My name is Irving Shapiro. I'm a businessman from Gering, Nebraska.
Of course I wasn't always a businessman. I had, well, I was born in Miedzyrzec Poland, April the 15th, 1923. I had a large family, lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins and grandparents. And they all perished during the Holocaust. The only one I had left was my younger brother, which I was shipped out together with him into a camp named Majdanek and I had him for three months. After three months, they shipped him away on a transport and I never saw him again. I'm still trying to find him — search for him, but I didn't have any luck so far.
My name is Irving Shapiro. I was born April the 15th, 1923 in Meidzyrzec, Poland. In May of 1939 I graduated from high school and the following September, the war broke out. I was too young at that time to go to the army. So I stayed home. And the first few days, the German bombers started coming- flying over, over our town and dropped fire bombs just to make a panic in town. It seemed to me like they did it all over Poland. Took about 10, 12 days and the first German tanks drove in to our town. The first thing they did is drove into the brewery and loaded up with wine and vodka, which was produced in the that brewery. And they drove out of town. They kept coming in all the time, back and forth like this.
After a few days, the army came in and they start occupying houses. 1942 they started bringing in transport, the Jewish people from all over Poland. They brought them from Kraków. They brought them from, from Kielce. They brought them from Sosnowiec. They brought from all over Poland, especially from Southeastern, Southwestern, Poland. We didn't know why they doing it. But shortly after that, we found out instead of going around all over and every town and taken out transports of people, they used to bring them out to our town.
And then the first, the 25th of August, 1942, they took out the first transport of 20,000 people from our town. They got everybody on the marketplace, the women and children, and they were going around and just gathering them up and whoever they didn't like, whoever didn't walk fast, they just shot them right on the spot. They went in to the hospital and they killed every person in the hospital. And when they found the nurses and doctors, they killed them too. And then they took us about 20 of our young men to clean up the place. And we were cleaning off the walls, flesh and brains from people that they were splattered all over the walls.
And at that time for the first transport, my mother was among the people that were sitting on the marketplace. So I went and I ran to a military policemen that I worked for and I begged him to go to the market and take my mother out and bring him to us. At that time I and my brother and my father lived next to the German headquarters, the Ortskommandantur.
Because we worked my my par-, my father and my brother, and I worked for them. So we lived close to their headquarters. So I begged them to go and take my mother out. So he went, went through the marketplace and went over to the one of the guards and said to the guard, this is my Jew sitting over there, and I want her out. So the guard says, okay, take her with you. So he took her out and brought her to us, to the Ortskommandantur. And she spent with us that night. And the next morning I put her in, I hid her in the barn. They had some furniture sitting over there. So I put her in one of the closets and she was sitting over there. And at that next day, the, the, the German, uh, Gestapo and the, Schutzpolizei, which will add a lot of helpers of Ukrainians in German uniforms and Lithuanians in German uniforms. And they helped them. And they were going around all over town to try to search and see if they missed any people.
And they came in to the Ortskommandantur and start searching in those, in the big barn. And my mother made a noise and they discovered her and they took her out and they put her together with all the other people that took her to the train station. I try frantically to find that military policemen, but I couldn't find them to take her out. And she went with the first transport of 20,000 Jewish people. They put them on cattle cars, about 200 people to a car. And they took them to Treblinka. We didn't know first where they were taking them. But then about three days later, one of my friends ran away.
Somehow he lucked out, he could run away from the train and he came back to town and he told us where they took them. They took them to Treblinka. Treblinka was a, they called it in German, they called it a Ferichtungskamp. That means nobody worked over there. Everybody they brought into this camp, went to the gas chambers. They didn't have any crematoriums built in Treblinka yet. So they used to bury the bodies. Gas them first and buried the bodies and in, in, in ditches and covered them with lime. It's a matter of fact that some Polish people later on were telling us after the war, they would telling us because they live close by Treblinka and they saw the ground moving when they were burying and and and and killing those people.
A lot of people in the ghetto built hiding places. They build it in the attic, they build it in the basements. They made false walls and they were hiding like this. So we, the house that I was, they had a hiding place up in the attic. So we, all the people from that house went up to the attic and tried to hide. There was a little baby, with a mother with a little baby with us and the baby starts start crying and coughing. And we heard the Germans next door yelling, come out bandits we know you hiding there. If you don't come out we'll shoot you all. And the baby start crying and coughing, and everybody is afraid for their own life. So they start yelling at the at the mother, keep that baby quiet. And she couldn't. Then, the baby all of a sudden got quiet and next morning early in the morning we found out the reason the baby got quiet. The mother put their hand over the mouth of the baby and choke the baby so to to save her life and the life of 20 other people.
But that didn't do any good because they discovered us next morning. And they chased us all out. And they took us to the marketplace. At the marketplace, I I found my father and my brother over there. And the rest of the people and we were gathered up, taken to the railroad station and put in the cattle cars, just like the other ones and took us away. We didn't know where we are going. We thought they're going to take us to Treblinka also. But then one of the men start yelling. We are not going to Treblinka because I recognize the countryside. He looked out, we had little windows to could look out and he says, we are not going to Treblinka we going someplace else.
Finally, they brought us into Lublin, came to the railroad station in Lublin and they put us on trucks. And they brought us in to that camp they called Majdanek. My brother was in the same camp as I was, but not in the same barrack. Then one day I went into look, they start shipping out transports from the camp. And I went in to look for my brother and he wasn't there. And I asked the people in this barrack where my brother is and they told me they shipped him out with a transport. I couldn't find out where they shipped him. And about two days later, they shipped me out with a transport to they took us to Auschwitz to Majdanek and when we got in there, first thing they did is gave us tattoo. Our arms gave us numbers. And then they put us out in the camp to work.
From Majdanek I was shipped out to Auschwitz when it came in, we didn't come in direct to Auschwitz. They brought us into a camp right next to Auschwitz, which was Birkenau. One day, one of the Gestapo came over and they were looking for 30 men to take him to a different job. So they used to, they came, came over to us, when we were working and they poked us. They said, Hey, you, they poked us. And a lot of people were so weak that when they poked you, you drop to the ground. And when you drop to the ground, you never got up again. So they, he poked me and I managed to stand up.
