strange car coming down the hill. no swastika but a white star, it was a muddy vehicle but i'd never seen a star brighter in my life. and two men jumped out, came running toward us and one came toward where i stood he was wearing gear and his helmet was mesh over that and he was wearing dark glasses and he spoke to me in german and he said "does anybody here speak german and english?" i said "i speak german." and i felt that i had to tell him that we were jewish, i

didn't know if he knew what the star meant, you know? and i told him -- i was a little afraid to tell him that but i said "we are jewish, you know." and he didn't answer me for quite a while. and then his own voice sort of betrayed his own emotion and he said "so am i." i would say it was the greatest hour of my life. and then he asked an incredible question. he said "may i see the other ladies?" you know, the way we had been addressed for six years and this young man, he looked like a young god. i have to tell you, i weighed 68 pounds, my hair was white, you can imagine, i hadn't had a bath in years and this creature asked for the other ladies.

and i told him that most of the girls were inside, too ill to walk and he said "won't you come with me?" and i said "sure." but i didn't know what he meant. he held the door open for me and let me proceed in. and in that gesture it restored me to humanity. and that young american of that day is my husband. and that is my story. i was very ill after that.

they established a hospital, i was at the hospital for quite a while. i was told i was going to die. liesel unfortunately died a few days later. after wounds which she sustained i was in the hospital for quite a long time. he told me -- he asked me if he could do something with me and i said if we could write to my uncle in turkey and tell him i was alooive and to see if he ha any news about my parents and my brother. i didn't see him for quite a long time. the following day the war was over and how i found about it, we went to -- to make a hospital out of a schoolhouse. >> and then you came to america? >> we were married a year later

in france. my husband came back after being discharged from the army. he came back, we were married in paris and i came with him to the united states. i landed here on the 30th of august, 1946, came to buffalo, new york, on the 13th of september. i have three children and eight grandchildren. i have one minute and one statement. i wrote in the preface of my first book something which is very dear to me. i finished the last chapter of my book i feel at peace at last. i have discharged a burden and repaid a debt to any unnamed heroes. i'm haunted by the thought that i might be the only one left to tell the story. happy in new new life, i pen it had last sentence. i've written my story with tears and with love and in the hope

that my children, safely asleep in their cribs, should not awaken from a nightmare and find it to be reality. i have just put my youngest grandchild, three weeks old, into her crib. it is with this prayer now for all children everywhere. i hope the world will remember all children. with the sudden death of president harding, vice president calvin coolidge takes office. grace coolidge was an enormously popular first lady and influenced the taste of american women by becoming a style icon. al show she married a man known as silent cal, she never spoke to the press but used her office to bring attention to issues she cared about. grace coolidge, this sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's original series "first ladies, influence and image, examining the public and private lives of the women who filled the position of first lady and their influence on the

presidencyunsuccessfully for any of his immediate relatives. this oral history is almost 90 minutes. >> october 6, 1929. >> i wonder if you could tell me something about your family, your early life before the war. >> well, we were a typical jewish family in a small town i had two younger brothers and my parents. a lot of aunts and uncles and cousins. and just as i said, normal kind of orthodox judaism. on friday, for example the world stopped, everybody came home and

went to services friday afternoon, friday evening and saturday it was just very peaceful and no labor, no money. >> what did your father do? >> well, he was a merchant. he was doing several things. he had a lumber business and farm farming and things of that sort. >> do you have any recollections of that period? >> mostly the hardships and also as things were getting tougher and when i remember -- i remember the terrible -- i guess it was a depression at the time, it was a lot of famine and hunger during that period but the hardship that came with the war i remember. i remember seeing the planes

going over our town, for example, when they were attacking poland when the war started i believe. then hardships that once we were occupied. >> can you tell us something about that and the detail of your first introduction to the war when it happened and the experiences you had? >> well, we were -- i'm not sure when it was but i at one time we were taken over as czechoslovakia was taken over by the germany. we were given to hungary. so we became part of hungary. and we had to reestablish citizenship and that took quite a bit of effort and noun become hungarian citizens and that was maybe in -- i'm not sure, it might have been 1940. >> do you remember when the war started you said you heard the planes -- >> i remember seeing planes going over to poland. that's what i was told.

a sky full of planes going over us. and that's -- i'm pretty sure -- the war was in '39 but that had very little effect. we were -- i was too young to make much difference. but i remember that scene and leaflets used to drop every so often. so then we were taken over by hungary and we became hungarian citizens and life seemed to go on with some difficulty almost normal but at one time soon thereafter jewish kids could not go to public school. i used to go to parochial school and public school and my father hired someone to give me private lessons. we were going more to parochial school. that's what i remember. >> go ahead. tell us what happened. >> well, it just -- it seems to

have become more difficult as we went along. in other words, your rights were taken away. jews could not have any businesses and at some level i remember that i was -- i had to work. we had a lumber business and there were ways to bring the lumber down from the mountains. i was working at that. there was a lumber mill cousin ran the lumber mill. that was the major business, transporting lumber from the mountains to the mill and chopping it up and making lumber out of it and shipping it off. but it was a rural area. there was no public transportation. there was no train service or no buses or -- those are some of the things that i remember. >> and things began to close in, things got more difficult? >> well, it was getting more

difficult and jews were being beaten on and off by hungarian police. and -- but really that's what i -- a lot of that is foggy to me. >> how about your own family? what was the impact of the events on your father and mother, your brothers and -- >> well, my brothers were quite young and for that matter not that i was an old man and there was a difference between each of us so -- but the family was close and i think you were in -- during a time of trouble you seem to get closer and also we had -- in my hometown we had, let's see, one uncle, two -- we had -- i had two uncles living in town and some of them were living in surrounding towns, but we had a bunch of cousins. but there was -- you know, the community was quite close to begin with. what happened everybody was affected by it.

>> so you were able to live in the same place? >> we lived in the same home until the end really, we lived in our own -- less rights but, you know, things were getting tougher, we had to spend whatever money we had, i think, to buy off officials and i remember the thing that it was very difficult to becoming a hungarian -- establishing some -- for some reason we had to establish hungarian citizenship and that took -- i seem to remember -- a lot of money. >> were your folks scared? was there an atmosphere of apprehension around? >> yes, there was a -- in fact, in 1941 i believe there was some talk that we were going to be deported at that time because we didn't know what it was all about. we had heard some things going on in poland and they were killing people. those were isolated. nobody really believed it. but for some reason in this -- through some gimmick we were not

deported. in fact, the whole town, and there were several town, we were not the only one, intact. >> did you see the nazis? >> i do not see any nazis until -- i'm not sure whether i saw them before auschwitz. the hungarians were just as bad. >> were there hungarians -- >> beatings, oh, yeah. >> do you remember any of those? >> not personally, i remember seeing them beating people and i remember one guy they arrested and beat the heck out of him for some trumped up charges. but there was -- we were -- in all fairness we were sort of shielded from a lot of it. we were in a small town off the beaten track so it wasn't coming through daily. it wasn't the kind of thing you would see daily. >> and how long did that state of affairs last? when did things start to change. >> on and off we went through periods where there was some

problems coming or at least anticipation of some things. but basically the troubles didn't really -- they were getting worse as we went along. however, in perhaps the end of '43 and certainly beginning of '44, that's when things were going bad to worse daily. >> can you tell us about that? >> well, it just -- we sort of -- we knew we were going to be deported. it was a question of time to prepare yourself for that deportation and to our knowledge we were -- or at least from what i recall we thought we were going to go as a family to a camp and being used as labor camps. in other words, to do labor -- physical labor. and we had family gatherings and meetings as to how we should handle it or how we can handle it. after it became sort of a fact that we were going to be deported we were really trying to prepare for that and also you baked and you prepared, like my mother she used to make -- she

made all kinds of things including small pillows we can take with us so we'd have -- in other words, whatever we can carry we should have a new home. and it was really a -- i remember one of the discussions when my mother used to complain to me that i'm not preparing for whatever we were going to be deported to and i said "don't worry about it, i don't need pillow, i can sleep on the farm and my arm will be as a pillow." it didn't go over too well because they were baking cookies that would last a lifetime, those real hard cookies and all those things. and those are the things that i remember. just preparing for that day. and having meetings as to what we could do about it. didn't seem to be very much we could do about it. >> when the day came, what happened? >> well, several things happened before the day came because as it was getting closer we finally realized what was happening and when i was becoming more and more vocal in the family saying "this seems stupid to sit here

and wait to be arrested and taken someplace." and my father used to say that he really doesn't know what we can do, however he felt that we would be better off as a family. at least this way we could help each other and it seems -- it would make a lot more sense. and i just didn't want to buy it. it just -- it just seemed -- i liked the idea of being as a family but i didn't like being picked up and just hauled off to someplace. and we have had several discussions on that subject and i think in a period of two or three weeks that we were -- we finally realized it was going to happen and it was just -- it was pinning down as to when it was going to happen so i just kept pushing for that and i was going to go to russia. and my father never said no but he didn't say yes. and then when we finally -- the day before we knew we were going

to be picked up by tomorrow, i think the announcement was made that tomorrow we had to be home because they were going to come and take us, early that morning i decided, in fact, i said to my family that i'm going to go. so i decided that i was going to just take off and very early that morning i got up and left town and started to go to where i thought was going to be russia and my kid brother said he'll come with me so went and i went out of town in the direction towards the russian troops, i thought, or russia and as soon as i got up to town some gentile we used to know met me and told us that my father paid him to take us in the right direction, at least part way so he wouldn't end up in the german lines. and we went into the mountains and hid out for several days, had heard what had happened and we were running into because we

met several other people who ran away during the turmoil, when the chaos started when they picked people up. so we ran into several other people in the mountains and we sort of hooked up together and two days later, in fact, i met my father and my brother who also they took off at the last minute. and we hid out for a period of about, i think it was two or two and a half weeks in the mountains and we kept -- we were just hiding, we kept on staying in touch with the local areas, someone used to sneak in at night in the town and try to pick up whatever information we could get and at the end of two weeks we had picked up that the germans issued an order saying that anybody who is hiding who is part of the family -- in other words, if they had part of the family in custody in a

ghetto and the ones who were missing, if they don't surrender within 48 hours, they're going to kill the ones they had so that we sur reverended. >> that was your mother? >> my mother and a brother. so we sur reverended and they didn't do anything to us. they just took us to the ghetto and we were there in the ghetto in a town. after several weeks they shipped people out to which turned out to be auschwitz. >> what town was the ghetto in? >> it was called izza. >> was that i-z-z-a? >> i'm not sure it was f it was i-

i-z-z-a or i z-a-. it was near a larger city. we lived several families in just a plain -- where cows used to live. that's the kind of floors. that's where we lived in and everybody was on top of each other, no privacy. it wasn't a room it was just like -- most of it was as i said barns and i imagine there were some houses but i don't remember seeing any because as they shipped people out they kept making the ghetto smaller but we were the last transport that they finally shipped out of there to auschwitz. >> and were the nazis killing people, doing anything to them in the ghetto? >> no, i didn't see any of that. they kept things pretty much hidden. i know they shot one person before we were shipped out because he had hidden -- we used to hide, as i told you earlier, they were busy sewing and baking

and kocooking and whatever. people were hiding money and gold and they dug out heels of shoes and money was put in the lapels of your -- coats and seams to take with us. some of those things i remember. >> will you tell us what happened the day came when they shipped you off and tell us about the trip to auschwitz. >> well, they took us to the city first. i remember it was a sunny day and they loaded us into these boxcars. it was very, very crowded and we were locked in with almost no air, just one window and the door was slightly ajar but it was mostly -- we were locked in there. and there were many people, i don't know how many. there were about -- there was barely room to sit. there certainly was no room for anybody to stretch out. in the meantime all of us had all these dumb suitcases that we packed and baked in clothing and food to take with us to our new

home, which took up a lot of room. and as far as for bathroom facilities we had a bucket and that's it and everybody -- in fact, a couple people died in the boxcar going there and we were in that, i think, for three and a half days that we traveled. we had no idea where we were going to. but we did end up in auschwitz. >> what were conditions like in the boxcar? >> well, it was just everybody was very -- there was no problem. i mean people were just all miserable and sort of like misery loves company somebody's very sick and somebody died but we were all not too far from that. we were given no food from what i recall. i don't remember being given any food except the stuff we brought with us. >> what time did you get into auschwitz? >> we came in -- i think it was early in the morning, like maybe 10:00. i have no idea but i seem to

remember it was early morning. in other words, like 10:00ish. we were -- many people who wanted to see were trying to get to the window as we were going by different areas but i remember when we pulled in and the train finally came to a stop we stopped several times before that but this looked like the final destination, you could hear rackets and the prisoners in auschwitz that i didn't know that it was auschwitz but the man who opened up our boxcar door did comment quickly to say "tell the young people that they are 16, that they worked in a factory." and he just unlocked the car and kept going on. that was the comment i remember. and then as we got off we were told to reboard the train. and we reboarded the train and one of my uncles collapsed, he was an ill man and he was very sick, he was just sitting there.

i'm not sure whether he died that day or not. you know, right there or not but then the loudspeakers were announcing to say men should go here and women with children under 16 to go someplace else. and i remember getting my two younger brothers and saying "go with mommy, see you later." and i got them off to go there and we were just lining up to go through what turned out to be the line -- the selection process or whatever it was called. but that was what was going on. >> and you thought -- you didn't know what was going to happen? >> i had no idea what was going to happen. i thought -- and i would imagine everybody thought -- that we were just going to go through a serious search. we were told to leave all our belongings on the train. just to leave, they told us you'll get it later, just leave it there. and just go -- separate men and women and small kids to go someplace else. >> did they treat you brutally

or did they seem to be -- >> no, they didn't seem to be. if there was a problem they were hitting people if you didn't go. there were people with clubs and they were hitting people if you didn't go where you were supposed to. just to get you quickly off the trains and into these lines that they wanted you to go to. but that seemed to go very -- that seemed to progress quite well but there was commotion, chaos. there were a lot of -- it was a long train, there were quite a few people on the train because we were not the only town around that train. >> what happened to you? >> well, as we were going through, i don't understand this still to this day and i've thought about it many times, we were going through the line and, of course, i was not first in line, needless to say i wasn't last, either. but there were people lining up and my experience as a kid i always used to tail my father. wherever he went, i wanted to go where he went and even when he didn't want know go i used to sneak behind. my father was right ahead of me

through this line and a cousin of mine -- a cousin i had who had a club foot who was limping, he was a little bit ahead of us and as we went through this line, i don't understand really this to this day and i've thought about it as to why i would do this because when he came to the head of the line he'd send my was on the the right, he'd send my father to the right and then he came to me and asked me how old are you? i said i'm 18. have you ever worked in a factory? yes, two years. and he told me to go to the right. and i noticed -- >> to the right? >> to the right is what he told me. i think that's what it was. >> did he tell the others to go to the right also? and he told you to go in the same direction? >> right. but as he told me that and i noticed that these people were lining up behind him on the left so that i just didn't pay any attention and just went, got in right behind him and turned left and went in and stood in line

with those people and i didn't -- in other words, i didn't follow my father. >> have you thought why? >> i have no idea. the impression on me, these people were all in their late teens to 20s and some i guess -- i should say really late teens, 19, 20, maybe in their 30s. so all the people that were lining up i had a lot of friends who were older than i, but these just seemed like -- as i said, it was a split decision, it took all of one or two seconds. i didn't stop walking through the line. i just kept on going and i just turned to go where these people were. >> did you see your father? >> i saw him go to the other side. i never saw him again. never said good-bye to him or anything. never said good-bye to my mother or my brothers for that matter. i just told them "go with mommy, we'll see you later." >> and that was the last you saw of them? >> yup. >> then what happened?

>> well, then we were marched off and we were taken to some barracks where we were lined up and they were shaving everybody. every hair on your body and i remember really because when it came to me i just got my hair cut. at that time we used to cut our hair, i had no hair at all and the guy who was shaving me he couldn't find a hair on me. he said "what the hell is this kid doing here?" and i remember a guy said what do you want? i didn't have a hair on my body and he was surprised that he didn't have any pubic hair or anything to shave. that was his problem. he seemed to have had a problem with it but he passed me through and after the shaving we went in, took a shower and we were told to take our clothes off before we went in there and it was a shower and we got new clothes afterwards, striped pajamas. and then we were marched into this camp and that's when

reality hit that i was on my own. that was the first time that i was ever on my own totally. >> when was this? what month? what year? >> it was june '44. i think it was june 14, i'm not sure. >> then what happened? >> as i said, i found myself in this huge camp, dreary and with no -- i mean no -- i mean the clothing only on my back and whatever i had was on my back which they gave me the pajama uniform and just with a million people, i was sort of separated from everybody. there was nobody there from my hometown. there were a couple of people but this was a huge building. and we were just being pushed around and shoved and i finally met a couple people from my hometown but they were most of them -- a lot of people i didn't know. and we spent several days there.

and -- >> what was the day like? can you describe what the days were like? >> the days were -- you hoped that you were going to be in there to get work. now, what i realized after being there just actually happened a few hours afterwards, because when i realized what was happening i ended up in a building that was mostly kids. more guys more my age and that didn't seem right to me for some reason so i ran away from there. i was trying -- you could go -- they let you go, you were in a ca camp compound but you could go to the next building. there were several buildings there. so i sort of mixed -- i was looking for places where there were more adults, people who were more working because we could see some people working, cutting stones and stuff like that. so that i mixed in with some of

those and i was just going from place to place where for the better part of those weeks what i was trying to find myself someplace that i'd end up with more adults. and every time i ended up doing that they had -- they were looking for work details and some reason they always threw me out. i was too small. in fact, we used to march and be counted, i was standing half of the time on a stone so just so i'd appear a little taller, or a brick. and when we'd march five people locked arms -- arms locked in, i used to ask the guys to lift me up so that i wouldn't be that much shorter. and that's it -- it worked pretty much. >> what was eating and sleeping like? >> sleeping we slept in this barracks where i was at you sat down on the floor and you spread

your legs and somebody else sat right in front of you next to you and that's how we sat and it was a total row of people sort of just like that and on top of each other. and you dozed off as much as you could but it was people to people. there was a person leaning on me, there was a -- there was a person that was leaning on me, there was person behind me and there would be a person touching me from both sides. so to get up it was almost impossible. you had to disturb everybody if you had to go to the bathroom or anything like that. in the meantime, they used to come in at night and the barracks had a center -- i don't know what you'd call it. almost like a runway and a guy used to walk there with a whip and start hitting people and we'd be running around. this happened -- it seemed to have happened every night, sometimes several times a night, just hitting bepeople with a wh and running in on us. in this particular camp there were a lot of gypsies.

they were sort of the authority. they seemed to be running the camp during that period. >> were they helpful or -- >> not really. well, they were not helpful but they were not -- it was mixed. there were some who were really more sympathetic than helpful but they weren't exactly debt ceme -- detrimental. some of them were putting on a show but they had to beat you. but the trick was to try to get some kind of work, go on a work detail. and the food they used to give us was some kind of soup that was more like some kind of just warm liquid of some sort. and that's -- i remember food. i remember the -- for breakfast they used to give us coffee that i used to use -- i never drank coffee in my life before that. i used to use that to wash my face with because it was warm

and i don't remember any other thing we got for breakfast. once in a while you'd see a small piece of bread. >> so you ate very little? >> very little. >> how about toileting? >> they had -- there was a building just for that purpose that you had to go to and it was across the building. it was a central building, just as big as this building. they had umpteen -- we called it -- what was it, wc. that's what it was called. >> what was going on inside of you at this time? what were you feeling? >> very lonesome, very depressed, very sort of lost. i really -- at that time i really didn't have any idea what was going on but i also knew it wasn't good and you didn't have time to think, you were just -- you're trying to survive and during that period i remember one time where i finally met some people, as i told you, i was running around these

different buildings within the same compound and i met somebody, some people from my hometown and i met this one guy who had a brother, one fellow who was my age and he had a brother that was three years older and they were there and so he was sort of trying to stick around together. and he used to get beaten for -- wherever you went many times you run into somebody who will beat you. >> you yourself were beaten? >> yes. so that we decided one day and i suggested to the guy, you know, here it's terrible, we should -- they had the electric wire fences, we had decided to go touch it. and -- just so we could die. and somebody had done that before us and -- >> you saw the guy? >> i saw the guy who did it just before and the guard was walking around the perimeter came in, kicked the guy who see if he was dead so i told this other fellow, i said, look, it's stupid here, i said they beat

you even after you're dead so maybe we ought to try, maybe we'll make it. and that's when we decided not to commit suicide, to stick it out. and we did. and i remember seeing people going to work and very seldom was a picked for one of those labor details. and finally after several weeks i was there i was at one, play we were in a work group, it turned out to be over a thousand people, we were carrying rocks and after several hours of work they counted off a group of people for some reason and they picked out -- first before they started to count they picked out some people and put them aside and i was one of the ones they picked out. then they counted off which i learned later were a thousand people so there were just a few of us left and they cornered off

those people that they had taken and put them in a -- and the sun was shining and i remember it was a hot day and they were sitting in the sun and waiting and we were being separated and we were told to disperse so we were carrying water to these people because they were begging for water and the guards let us give them water so i made several trips to these people, we found some dirty barrels in containers and we gave them water to drink. in the meantime, these two fellas that i told you about, this fellow who was my age and the older brother, the older brother was in the group that was cornered off and we were not. these two brothers wanted to stay together so we had -- every time i handed them water we made a couple of comments and i told him that his brother -- that they wanted to stay together and he said definitely they would like to get together so after making several trips with these water bottles, we had pre-arranged the next time i'd come in with water guy is going

to flip, it will make it appear he's handing me the water and i'll stay and he'll go out and stay with his brother, the older brother to stay with the younger one so that when i made that final trip he had changed sides to appear that he's handing me the water and i ended up with the water and he left. >> why did you make that decision? >> because they wanted to stay together and i knew that i needed to get out of there. >> just knew it? >> we just knew it. they looked -- i assumed they were going to go someplace as a work group and after that maybe an hour or so later we were being loaded on trains, they took us -- it was a couple of two or three day trip and we went from there to germany which turned out they took us to a train that came in the middle of the night to a place which was one of the satellite camps of

dachau and there i remember this was scary, we got off the train, it was late at night and we walked to this satellite camp and we had to walk between a -- like railroad tracks and it was like two -- it wasn't mountain bus two hilly areas that looked like i thought we were being take therein to be shot. that's the first time i thought we were going to be killed. we marched into this camp and that's where we ended up being -- i was station there had for several months doing -- building and stuff like that. >> tell us about that. >> this was a camp where life was sort of normal to some extent. the biggest problem we had was a field that they put cardboard huts, there were huts around made out of compressed or some kind of very heavy cardboard because during rainstorms they used to sort of bend and all of a sunday they had a little straw on the floor. we slept on the floor and if it rained it came in, water came in so we put dirt around it a

little bit and we were getting fo food, our regulation rations, certainly not normal. again, most of the food was soup, very seldom was there meat in it. once in a while we eat get a piece of bread and sometimes we'd get liver wurst and we were doing normal, all kinds of building construction, we built factories. i remember that, for example, they built a factory and our job was to put -- what the hell do you call it already? not soil but we were putting like sod on top of it. we had to carry physically sod and from the air it didn't look like a building it just became a hill. >> you were still a pretty small boy? >> well, i was doing it. i was small.

i remember that the camp commander complained bitterly when he looked the next morning when he came into the camp and he says "all these kids on this transport." there were several youngsters. but the camp was run -- i mean, we worked long hours and we were doing all kinds of stuff. there was some food, there were beatings on and off but basically if you did your job it wasn't too much meanness. >> were you yourself beaten? >> there was one guy used to beat me. every time he saw me he used to beat me. i used to run away from him. and there was another guy who helped me. but in this camp, you know, it was just -- we were really true laborers. and i remember because of the fact they spoke jewish i was able to understand german. and it turned out in this camp that i was at in this particular camp there were about 21 or 2200 of us, most of them in excess of 2,000 hungarian jews, they were

very idealistic and these people didn't speak any jewish and we were sort of outcast and there were about 100 of us, the assorted nationality -- well, they were all jews but assorted from different countries, a few polish, a few stragglers from here and there and so i used to be able to go sometimes and do like interpreting so if a german asked for a detail, like, i remember on several occasion we used to go to the farmer to deliver something or fix something up and i used to be part of that detail because i was able to communicate with him a little better. then there was an austrian who was not in the army, he was in the work -- i'm trying to remember what they were called. the work details. in charge. he was an engineer. he was the one who had us build all these projects and he gave us -- he did a lot of things for

me that were have been helpful such as he used to go to this kitchen, for example, at lunchtime, we'd go to one place and get our food and, of course, the germans got it someplace else and he'd go for seconds many times and take two bites out of it and call "hey, jew, go wash my dish" because it was full of food. that was the greatest thing he could do for me. so there were some -- they were helpful. but we worked really long hours and every morning and every night you had to stand around for hours to be counted. rain, sun, didn't make any difference. and also another thing that i remember really that made an impression on me at the time, you became sort of religious. not to the extent that we were religious but we would have services. we'd have one every morn and every night when we were waiting for them to come and count us. we were sitting there, a german came by and you shut up but you were all praying all from memory. and we did that quite a bit.

>> did it help? >> i don't know what helped, really. it helped, yes, i guess it helped. but we were really just existing day to day. what did happen, there were people who did give up. i mean, there were suicides and people used to go to the latrine and hang themselves. that was one of the most dangerous places to go to because people were just, you know, falling. then it happened to -- i remember i was involved, we used to look forward to when the daylight bombings started. i call it daylight bombing now which i didn't know at the time but everyday at 10:30 the planes used to come over. we used to get a break from work. we loved those things. just go stretch out on the grass and rest while the sirens went off. but i was also involved -- i was one of the fellows in munich -- when munich was first bombed or the first big bombing that did a lot of damage to, they destroyed

pretty much the railroad station, but i was taken there to -- i was one of the guys who went to work to put the train station back in some kind of work order. and that was where we used to have to go on the train a long time and come back. really during that period we were working very, very long hours, between work and being on the train two and from munich took a long time: but we had many projects, i remember laying railroad tracks and that's when they used to lay railroad tracks in the wintertime with no gloves and the hands used to stick to the tracks so that you'd have to really shake it to get it off because it was so cold and people used to haul things and i was in that. you had to pull stuff and that's when they whip you like a horse, you know, pull, pull, pull. we were doing a lot of that. and -- but some -- on several

occasions i was able to get myself some jobs that were helpful, such as i used to clean out offices and that gave me a lot of benefits only because in trash cans and ashtrays i used to find cigarette butts. that was like gold. in fact, gold -- that was more like diamonds because every -- for every butt you can give somebody you can get his ration of bread. there were people who really traded that away. and so those things were helpful. but the big problem we had, we were very, very cold because we had the same clothing for winter -- >> what were you wearing? >> the striped pajama uniforms. it was just like a shirt and a pair of pajama pants and what i did in the wintertime is used cement bags as liners. we emptied the cement bags from cement and we used to use them to put them in our clothing and the shoes fell apart. in fact, i had frozen off my

toenail, my toe on one of my feet was frozen and my bottom of my feet were frozen. i have had problems with that. and then i was just -- it was -- the big problem i remember it being extremely cold and the working conditions were atrocious. >> how long did that last? >> well, that lasted pretty much till the end. it lasted till -- let's see, i cleaned there it must have been i think it was in august when i got to germany through december i remember christmas eve being moved from that camp to another camp that we were building a new camp and that was -- that's -- because life was sort of normal between the period of august through december in this camp. you worked hard hours but it was more a normal kind of thing. but then when we were shipped to this other camp things seemed to have -- we had no idea.

we had no news what was going on. i do remember seeing one fellow who we knew that they came in and made selections every so often of people who were not fit anymore to work and took them away. and i remember one romanian doctor who told me that he was -- because he told us he's going to go volunteer for that and we were telling him this is not the thing to do and his comment, he says "i can't take it." he was a big fellow. he had swollen up. he really had puffed up. he had volunteered for -- i mean, he wanted to go in one of those transports. >> to die? >> well, we felt that. but also when they started to take us on train projects to work people used to jump in front of the train. you'd see that. when the train was coming into the station people would just jump in front. so you saw things like that. >> so what happened when you got to the other camp? >> that's when we were building that and it was really very cold, we marched all night, we

came there, no place to stay, we had to build some kind of makeshift buildings and i was just starting to deteriorate. soon afterwards there were a lot of people who got very sick and that must have been, i would guess, maybe january or february and people were just getting sicker and sicker and then they had started where there was one building they put up which was in -- in fact, we moved to another camp because it was just -- it was terrible and when we got there more and more people -- it seemed like the whole camp was sick so they had buildings that had people who were just sick. >> why were they sick? >> well, i didn't know at the time but they had typhoid fever. i found afterwards. >> what did you observe? >> well, they just couldn't move. they were just terrible. they were -- and i remember i went through a period there, in fact, for some reason and i don't remember how it came about but i was thrown into one of

those buildings with these very sick people, every morning i remember all people did was go through and that's how it started, that's what i did, go through, people slept on these -- it wasn't a bed, it was like a platform and just next to each other you slept in rows and we used to go in the morning to pick up the dead bodies and throw them in front of the building and then they'd come and haul them off. but i remember after a while i was -- i was put in one of those buildings to stay and that's where i -- i mean, i was down to -- >> were you sick then yourself? >> i was starting to have some, but i certainly didn't have -- i developed typhoid fever, i think, while i was there, but i wasn't when i -- i was still working. i was able to go on because most of the people couldn't do anything. >> what do you think you weighed? >> i don't know. but when i was liberate it weighed 30 kilos which is about

64 pounds. but i was laying in this place and i remember i had sores because i was nothing but skin and bones and i had huge sores on my backside and -- because -- and i also remember one period where i didn't go to the bathroom for like three weeks and that was the most painful thing when i finally did try but then we were being pulled back as the war -- as april, march came and then april came we were being consolidated, pulled back which i didn't know for what reason or where but and then life seemed to have improved slightly and then we were -- at the end of april we were being taken by train. we had moved to sort of -- you know, drawn together into an area where we were being loaded on trains. >> so you were no longer in dachau? >> well, this was the same general vicinity. dachau was a major camp, there was a lot of satellite camps around it. so i guess they were pulling all

the people back to what turned out to be dachau. we were loaded on this train and i remember it was april 27 when we finally got on the train and we were pulled into this train station where we were parked and the train was open car, all open boxcars and next to us was an anti-aircraft gun train. anti-aircraft guns and the planes came over that morning like they always did and looked at us and saw us in these open boxcars and took off. as they took off, the anti-aircraft guns opened fire and they shot down several of those planes. >> and they were hiding the anti-aircraft guns? >> right behind us. i imagine they should have been able to see it from the air because you can't hide a train and because it was an open train station. well, that day the planes kept coming back all the day long and bombing the hell out of us and

the train station and the anti-aircraft guns and during that period, really, the lull of the shooting had stopped because people got out of the boxcars and were climbing over and the germans were disappearing and i remember this was april 27 so we rome e roamed around and we hadn't eaten, many hadn't eaten for quite a while so i saw a lot of bread on the german train so i climbed on to the train station -- under my train and ran up to the german and asked him to please give me some bread so he started to hand me two loaves of bread and as he did that one of our guys came over and put his rifle butt to my forehead just like this and pushed me across the track and told the german not to give it to me. he really pushed me physically across the track. and i was while i was backing up, he didn't say one word, pushed me across. as soon as he did that, there was another prisoner that did

exactly the same thing that i did and he went there and reached out for the bread and the guy shot him on the spot and killed him right there. >> one of the guards? >> yes. didn't say one word to him. so go figure. but that day we thought maybe we were liberated later that day because after we looked around there were no germans left and we got into the woods and it seemed to have quieted down when the germans rounded us up again and put us back on the train and took us into dachau. i remember getting there. the people who guarded us at dachau, the new prison guards who took over there, the rifles were bigger than they were. they were all little kids it seems like. and they marched us into dachau. and also prior to that what happened was during all that chaos i saw that train with food, i broke -- took a lot of food and we had uniforms, just very sloppy and loose so whatever i could stuff in my shirt i took, all kinds of food.

so that evening they came and took it all away from me, whatever i had. but they missed a package of butter that i had noticed a little later because i felt it sticking to my body and it started to melt. so when nobody was looking i kept on putting my hand in my shirt and breaking off a piece of butter and eating it. i ate up that whole package of butter. and if you want to know what happened to me after that. i became so deathly sick that it was terrible. but i was dehydrated to begin with and i had diarrhea from that. it was absolutely a disaster. and i was just really waiting to die. i was just lying there. i remember in dachau because i was lying in this barracks and somebody came and told me -- somebody who knew me from europe said "hang on, it won't be long now." and i told him, i said "it won't make any difference to me, i don't have long."

but on april 29, we were liberated. >> can you tell us about the liberation, what you saw. >> i saw really -- as i told you, i was very sick, i really didn't get out of bed. i heard the commotion, didn't pay any attention so i saw very little of it. fortunately for me, when i came in -- when they came in and they had seen what was going on, i was close to the gate where i was, i was taken to -- by the military personnel to what seemed to me to be a military hospital, for americans. >> american soldiers? >> american soldiers, yes. american doctors had taken me and they were treating me. >> how did they react when they saw you? >> they seemed to be very disturbed but they really -- around me, you know, you could see these corporations or you could see people who looked like corpses. there were quite a few people who died after the liberation from illnesses or dehydration or -- it was very -- really like

my first food that i recall that the americans gave me seemed like charcoal to me. some kind of -- it looked like really -- and it taste like ground up charcoal. and believe me i tasted it because once i went when i was in the camp we hadn't eaten for several days that people were eating grass so i went to -- i tried that, dirty grass, to me it tasted and i said i'd just as soon die if i have to eat this and i didn't eat it again. yet behind the kitchen i used to go steal the rubbish because the potato peelings, that was great food. anything the kitchen threw out. but remembering stuff like that, when you went, for example -- prisoners who used to work in the kitchen detail, it was a good job if you could get it because if they knew you, where it was mostly soup, some kind of warm liquid, once in a while you get a potato. very seldom any kind of food, i

don't recall ever seeing a piece of meat in it but it was basically potato soup kind of. more soup than potato. but that was -- they treated me quite well and then they had moved me -- because i remember more of a reaction when a german nurse came in to see me. >> where did the americans take you? >> in the same vicinity, somewhere in the dachau area. >> the hospital? >> the hospital. and i was being treated and i remember when this german woman came in and she was very young and when she saw me she collapsed. she fainted. and i remember having a discussion with somebody because i said "they claim they didn't know what was going on." my question was how can you not know what goes on here when you see day after day train loads of people coming in and nobody in the trains are leaving empty. now after this goes on for several months or years, you have millions of people there. so you can't possibly -- something had to be going on

there. i was also told that afterwards that i was supposed to go to dachau, we were being taken there to be killed. but we didn't make it, we were delayed on the trip. >> you mean when they got everybody together? >> when they got everybody together towards the end of the war, right. i was liberated april 29, the war was over just a few days later, may 8, so it wasn't much. but i stayed in that hospital for several months. >> when you made the transfer from auschwitz to dachau, of course, your family were not with you. >> right. >> what did you think had happened to them? when did you realize that you were alone? >> i really didn't know and -- i mean, i didn't know really until after the war that they are probably dead. >> when you got out of auschwitz, what did you think?

>> at that time, all i wanted to do -- when i was in auschwitz i just wanted to get out. out of there. and i was told that we're going to go to -- the people, the prisoners were saying we were being taken to a labor camp and we're going to work and that's really what you were trying to -- again, we were being taken and it was cold and that was one of the problems even on that train, the nights were cold. and i remember seeing -- we were moving constantly, we did stop in the end i remember somebody pointed that out. but we were just trying to survive, really, didn't think too much. i assumed at that time they were just in a different camp, that they were also someplace working. >> didn't have in mind -- >> i had no idea that they were dead or about to be dead.

as i said, it was just -- i assumed and i think most people assumed that they were just in a different camp. we were told there were a lot of camps. >> when you were in the hospital after dachau, how long were you there? >> i would say that was from, say, the end of april to maybe two or three months anyhow because i remember that i had trouble walking. i was very weak, they tried to build me up so when they finally released me which maybe -- it must have been at least two months because i remember then they took us on trucks to czechoslovakia to prague, i think. and we were going on a truck and i remember getting off the truck and i had to walk up steps and i really had trouble walking steps. my legs hurt and it was just -- it was very difficult. just didn't have the strength. and i'd gained back some strength by that time already.