Datasets:

wjbmattingly

/

ushmm-testimonies

like 0

RG-50.549.05.0014

No. [Laughing.] I guess just normal food, you know, what my mother always would fix. I know used to give me, come in from playing, because you’re, I’m what? I was seven and a half years old, eight years old? I’m paying not much attention to that. She used to give me a piece of bread with butter on it, sprinkled with a little sugar. That was my snack. [Laughing.] Tasted good to me. So as far as I know, normal food that she would normally prepare, you know, that’s what we had. I don’t remember... now thinking back at it, I really don’t remember what we ate. What kind of food. But we weren’t there that long, because once they got everybody together, 6 they started cleaning out that place. Load people up and they went to Auschwitz. The only reason I’m sitting here talking to you right now is because the fact that my father was American. He was born in New York City and he never accepted citizenship, Hungarian citizenship. So consequently we were protected by the Swiss Embassy. So they put us in a separate house from the rest of the ghetto. There were some other families there, who were foreign nationals or considered foreign nationals. And they were protected by the Hungarian police and not by the Germans. And so once the whole ghetto got emptied, because we didn’t know where they were taking them. We were taken on train, we were taken to Budapest. And they put us there in a, what they called a protective house. Basically it was a prison, but, and part of the wing there, they even had American flyers there. They were shot down. Because we seen them exercise. We had no direct contact with them. But they were shot down, you know, they were bombing Budapest and the planes were shot down and they got captured. That’s where they kept them, too. So, that’s were they kept us till December 1944.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Do you remember being... do you remember what you were feeling during that time? Being this young boy, being afraid?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

No, no. I wasn’t afraid at all. No, no. I remember they were bombing, because the house that we were in was close to the central train station. And they got bombed a lot. And so we always had to go down to the shelter. I don’t remember being afraid, to be perfectly honest with you. Sounds crazy, but if I was, I do not remember it as such, as being afraid. I guess at that age, you really... do not comprehend, you know, what was going on. Was no reason, really, in my mind there was no reason to be afraid. But no, I do not remember being afraid. Now, my sister might have been, I don’t know. But I personally do not remember being afraid.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Were you close with your brothers and sisters?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

I think so. We always did everything together, together we used to go, Sundays we used to have matinee, back in Debrecen, we used to have matinee operettas, you know. And we used to love operettas. I was just a tiny little thing. But we used to, always save our money and go, on Sundays we used to go to the operetta, the matinee. [Laughing.] There was a place they called Nagy Erd6 which 1s basically a little forest area and they had a big pond there and row boats. And I remember my brother taking me there, you know, for going on the pond with a row boat ride. That kind of stuff I remember. We did things together, I mean we were close family. Even today, every year we try to see each other. Once a year we get together somewhere, if it’s at all possible.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

So one sister, you said, lives in Sweden and the other in Israel?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

In Israel, right. That’s where they live. Matter of fact, I just came back. I visited my sister in Israel. My sister from Sweden was sick, so she couldn’t join us. But that’s the first year that we didn’t, all three of us weren’t together. So, next year we are going to Sweden, so whether she is sick or not, we’ll be there. We’ll visit her. Each year we try to get together.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

When your, when the ghetto began to be liquidated did your father come back from the labor force? Or what happened to him? 7

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

No. He joined us back in Budapest. They brought him back from whatever work Battalion he was in. I guess the Swiss Embassy intervened. Anyway they brought him back and he joined us at the protective house. That’s where he rejoined us.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Do you remember anything else about your time in the protected house? You just had to...?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Well basically there was a lot of families there. I remember one guy taught me how to play chess. [Laughing.|] They had French and Italian, all different nationalities, bunch of... well, no, wasn’t Italian, because they were, anyway, whoever were at war with the Nazis, with Germany and their allies. There was a whole bunch of different nationalities, I know that. I think there was some French, too, Jewish, Jews.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Were all of them Jews?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Yes, yes, I think so. Well, I better not say yes because I really don’t know. But I think that all of them were Jews. And it was just normal, I mean they would... again I don’t know where the food was coming, whether the Hungarian government provided the food or the Swiss or Red Cross, I’m really not sure. I remember that one time the Red Cross came to inspect the house. And I was , because I guess we were considered prisoners. I remember one, and they brought some packages and stuff. I really don’t remember a whole lot, detail-wise. I know there were a lot of little kids and we played. The quarters were very tight, we only had, I think, for the whole family, that’s four of us and my father and mother, I think we only had one big room for all of us. So there was, space-wise there wasn’t a whole lot. And we had a window that opened up on the courtyard. But it was all in four with the one gate you could come in or out. It was like enclosed. The hallways, the Hungarian police sitting in each hallway, armed.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Were they, did they treat you decently or were they cruel?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Yes, the Hungarian police treated, you know, as far as I know they treated us decently. Okay? The rough time was with the Nilosh (ph), with the Hungarian Nazis during the ghetto. And there they hit you with the butt of the rifle, whatever, if they didn’t like your looks or whatever turned them on, you know. But at the Protective house, they did treat us decently. There was no rough stuff or that kind of stuff. They were pretty decent.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Did you ever get hit while in the ghetto?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Yeah a couple of times, but that was later on. That was around when I got to the concentration camp. At the house itself there was... as far as I can, for me anyway, for my memories, I didn’t see any mean beat-ups or that kind of stuff. I did not see anyone when I was around. December of ‘44, I guess the Russian were getting too close, and then they just moved everybody out in the street. Said, “Everybody out, pick up whatever you can carry.” And this was in December, cold, snow on the ground. And they lined us up in the street and my brother, when he heard that they started hollering “Everybody out” and all that, he ran down underneath to the basement and opened the door for the bomb shelter to the street and he got out there. I followed him. And he told me to go back. I would have been with him, but he didn’t go to the concentration camps. 8 He took off. But he was already fifteen, obviously he couldn’t worry about me. He told me to go back to mom and dad, so I went back and he took off. So he managed to escape. So he did not come with us. End of Tape 1, Side A 9 Tape 1, Side B

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Tape one, side B. Where did your brother go?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

From what he told me later on, first of all he hid around there in Budapest till he managed to get out of Budapest. He went back to Almozd, to where he was born. He knew the people there, and they hid him till after the war. He worked for the farmers and all that. But they took care of him, protected him and hid him. That’s where he went back to.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

What else do you remember about that day?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Well, that day is when all Hell broke loose. There was no trains from there, from Budapest, so they marched us. We walked about four days, I guess, close to a couple hundred miles, I mean kilometers, which 1s about... a hundred kilometers is sixty miles, so probably about a hundred miles, maybe a hundred and twenty miles we walked to a rail head. And we were cold, snow and young children. And they called it a death march, because whoever couldn’t keep up they just shot him. Dropped him whenever he couldn’t go no more and killed him. Either you went or you died, as simple as that. So, they marched us in the snow and ice for about, I guess it was four days by the time we got to the rail head.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Did you have any of your belongings with you, were you having to carry...?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Well whatever, initially we had belongings with us, but as we walked we threw, basically got rid of most of the stuff we couldn’t carry. Just the most important necessities 1s what you kept. Everything else got thrown to the side of the road. And, you know, just kept on trucking.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Did you have any food with you? Or were you given any?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Well each day, evening they usually had some big barns and stuff, I guess they took over from some farms or whatever, they herded us in there because it wasn’t that many people to begin with. I don’t know how many, but I wouldn’t think it was more than a few hundreds, maybe four or five hundred people the whole, the whole thing. So, they herded us in there. And usually they fed us some kind of a hot soup and some black bread, you know, rye. And that was basically all the food we got.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Were all of the prisoners foreign nationals in this group?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Yeah, that’s all from that protective house. They were considered foreign nationals, yes.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

So there were a few hundred people just in that one house?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Yes, yes, in that whole complex. It was four or five stories high, I mean the building. But anyway, yeah, whatever was in, they emptied out, the house, the prison, whatever you want to call it. They took everybody from there.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Was it the Germans who were evacuating and leading the march? 10

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Yes, there was Germans and some Hungarian Nazis were working with them, but basically the Germans SS was in charge. They’re the ones who controlled the whole thing, the movement and all that. So once we got to the rail head, there they separated the women and the children and the men and they loaded us on separate cattle cars. And they packed us full in these cars. We barely could breathe, and one little bucket in a corner for everybody to use as a toilet. And closed the doors and off we went. We went... and my father was taken separately to, well all the men were taken to different camps. And so they took us to Ravensbrick, that’s where our first concentration camp was.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Do you remember starting to feel afraid during that time about what was going to happen to you and your family?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

I never, ever can remember that I was afraid. I’m not saying I wasn’t, but in my mind I do not remember being afraid. I was more... I don’t even know what I was feeling. I really didn’t know what was going... I guess I was just trying to survive. My main motive was, in the cattle car if you don’t watch it you will be trampled to death there. There were people who died in the camp, I mean in the car going there. And I don’t know how long we traveled in the car. But honestly, I really can’t tell you that I actually felt scared, no afraid. Now, I’m not saying that I wasn’t, but I do not remember that kind of feeling. Because maybe that was because of my age, you know, and all that. It just didn’t dawn on me that I’m supposed to be afraid. I don’t know. Matter of fact, my sister tells me and I could not verify it for you, because I don’t know. Because I’m not remembering. But once we were in Ravensbriick, it was like they had appell, basically like reveille in the morning in the Army. Everybody had to fall out of the barracks and line up and had roll call, you know, account for everybody. And whoever was sick had to go, that whole camp was nothing but women and children. Basically women, there were a few children, but not too many. My mother had a real terrible headache and she asked for some medication or something and the German whipped her with... he had one of those riding, you know?

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Riding crop?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Yeah, he slapped her across and I went and kicked him in the shin. [Laughing.] And my sister said everybody, they got deathly still. They were afraid that he was going to kill me or something. But he just turned around and he slapped me and I went flying, but that’s about, he didn’t do nothing else to me, but, you know. That tells you I wasn’t afraid for my own personal. I don’t remember doing it, to be honest with you. But that’s what my sister told me that I did. I personally cannot remember that I personally was afraid. From when we arrived at the camp everybody got taking all the clothes and everything away from them. And my mother had sewed gold coins and stuff into each one of our, because we didn’t know, you know, so she divvied up what we had and sewed into our overcoats just 1n case, you know, we could use it. Maybe the whole family could have been saved. My dad got hold of the farmer one of the nights when we stopped overnight and talked to the farmer. And he had sewed in his overcoat, a big diamond ring and he told the farmer he was going to give him the diamond ring if he hides us, the four of us, the four kids and him and my mom. And he agreed, so it must have been a pretty good 11 diamond ring, you know pretty big diamond. But my mom wouldn’t go. She said that he might kill us himself for the rest of the stuff. She didn’t want to go.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

When did that happen?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

It was on the way to the rail head from Budapest. Anyway, they took all the clothes away and they gave us those striped, pajama type stuff. And they cut everybody’s hair, women, children, everything. And they gave us a shower, but it was water. It wasn’t gas. And they assigned us to barracks. When we went out, after the reveille in the morning, they took us out to the field to pick beets, cattle beets. And we ate cattle beets to keep us from starving.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Did they give you anything else to eat?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Basically once a day they gave you a slice of black bread and soup made from cattle beets. Hot liquid, but it was wintertime, was cold. That’s basically what you got and while you worked out there if you could sneak away some beets, then you chewed on that while you worked. And that was it.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Did you have to work long hours? Do you have any sense of how long the days were?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Well, they marched us from the camp out to the field. I don’t know how long it took to get us out there. It wasn’t too far from the fields. I don’t remember how far. Mainly I think the difficulty was walking in the snow and ice and all that kind of stuff. But we went out to the fields and you pulled them beets, you know? They had a cart that you threw it on. Afternoon they walk you back to the camp. I don’t know if that’s all. There might have been other stuff, other people picked, maybe because the younger one, the weak and all, the weaker people they took to the easier, where the beets weren’t that heavy. They weren’t that big. Just depends, probably had other kind of work details, too.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Did you work with your mother and your sisters?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Yeah. I didn’t every day go out with them. But most of the time they just took everybody out. Just brought them down and took them out. So I don’t know, we stayed there for a couple of months and then one day they hollered everybody out from the barracks and they lined us up again. And at the time my sister, Miriam, she was very sick and they had her in the dispensary over there. So started marching us toward the rail head and I remember Mama hollering, “Miriam, Miriam!” She didn’t want to leave her. [Weeping.] Anyway, they loaded us back up again and my sister stayed behind. From there they took us to Bergen-Belsen. We arrived at Bergen-Belsen and they took us in where the crematorium was and maybe because I was just a little child, but there was a mountain, nothing but dead corpses piled on top of each other. And the smell and everything else, and stayed over there overnight. The next day they took us and put us in the barracks. There was no beds or anything. They had some straw. And give you a sack to fill up with straw. That was your bed. So, basically you laid on concrete in the winter. No food. My mother died there. Then in May, ’45, we got liberated. The British and Canadian troops actually liberated Bergen-Belsen. And then the Red Cross took us from where they found us, took us to hospital. We stayed there and the Swedish Red Cross took us from there to 12 Sweden. I stayed about a year in hospital. They nursed me back to health. Then once I got out of the hospital, I joined my sister in the orphanage.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

So you, I’m sorry, did your mother die of typhus? Was she ill?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

I don’t know what she died from. I have no idea. But a lot of people during that period of time died from typhus. They... I think she probably more died from starvation than anything else, because what little food we could get hold, she would feed the kids, me and my sister. I don’t know if she ate any or what, and so her condition... and we were susceptible to any disease that was rampaging around in the place there. There was no cleaning, you didn’t wash you. Any kind of hygiene, so who knows what would have caused it.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

So it was you and your sister, Ilona, who were...

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Ilona...

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

.. liberated.

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

...and my mother went to Bergen-Belsen, yeah. Me and Ilona was liberated from Bergen- Belsen.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Do you remember any details about the day of your liberation?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

The only thing I remember, somebody said that they were hanging, they’d seen some white flags on the guard towers. What is the white flags? Germans put white flags on the towers. Didn’t mean nothing to me. I don’t know what the symbol, surrender, but how was... and then somebody I heard said, holler something about, “the Germans are leaving.” I guess they try to hide. You know? The camp guards all were booking. [Laughing.] So, anyway. And then the next thing you know the troops, the military was coming through the camps and all that. I guess picking up whoever was still living. Matter of fact they took us to the German hospital. I guess they cleaned it out whoever was in there. Anyway they took it over and that’s where they were taking us. Then they put up big, old hospital tents. That’s where the children, they brought the children to, we were in a hospital, a big hospital tent. I remember that. And I guess they started feeding us slowly, slowly because we had hardly any stomach left. That’s what killed a lot of people, I understand, is they gave them too much food too soon. Got diarrhea and all that, they couldn’t handle it on their bodies. So anyway, wasn’t much left of me by that time. But anyway from there the Swedish Red Cross came and picked up all the children without any family and everything and took us to Sweden. They put us on one of those Red Cross trains and we arrived in Malmo. Had those white buses with red crosses on them. From there they took us to the hospital, Swedish hospital in Stockholm, I mean Malmo.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

How old was, let’s see, you were ten years old at that time, right?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Nine and a half. I would be ten in November.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

And your sister, Ilona? 13

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

My sister, she was three years older, at least three, three, three and a half years older than I was. So, she was about twelve and a half, between twelve and thirteen. But she was born in December, so she wasn’t quite thirteen, past twelve, but not thirteen.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

How did the Swedish people treat you?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Oh, they treated us very well. I mean, they were wonderful people. They cared for us. As far as I can remember, in the hospital anyway, they were very kind and all that. When we went to the orphanage, I think it wasn’t Swedish. I think it was run by a Jewish agency. I think it wasn’t a Swedish government function. It was kind of tough. Started putting us back to school. But, had one teacher who was teaching me in German. One teacher was teaching me in Polish. [Laughing. ]

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Did you speak any Polish?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

I picked some up there. There were a lot of children who were Polish. So, it was pretty hard to learn anything, because of all the language. Nobody was teaching me anything in Hungarian, which was the only language I really knew. But I learned there. I was able to speak pretty good Polish by the time I was done there, and German, too. And anyway, that was the education that we got.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

There was a school within the orphanage itself?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

That’s what I’m saying, they had some teachers, I guess, who were, before the war who were teachers. But one was a German, the other one was a Polish, that taught the subject, but in their language, because that’s the only one that they knew how to use, so. But if you weren’t a Polish child, it didn’t mean nothing to you. What do I need to learn Polish? How to spell or whatever Polish. The German guy, he, I think he taught math, so that was okay, one and one 1s two, you know, doesn’t make no difference. As long as you understood what he was trying to say on the blackboard, so you could follow him fairly reasonable. Anyway they disbanded the orphanage. And by that time my sister was fifteen and she had to go out and work. They told her she has to find a job and go to work. And they took me to a DP camp. I mean it wasn’t a camp, it was a house in a place called Tabo (ph), in Sweden. And basically I was on my own. There was a woman who was a cook there, who was basically supposed to look after me. Look over me. And they enrolled me in a Swedish school, so now I had to learn Swedish. [Laughing.] You know. And went to school in Sweden. Now I went to one grade in Hungary and what little schooling I got there at the orphanage. And from there they started me off... I think in sixth, according to my age, which was sixth grade or something like that. Sixth, seventh grade. And obviously it wasn’t easy. But the children there was nice. They were fairly friendly for a stranger, you know, and all that. A couple of friends I had there. One was a little, wanted to be a jockey. There was a horse farm not far from there. He and me used to go to the horse farm and try to get, let him ride the horses and stuff. So, anyway I was there for a while. And a Jewish family came and they introduced me to them, and blah, blah, blah. They basically took me home with them, in other words, they were going to be my guardians. They lived in Stockholm, so we moved to Stockholm. And they enrolled me in school over there. They treated me nice, as a 14 matter of fact they wanted to adopt me, but by that time I found my brother and my other sister, Miriam, in Israel. So I said, “No I don’t want to be adopted. I’m going to Israel.” So, that’s what I did.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

How did you find your brother and sister?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Through the Red Cross and through the Jewish Agency. We looked for Father, too. And I found my father also. He went back to Hungary looking for us. He wrote and said, “Do not come back to Hungary.” He said, “I’m going back to the United States. When I get there I want you to join me there. In the meantime stay where you are.” But I didn’t want to stay there, so I signed up to go to Israel. And my sister, I guess by that time she had a boyfriend, whatever, anyway she decided she wanted to stay in Sweden. She stayed there, and I went to Israel.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

What made you decide you wanted to go to Israel rather than staying in Sweden as you father had suggested?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Well, because I... I been always close to my older brother, and my older brother and sister was in Israel, so I said, “Well I'll just go there and wait for them until Father gets to the United States, instead of here.” So anyway, that’s what I did. That was in ‘49, in May ‘49, I went to Israel. The Swedish family, they wanted me to stay and they were going to adopt me and everything. I didn’t want to. And later on, I’m glad I didn’t, because that guy, my sister told me that the guy and his wife got divorced. [Laughing.] So, you know, anyway, that’s neither here nor there. They were nice people, they treated me fine. As a matter of fact, my thirteen birthday, my Bar Mitzvah, they did that at the big Temple in Stockholm.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

That was your guardians, who...

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Yeah they are the ones who...

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

...arranged that?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But religion is not my thing. After what I’ve seen, nobody can convince me that faith is worth anything.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Did they pressure you to do the Bar Mitzvah?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

No, no, no. I willingly did that. I’m just saying I have no religious... I’m not religious of any kind. I don’t believe in all that stuff. That’s what the war did to me. What I’ve seen and everything. I said, there’s nobody up there watching anything if this can happen here. That’s me, anyway. End of Tape 1, Side B 15 Tape 2, Side A

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

This tape number two, side A of an interview with Paul Schlisser. So, you were just talking about leaving from Sweden and moving to...

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

... to Israel.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

...[srael. What year did you say that was?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

That was in ‘49, May of 1949. D: Who paid for your travel?

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

I think the... as far as I know it was the Jewish Agency or whatever. You know, Aliyah Tano’ar (ph)which 1s basically the Jewish Agency gathering up the children, the No’ar (ph), which means the young. I guess they’re the ones who paid for it. As far as I know. I didn’t have the money to pay for it, so they gave me the ticket and I went. I think, basically what they did, I flew from Sweden to France, and in France the Agency picked me up and took me to a DP camp, I guess. And from there they loaded us up on a boat. By that time it wasn’t illegal anymore. The British were gone. And they took us with a boat to Haifa. And we arrived and my brother was waiting on me. We arrived like today and that evening he was already there, my older brother.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Do you remember that reunion?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Yeah I remember it. We were glad to see each other and hugged and all that good stuff. I want to know how the trip was and how he was, how I was, how Illy was and all that. He said that he’s going to take me to the village where he lives. The name of it was Kfar Warburg, it was a moshav. Moshav means that everybody got, owns his own land, got his own farm. And they just have joint, the milk processing and the equipment, the major equipment and stuff 1s jointly owned, but each one got his own land and his own farm that he works, that’s a Moshav. So anyway, that’s where he took me. The family’s name was Lillieh (ph), they were German Jews, who escaped before, during the Kristallnacht back in ‘39. They got out of Germany and came to Israel. So, they are the ones who, he was with them before, when he first came to Israel. And so anyway that’s the family, and I worked half a day and went to school half a day. So again I had to learn a new language to go to school. And basically we went to school in the morning and worked in the afternoon.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

On the farm?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

On the farm, on his farm, yeah.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

What were you growing?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Well, he had milk cows. He had about fourteen milking cows, so you had to grow feed for them. And you had, he grew vegetables, tomatoes and cucumbers and that kind of stuff. Eggplants. Cauliflowers, corn, you know, just basically, it wasn’t, the land over there, you don’t have no 16 huge acreage anyway. You’re talking about... dunam (ph), I guess, I don’t know how to compare it with acres. But I would say he had no more than maybe fifteen acres of land. And so he had to raise alfalfa to feed the cows. One thing he didn’t have to worry about, 1s that like here you have to cut hay and put it away and all that, so that you would have food for the winter. Over there it grows year-round, semi-tropic, so you don’t have to worry about not having feed for them. You just have to make sure that... but we grew hay, you know, alfalfa for... and cut hay to feed the cows, and all that. Basically I worked out on the farm, plowed, picked tomatoes, picked this and picked that and weeded. All the things you do ona farm. Milked cows and all that stuff.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

I had a couple of questions from earlier that I didn’t ask. I wondered if when you were with the family, the Jewish family in Sweden, if they...

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

In Stockholm you mean?

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

...1n Stockholm, if they asked you, did you talk to them, did they ask you anything about what your experiences had been?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

No.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

During the war?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

No, no. They never did. And I never talked about it. As a matter of fact, you’re probably only about the second or third person I ever talked about, talked about it at all. First time I ever, well beside Yad Vashem, you know, when we got interviewed, but that was with both my sisters there and they did most of the talking. And last year, the Jewish Community Center here in Louisville asked me to join them on Yom Ha... Remembrance, Day of Remembrance and all that, to tell my story. So I reluctantly agreed that I would tell them whatever I remember. And so I did. I went up there and said my piece. And that was, beside this here, that’s about the only time. I don’t talk about it. And matter of fact, Professor Dickstein wanted me to go to one of the high schools and speak to the children about my experience and I declined. I said I just can’t handle it. I’m not going to constantly dig it out, dig it up. I just can’t live like that. I’m just not willing to constantly put myself through that. So, I don’t, normally don’t talk about it. I want to put it behind me, not in front of me.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

What made you agree to talk to me and to talk to the Jewish Community Center?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Well, I really don’t know. I just, I think probably the main thing that motivated me on that is I read in places where, especially where they had the trial in Britain about people saying it never happened and all that stuff, 1t’s somebody’s fantasies. And I’m here to tell you that it did happen. And I guess that’s probably the main reason that I agreed to talk about it, is that, you know, people are trying to change history. And if you don’t learn nothing, you don’t learn no lesson from what happened, it can happen again. That was my biggest motivation of joining the US Army, is I felt that the Russians weren’t that much better than the Nazis were. They had the gulags, they had the camps. May not have been prosecuting Jews per se, but they were prosecuting human beings. That’s basically what decided, probably the only force in the world 17 during this period of time that could prevent something like that happening is the U.S. Armed Forces. And so that was my main reasoning for joining the Service. I served in the Israeli Army. I fought in the Sinai Desert in ‘56. And so I’ve been through the wringer. But that wouldn’t affect Israel, doesn’t affect the world. And probably the only force in the world at this time of human history who can make a difference is the United States and the U.S. Armed Forces. So, that was my main motivation of joining the Service.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Another question, looking back on those days just after the war when you were a young boy in Sweden, did you, I’m trying to think of how to form the question. But I’m wondering about whether you, you were questioning or whether you understood why you and your family and others had been singled out for this, for this horrible persecution. Did you have any understanding of what...?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Yeah, I understood that it was basically based on my religion, basically that’s the only thing that... you know. And then as I got older and I read. I’m not educated very well. I finished high school GED and I got some college behind me, about sixty-eight credit hours. But basically I read a lot, and my understanding that the foundation for this disaster has been laid a long, long time and is basically... I don’t blame any particular faith, but basically they were teaching in churches and stuff that the Jews killed Jesus and this and that and always had limitation on what Jews can do. They always kept them outside of the mainstream society. And they were prohibited to be in certain trades and they were always prohibited in doing certain things. So they were always kept like foreigners, you know, strangers or foreigners, whatever you want to call them. And then the church teaching basically demonized them. So, I don’t think it was too hard for somebody like Hitler to come along and demagogue the issue to the point where people didn’t, didn’t care. Because it’s supposed to be that most of them were Christians, supposedly supposed to love thy brother and turn the other cheek and all that stuff, they’re teaching. But I guess that wasn’t what, what actually happened. I’ve seen them take a little baby and smash him against, his head against the wall. Kill him. And what human being would do something like that? And then they go to church to pray? I mean, you look back at most of the wars in this world today, most of the time, most of it is based on religion. Take a look right now. Sudan, got a Muslim against the Christians. Northern Ireland, Catholics against the Protestants. You go to India, you got the... Sri Lanka, you got one sect fighting another and again it’s religion. Iraq, Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims. So every place you look at, to me anyway, from what I read and seen, the biggest disaster in this world is religion. That’s my view.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

How does that, how does that translate to your feelings about Israel and protecting Israel? You fought and risked your life fighting for Israel.

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Well, that’s something different, because if there was an Israel before the Second World War, before... this probably, I mean the Holocaust probably never would have happened. Because I’m not looking at it as religion, okay? I look at it as a homeland for a people. Because you can take the Bible as a religion or you can take the Old Testament as a history of a people. And ’'m Jewish and the Bible, the Old Testament to me is the history of my people, and as such every people need a homeland. And that’s what motivated me. But I always consider myself American, which is really funny, that even before the war, my dad always told me that he was American, so I considered myself American. And he was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1906. 18 And he always told me that he is American and one of these days we’re going to go back to the United States. So, it was very natural for me, once I found him and once he got to the United States himself and everything, that in ‘59 I came and joined him in the United States.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

Had his parents been American or Hungarian?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

From what I understand and I’m really not positive, but it seems to me, what happened was that his parents or his grandfather, 1t was him and his father, immigrated to the United States back in the 1800s or somewhere, you know, late 1800s. And they lived here, matter of fact, I got an aunt, who was born here and never left here. She’s passed away now in Houston. But her whole life, she was born in the United States, lived in the United States and passed away in the United States. So, they lived here, I guess in New York and either during the Depression, or early, they decided that they would be better off and went back. That’s my understanding as to what happened. And then my father was still, wasn’t... his sister was old enough that she said no, she’s not going back with them, she’s staying. My father probably wasn’t old enough, you know, to be on his own, so his father took him back with him to Hungary. That’s my understanding, you know, is what happened. But I’m not exactly sure as to what year, you know, they came and what year they went back and all that. But that basically what happened. Like I say, probably if not for that, that he was born here, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you, because I would have wound up in Auschwitz in the gas chamber.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

About your early years in Israel, did you feel at all... I don’t know whether this 1s, well...

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

Ask away.

answer

RG-50.549.05.0014

[Laughing.| I had read and heard from a couple people that Holocaust survivors in some cases, were discriminated against in Israel or looked down upon by people who had come before the war started. Did you experience anything like that?

question

RG-50.549.05.0014

No, I personally didn’t. Of course, I was basically with the youth, the youth movement. It might have happened in some places. I’m not saying it didn’t. It might have. But in my personal experience, like in the village where I was at, there was no, you know, down look. You pulled your share. I’ve never been a whiner anyway. You know, I always pull my share, whatever needs to be done, Ill go take care of it. I worked and I went to school. Pulled guard duty at night with everybody else. Went with the youth and learned how to use a weapon and at night when the Arabs came and stole cows and stuff, we chased after them. [Laughing.] And all that stuff. I was, I personally did not feel that I was in any way looked down at or discriminated. But could have been better treatment? Sure, it could have been better treatment for everybody involved. But, you know, you’re talking about a country just been formed, poor, wasn’t a whole lot of anything there. And everybody did the best they could with what they had. Sure I would have liked to have gone to school full time and learned something, had a degree in something, at least had a trade of some kind. But I didn’t expect that, it was just the way things worked out. I got no complaints personally. If there’s some people that say they were discriminated against, might have been. I have not, my personal, maybe because my brother was already there, you know. He served in the Palmach, which was their elite troops in those days in Israel. So, I was, I 19 guess under his protective wings or whatever. But I personally did not feel any, and my sister was in a kibbutz by then, Miriam. So, I did not feel that I was discriminated against.

answer