracks</span>, the <span class="DLF">railroad tracks</span> that go to to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>, the answer came back...we have no <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">planes</span> to spare.</sentence><sentence id="2287">When they said they're throwing two hundred thousand children in the open fires and burn them alive, the answer came back...it is an internal matter.</sentence><sentence id="2288">When the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">ship</span> with eight hundred people, the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">St. Louis</span> I believe it was, when that uh got in into the <span class="COUNTRY">United States</span> to <span class="COUNTRY">Cuba</span>, from the <span class="COUNTRY">United States</span>, they would not allow them to land.</sentence><sentence id="2289">They were eight hundred people, and they would not allow them to come into the <span class="COUNTRY">country</span> and they went back to die.</sentence><sentence id="2290">That is the biggest tragedy of the 20th century, and that is something I will never forgive them for.</sentence><sentence id="2291">Not anyone, any of the <span class="COUNTRY">countries</span>, any of the rest of the world.</sentence><sentence id="2292">There are people that...in <span class="COUNTRY">Mexico</span> there was an earthquake.</sentence><sentence id="2293">Millions of people were __...help, help, help, help, help everybody.</sentence><sentence id="2294">When the Shiites had a problem, millions of dollars, <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">planes</span>...they don't know what to do for them.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2343">Q: Uh you you...can we just talk a little bit...you came to the <span class="COUNTRY">United States</span>...and what did you do?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2345">A: Yeah.</sentence><sentence id="2346">I came to the <span class="COUNTRY">United States</span> with three cents, and an old army uniform, fatigues...that's all I had between me and nothing.</sentence><sentence id="2347">So I stood on the <span class="DLF">dock</span> and I went to a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bus</span> that was standing there, and I said to the bus driver, you go?</sentence><sentence id="2348">And he said to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Newark</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2349">I said what's <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Newark</span>?</sentence><sentence id="2350">He said outside <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">New York</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2351">I said I go there too.</sentence><sentence id="2352">I can't stay here.</sentence><sentence id="2353">And he says what's...where were you?</sentence><sentence id="2354">He said do you have money?</sentence><sentence id="2355">I said yeah.</sentence><sentence id="2356">I pulled out three cents, English pennies. _</sentence><sentence id="2357">get in the back.</sentence><sentence id="2358">Took me to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Newark</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2359">I said where do you want me to get off.</sentence><sentence id="2360">They had a lot of <span class="BUILDING">gas stations</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2361">Let me off where there are a lot of <span class="BUILDING">gas stations</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2362">I walked into this...I walked into the second <span class="BUILDING">station</span>, two Jewish boys.</sentence><sentence id="2363">I said...I said I need a job.</sentence><sentence id="2364">They said to me, so do a lot of people.</sentence><sentence id="2365">I said no, but I I need a job now and you've got to give me a job because I can do anything better than you in fact.</sentence><sentence id="2366">He looked at me.</sentence><sentence id="2367">He said you have a loud...you have a big mouth.</sentence><sentence id="2368">| said but I can back it up.</sentence><sentence id="2369">He said where are you from.</sentence><sentence id="2370">I told him off the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2371">You have money?</sentence><sentence id="2372">Yeah.</sentence><sentence id="2373">Three cents.</sentence><sentence id="2374">The bus driver never took the money.</sentence><sentence id="2375">He looked at me.</sentence><sentence id="2376">He says alright, I give you a job.</sentence><sentence id="2377">Thirty dollars a week, six days.</sentence><sentence id="2378">I says fine.</sentence><sentence id="2379">He gave me something to eat.</sentence><sentence id="2380">He gave me...got me a <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span>, and I worked with him in the <span class="BUILDING">gas station</span>...washing <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cars</span>, greasing <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cars</span>, towing <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cars</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2381">And after a while I said to myself, there's nothing I want to do with my life.</sentence><sentence id="2382">And I saw an ad in the paper...<span class="BUILDING">school</span>...uh .</sentence><sentence id="2383">I wanted to do that.</sentence><sentence id="2384">I mean that takes ten years to learn, thousands of dollars in tuition.</sentence><sentence id="2385">I can't afford that...no money.</sentence><sentence id="2386">I saw another ad...watchmaking.</sentence><sentence id="2387">Well, doesn't sound bad.</sentence><sentence id="2388">I have good hands.</sentence><sentence id="2389">I have a good mind.</sentence><sentence id="2390">I went up there and I saw the blueprints on the <span class="DLF">wall</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2391">I was running out.</sentence><sentence id="2392">The instructor grabbed me by the neck and pulled me back.</sentence><sentence id="2393">Stay.</sentence><sentence id="2394">I stayed.</sentence><sentence id="2395">The course was something like I believe twenty-four months.</sentence><sentence id="2396">Seventy-five dollars a month.</sentence><sentence id="2397">I stayed.</sentence><sentence id="2398">I got myself a job with <span class="BUILDING">Cable and Wire</span> in , <span class="REGION">New Jersey</span>...a <span class="BUILDING">factory</span>, loading <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span> on a <span class="DLF">platform</span>, from seven to four.</sentence><sentence id="2399">At five o'clock I was in <span class="BUILDING">school</span>, five days a week.</sentence><sentence id="2400">I couldn't pay seventy-five dollars a month.</sentence><sentence id="2401">I said tell you what...give me half the 3 tuition off and I'll wash your <span class="INT_SPACE">floors</span> for you.</sentence><sentence id="2402">He says you've got a deal.</sentence><sentence id="2403">I paid him whenever I could.</sentence><sentence id="2404">There were months I couldn't pay him.</sentence><sentence id="2405">So I cleaned the <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2406">I took care of the <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2407">I took care of the tools and the <span class="REGION">land</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2408">After twelve months he called me into his <span class="INT_SPACE">office</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2409">He says, here's your diploma.</sentence><sentence id="2410">There's nothing more we can teach you.</sentence><sentence id="2411">I said I have another twelve months to go.</sentence><sentence id="2412">He says no, you go out.</sentence><sentence id="2413">Go out in the <span class="DLF">field</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2414">You've learned all we can teach you.</sentence><sentence id="2415">I went out in the <span class="DLF">field</span> and I learned and I worked and I learned and I worked and I got better and better and better and I spent nights studying books, uh mathematics, algebra, ratios.</sentence><sentence id="2416">I practiced uh on the lathe.</sentence><sentence id="2417">I made parts by hand and I wanted to know why this is round and that is square and this is thick and this is thin and why and how...why couldn't it be improved upon and how many ways are there to do a repair job and I learned from masters.</sentence><sentence id="2418">I knocked on their <span class="DLF">doors</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2419">I said teach me.</sentence><sentence id="2420">Teach me all you know.</sentence><sentence id="2421">They did.</sentence><sentence id="2422">I became good.</sentence><sentence id="2423">I've been doing this for forty-five years.</sentence><sentence id="2424">I've had my own business for the last twenty-five years.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2505">Q: Before we finish is there anything that you want to add?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2507">A: No.</sentence><sentence id="2508">I think I covered it. (</sentence><sentence id="2509">Sigh) It is just...I tell you before I finish up...this is a hurt that will stay with you the rest of your life.</sentence><sentence id="2510">This is...this is a feeling of guilt that will stay with you the rest of your life, the guilt being that you are left alive and they didn't make it and you feel guilty about that.</sentence><sentence id="2511">And that will all stay with you and you will suffer the rest of your life with all this.</sentence><sentence id="2512">This is not something that will go away ever, and you look at the world and you say, why didn't you help me?</sentence><sentence id="2513">You could have done something.</sentence><sentence id="2514">You helped other people.</sentence><sentence id="2515">Why not us?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2525">Q: You had mentioned uh something about heroics...some heroic stories.</sentence><sentence id="2526">Is there one particular one you'd like to tell?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2529">A: My God...there are so many.</sentence><sentence id="2530">They are .</sentence><sentence id="2531">Yes I do.</sentence><sentence id="2532">Twice I spent time in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Fort</span> hanging on the hook for stupid reasons.</sentence><sentence id="2533">The third time would have killed me.</sentence><sentence id="2534">I had made a fire.</sentence><sentence id="2535">We had lookouts.</sentence><sentence id="2536">They didn't watch out good.</sentence><sentence id="2537">They caught me and I was supposed to go another fifteen days at <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Fort</span> .</sentence><sentence id="2538">They knew if I would go another fifteen days it would be the end of me.</sentence><sentence id="2539">There was nothing left of me after two to start with.</sentence><sentence id="2540">Before I knew it, all the remain camp guys, they assembled in front of the <span class="DLF">gate</span> and they had me <span class="NPIP">inside</span> and they said no, he's not going.</sentence><sentence id="2541">It came out sudden.</sentence><sentence id="2542">He is not going to <span class="BUILDING">Fort</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2543">Neither is anybody else.</sentence><sentence id="2544">We've had enough.</sentence><sentence id="2545">Nobody is going out of this <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2546">Nobody is going to be hanging up their arms.</sentence><sentence id="2547">Nobody is going to get beat up again.</sentence><sentence id="2548">Nobody's going to die anymore.</sentence><sentence id="2549">We've had it.</sentence><sentence id="2550">The guards could do nothing.</sentence><sentence id="2551">We were a thousand, two thousand guys there.</sentence><sentence id="2552">So they told me you stay where you are.</sentence><sentence id="2553">You're not going anyplace.</sentence><sentence id="2554">Everybody picked up rocks.</sentence><sentence id="2555">That's it.</sentence><sentence id="2556">So they called in the <span class="BUILDING">Spahice</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2557">We saw them arrive with their horses.</sentence><sentence id="2558">He called them in.</sentence><sentence id="2559">They came through the <span class="DLF">gate</span> and that was the only uprising we ever had...could do in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2560">There was two-fold...the reason was two- fold.</sentence><sentence id="2561">No...nobody ever again would go to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Fort</span> , and maybe this will go on to the outside world to let people know what's going on here, make people find us, make people investigate.</sentence><sentence id="2562">Perhaps somehow, somebody will bring it into the outside world that other 4 people died.</sentence><sentence id="2563">They came with their sabers.</sentence><sentence id="2564">We threw rocks at them.</sentence><sentence id="2565">We trampled them to death.</sentence><sentence id="2566">We took their sabers and we fought.</sentence><sentence id="2567">It was a bloody battle in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>, but there wasn't much we had to fight with.</sentence><sentence id="2568">And I didn't go to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Fort</span> that day.</sentence><sentence id="2569">It was spared me, but people actually gave their lives to save mine.</sentence><sentence id="2570">I think that's heroic.</sentence><sentence id="2571">Some how or other incidents...guys that tried to commit suicide uh and went into the <span class="DLF">barbed</span>...we weren't allowed to go within ten feet of the <span class="DLF">barbed wire</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2572">They would shoot you.</sentence><sentence id="2573">And guys started running into the <span class="DLF">barbed wire</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2574">We pulled them back and they were shooting at us and yet still they pulled them in, in spite of the bullets.</sentence><sentence id="2575">You did so many things...there was so much going on with so little we we could do about these situations, but yet every little thing was a heroic act.</sentence><sentence id="2576">Can you understand that?</sentence><sentence id="2577">Everything was a heroic act and and and finally we got out and we said well...Max came to me and says I told you you'll make it, because many days we stood on the <span class="DLF">barbed wires</span> and says Max, we'll never get out of here.</sentence><sentence id="2578">Max was ten years older.</sentence><sentence id="2579">Max, we'll never make it.</sentence><sentence id="2580">It's already two years.</sentence><sentence id="2581">We'll never get out of here, and Max said, you'll see...tomorrow.</sentence><sentence id="2582">You'll see...tomorrow.</sentence><sentence id="2583">That little...you'll see tomorrow...gave me hope for another twenty-four hours.</sentence><sentence id="2584">Can you understand that?</sentence><sentence id="2585">Although I didn't...I didn't believe him...thought he was lying and I knew he was lying...but he said it anyway and and I could make myself believe it.</sentence><sentence id="2586">These are the little things that kept us going, little things, little supports, supporting each other.</sentence><sentence id="2587">Can you understand that?</sentence><sentence id="2588">We had so little to support ourselves with and so little hope.</sentence><sentence id="2589">How I survived I never know.</sentence><sentence id="2590">I tell you to this day it's a miracle how I got out of it, how I survived all these nonsense, all these cruelties, all these beatings, all this brutality.</sentence><sentence id="2591">I don't know how, to this day, but I'm here to talk about it.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2655">Q: Well, thank you very much for telling about it.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2657">A: It's not a hell of a lot, but what can I say.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2659">Q: Thank you.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2661">A: Thank you for having me to tell my story.</sentence></p><p><sentence id="2662">TECHNICAL CONVERSATION</sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2663">A: It's a sad story, but nevertheless, it's my story.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2665">Q: It's your story and you expressed it...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2667">A: It's my story.</sentence><sentence id="2668">How can you put years and years of these things...how can you tell about the nights, the lonely nights and the lonely, the hard days?</sentence><sentence id="2669">How...how can you put that into words.</sentence><sentence id="2670">TECHNICAL CONVERSATION 5 END OF INTERVIEW</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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