Searching for Humanity

Be good to one another, don't envy, don't want too much, be honest, be decent.

I grew up in a nice home. I had two sisters, and I went to school, to a cultural school, Hebrew school. And I, you know, we had friends, we had family, and we used to get together. And there wasn't too much entertainment there, like we have here. But as long as we had a family and we had friends, it made us happy.

I was in public school during the day, and I had experiences, several experiences in the public school. For example, as a Jew, I was not permitted to play with non-Jewish students during recess. We had to stay in a corner outside. During class, if I had to go to the bathroom, I was not permitted to go to the bathroom. I went home many, many times with wet pants. This is the type of life I lived and I grew up in the small, in the small town. When I went to the synagogue, I couldn't carry my prayer books with me. I had to hide them under my jacket. And I was walking toward the synagogue or to the Hebrew school, and I looked around, see if there are any non-Jews around. When I saw no non-Jew, then I ran inside into the synagogue. So this is the type of life I lived. I had long payos1, curls, which I'm sure that you've seen those.

Were you able to wear a kippah?

I never wore a kippah. I always wore a cap or a hat. In that case, they didn't know really if I was a Jew or not. Of course, my neighbors knew. I was not wearing a kippah outside on the street. We spoke Yiddish in our home. Always Yiddish. My father had a store. As soon as we walked into the store, we spoke Hungarian, because if a non-Jewish customer would hear Jewish language, they would walk out immediately. On the street, we were not permitted to talk Yiddish. We spoke only Hungarian. Even in the synagogue, we got so used to the Hungarian language that we spoke Hungarian. And this is the reason even today, many Hungarian Jews, they speak Hungarian.

It was very bad. We went, the Russian, no, the Germans came in and told us to leave the house. So we didn't leave right away, but we leave later. And they went with us, the two soldiers, went with us. We went maybe six, eight kilometers. And between, we went with us and other people. During the war, people was, you know, walking there, and they don't know where to go. And they went with us. They took us to the river San. And they told us to take, we didn't took too much with us. Because if you walk, you cannot take too much. So they took us to the river San, it was bushes. And they told us to stand one after another. We was thinking "are they going to kill us?" And told us not to take too much because we were passing, going through the water. So my father took something and my mother took something. My father took me on the arms. He was afraid I would drown. But the water was not too deep. And we went through the water, and another side was Russian. And they helped us to get up.

I got better, and then my mother came one day and took me back to the barrack. And on the way to the barrack, she said to me, you know, it's time for you to leave me. You're not that well. And you're very weak. And you won't be able to last here much longer. So we have to say goodbye. And I did not want to leave my mother. First of all, she was the only security that I had left. And I didn't know at that time where my father was. Even though he told me the name, it didn't mean anything to me. I didn't know where my sister was. And even though we were suffering, I knew the conditions were terrible. I still didn't want to leave my mother. I didn't want to leave my friends. I didn't want to leave the people that I was used to and surrounded with. Because to me, that was the only form of security that I had. So I gave my mother, I know, a terrible time. But one day, she took me to an area where there was a truck, and I had to say goodbye to her. I think it was the most difficult thing I ever did. Excuse me. Because I felt very much just alone. They put us on the truck, and we were about 15, 20 children, drove us out of the camp and into the countryside.

Every day, something else. And then this came out, we have to move to the ghetto. The ghetto they had, it's a Slavotka, it was called. And that was like over the bridge, over the water, a small place like a suburb from Kovno. Mostly the poor people lived there, also a lot of Gentiles, a lot of broken down little wooden homes. And this is the place that they decided to make the ghetto. And at that time, we were, I would think, at least 35 or 40,000 Jews. And there was no place for them. So whatever you could find, a basement, an attic, to move in with two, three families together, we had to, you know, at that time, not everybody had cars over there. So horse and buggy, we took a few belongings. And the Germans always used to say, don't take too much because you're just going to work, and the Lithuanians will take care of everything when you come back from your jobs. You know, you'll find everything intact. And of course, we had to leave everything in the apartment. We just took the necessities. And with horse and buggy, we moved in into the ghetto. And the people who lived in the ghetto, the Gentiles, had to move out of their little homes. So they all moved out into our homes in Kovno and took everything over. The ghetto was August 1941. August 15, 1941, the ghetto was closed.

Then they lined us up and gave us the numbers, which you saw my number.

So they gave you the tattoo?

Yeah, I got my number, 76470. And I had two brothers. One had 69, one had 71.

So you were still with your brothers at that time?

Yeah, we were all three together at that time.

Which brothers were you with?

I was with Abraham and Hirschmeyer. So we got our numbers and registered everybody by the number, you know. And assigned you to a block where you're going to be staying. And this group, which went on that block, they took us to the block. The block, well, two stories high, they took us up on the second story. And on the floor was straw. We slept on the straw. I think this was on a Saturday night. It must have been. The next day, which was a Sunday, we got up, you know, and we had to go on the Appell lot, Appell they called it in German, where they count the people. And this was going on twice a day. In the morning, they count each block or each commander. Actually, it was each block because after you worked, you went back on the block. And you had to stand where your block was standing. You lined up there, and they counted. And if they miscounted wrong this could go on for a few hours. You know, sometimes you could miscount the person. And if somebody died or had a heart attack or got shot, they had to bring him and line him up in the same lines so the count would be there, and then they took him away. So that day...

This was the first morning you were in Auschwitz?

The first morning, they took us down. They marched us around, I don't remember what it was. And I remember one episode, one fellow from my hometown, noticed there was a dead man laying there, and it was already cold. So he ran up and pulled off. He had gloves. And, you know, you are fresh from home. it makes an impression when you are taking from a dead person, you know, gloves and he says, he won't be needing them anymore, and I can use them. And then you realize that he was right.

I don't think I would have survived Buchenwald if I would stay there. But I think in 1944, I left Buchenwald to, they sent me to Hindenburg, the stone quarries. But somehow I made it. I don't know. I just... You know, if you, if it goes to your mind sometimes, and if you dream about it at night, you don't believe that what happened to the Jewish people ever happened without the world doing nothing about it.

My sisters were in Auschwitz but in a different camp. Remember, I had a piece of... I had a loaf of bread. I think that Carl's brother, the youngest, was on one of the trains which they brought people from Denmark, from different... to Treblinka, no, to Auschwitz for the gas chamber. And he had with him, I saw him working on the trains from the far. I recognized him. His youngest brother, Nathan, was his name. And he saw me. He threw me a bread, and I had that bread with me. Then when I walked in Auschwitz, just walked... Must have been in the summer. And I saw a lot of women working in the train. What do you call the... When the trains go through, the...

The tracks?

The tracks. And I looked, and I looked, and I said, This is Bluma and Manya.

Your sisters?

My sisters. I went a little bit closer to the gates, to the barbed wire, and I screamed, of course, but they saw me, and they waved to me. And I had that bread cut up in little pieces, and I threw them that bread.

Mary Anne worked for the Underground in placing... There was a network in Belgium, and there was about five different organizations that worked together in placing children and hiding them. One of the things I know about the hiding is that I have very few memories about the hiding, about those 18 months. It's only... There may be two things I really remember. No, three. A tonsillectomy without anesthesia. I have memories that it was not very pleasant, because I must have been about four by that time. And I remember a swollen belly. Well, in view of what I do now, and being an adult, I know that that's associated with starvation, and there wasn't any food around. Not very much. So I had this image of this big belly a little bit early in life. And the only other thing I really remember clearly is liberation. And I remember noise and the excitement and going out in the streets and people shouting. We really didn't know what happened, but when they said we were being liberated, those are things that you remember.

The earliest memories, I guess, now, in retrospect, I know, I really refer to the time that the Holocaust was going on in Europe and in Belgium. As a child, you always wonder what you really recall and what do you remember people telling you. But I do recall very early on walking the streets. And now, in retrospect, I understand that that's when I was separated from my mother. And that was the beginning of being able to survive. In Antwerp there was the raffle and Jews being sent onto their deaths as part of the Holocaust Auschwitz. And from what I found out from speaking to an aunt on my uncle's side, the same uncle who found me after the war, as part of the raffle that went on in Antwerp, that [aunt] was with my mother when she was being deported from Antwerp. And by train, the Jews were being sent from all over Belgium to Malin, which was a deportation site. There was a deportation camp just outside of Brussels. And I was with my mother at that time. And from the train station itself, from what I gathered from this aunt, my mother told me to just walk away and to just get out of the train station. And that's what I did. So I was four at that time. And I guess walking the streets relates to the time that when I was separated from my mother, she went on to her death. And I fortunately, instead of being picked up by the Germans, was picked up by a nun from one of the religious orders. And the only thing I remember is, as I realized much later on, when I saw pictures on TV, the nuns used to wear these long, long, big white headdress headpieces with a flowing thing in the back that registered. It meant something to me. And so I was saved because I was walking the streets of Antwerp. After that, I picked up by a nun, and I was that way saved and sent to be hidden in a home where the Jewish children were being hidden at that time in Antwerp. People were obviously hiding. Jewish children's parents were trying to save their children. My mother obviously hadn't done that, but at least she had me walk away from the train station.

Yes, we, everybody had to have a identity card of some sort. The ones for people above, a persons above 15 years old had to have a photograph on it. Below that, you didn't. And so I was free. I didn't have to have a photograph. But I do have my own, I still have it, what is called a Stump Card. And that card was used to obtain the various permits for buying food, clothing, and so forth, ration cards and so forth and all that. It also served sometimes as a passport, too, as a passport to go to places. You had to have that with you at all times. And those were extremely valuable objects, those cards. And if there was one which was not falsified, at least, which could not be traced, then it was worth its weight in gold.

Did you have this card with your own name on it?

No, that was in the name of the person I was during the war. And his name was, or my name was Rudi, R-U-D-I, van der Roost, V-A-N-D-E-R, typical Dutch, and then R-O-E-S-T. And I knew Rudi very well, the other Rudi very well. I knew the whole family, in fact, I stayed with the grandmother quite a bit. I loved the old lady, and I loved the whole family, and we still know them. We've met them since then again, and since the war.

Now, this was several days after I went into the camp, because I couldn't write right away. I suppose you've read in the papers about the Nazi torture camp found at a town by the name of Ohrdruf. I went in there and saw the ovens that were still burning. I'll never forget it. The Nazis had to leave in a hurry because of the advancing troops, so they shot as many of the inmates as they could. All the dead bodies were littered around the ground while I was there. The people had evidently been starved. That was so naive, evidently been starved. Of course they were, because they were thin and emaciated. The quarters consisted of piles of straw on stone in dirty shelters. They couldn't even be classed as homes. I saw the big ovens that were used to burn the bodies, and the bodies stacked like logs beside the ovens. I could tell you more about it, but it would be sickening. It gives you some idea what beasts they really were, and we can't deal too harshly with them. Death is too good for those responsible for these crimes. Now, this is kind of mild, I'm sure, but this is what I wrote home. When I went into the camp and smelled it, smelled... This odor is still in my nostrils, and I think it'll never go away. And when I heard the cries of these people who were in the barracks, and they were lying on pallets, cement pallets, one might have been dead and the other was so weak that he couldn't push him off, didn't have the strength to push him off so that he might be able to stretch his legs. They were dressed in these striped pajamas, and you heard the cries. Well, cries of joy, and just cries. And the townspeople then would gather around, and perhaps many of the guards who by this time might have changed into civilian clothes to save their lives. I later learned from some of the inmates of the camp that around 2,000 of them were taken the day before and marched to a forest and shot in the head.

We were on the march, and one day we walked into a village as a group again with soldiers, and we saw white flags, and the soldiers have seen white flags, and they started running away.

The German soldiers?

Yeah, and suddenly we thought, oh my God, maybe this is, this is the end. And we were walking around not knowing what to do with ourselves. It was such an incredible experience, suddenly being free and being able to walk wherever you want to. I don't think probably we wanted to go anyplace. We were so conditioned. And we met a Polish man who worked, and there were many Poles taken from Poland to work in German factories. They weren't slave workers, but they were almost like. Actually, they might have been slave workers, you think of workers, but they weren't concentration camps. And he told us to come to his home, and he shared with us some food. I remember baked potatoes, boiled potatoes. And you know, that was very important, that we didn't have immediately good food to eat, because so many died after the war being liberated and immediately getting that rich food. And at that time, people didn't realize that if you're starving for five years, you cannot start eating normal food like chocolate or butter. And quite a few people died after the war because of improper nourishment. So it was very fortunate that we were at that farmer's place for, I don't know, maybe several days. So we got accustomed to eating something solid.

First of all, we saw the planes coming over. And in those days, you know, I didn't know from politics, but I remember we saw the Russian planes come. We saw the American planes come. And I still remember hanging out of the windows from the chateauxs and waving at them. And we were all so happy. And we heard about Roosevelt. And to us, he was a hero at that time. And it was great. And yet at the same time as happy that we were, that the war was over with, we all felt so insecure because we didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know whether our parents were alive, whether there was any family still living. It was also a very frightening time. And yet also a happy time.

We got the townspeople. And there's always someone in charge. Even though if the burgermeister was gone, there was someone to take his place. And we admonished them that if they weren't taken care of properly until the United States Army could take care of them, that the whole town would be wiped out. I mean, we made all sorts of threats, hoping that they would, you know, adhere to whatever humane conditions that they could.

Did you bring the townspeople into the camp or did you go in?

They didn't go into the camp, but they surrounded it. You know, the camps were surrounded with barbed wire. And they looked in. And many of them said it was the first time that they had seen anything like that. I mean, I started berating them.

You talked to some directly?

Yes, yes. They said they didn't know. And I said, how could you not know? Can you just smell? Can you smell it? What did you think they were doing, baking bread in the ovens?

What was their response?

They didn't know. They were civilians. They weren't... It was the soldiers that did it. This Nazi ideology was inculcated into their minds so, so severely that it stayed with them for after many, many months and now years after the war.

The people you meet, that look will never go away. They're so lost. They don't know where they're going. They don't know... they're helpless. I've seen it. I've seen so many people on the street. It's just a mass of humanity. You go to like University of Nebraska football game and that's how people are amassed on the road, going down there, going just to flee the war. They're pushing baby buggies, little wagons, and it's mostly women, not men. Everybody was in service. Women carrying bags on their back. It's gruesome, gruesome. If people could just witness so that they'd understand what can really happen to humanity. What one person can do to humanity.

The only message I can leave is up there. Even I never want to talk about it many times up there, is not to forget what happened during the Second World War. What happened during the Second World War, if people forget about it, it could happen again. As a matter of fact, look to see what's going on now in a lot of different places. As a matter of fact, there's a lot of people nowadays that still don't believe what happened. The only thing, you know, we survivors, we're getting in the age up there. Maybe we have a few more years, maybe we don't. But it won't be long, we'll all be gone, and we hope it doesn't. Our kids keep on doing what we did up to now, as little as we did. I hope they remember and don't forget what happened up there and keep reminding people that something like that could happen again.