THE HOLOCAUST; THE FATE OF THE POLISH JEWRY AN INTERVIEW WITH MRS. SALLY GOLDBERG KRIEGER JOANNA MICHELLE GREEN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT ADVANCED PLACEMENT UNITED STATES HISTORY PROFESSOR GLENN WHITMAN ST. ANDREWS EPISCOPAL SCHOOL OH ORE 2001 Green, Joanna Green 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. CONTRACT PAGE 2 n. STATEMENT OF PURPOSE ..PAGE 3 III. BIOGRAPHY OF MRS. SALLY GOLDBERG KRIEGER PAGE 4 IV. HISTORICAL CONTEXTUALIZATION, "THE FINAL SOLUTION TO THE POLISH PROBLEM: THE FATE OF THE JEWS IN POLAND" PAGES V. INTERVIEW OF MRS. SALLY GOLDBERG KRIEGER PAGE 23 VI. INTERVIEW ANALYSIS PAGE 75 VII. APPENDICES PAGE 85 VIII. WORKS CONSULTED PAGE 95 Green 2 ST. ANDREW'S EPISCOPAL SCHOOL INTERVIEWEE RELEASE FORM; Tapes and Transcripts I, ^C'dloy ^UIOl/jJl^'^ . do hereb\ give to the SaiiU Ajidrew^ Episcopal Cname ot" interviewee School all right, title or interest in the tape-recorded interviews conducted by 'Jo.inn;^ (^re:eri on _UJjiJjlC l understand that these name ot~ interviewer dale(3) interviews will be protected by copyright and deposited in Saint Andrew's Libraiy and Archives for the use of future students, educators and scholars. I also understand that the tapes and transcripts may be used in public presentations including, but not iiniited to, audio or video documentaries, slide-tape presentations, exhibits, articles or the world wide web at the projects web site www.doingoraihistopr'.org. Iliis gift does not preclude any use that I myself want lo make of the information in tiiese transcripts or recordings. Tlie intervieuee acknowledges that he/she will receive no remuneration or compensation for either his/her participation in the interview or for the rights assigned heretrnder. CHECK: ONE: Tapes and transcripts mav be used without restriction Tapes and transcripts are subject to the attached restrictions (T\ped) INTERVIEWEE: INTERVIEWER: J^'Zl f-oo^^UMA o^nni rrrn Signature of Interviewee Typed Name Typed Name qiHt ^nrfcl Ov/r • Addr^s Address PeC^.-nhLxnihc- r 10 : ICH\C) Date Date 8804 Postoak Road < Potomac, Maryland 20854 • {301)983-5200 • Fax:(301)983-4710 • futp://www.saes.org Green 3 STATEMENT OF PURPOSE The ptiqjose of tliis Advanced Placement oral liistory project is to gain a more complete and accurate imderstanding of the Holocaust. It is intended to enhance existing scholarship by documenting the inhuman and barbaric treatment of the European Jewry during World War Two. It provides insight into one individual's struggle to siuvive. This project gives first liand testimony to the horrors of the greatest persecution of the twentieth century. Through an interview with Mrs. Sally Goldberg Krieger, the depersonalized "six million Jews" now attains an individual hujnan face and voice. Green 4 BIOGRAPHY Sally Goldberg Krieger was bom on June 15, 1927 m Poland. At the age of two, her family moved to L6dz, (see appendix) as they "wanted to get out of the little shtetl" and live in a larger city. In 1929, her fatlier [Shimon Faival Goldberg], mother [Rivka Laja (Leah) Goldberg], younger sister of fifteen months [Frania Ruchel Goldberg], and Mrs. Krieger settled in L6dz. They moved into apartment #38 on Zgierska (street), a few blocks away from where Mrs. Krieger's aunt [her mother's sister] and family lived as well as her maternal grandparents (Her grandfather died two years before the war at the age of 88). By 1934, her family had grown and Mrs. Krieger was one of six cliildren. She had three younger sisters, Frania, Dorka, and Blumka, and two yoimger brothers, Smuel and Avrum. Before the outbreak of World War II, Mrs. Krieger and her siblings spent their time preoccupied with friends and going to school. Mrs. Krieger received seven years of education (1933-1939) at the localJewish public school, where her sisters attended as well. However, her brothers were emolled in a private Talmudic academy, as Jewish men expected to leam Hebrew. On tlie 3^"^ day of September 1939, the powei-fiil Gemian Nazi army marched into L6dz. Measures were taken to establish the ghetto in L6dz and force resettlement of the entire Jewish population therein. Consequently, Mrs. Krieger, her father, and her siblmgs were transported to the west, to Cracow for two months until they were able to smuggle themselves back into L6dz. On May 1, 1940 the L6dz Ghetto was officially closed and sealed off from the outside worid. It was the longest lasting ghetto in Poland duiing the Second World War. This was due to the fact it was utilized its industries and slave labor that produced textiles and equipment for the Gennan army. Mrs. Krieger and her entire family were forced to work. They sinvived and managed to stay together from May 1, 1940 to the final Uquidations of the L6dz ghetto in August 1944. When ghetto was liquidated in August 1944, Mrs. Krieger and her family were transported to Auschwitz. On August 17, 1944 that her mother [age 43], youngest sister Blumka [age 10], and two younger brothers, Shmuel [age 13] and Avrum [age 11 ] died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mrs. Krieger her two yoxmger sisters, Frania and Dorka were later deported to another Polish deatli/concentration camp named Stuttoff. They remained in Stuttoff from late August 1944 to February 1945. It was on Febmary 18, 1945 that Mrs. Krieger's younger sister, Dorka, died in Stuttoff camp at tlie age of 15. The next day Mrs. Krieger and her only remaining siblmg, Frania, joined the Death March. They hid in a bam in an Italian where they were liberated by the Russians on March 22, 1945. After liberation, Mrs. Krieger and Frania were placed in different field hospitals. Frania died en-route to a hospital in Gdansk, Poland on June 4, 1945 at the age of 16 '/i. After Mrs. Krieger had sufficiently recovered from her injuries, she was given a train ticket and sent back to Lodz. In February 1945, Mrs. Krieger was reunited with her father in Lodz. After which, they smuggled tiiemselves into West Berlin where Mrs. Krieger's fatlier had aheady been registered in a DP camp called Feldafmg. It was here that her father remarried. Later, on March 2, 1947 Mrs. Krieger was married and had her first child [Leah] on October 31'^' of the same year. In September 1949, Mrs. Krieger and her family arrived m America. Mrs. Krieger is now a widow, grandmother, and mother of three [Leah, Aim, and Sylvia] who has a permanent home in Baltimore, Maryland but rents an apartment in Florida during the winter. Green 5 THE FINAL SOLUTION TO THE POLISH PROBLEM: THE FATE OF THE JEWS IN POLAND "OUR ONLY PATH TO SURVIVAL IS THROUGH WORK" -MORDECHAI CHAIM RUMKOWSKI The Holocaust, the annihilation of six million Jews during World War 11, was the poUtical unplementation of Adolf Hitler's racial ideology. Such an ideology was a product of Hitler's aiUi-Semitic convictions towards the Jews that evolved tluou^out his life. It later was integrated into the platform of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartie (NSDAP-National Socialist German Worker's Party) and carried out under the German State as a national and foreign policy from 1933-1945. The policy was referred to as "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question," a code name assigned by Hitler and the Gemian bineaucracy to the obliteration of tlie European Jewry. In "Final" it suggested the apocalyptic end to the Jewish people and domination of the world by the Aryan race. It was conceived by Hitler and National Socialists, not only as an anti-Semitic imdertaking, but a program devised with an eschatological intention. The Final Solution was a metahistorical program never before seen in modem history. It was the fn^t time the mass genocide of anotiier people or ethnicit)' had been the principal objective of an ideology. The policy was enacted through a series of anti-Jewish legislation and isolation of the European Jewry by ghettoization. Such ghettos included the Lodz Ghetto in Poland, the longest ghetto in operation during the war, from 1941-1944. When containment proved to be ineffectual, rapid annihilation was executed through the establishment of concentration camps (tliat utilized excessive labor combmed with undernourishment) and kiUing centers (m. which extermination was completed by gas chambers and crematoriums). The majority of concentration camps and killing centers were located in Poland. The largest of these were found along main railroad lines and included Auschwitz-Birkenau (where 1.6 to 1.1 million Jews were murdered) and Stuttoff (where 65,000 to 85,000 Jews were murdered). Consequently, approximately 2,9000,000 Polish Jews were killed during the execution of the Final Solution. Originating from Hitler's anti-Semetic ideology, tlie Holocaust was the massive and disastrous catasrophe that ensued from tlie political implementation of the Final Solution under the German dictatorship and resulted in the desfruction of two-thirds of the European Jewry and eightv-eighty percent of the Jewish population in Poland. The origins of these antagonistic views were in Hitler's reactions and subsequent realizations about Gemian society while in Vienna from 1909 to 1913. "In this period my eyes were open to two menaces of which I Green 6 had previously scarcely known the names," Hitler wrote in his 1923 memoir Mem Kampf "and whose terrible importance for the existence of the German people I certainly did not understand: Marxism and Jewry" (21). Hitler viewed the Jews as having "unclean dress" and blamed them for the prosecution and white slave traffic in Vienna. Moreover, Hitler discerned the Jews were the antagonistic force beliind the deceptive liberal press and the Social Democratic movement (Marxism). He thus concluded, "the Jew is no German" (Hitler 61). The socio-political atmosphere of Vienna, m wliich anti-Semitic political movements - Georg von Schonerer's Pan-Germans and Karl Lueger's Christian Socials - were widespread and influential and fostered tiiese ideas. Upon the outbreak of World War I (1914-1919), Hitler petitioned for approval in joining the Bavarian army, and was emolled in the 1^ Company of the 16*^ Bavarian Reserve Infantry. He fought on the front imtil October 13, 1819, when he was blinded by a British gas attack and taken to an anny hospital in Pasewalk. It was here that Hitler leained of the Bavarian Revolution (November 7,1918). Lead by Kurt Eisner, the revolution had overthrown the monarchy and, in its place, created a Weimar Republic. "It was lost," he recalled, "[...] we were throwing oiu-selves upon the mercy of the victors, our fatherland would for the friture be exposed to dire oppression [...] everything went black before my eyes" (Hitler 204). Some historians have speculated that it was at this tmie, November 1918, that Hitler decided on the destniction of the Jews as his ideological goal. As Hitler noted, "in these nights hatred grew in me, hatred for those responsible of this deed [...] my own fate became clear to me [...] there was no making pacts with Jews; there can be only the hard: either -or" (206). "A cycle of anti-Semitism came with World War I," and Hitler, like many other Germans, had begun to use the Jews as an explanation for social and/or political wrongs (The War Against the Jews 45). Hitler accused the Jews for the German defeat in World War 1, claiming they were to blame for the Bavarian Revolution, loss of monarchy, and the fomiation of the Weimar Republic. Hitier later wrote in Mein Kampf: If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew cormpters of the people had been under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our best Gemian workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions on the front would have been in vain. (679) Such sentiments were exasperated with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on Jime 28, 1919, that ended World War I. The peace treaty forced $56.5 million in reparations upon Germany (that later triggered a woridwide economic depression). Moreover, new countries were created from land acquired by Germany during the war, Green 7 including; Austria, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Such land acquisition would become the basis of Hitler's imperialistic concept of Lebensraum, "living space," and conceal his true desires for world domination. The antagonism fostered ill will towards Allied nations, and triggered a resurgence of Germanism amongst a majority of the German citizens. It was this tension and atmosphere, compounded by debt and food shortages, which allowed Hitler to gam political power. In the years following the war. Hitler settled m Munich and, as he stated in Mein Kampf, "decided to go into politics" (206). He gained employment as an educational officer in tlie Press and Propaganda Office of the Political Department of the District Army Command in Munch. The ftmction of the department was to "mdoctrinate Reichswehrreciuitson the dangers of radicalism" (The War Against the Jews. 14). Hitler's participation in a conspiratorial organization exposed him to various circles of like-minded people. Through such people. Hitler acquired a multitude of new views and opinions that expanded upon his former ideology on race and Jews. Moreover, they forced Hitler to redefme his anti-Jewish racist ideology and consolidate it into a single doctrine. Such mfluences included Alfred Rosenhm^g, a Baltic German, who expanded Hitler's ideology beyond the political boarders of Germany. Rosenburg was an anti-Semitic Russian emigre from the Bolshevik Revolution who attributed the fall of czarist Russia upon the Jews. Like other emigres, he infiltrated Western Europe with notions of Russia's Black Hundred. In Germany, such anti-Semitic conceptions were combined witli Germandom's paranoid nationalism. Fostered by Rosenburg, Hitler concluded that "Russian Bolshevism [...] [was] the attempt undertaken by the Jews in the t^ventieth century to achieve world domination" (qtd in A Holocaust Reader 32). He perceived that Jews had eradicated Russia's Germanic aristocracy. Hitier foresaw a similar fate for Gennany if measures were not taken to abate such forces: "/I victory of Bolshevism over Germany would not lead to a Versailles Treaty but to the final destruction, indeed to the annihilation of the German people" (qtd in A Holocaust Reader 32). Additionally, Rosenburg taught Hitler an anti-Semitic elaboration of Karl Haushofer's concept of Lebensraum, "livmg space." Space, Haushofer believed, vvas fiindamental to a nation's ability to enhance its political power. Thus, Rosenburg concluded that through imperialistic expansion, Germandom could acquire the force to rid itself of a potential Jewish summation. Hitler espoused Rosenburg's ideology; Lebensraum became a comerstone of National Socialist doctrine and the aun of Germany's foreign policy from 1934-1945. By 1919, Rosenburg's Green 8 profound influence on Hitler's ethos was evident. In a letter, dated September 16, 1919 and written at the request of his superior in the Press and Propaganda office. Hitler proclaimed:' Rational anfi-Semitism, however, must lead to a systematic legal opposition and elimmation of the special privileges with the Jews hold, in contrast to other aliens living among us (aliens' legislation). Its fmal objective must unswervingly be the removal [Entfernung] of the Jews altogether, (qtd in A Holocaust Reader 30) Hitler's racial anti-Jewish ideology - fostered by people, events, and societal obser\'atioiis tliroughout his life, had been molded into a single cohesive system by 1923. It was presented for tlie first time m its entirety in his memoir: Mein Kampf^ Mein /[^am/j/expounded race as the fundamental principle for human existence. It described the apocalyptic struggle between the Aryans and Jews in their quest for world domination. Hitler attributed "the question of racial preservation of the nation" as the determinant factor in the rise and fall of civilization (qtd in The War Against the Jews 18). He aspired to rebuilt Germandom to its former glory and rid Uie nation of its political and social upheaval. Such resurrection was dependent upon "the clearest understanding of the racial problem and hence of the Jewish problem"(Hitler 301).^ The "Jewish question" was a term first used during the eaily Enlightenment (late 1600's through the 1700's) period in Western Europe, referring the "question" or "problems" that the Jewish people posed to the development of self-determination and political nationalism due to tiieir incongmity towards socio-political demands. Hitler perceived the Jew as the "mightiest counterpart to the Aryan" (Hitler 300). The Aryan race was the bearer of all human cultural development, and hence, humanities existence rested solely on the subsistence of the Aryan. ^ It was thus concluded tiiat divine providence had selected Aryans to govern the world. The sustenance of civilization relied on preserving the purity of Aryan "blood."^ Therefore, it was the infiltration of ' The letter was in response to one Adolf Gemlich who requested infomiation about the Jewish Question. ^ Hitler wrote Mein Kampf {''My Struggle") while m prison at Landsberg. He had been sentenced to five years in prison for high treason in organizing the Mmiich Putsch. However, due to Hitler's high-ranking conferees, he served an abridged sentence from November 11, 1923 to December 20, 1924. ' Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, "if we pass all the causes of the German collapse in review, the ultimate and most decisive remains the failure to recognize the racial problem and especially the Jewish menace" (327). '' "All human culture, all the results of art, science and technolog>' that we see before us today, are most exclusively the creative product of the Ar>'an. This very fact admits of not unfound inference that he alone was the founder of all higher humanity" (Hitler 290). ^ Hitler placed utmost importance on safeguarding the purity of Aryan blood, as he believed " "all great cultures of the past perished only because of the origmally creative race [i.e. Aryan] died out from blood poisoning" (Hitler 289). Green 9 Jewish "blood" that had caused the gradual decomposition and disintegration of the Aryan race.^ As opposed to the depiction of the Aryan as the perfection of human existence, the Jew was the embodiment of the ultimate evil - the Devil. The "vileness"ofthe Jew had permeated all aspects of society. The Jew was the carrier of filth and disease, the "germ-carries" that had poisoned the blood of the Aryan race. They were figuratively personified as parashic bloodsuckers tiiat had infiltrated economic and political spheres. Moreover, the Jews had succeeded m integrating themselves into the body of the Aryan race. Such interposition had been achieved by deception, as the Jews portrayed tiiemselves as a religious community when, in fact, they were a race. A race witii no language or culture that, under the mask or religion, had dissipated the culture of the Aryan race in order to achieve world dorainatiori. "// is the inexorable Jew," Hitler wrote, "who struggles for his domination over the nations" (qtd in A Holocaust Reader 31). Such conspiratorial teclmiques for world mastery were evident in the press, Freemasonr,', the Bolshevik Revolution, democracy, pariiamentarianism, the trade union movement, Social Democracy, and Marxism. In the apocalyptic stmggle for control over humankind, Hitler saw himself as the savior who would deliver tiie Aryan race from the forced submission of tiie Devil - the Jew: Two worlds face one anotiier - the men of God and the men of Satan! The Jew is the anti-man, the creatm-e of another god. He must have come from another root of the human race. I set the Aryan and the Jew over and against each other, (qtd in Raushing 238) Hence today I believe I am actmg in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew 1 am fighting for the work of the Lord. (Hitier 65) Lucy S. Dawidowicz, a leading Holocaust historian, stated in her 1975 book. The War Against the Jews 1933-1945. "Mein Kampf was the basic treatise of Hitler's ideas, where he brought together the three essential components that formed the embryonic concept of the Fmal Solution" (150). The "Final Solution to tiie Jewish Question" was the code name assigned by Hitler and his German bureaucracy to the annihilation of the European Jewry. By exploiting the existing anti-Semitism, nationalism, and xenophobia of the German people. Hitler aspired to enforce a racial governmental policy whose goal was the destmction of the Jews. In practice, this doctrine was fu-st instigated as a domestic policy and later developed into contmental genocide. Through such means as anti- Jewish legislation from 1933-1935 and isolation, by ghettoization and emigration, the Jewish threat would be extinguished %vithin Germandom. Hitler believed that Jewish Bolshevism was responsible for tiie overhaul of 'Historical experience offers countless proofs of this, h shows with terrifying clarity that in every mingling of the Green 10 Russian monarchy, and exemplified tiie Jewish quest for world domination. To impede imperialistic expansion into Western European nations, he called for a "holy cmsade" to liberate Russia from Jewish conu-ol. However, the policy's tme mtent was to stretch Germandom's boarders in an effort to ftilfill Hitler's apocalyptic quest for Aryan domination. With race as the fiindamental principle, Hitler had transferred his ideology and imperialistic desire into a radical variation of Rosenburg's Lebensraum. The concepts laid down m 1923 were the collaboration of Hitier's central ideology, his "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." Hitler was only waiting the political opportunity to implement his policies -such an occasion occurred on Januar>' 30, 1933. Elected as Chancellor of Gemiany, Hitler now held the key to enforcmg his anti-Semitic doctrine -poUtical and military power. Hitler's speech to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939, the amiiversary of his accession to power, he declared: I have often been a prophet in my life and was generally laughed at. During my stmggle for power, the Jews primarily received witii laughter my prophecies Uiat 1 would someday assume the leadersliip of the state and thereby of the entire Volk and then, among many otiier tilings, acliieve a solution of the Jewish problem. I suppose that meanwhile the then resounding laughter of Jewry m Germany is now choking in their throats. Today I will be a prophet agam. If intemational fmance Jewry within Europe and abroad should succeed once more in plunging the peoples into a worid war, tiien the consequences with be not the Bolshevization of the world and therewith a victory of Jewr>', but, on the contrary, the destmction of the Jewish race in Europe, (qtd ui Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader 32-33) The authoritative responsibility for the implementation of the Final Solution was Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuhrer-SS (Chief of the Defense Protective Units).' Himmler had appointed Reinliard Heydrich as Chief of tiie Security Police and Security Service (head of tiie Reich Security Main Office]) whose primary duty it was to carry out all plans necessary for the Final Solution.^ Under Heydrich's command, were the paramilitary police forces -Einsatzgmppen (special-duty groups), six of which, during the military campaign in Poland (Operation Aryan blood with that of lower peoples [i.e. Jews] the result was tiie end of the cultural people" (Hitler 286). ^ In January 1929, Hitler appointed Hemrich Himmler as Reichsftihrer-SS. The SS (Schutzstaffel - Defense Protective) was a select combat unit drawn from the already existUig SA (Sturmabteilug - Storm Troops; the private army of the Nazi Party organized in 1921). ^ Remhard Heydrich was originally Sicherheirsdienst (SD) de Reichsfureres-SS (Securit>' Service of tiie Reichsftihere-SS) and later director of the Main Office of the Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo -Security Police). The Sipo consisted of the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizeimt -Secret State Police) and the Krip (Criminal Police). On September 27, 1939 Himmler ordered a decree to unify tiie Sipo and SD into one organization under Heydrich, know as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA -Reich Security Main Office). Green 11 White), were attached to the Germany army.' On September 21,1939, Heydrich issued written instmctions to the chiefs of the Einsatzgmppen, outluiing their tasks with regard to tiie"Jewis h question in the Occupied Territory." Heydrich's directive discussed the master plan for annihilation the Jews and served as a guidepost in the chronology of the Fmal Solution. Heydrich specifically pointed out "that the planned overall measures {i.e., the final aim) [were] to be kept strictly secret" and made clear distinctions between "the final aun," -requiring extended periods of time- and tiie "stages leaduig to the fulfillment of this fmal ami"(qtd in A Holocaust Reader 59). The first prerequisite for the Final Solution was the concentration of Jews from tiie countryside mto larger cities. Heydrich emphasized the establishment of the fewest concentration points possible. Consequently, Jewish communities with less then 500 people were to be dissolved and the inhabitants transferred to the nearest city of concentration. Such points of concentration were established along railroad lines or at rail junctions, "so as to facilitate subsequent measures" (qtd m A Holocaust Reader 60)."* In each Jewish community, a Judische Altestenrate (Judenrat) - "Council of Jewish Elders" -was to be erected and consist of mfluential personalities and rabbis. " The Jewish council was made "fully responsible, in the literal sense of the word, for the exact and punctual execution of all directives issued" (qtd in A Holocaust Reader 60). The council was required to institute all measures granted by the German civil administration agencies or local military authorities. They were to administer (and be held accountable for) the evacuation of the Jews from the countryside and providing them with appropriate housing and food supplies in the cities of concentration. Once the ghetto was established the council could, for reasons of security, bar the Jews from leaving the ghetto altogether or af^er a designated evening hour. Econonucally, only those Jevrish-owned war mdushies and enterprises were to be tolerated (as they served to provide for the needs of the German army), however; measures were to be taken for prompt Aiyaiuzation of all enterprises. The measures that Heydrich issued on September 21, 1939 transfomied Poland mto the launching area and testing ground for the execution of the Final Solution. Poland served as an impetus where Hitler was able to begin fulfilling his racial and imperial ambitions. ' The Einsatzgmppen was conceived by Heydrich to provide a striking force for the political police and security intelligence. In Poland, the Einsatzgmppen was responsible for the sadistic atrocities against tiie Jews and Poles. "^ Historians have suggested that the "subsequent measures" (i.e. "the finalaim" ) to which Heydrich was alluding were, at this time, not the annihilation of the Jews, but the establislnnent of an extensive Jewish reservation. Himmler wrote in May 1940, "I hope to see the concept of Jews completely obliterated with the possibility of a large migration of all the Jews to Africa or else m a colony" (qtd in The War Against the Jews 118). '' The system of a Jewish council directed by the "Eldest" was based on tiie intemal organization of Jewish communities in medieval Germany. Each had a Judemat, an advisory council of twelve dayanim (called "elders") lead by the Judenbischof-chief rabbi (called the "eldest"). Green 12 The first ghetto established in Poland was in Lodz. The creation of the Lodz ghetto was first mentioned on December 10, 1939, in a secret memorandum from SS-Grigadenfrihrer Friederich Ubelhor, Regierungsprasident of Lodz (lop official in the civil administration in tiie district of Lodz): The establishment of the ghetto is of course only a provisional measure. 1 reserve for myself the points in tune and means with which tiie ghetto and tiiereby the cit>' of Lodz will be cleansed of Jews. The end goal [Endziel] in any case must be that we bum out this presthole without a reminder, (qtd m The War Against the Jews 162) Lodz was the second largest Jewish community after Warsaw. Prior to the Second World War, Lodz had close to 250,000 Jews; one-third of the city's total population. It was a tliriving industrial center, and was one of the largest textile production areas m Europe. Consequently, Lodz was miiversally known as the "Polish Manchester" or the "city of factory smokestacks." However, this was not always so. In 1793, the total population of L6dz was 109. L6dz had grown in magnitude and international impoilance over the comse of barely a century due to the contributions of the its Jewish conimimity. In Lodz, (as well as many other Polish cities) Jews fijnctioned as merchants, entrepreneurs, and managers; as well as artisans, industry laborers, and workers. The city's economic life as a whole, was primarily defined by and dependent on the its Jewish chizens. In addition to being an integral part of the economic stmcture, the Jews of Lodz were an organized conununity with a distinctive way of life and its own institutions. All Jews were members of the kehilla, a self-governing religious institution of public law guided by the Talmudic traditions. Jews had their own hospitals, retirement homes, economic aid, banks, orphanages, theaters, religious and secular schools, public libraries, sports and music clubs, youth organizations, and political parties. As historian Lucjan Dorbroszycki stated, " If there were any place in Poland where Jews could consider themselves at home and safe, no city had more of a claim to this tiian Lodz" (xxx). However, on September 8, 1939, the advanced detacliments of the German army appeared on the streets of L6dz, and the lives of its Jewish inliabitants changed forever. With minimal resistance, the German army established a state of martial law in L6d2 under SS authorities that would remain in place for the next five years. Swiftly measures were taken by the Einstazgmppen to mstitute the measiu^s outlined by Reinhard Heydrich in his September 21 decree. They immediately ordered the resettlement of the Jews from Lodz to concentrated points in the Generalgovemment. In accordance to an agreement be^veen Wilhelm Koppe, the chief of police in the Wartiieland, and his counterpart in Cracow, Friedrick Kmger, resenled Green 13 persons were also concentrated in the city of Cracow. The most bmtal and dangerous phase of resettlements to Cracow ran from December 11 to 16, 1939. Its victims were primarily those that lived on Zgierska and Lagiewiiicka streets and in Kosciuszko Boulevard. The people to be resettled were herded witii only the clothes on their back to the railroad station, where they were loaded into unheated cattle trains that had no sanitary facilities.'^ They traveled from two to three days witiiout food or water, unaware of where they were being taken. This occurred during the period of the largest forced resettlements to the General gouverement, begiiming early in the winter of 1939. At this time, the SS authorities m Lodz had begun to realize tiiat such mass resettlement (up to 50,000 Jews) could not be accomplished at once. Consequentiy, they moved to isolate the Jews m a separate and closed comer of the city, from which it would prove easier to resettle them. This marked the onset of the creation of the ghetto. SS-brigadenfuher Johannes Schaffer, L6dz chief of police, ordered the establishment of the ghetto on Febmary 8, 1940. Three days later, Hermann Goring's stated that "all orders concerning the settlement [of Jews to the Generalgouvernement] should be suspended for a time being so as not to reduce tiie amount of usable manpower and impede tiie country's economic development" (qtd in Dobroszycki xxxv).'^ The decision to desist from resettlement may have been attributed to the formation of tiie L6dz ghetto. For, the ghetto was seen as a means to implement Nazi's plan of exploiting Lodz's large and highly skilled Jewish labor force to serve the German war economy -an aspect that later prolonged the deportations of the Jews to concentration camps and killing centers, lengthening the lives of its inhabitants, and made L6dz the longest existing ghetto in Poland. On April 30, 1940, Schaffer ordered the Jewish quarter of Lodz to be closed, whereby creating the first ghetto in the Wartheland. '•* On May 1, the Lodz ghetto was sealed off from the outside worid. The Lodz ghetto was located in the poorest, most neglected, districts of the city. Stare Maistro (the Old Town) and Baluty, and lacked tiie most basic facilities of the city proper-paved streets, lighting, adequate sewage, sanitation facilities. Out of 31, 721 [one-room] apartments, only 725 hadrunning water and the use of electricity was forbidden (Dobroszycki xxxvii). The dwellings were, for the most part, dilapidated and devastated from looting, vandalism, and shelling. Tlie ghetto was congested; overcrowding forced, on average, 3.5 persons to a room (Web '^ Gschlisser, a high-ranking official in the Labor Bureau of the Generalgouvemment, wrote a letter to the governor of the Cracow providence. Otto G. Wachter, concerning the inhuman conditions that existed during the transfer of the Jews and Poles from the Wartheland to Cracow provmce on December 29, 1939. '^ Hemiann Goring was the Reich Marshal of the Greater German Reich, plenipotentiary' for the Four-Year Plan and Chairman of the Ministerial Council for tiie Defense of the Reich. Green 14 13).'^ "Overcrowding precipitated the breakdown of sanitation... Toilets, running water, all plumbing and sewage facilities were taxed beyond capacity and beyond repair" CThe War Against the Jews 209). The air was fetid and the streets were filthy. Such conditions and facilities were persistent in the dinunished area of 3.8 square kilometers that constittited the ghetto (Web 13). "The Lodz ghetto tmly was hermetically sealed, cut off from other Jews and non-Jews alike" (Dobroszycki xxiii). This isolation was due to tiie inipregnatablity of the L6dz's ghetto administration operated by local German authorities. Despite the eleven-kilometer wooden fence with barbed wne entanglements that enclosed the glietto, Jews of Lodz were unable to escape due to the presence of Gemian sentries. The Schutzpolizei (Schupo) [local police], together witii its auxiliary units, guarded tiie ghetto from the outside. Their orders were to shoot anyone from the Aryan side who did not obey the cry, "HALT."'* "On the Jewish side, however, it could shoot anyone approaching the barbed wire fence surrounding the ghetto without even a word of warning. The Schupo had also been instmcted to allow no one into the ghetto, no matter who that person might be, without a valid pass signed by the chief of police" (Dobroszck xxxix)." Therefore, the smugglmg of Jews between the "Aryan" side and the ghetto, so prominent in other ghettos, was rather incidental in L6dz. The Jews of L6dz experienced absolute physical and communicable isolation from events occurring in the world. The degree to which Jews were informed was minimal in compaiison witii other gliettos -there was essentially no communication between the ghetto and the city of L6dz. Hans Biebow, the head of the Gennan Ghetto Administration, forbade the Liztmannstadter Zeitun, the official publication of tiie local occupying authorities. Punishment ensued, not only for those guilty of possessing publications or newspapers, but for those who read them as well. The Polish clandestine press did not reach tiie ghetto eitiier-the medium through which underground organizations m occupied Poland dissipated information. Furthermore, German authorities had confiscated all radios, and the possession of, or listening to, one was an act deemed punishable by death. Mail was erratic, imdependable, and censored; the few postcards or letters that managed to reach the glietto were either forged by the Gestapo or coerced from the victims before their execution. '"* Wartheland was the name assigned to the area of occupied Poland that was incorporated into the Third Reich. L6dz was incorporated into the Reich on November 7, 1939. The name of the city was then changed to Litzmaimstadt, in honor of Karl Litzmann, a German general who fell m battle near L6dz ui 1915. '^ When the ghetto was sealed, 164,000 Jews lived in 48,1000 rooms. '* The "Ar)'an" side referred to tiie area, not directly outside, but in close proximit>' to the sealed-off Jewish ghetto. " Between the Jewish quarter (tiie ghetto) and the "Aryan" side of tiiecit y "there arose a sort of no-man's-land" Green 15 The German Ghetto Administration and its subordinate branches -police and city municipality -formed a coercive bureaucracy that governed ever}' aspect of ghetto life. The most important and most dreaded police force was the Gestapo, known all to well for its mthless cmelty. All other police forces within operating witliin the ghetto or around its boundaries were de facto subordinate to the Gestapo. It maintained political surveillance over the city municipalitj' and its departments. Every head of the Gestapo "was tiie political superior of the president of tiie L6dz region, to whom the city was subordinate" (Dobroszycki xl). Consequently, decisions and policies could not be implemented without tiie knowledge and consent of the Gestapo. Tlie Gestapo tiierefore determined, organized, and dfrected those matters concerning the treatment, living conditions, and settlement/resettlement of the Jews. SS- Obersturmfuher Gunter Fuchs, commissioner for Jewish affairs [Gmppe II B.4 Judenangelegenlienen] "played a particularly sinister role" in the lives of those Jews in the ghetto (Dobroszycki xl). Fuchs arrived m Lodz in January of 1940 and remained until the L6dz ghetto was liquidated in 1944. He was often on the grounds of tiie glietto to personally direct various police actions.'^ The Gestapo, as well as other Gennan police forces, were aided by the Volksdeutch, Ethnic Germans, that resided in Lodz.'' The Volksdeutch viewed themselves as a deprived minority, cut off from tiieir originaJ homeland, and isolated by language and tradition from the people among whom they lived. They seized the coming of Nazi mle as an opportmnty to revenge and prosper. Consequently, "The invader's police forces...were aided and abetted by a very large and well-organized pro-Hitler elements among the local Gemian population... primarily etlinic Germans" (Dobroszycki, xxxiii). Administratively, the Volksdeutch served in the various police forces, implementing the orders of the SS authorities, to the directors of nearly every city office. To the Jews, they presented an even more arduous danger as their presence prevented the organization of resistance and escape routes. Under the Gestapo and Volksdeutch forces, tiie Jews of L6dz were stripped of their rights and property and subjected to unrelentingly inhuman treatment, Jewish businesses, factories, and industries were seized reestablished under German tmsteeship. Jewish shops were destroyed, plundered, and robbed. All pre-war Jewish organizations and institutions were disbanded. Synagogues were burned down and desecrated. Jews were ordered to hand over all their gold, jewelry, and money under the threat of death. Apartments, buildings, and entire blocks were robbed whenever there were any valuables for the taking. The criminal police [Kriminalpolizei, Kripo] searched the ghetto '^ After Worid War II, Gunther Fuchs was sentenced to life in prison following a war crimes trial m Hannover, Gemiany. 19 In a city witii 350,000 Poles and 250,000 Jews, 75,000 Ethnic Germans lived m Lodz on the eve of tiie war. Green 16 for all articles of value that had been ludden by Jews. The real or imagined owner was arrested and subjected to horrible torture. Jewish bank accounts were frozen. Jews were ordered to wear yellow Star of David patch on the front and back of their clothing. Moreover, they were required to perform force labor for tiie Germans. As a measure to damper possible opposition, Jews were selected at random and shot, hung, or executed in pubUc squares -witii the surrounding Jewish community ordered to appear and witness. German's professed that such bmtality, "caused the Jew to understand the servere order here, and from now on he will obey all orders completely and peacefully" (Gilbert 366). Such imspeakable horrors and violence became commonplace in the ghetto and were inflicted upon the Jews daily. The refinements of cmelty were especially perpetrated upon the pious Jews and rabbis, whose attire (long coat and hat), earlocks, and beard distinguished tiiem amongst the popiUation. They were forced lo desecrate and destroy sacred articles of Judaism, by spitting on the Torah. Moreover, they were compelled to set fire to piles of Torah scrolls and dance around it signing "We rejoice tiiat the slut is bimiing" (qtd m The War Aeainst tiie Jews 201). Observant Jews were especially victimized because of their beards. German authorities plucked their beards, hair by hair or m clumps, shaved them off (with the Jews paying for the service), and even set them afire. "Germans themselves hacked off the Jewish beards with bayonets, often along with parts of cheeks, chins, and faces" (The War Against the Jews 202). Bearded Jews were also singled out for beatings. Mary Berg wrote in her diary on November 2, 1939: .. .Uniformed Gennans came upon the scene and began to beat their victim [a Jewish man] \vith mbber truncheons. They called a cab and tried to push him into it, but he resisted vigorously. The Germans then tied his legs together with a rope, attached the end of the rope to the cab from behind, and ordered to the driver to start. The unfortunate man's face stmck the sharps stones of the pavement, dyeing them red with blood. Then the cab vanished down the street, (qtd in Gilbert 97). Jews in the Lodz were unable to curb or prevent such treatment, despite tiie presence of an intemal Jewish administration within the ghetto. The Jewish administration was created by order of local German authorities, in accordance with Heydrich's September 21'' decree: " In each Jewish conmiunity, a Council of Elders [Judisch Altestenrate] is to be set up, to be composed, as far as possible, or the remaining influential personalities and rabbis" (qtd in A Holocaust Reader 60). Nevertiieless, the Council of Elders was de facto subordinate to the German Ghetto Administration, which, in tem; was subordinate to city, provincial, and state authorities -who received orders from Green 17 the top leaders in BerIm; Herman Goring, Hemrich Himmler, and Wilhem Frick.^° In many communities, tiie Council of Elders was organized as a collective body. However, tiiisorganizationa l stmcttire did not prevail in the Lodz ghetto. On October 13, 1939, a Council of Elders was established, but it never gained fiill authority over the Jewish commiuiity (Web 11). This was compounded when all but eight of its thirty members were arrested on a single day in November 1939 and killed. A new council was chosen, but Germans regarded it as inconsequential, and it ceased to exist of its own accord. Power fell mto the hands of one man, Mordordechai Chaim Rumkowski, the Eldest of the Jews.^' He transformed the Council of Elders into a one-man institution -Rumkowski's title became synonymous with the name of the Jewish ghetto administration, while the Altestenrate existed as an advisoo' group only. Everybody and everything was subordinate to Rumkowski in the ghetto, his power ended only where the German authority began. He was endowed with the responsibility of organizing and maintaining all aspects of ghetto life with respect to the economy and heatii and welfare. Most unportantly, Rumkowski was the sole distributor of provisions m the ghetto, and controlled every facet of work and labor. Initially, Rumkowski sought to use his power to diminish the severity of German policies towards the Jews, as well as, to reduce the violence and brutality inflicted upon them in the ghetto. Of pailicular concem was the arbitrary roundups of Jews in the streets and buildings by the Gestapo and other police forces -undertaken to meet tiie daily contingent of 600 forced laborers from among the Lodz. "Random abductions by tiieGerman s of large numbers of Jews for forced labor made venturing out on the street a perilous gamble. The fear of being dragooned aggravated tiie numerous other hardships and uncertainties of daily life" (The War Against The Jews 231). Consequently, Rumkowski and the Jewish admuiistration took it upon themselves to organize a labor pool from which the specific niunbers of workers requisitioned could be supplied. On October 15, 1939, Rumkowski created the department of Arbeitseinsatz [Labor Assignments] that set up a labor registry. Nevertheless, tiie large contingent of laborers demanded by the Gennans forced the Jewish administration to adopt coercive measures (Web 21). Jewish police were deployed to round up the Jews, and proved no less forceful and cmel as tiie Gemians tiiemselves. Rumkowski was unrelentlent in changing his policies concerning forced labor. "My main slogan has been to give work to the greatest possible number of people," Rumkowski explained (qtd in Gilbert 141). He saw the survival of the ghetto -and its Jewish inhabitants -contingent upon a productive work force. A work force that ^^ Wilhem Frick was the Reich's Minister of the Interior. Green 18 would utilize tiie factory and industrial capability of L6dz, as well as, make the ghetto useful to the Nazi war industry and economic needs. "They respect us because we constitute a centre of productivity. The plan is work, work, and more work! I will strive with an iron will so that work will be found for everyone m the glietto," Rumkowski stated (Gilbert 249). "Our only patii to survival is through work" was Rumkowski's principle ideology (Weber 191 ).^^ It governed the intemal organization of the Lodz ghetto; it dictated that the life of every Jew revolve around incessant, unrelentless work. Rumkowski had successfully tumed L6dz into a giant slave labor workshop. Rumkowski's long tenn sfrategy for survival remained steadfast even when the finalstag e of "The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" was implemented in the L6dz ghetto by the Nazi authorities, beginning in 1942: direct genocide. "The establishment of the ghetto [was]...only a provisional measure" in solving the Jewish problem (The War Against The Jews 162). In ghettos, Jews expired slowly of "nattiral" causes including hunger, disease, cold, and exhaustion. Consequentially, the idea of systematically killing the Jews began to appear as an inevitable and desirable development In the elimination of the European Jewiy. However, it was not until 1942 that Hitler and the Nazis had developed the machinery necessary to efficiently execute the finalstag e Final Solution: complete annihilation of the Jews. German authorities in Berlui aimed to replace killing by bullets (carried out by mobile killing units, the Einsatzgmppen) with techniques of mass killing by gas. German scientists expanded upon the abeady existing methods of "killing with showers of carbon monoxide while bathing" (as was done to mental patients in the Reich's Euthanasia Program) and "killing with exhaust tmcks" (previously used in the East) (Tlie War Against The Jews 131). They developed stationary gas chambers equipped with carbon monoxide or cyanide gas [Zyklon B]. It enabled mass killing, and at the same time, disguised the fate m store for the victims and deceived their families. The procedure was pragmatically simple and convincingly deceptive. In groups of twenty to thirty, tiie [Jews] were ushered into a chamber camouflaged as a shower room. It was an ordinary room, fitted with sealproof doors and windows, into which gas piping had been laid. The compressed gas chamber and the regulating equipment were located outside. Led into the chamber on the pretext ^' German autiiorities in Lodz impartial to the presence of a one-man mstittjtion "and it did not matter who he was as long as he was obedient, able to maintam order in the Jewish quarter, and knew how to mobilize people for work" (Dobroszycki xlvi). ^^ It is interesting to note that Rumkowski's motto was almost identical to tiie inscription on the entrance gate to Auschwitz death camp, "Work Brings Freedom." Green 19 tiiat they were gomg to take showers, the [Jews] were gassed by the [German autiiority] on duty. (The War Against The Jews 134) The development of a stationary gas chamber mstigated tiie consttoiction of aimihllation camps -the Nazi's tool for executing the last stage of the Final Solution. Killing camps were erected along the main railroad line in Poland, uicluding Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Mejdanek, and Auschwitz/Birkenau. The railroad system allowed for rapid, efficient deportation and annihilation of Jews from concentration camps, labor camps, and ghettos tliroughout the Third Reich, Wartheland, and Generalgouvemement. Tlie first death camp to be completed was Chelmno [KulmhofJ. Located sixty kilometers fromL6dz , it was intended to extermmate tiie Jews from the Lodz ghetto. Chelmno began operating on December 7, 1941. Eight days later deportations began in the Lodz ghetto. The Chronicle of the Lodz ghetto reported: Saturday, December 20, 1941: TEN THOUSDAND PEOPLE TO BE RESETTLED OUT OF THE GHETTO On the 16*^ of this month, the German authorities held a conference with the Chairman... [in] which they demanded that 20,000 people vacate the ghetto. Through persuasion and request, the Chainnan succeeded in having the number of ghetto residents to be resettled reduced by half The Eldest of the Jews also won permission for himself, on the basis of his authority over tiieinterna l autonomy of the ghetto, who is to leave the ghetto. Apparently, those to be resettled will be sent to smaller towns in the Protectorate [Generalgouvemement], to centers where food supply is not as difficult a problem as it is in the large cities.. .The news of the coming resettlement had created a mood of depression in the ghetto, (qtd in The Clironicle of the L6dz Ghetto: 1941-1944 96-7) The deportations in December 1941 signaled the beginning of the end for the Jews, not only in the Lodz ghetto, but also throughout Eastem Europe. The next three years were filled with waves of deportations that diminished the population of the ghetto and brought incessant fear and desperation. The deportations to Chelmno from L6dz ghetto in 1942 were in step with the Nazi policy of disposing all unproductive groups. Following the first deportations in January 1942, Rumkowski explained the system by which he chose the contingencies: "1 assigfied for deportation that portion which was for the ghetto a suppurating abscess. So the list included the ousted operators of the underworld, scum, and all sorts of persons harmful to the ghetto" (qtd in The War Against The Jews 292). The hierarchical ranking of categories for deportation began with those persons convicted of misdemeanors or Green 20 felonies and had been sentenced, a category designated as "undesnables."^^ Underworld elements, criminals, prostitutes, welfare recipients, the unemployed, and the unproductive followed the "undesirables." They constittited the majority of the 54,990 persons deported behveen January and May 1942 that reduced the ghetto population by more than one-third. After such elements had been exhausted from the ghetto, work became tiiefundamenta l principle justifying the existence of the Lodz ghetto. Any persons that did not contribute to Lodz's productive labor force were deported. Rumkowski spoke about these matters on March 2,1942 after the category of "criminals" had been eliminated: "Wholly innocent people have begun to be deported because a new principle was introduced: that only those people who work can remain in the ghetto! On the otiier hand, those who don't yet have or have not gotten work must leave the ghetto. The order must be carried out, there is no choice" (qtd in The War Against the Jews 292). The next wave of deportation was duected against cliildren, the elderly, and the sick. The Jews in L6dz had anticipated tiiesecontingencie s and during the summer of 1942, approximately 13,000 children and adolescents were employed in the ghetto workshops and factories (Web 17). But in September, the sick were removed from hospitals and preventoriums, the elderly from old age homes, and the children from orphanages to be deported from the ghetto -no one was prepared for the horror and despair that would ensure. On September 4^ Rumkowski -"this proud Jew, who till now had governed his realm high-handedly and with total despotism" -stood before a crowd a shattered man: The glietto has been inflicted with a great sorrow. We are being asked to give up the best that we possess -children and old people... I could never have imagined that my hands would deliver the sacrifice to the altar. In my old age I must stretch forth my arms and beg: Brothers and sisters, yield them to be! Fatiiers and mothers, yield me your children. (Enormous and fearfnl weeping among the crowd.) (qtd m A Holocaust Reader 307) The German Ghetto Administtation directed a vicious manhunt in which Gestapo police forces conducted house searches to findth e remaining children and take them away from their parents. It resulted in the deportation of 15, 859 persons and left 600 dead in tiieghett o stt-eets and homes (Web 18). In his personal account, "Days of Nightmare," Josef Zelkowicz described reactions to the deportations and events in the Lodz ghetto on September 5, 1942: ^' Cold and hunger had also tumed thousands of law-abiding ghetto residents into "undesirables," as they stole Green 21 If only a fire would come and consume everything! If only a bolt from heaven would strike and destroy us altogether! There is hardly anyone in the ghetto who hasn't gasped such a wish from his feeble lips, whether he is affected directiy, indirectly, or altogether involved In the events which are staged before his very eyes and ears. Everyone is ready to die; already now, at the very start, ant this very moment, it is impossible to endure the screams of hundreds of thousands of bound cattle [children, parents, the elderly] slaughtered but not yet killed; impossible to endure the twitching of the pierced but unsevered throats, which let them neither die or live, (qtd in A Holocaust Reader 311) The deportations of 1942 were even more disasttous to the Jews of the L6d2 ghetto because no one knew anything about the fate of the 55,000 deportees. The ghetto was entirely sealed off and isolated from all commimication with the outside world. The first news in Lodz of the death camps and deportations to Chelnmo was tiirough a postcard that a survivor fromBrzezin y had received from the rabbi of Grabow and given to a Lodz Bundist. All other information about Chelmno that reached the ghetto was sparing and unreliable. This was evident from the rejoicing and celebration that ensued following a public announcement on July 15, 1944 tiiatGerma n authorities had suspended deportation. None of the Jews were awaie that tiiis intermption, only temporary, had been caused by the sudden dissolution of the death camp in Chelnmo. The final wave of deportations, in the summer months of 1944, signaled the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto. Liquidation of the ghetto had been postponed throughout 1943, as Heinrich Himmler imdertook extensive efforts in proposing tiiat the Lodz ghetto be transfomied into a labor camp or concentration camp. The enthe project collapsed, chiefly because of the Soviet army's rapid progress during the offensives in the summer and fall of 1943, and the winter and spring of 1944. The liquidation of the Jewish quarter assumed a total character on August 2, 1944 when Rumkowski posted a proclamation on tiie walls of the L6dz ghetto that read, "By order of the Oberburgermeister von Litzmannstadt, the ghetto must be moved to a new location. Factory workers will ttavelwit h their families to perform manual labor. The first transport will depart on August 3, 1944. Five thousand people must report each day. There will be separate notices concerning the workshops that are to be moved in the next phase" (qtd in Dorbroszycki Ixiv). German officers made assurances that the ghetto was to be moved to Germany, where labor was needed. There were people by then who believed such assurances. Moreover, al! inhabitants of the ghetto potato peelings for food and wood for fiiel. Green 22 knew that the Russians were only 120 kilometers away fromL6dz . Jews attempted to postpone their departure by hiding. Fewer Jews were reporting voluntarily with each passing day and, consequentially, German forces usurped control from the Jewish police. On August 9, Schutzpolizei detachments entered the ghetto and surrounded one block after another, ordermg the Jewish police to drag the Jews out of hiding. The Gestapo issued proclamations on August 12''' and 23"* ordering specific blocks to be vacated street by street and threatened anyone found therein with death. The fmal proclamation signed by the Gestapo was issued on August 28, 1944, after the ghetto had already ceased to exist. Among tiiose on the transport that left that day was Rumkowski and his family. Like all the previous fransports, the one that left the ghetto on August 28, 1944 was sent to Auschwitz-Bfrkenau. The Jewish community of L6dz -and tiiosethroughou t Eastem Europe -had been annihilated. Green 23 INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTION INTERVIEWEE: SALLY GOLDBERG KRIEGER INTERVIEWER: JOANNA MICHELLE GREEN DATE: DECEMBER 20, 2000 LOCATION: INTERVIEWEE'S HOME: 6 LYOLIA COURT, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND Joanna Michelle Green: What do remember about growing up Jewish in Lodz prior to World War II? SaUy Goldberg Krieger; My father was more modem but my mother was very religious. But he followed because he loved the woman; he followed on Sattu-day, didn't work. We were a normal family and the kids were starting to go to school. 1 was going to school, my two younger sisters were going to school, my two little brothers -when the older one was little he was already sent to a Tahnudical academy, maybe at the age of tliree he started. Because in Europe it was like that, the men -the olden times, it's still not the olden times, but we didn't know no different -the men have to be real educated in Hebrew, and the other education we had in the public schools. So they sent the little boys to the all day school. It probably was expensive, I don't know how they could afford [it], but they did. We, me [and] my sister -I don't know me, but [they sent the boys to school and ] all the men are rabbi's that told us - and when we were kids we were making fun of all the men with the long beards, so that's why I don't know no Hebrew, I wish I [did]. The family was normal. My father had a license from the Polish govemment for tobacco and all tiie other things. A license for tobacco could only get [be gotten] by war veterans and the ones that were a little injured and receiving pension. No private person could get a license for selling tobacco and things like that; it was a monopol, you had to buy your merchandise at tiie monopol. We had a kiosk in a comer, in a very big comer, and my motiier was standmg there. My father also received a job, which was an easy job, because we were a large family and it was not enough for a living just from that kiosk, so they gave him a job in a very big factory. He was like a, I don't know how you say it, you when the people are coming into the factory, he was sitting in a little kiosk with a [gun/wand?] and you had to show him identification to go into the factory. He was like - JG: At tiie front desk? SK: Yes, well - JG: The concierge? Green 24 SK: But it was outside in a Httie kiosk. From both incomes togetiier they managed, we were middle class. We were not wealthy, but we were never hungry. Clothes, we used to get twice a year, for Rosh Hashannah and Passover. The gnls used to get custom-made [clothes] -everything was custom made. Everything was normal; it was a loving family. We were kids and we were fighting just like all the other kids in the house; we came home, we [did] our homework, we went to friends, [and] friends came to our house. It was a busy, happy life. We went out in the streets -it was mostly Jews that lived in the area, like here -here mostly Jews live in the same area; that's how it is. We didn't know no better and we were happy. We were very happy - Until September, I don't remember whether h was the third or fourth [when] the Gennan army walked in. I didn't hear no -L6dz (see Appendix II) was not bombarded -I only heard one shot. I happened to be in the street and the bullet went into tiie police station, it was in a comer. That's all I heard. There [were] no bombs, no shooting, no notlung. They walked in, so proud and big, and you saw how mighty tiiey were. The first few days, two or three days, there was a curfew. You couldn't go out at all; not during the day, not duruig tiie niglit. Later on they lifted the curfew [so] that you could go out until a certain time, like six o'clock or five o'clock, 1 don't remember exactly. JG: Who was "tiiey"? SK: The Germans, tiiey made the order. Not far from us, [from] where we were living, was a circle. [During] normal times it was a market. In tliis circle, this market, [tiiere was] exits to a lot of different streets. In one comer there was a big building, and [there] they made the station for the ghetto. That's where they went right away. They plaimed right away to do something. [At] this market, after about ten days, it was an order that everybody had to go see, to witness what was gomg on. They hung three men. This was a warning -what would happen to us if we didn't obey the orders. JG: Did you know the people that were hanged? SK: I don't know them. There were two Jews, supposedly, and one was a non-Jew. That's how it was. After a few days, ever>'one was working still, wherever we worked before the ghetto was closed. 1 was young. I was a kid, you know. JG: How old? SK: 1 was about twelve or thirteen years old. After about two months, in November, right away they started to draft {??) people to work; to do tiie dirty work for tiiem, whatever tiiey need[ed]. Some came back home, some were sent away; the families didn't know where they went. The people on the street -there were a lot of religious Jews Green 25 that were wearing beards, at that time just the religious Jews were wearmg beards. They were grabbing them, and they were cuttmg their beards. They were cutting their beards so far [close] that they cut them with the skin and with the flesh. They were beating them with their feet. It was unbelievable. They did whatever they want[ed]. They had fim seeing Jews suffer. Eventually, it was not just the Nazis. It must have been some of the army people that [were] stationed there, some solders, who knows. Right away we realized [that] things [were] bad. Wlien they marched in and the Polish army was going farther, like to Warsaw, some of the Jews realized how bad it [was] so they were going also, following the army. They were going as far [as] the Russian border. The Russian border was already almost in the middle of Poland because Poland was -Llitler made a pact with Stalui that he was gomg to occupy this pail of Poland (points to a map) that used to be occupied in the First World War and the Russians will occupy the part that they had in the First World War. JG: Did you know about that pact? SK: I was to young to know, to understand, but my father knew and was talkuig about it. A lot of those people that were in their twenties, young people, especially men, some were courageous enough to [take] their whole families, to leave their homes, and go to the Russian border. They were on the boarder and some they let in, [but] some people had trouble getting it. A little while later, they sent them to Siberia to work. But tiiey were no in danger of being killed or [of dying] from starvation. Some say that they didn't have enough to eat, but still they were not under the gun and would not escape. Most of those that survived are the ones tiiat came back from Russia after, when the War ended. I remember my father wanted to go because he was a young man. My mother said, "If you go take the tiiree older children with you. The three younger children -maybe somebody will give me a piece of bread when I need [it]." She didn't realize how bad it was going to be. In the First Worid War everything was [the] opposite; the Germans were good, you know, and the Russians were bad. So who knew? My mom was a young teenager [during] the First [Worid] War, between 1914 and 1918. (Takes a sip of water). So my father decided he's not going, he's going to stay what ever happens to him will happens to all of us. All the tmie it was bad. They put several families in one room, you know, it tells you how big the ghetto was. Usually it was the poorest neighborhoods. (Pomts to the map). Ok, this part was nice but this part, the upper part, was a very poor neighborhood where not just Jews lived, some non-Jews lived there too, but the majority were Jews and they were poor. They [the Germans] started to take out people and send them away. JG: Did you know about that? Green 26 SK: Yes. This we knew. We didn't know where they sent them, but we never heard of them [again]. Then, one day in November, 1 don't remember exactly the date, we heard rumors, in the aftemoon, that they're [the Nazis] gomg to deport tliis part of tiie city. (Points to map, see Appendix III) JG: In 1939 or 1940? SK: In 1939, November. This part of tiie city, that tiiey're [the Nazis] going to depart all the Jews fi^om tius part of the city. We didn't have more than a few hours time. We packed; we made sacks and we packed, you know, everything the linens and things like tiiat -whatever we could take writh us. We were prepared; we were ready, but we didn't know where we were gomg to go, whatever. It was in the evening, there was a Nazi soldier and tiie German that lived in Lodz -there a lot of Germans that lived in Lodz that were left over from the First World War and they made a life there -right away they joined them and they were called the Volksdeutsche. Volksdeutclie, it means from German origin. Right away they would join them and they approving of eveiything of what they [the Nazis] did. We lived in a [curch]. We lived in the first floor in tins courtyard. There were 230-some tenants in the courtyard that we lived. When they [a Nazi and a Volksdeutsche] came into our apartment, they told my father to sit down at tiie chair, and they were standing there. (Motions to the other side of the room) Right away tiiey said, "Take out all the money that you have and everything you ov/n put on the table." It just so happened that this was the last day that when the Polish, [Zlotish] money was changed for German marks. The ortiy place that you still could buy, could spend, with Polish money, in that day, was in tiie monopol because it belonged to the Polish govenmient.' They still could change tiie Polish money. Since some neighbors -friends of ours -didn't have time, didn't manage, to change all [their] money -and they knew my father buys the merchandise at the monopol- so they gave him the money, whatever they couldn't manage to change, so he can buy merchandise. And later on, when we sell it, we'll give it back according lo whatever it's going to come out. So my father put out everything. He [the Nazi] asked him [my father], "Were you got that much money from?" My father explained [to] him what happened. That's how he got the money and that he was supposed to go next day and buy the merchandise for the kiosk that we were selling -for the tobacco and all tiie other tlungs. Okay. He [tiie Nazi] took everything. He put it in the pocket all the bills and just the change he left for my father, he said "The change you can take." My grandmotiier was livmg with us and she was bedridden; she was in bed. And when Green 27 he [the Nazi] was ready, when he was finished, he told my father to get up, get up. So wlule my father got up the chair fell from itself to the floor. So he [the Nazi] got angry. He said tiiat my father was try grab the chair against him and he told him -and he took out the gun -and he told my father to go to the wall with the head up; he was ready to shoot lum. My mother fell to his knees -and kissed his knees -to beg him not to shoot him. So the other guy, the Volksdeutsche^ told him that it's tt^e, the chair fell from itself That's when he put away the gun. And he said, "Tlie father and the children -out. The young mother stays with the old mother. Tlie young mother going to remain home," So whatever we had, we went out. And they took us on tmcks. And they put us someplace far away, away from the main town. And we were there for like a day and a night. We didn't know what's going to happen. My mother was home. And you know, in the beginning, my mother probably didn't realize -she probably was excited he could have [shot] my grandmother laying in bed- but he didn't do. So, in the moment, she didn't realize. Later on, she realized, when we went out, that she was all alone with her mother and she didn't know where her family went away, she became hysterical and it's terrible. It was terrible. The only non-Jew lived on tiie second floor and he was the one that cleaned, you know, took care of the complex. He helped out a little, things like that. Found out that they took us on tiiosetrams , cattle trains, and we were ridmg for two days. We didn't know where it was. Then we came to a station and they let us out and they put us in a building that must have been a music school at the time. And we were on the floor, everybody lay down, you know, with whatever we had -tiie comforters and everything. And that was supposed to be our home. We didn't know what it was and we findou t that we were in Cracow. You have a map of Poland. Cracow, eventually the Cracow Jewash Committee bailed us out. So we were for two months, we were tiierei n Cracow. Then- JG: How was a day like there? SK: Oh, it was terrible. What ever they gave us -it not enough to live, not enough to eat. We couldn't wash up; we couldn't do nothing. The lice and everything was all around us. Anyway— JG: But you didn't have to work? Did you have to work in Cracow? SK: No, we were sitting. We didn't have to work. No, we were kids. There was an aunt of mine -my mothers older sister, we lived on the same street -she also was in the same group, with her daughter and the baby, and whatever. And we were there for almost two months. My father tried to contact the Jewish War Veterans of those city. And for Friday night, some of them came and took us children for dinner. ' In a later conversation with Mrs. Krieger she explained that a monopol was "like a post-office, you know, it was Green 28 -You know Cracow was not to far from Germany, and they still didn't have no ghetto; they were still free, you know, things like that. It did not belong to the Third Reich. Lodz was right away included to the Third Reich. Third Reich it means like Germany and it [Lodz] was right away changed, the name was changed to Litzmannstadt. That's how [Lodz] was in the First World War eventually [as well] ~ And tiien my fatiier decided that he have to smuggle himself back to Lodz -He could have go on as a non- Jew. He was a very good-lookmg man. I have pictures; I'll show you one day, later on— And he went on the ttain and went back to L6dz to see whether we still - he left us, all children, in tiie care of the other people that were there -to see whether we still have our home, what happened to my mother, my grandmotiier. So he said he'll be back within a few days. So my mother was still there. And at that tune they were aheady startmg to move, they moved all, they tried to move, the wealthy Jewish people tiiat lived downtown, you know, lived all over the city. They had already big beautifid apartments, with nmning water, with baths, you know. And they wanted to bring in Germans tiiere - from Germany. And they decided to make the ghetto. The ghetto was afready in tiie work, but we didn't know how it's going to be. Those are the most important things, you know, that I remember. The most important things. Lodz. My father went back, as I told you, JG: How did he get back? How was he able to? SK: On the tram. On the train. On a regular tram. He wasn't recognized. Because, you know, even the Germans and the Polish people when it comes to the Jews, they were very anti-Semitic. When h conies to kill Jews they collaborated with the Germans. Otherwise, they were patriotic for tiieir own country, but not when it conies to Jews. You know. JG: Did the Polish people know? SK: The Polish people didn't recognize my father. You know he spoke tiie language. He spoke Polish. We all spoke Polish. That's how it was m the schools. And he saw that my mother still there, that my grandmother was still there, and the home is still there. And he saw none of the people that live m the courtyard were tiiere because as 1 told you it was a very big courtyard. The only one lived there was the landlady, she was a young Jewish woman and the janitor. My father came back. Tells my motiier you have to come back you have to smuggle the whole family back to L6dz. And he came back, we didn't see him after a few days, we kids were crymg ~ we were occupied whether he made it or not. And finally, he came back. And he came with the idea that he was gomg to smuggle us somehow and run by the government, the Polish govemment." Green 29 my aunt with her family, too. He went and they grabbed some people for work in Cracow and he did a good job — whatever he did I don't know -but he did a good job from tiie place where they grabbed him. So they said - that was probably the army - must not have been the Nazi's or whatever - they said, they asked if they can (??) with anythmg for their job? My father says all I want is permission to go on the train and go to a city named Piotrkow. You have the map of Poland? Piofrk6w was a where quite a few Jews lived. It was not too far from Lodz, but it did not belong to the Third Reich. So, that's why he asked to Piofrk6w not to L6dz because they wouldn't give him So we came there. We went tiiere. We had to stop in; we had to stop, in a city named Keilce, for ovenuglit. We had, we found people that were smugglmg already, you know, people that, you know, that fried to make some money smuggling people from one place to the other. We found a place, somebody gave us a place where to sleep and late at niglit, in the middle of the niglit, we had to go the frain station. We went to the train station, waiting, you know, to catch the other train - to take us to Piottkow. And we were all children; we went in, inside the station, where it was warm. They were all sitting in, you know, smoking cigarettes, and you know, young girls and boys and things like that. As soon as we came in and tried to sh down, they chased us out. They chased us out. They said in Polish, "Jews out! Jews out!" So we were going like tiiat, you know, and it was so cold. It was maybe 25 below zero. The ice was so high. It was horrible. And they took my father to defrost with the torch, to defrost the train that was attached one to each other that was frozen. And they couldn't move, so he was laying on the ground with a torch to defrost that. And we was all scared, we were little kids, we were all scared. We thought that it was going to defrost and the ttain was going to start to move and kill my father. We were all crying. Then, an older officer, you know a military man, walked out and he saw us, you know, blowing like that and walking and he asks in Gennan, "What are you doing here children? It's so cold. Why aren't you inside?" So we told him the story, we told him the story. So he took us all in, and he said to tiiem, he wanted to show us, wanted to know which ones chased us out. We were afraid to say. So he said all those children are going to stay here, as long as they have to sit here, and no one will take them out. So they say, "But they're Jews." So he says, "So what if they are Jews? They're little kids. What would you do, what would you do if, if, it's in England and the children" (Because they must been already in war with England at tiie time. They were bombarding England.) "If something like that happened - sendmg the children out, your children out in such a weather? No body is going to touch those kids till they have to go." So, we realized that there's still some people with a littie heart, you know. JG: Was that a German? Green 30 SK: Yes, that was a German. But is was a military officer, must have been a high officer. He was a middle-aged man, an older man. And fmally the fram was defrosted and my fatiier came out. We all went out, we, we, all took turns lo go out, to check, with my father and while we were sitting. Also 1 think, you know, when you're kids you remember those. Anyway, we went to, we had our fram and we went to Piotrkow. We came into Piotrkow. We went to— Repetition arises because Mrs. Krieger was asked to restate part of her story that was believed to be lost on a broken tape. SK: He asked where do you have that much money from, so my father explained to him that this is tiie last day that you could find the monopol for the Polish money, and some people, some friends and relatives, did not have a chance to exchange their money for the German mark because they knew that my dad could have kept the merchandise from the monopol still, the next day for the money. So, that's why he had that much money, and he told my father to take all the change that he had on the table with him. He had, all the bills, the paper bills he took. And he got up and he told my fatiier to get up. While my father got up, the chair fell backward from itself, and he wanted to tell that my father tried to grab the chair against him, so he told Mm to go to the wall with his hands up. He took up Itis gun; he wanted to shoot him. And then he fell to his knees and was begging and kissing his knees, and he saw what was going on, the otiier guy, tiie Volksdeutsche, said tiiat is was tme, the chair fell from (by) itself So, he put the gun back, and he said, the father with children out, and the young mother remains here with the older mother. So he took us and all those people from tiie court yard and from the whole section, people that 1 did not know what to a place someplace far away from the city. They took us in open tmcks and we did not know where we were, but we were there like for a couple days and nights, then they took us to a train. The fram, you know, a cattle frain, like they did, and they took us and we were riding for, I don't know how long, a day or two nights. JG: How were the conditions on tiie frain? SK: Oh, it was horrible. The conditions on the frain were horrible. We were all kicked and dragged around. They probably didn't, we were young kids, and we did not realize what was happening to us. Then the train came in and we realized we were in Krakow. It felt just like sardines (??). Cracow was close to the Gemian border and they took us up in a big building, must have been a music school, with big, big rooms, and we put all of the bedding stuff, the comforters (??) and things on the floor tiiat was where we were living. There were no towels to wash ourselves, we Green 31 couldn't do nothing, and we found out that the Jewish community of Cracow might bail us out. 1 don't know what they would have done to us, but it was no ghetto in Cracow, and the life was still gomg on like normal. They also had probably a feeling that it's no good, but tiiey still had their businesses up and everythuig was gomg normal. JG: They weren't confrolled by the Germans? Yeah, they were controlled by the Germans, but it was not the Third Reich. It did not belong to Third Reich. My father, he found out where tiie Jewish War Committee was, but he could not do anything the Germans, and explained to him tliat he had young children where he is. So some people came on Friday rught, and they took some of the children for dinner to then houses, and after dinner, we went back to where we were, and this was going on for several weeks. Then, my father it was like it was no life; he had to go back to see if we still had our home, whether our motiier is still alive, and if anybody is, decided to come smuggle himself back to L6dz, and leave us children under tiie care of other people that were with; my oldest aunt, her motiier's sister, was her with her daughter and a young cluld, and he would be back in several days. He tried to come back in several days. As soon as he comes to L6dz, and sees that my motiier is still there, he will come back and he will start to fmd a way how to smuggle us back to L6dz._ JG: Did you know the ghetto was being built? SK: This was in the begiiming of Febmary 1940. In February or January, 1 can't remember exactly, but 1 know we were two montiis in Cracow, because 1 remember tiiem. They started to build a ghetto, to make ghetto; they did not realize what it was. Anyway, as the Nazis told him that he still had a home, he came back to Cracow. We were very worried, when we did not see him at that time like it was scheduled, and we were crying, we were scared maybe they caught him and tiiey did something to lum, but tiien finally he came back. He came back, and he said we have to fmd a way to help us move back to Lodz, so we can be there. And he went out of the street, and they were gathering people from all over, but they were not Nazis but they were probably just you know the Wehrmachts, the soldiers, you know, that had things to be done, you know, some cleaning, with some cold, whatever they needed (??). And one of the guys came out and he said, he asked my father what kind of work he would like for a job. He said, if you can give me permission, to go on the train with my family to get tickets from here to a city named Pieticov. The reason he picked Piotrkow is tiiat Piotrkow was the closest to Lodz but it did not belong to the Third Reich. They called the other part of Poland; they called Protektorade. It is a German word, Protektorade. 1 don't know how to explain all of this to you. Lodz was the Third Reich was considered Gemiany. JG: Was it in the Generalgouvemment? Green 32 SK: I guess so, whatever. That was considered, it was like it was in the First World War. L6dz was belonging to the Third Reich, they named it Lichtmanstadt right away, there was no Lodz. The Germans were there; the Nazis were there. The Jews had curfews there. They had a bedtime there too. They were taking them out and sendmg them away. They did not know where it was. There was a lot of little towns and everything. But L6dz was a really big city of ahnost a million people. Anyway, and he gave him pemiission. He decided he wanted to go; we packed our bags, whatever we had, and my aunt with her daughter too, and we decided one day that we would go. So one day, to go to Piotrkow we had to stop at a city that was called Keilce. We had to stop there overnight, and found a place where to stay there with a Jewish family that was there afready. Some of those Jewish families were already mvolved in smuggling people out, you know, from the Tlurd Reich, you know, to other part of Poland. So they let us stay, gave us place where to sleep. Then we wake up night, we had to go to the ttain station and we went there, we went into tiie station that was warm, you know, and people are sitting tiiere, soldiers and Polish people, they were drinking you know, and it was verj' wami, and a couple of them decided they were going to throw us out. They threw us out; they recognized we were Jews, we could not sit there. So we all went out, and oh it was so very cold, maybe 25 below zero, 1 mean Poland had very strong winters. And we were staying outside, and blowing in oui- hands and you know and knocking, stomping our feet together and everytlung, and all of a sudden, we saw like a gentlemen, a middle aged gentleman went out, he was in the militar>' unifomi but must not have been a Nazi, but he asked us "One of you lose tickets? You're staying outside, it is so cold. Why are you not inside?" We told him "We were inside, and they chased us out." He said, "Why?" So we told him, "Because we are Jews." He said, "Come with the children, I I take you in." We went in, and he said loud, he spoke out to all of tiiem, "[Do] not to tlirow those children out. It is * bitter cold outside, let them sit here, even if they have to sit on the floor, let them sit here." So, one of them went up, he said, "But those are Jews!" He said, "So what! They are still little kids. What would you tiiink if sometiung has happened in England with the Gennans and they would do the same thing to your kids, how would you feel?" So they let us sit, and they took my father, they took with tiie torch, you know to defrost, you know, the connection between one frain to another, you know those parts, I don't know what you call, the cables, they call those things, my father was lying on the ground with the torch, trying to defrost that. And, we were so afraid, so worried that we thought the ttain might move, and my father was going to get killed. We went out all the time, you know, took turns. This one, we changed, this one went out to see what my father was doing, fmally it got defrosted. JG: Was that unusual that they made him do that, or is that— Green 33 SK: They took lum because he was a Jew; otherwise, they had people who worked for the train, you know. So fmally, this ended, and the train that was supposed to take us to Plefrkov, arrived ui tiie moming, I don't remember when, what time, tiien we came into Pietrkov. Piefrkov was already, I don't know whether it was ghetto, but there were still open streets. They did not have no electric wires or nothing. And they had guards, you know, Gemian guards, and we asked him how to go to the Jewish community center. They started showing us, and we went to the community center and we stayed ovemight there. We asked if they could get us connections, to come by with the horse and wagon to take us from there to Lodz. We had to go through wagons (??) you know, and tiiere was a lot of snow and everything. So we were in the wagon and were traveling to L6dz. JG: Were there other families with you? SK: Yes, there was farmers and some others that were going ui the opposite direction. There was non-Jews. They recognized that we were Jews, and they were saying in Polish, they were saying, "Jews, where are you going? They building a ghetto for you, where are you going?" We did not know what a ghetto means. And one time, 1 remember the wagon went in a ditch, and there was a lot of snow and it tumed over, and we had such a hard tune to put it back, you know, to get it back on the bridge, because tiiere were a lot of people on there. My family, my aunts and imcles, another couple families that went along, and we were lucky that this happened, because there were Germans that were going on past there a few minutes before, and if they would have noticed us, then it would have been bad. So, while we were occupied with that, we missed them. And finally we get to Lodz. And we came L6dz and it was already like lught was falling afready and we are all stined up, because we run, and we wanted to ride sfreetcar, that was going in this direction to our house. So we get up. Everybody was separate, we did not know. And we arrive to our apartment at different times, two kids, three kids, and my father praised God that we arrived. We arrived, and we were together tiiere. And there was no more you know, could not work no more, could not do nothing no more. They were already building the ghetto, so people were already with the whatever they had that was able to pull with wagons, to pull the fumiture, and everything that was coming from downtown. They wanted all the Jews out from downtown and places where there were beautiful apartments, and they occupied Gennans from Germany there. They had to take them out and they had to make the ghetto for us, but they took that part of tiie ghetto. Probably right here, some places were the cmde places where people lived, but some places had no water no nothing. We had water in our courtyard. We had a pump that we pumped the water. And we started, and tiiere was black-market going on you know, non-Jews used to bring food, they used lo buy whatever we had, otherwise we later on the fact Green 34 tiiat they made it a ration tiiat you could buy. There was -for ration you could buy, go and buy some food, whatever it was. And that was Febmary of 1940. In May 1940, they closed up the ghetto. JG: When you came back, were there still Jews - SK: Yeah, there were those Jews that lived downtown because tiiey emptied the best part of the ghetto so they can help for those Jews from downtovra. JG: But were there still Germans there? SK: Yes, Gemians were always there. They were buildmg. JG: No, those that had lived there before. SK: Okay, there were some Gemians where the ghetto was. Matter of fact, my husband told me lus best friend was a Gennan, they had a neighbor who was a German, a guy lus age, and my husband had a very expensive bike and as soon as the Germans came in, you know, when those Germans that lived in Lodz from before joined them and tiiey started to work with the Nazis, well this guy this best friend of Ins, he said, "You have to give me your bike". He had to give it to him. He had no choice. He was afraid. Anyway, tiiey brought m all those Jews from downtown, tmcks came in, There were several families in one room that was a small portion of the city. And things were terrible. On May 1, 1940, tiiey closed up the ghetto because those, you know, all around, tiie ghetto was closed, where electric wares with lights. You see where the borders, there were electtic wires wherever you see electric wfres, there were guards. JG: Were you still living in your house? SK: Yeah, we still lived in the house; it was an apartment, in those big buildings, that had a lot of apartments. A cousin of mine gave me a picture, here. (Shows tiie picture.) See all these houses as it was in tiie photograph, there were a lot of houses behind this picture, and all around, you know, were squares. And behind those buildings were still that belonged to the same house number, buildmgs tiiat some people had you know small factories that tiiey build and the bakery, all different kind, industties, and those people lived in the same number, same courtyard. Those three windows was our apartment. This was the entrance to the apartment. This was the front of the house. This is, here you go in, and all day it was open. Twelve o'clock it was locked every night in normal tunes. Twelve o'clock was locked. And tiie janitor, if somebody came later, you know, before the war, somebody came later, and it was twelve o'clock, they pulled an iron, they pulled something, and entrance. You know those doors are locked, and Green 35 it was ringing in the janitor's apartment, so he came down, and he opened the door, he let them in. Some gave him a tip, you know. Up in this buildmg was a beautiful apartment in this building, where all professional people lived in there before the war. Even it belonged to the ghetto; some of them were beautiful apartments, beautiful houses, and you know, here they had gas cooking, you know, just in the front not on the side of the courtyard. And my cousin brought me those pictures. This was done like in the early nineties. He worked for El Al Airlines in Israel when he went there, he came here lots of tune, it did not cost him to fly, and he was lured to go to Lodz. His father died in the ghetto, my uncle. He died in the ghetto. He knew tiiat he was buried next to my grandfather that died a couple of years before the war broke out. And my grandfatiier already had a memorial stone where he knew how to find his father's grave, that he was next to his father. It was right up in (Points to the sidewalk in the picture.) and that it's empty. Before the war, it was fttil of people, full of people, all youths. It was everytiiing. So that's how 1 had the pictures. He made pictures were from everybody's, from the relatives where they lived. My children never want me to look at them, they put it away, but I found it accidentally looking for something. JG: Throughout tiie tune that the glietto was set up, in those years, were you able to only live with your family in your house, or did you have people come in? SK: We lived with only our family in our house. My grandmother was still with us, and she died late in 1940. She died because she did not have the little things that she needed, she needed a little milk, the tiungs she needed to survive, a little water. She was very fragile. She died in 1940 in the glietto. Her grave, he could not fmd, my cousm. He could not fmd her grave. They couldn't find his mother's grave. He could not find his brother's grave. They all died in the glietto, from starvation. They all died in tiie ghetto from starvation, We were a big family, I don't know, we were living you know with whatever we had. We cooked, we ate, we tried to manage. But thank God, we were still all together. But a lot of families, during the years in tiie ghetto, all the tune, we had deportation. They established the ghetto in May 1940. He was m charge of the ghetto, just like the govemment. JG: What was his name? SK: Rumkowski. JG: Oh, yes. SK: He was the president of an orphanage. He was well educated. 1 don't know how they picked hmi, but they picked him. There is an article in Peter Jermings' book, about how he dealt with the Jews. JG: Did you meet [Rumkowski]? Green 36 SK: 1 saw him once. He dealed witii tiie Germans, to leave the ghetto, people in L6dz. They goima establish factories, they gomia work, slave work for the Gennans, whatever they need, you know there were many different factories in the ghetto. And they gave us rations. Once a week, we went to buy the rations from the money that we were paid with ghetto money. They made money in the ghetto. It wasn't worth a tlung, but for this, we paid for tiie rations. Some people, you know, we used to say, in the beginning it was verj' little, each time got worse and worse and worse. They brought in people from different countries, from Germany, from Austria, that they probably took away tiie older ones to kill them, to take tiieni to the camps where they could kill them. And the younger ones, they brought in to the glietto. They took out people from us, from Lodz, this way, whoever they wanted, and the healthy ones they left. Later on, they started to deport (??) the children They .made and order tiiey want a list of who is going to go out, who was going to be deported. We did not know where tiie people were going. Nobody knew. It was so closed up that h was, we could not have any radio, everything was taken away. There were a couple of radios they said, that people heard that were hidden inside the walls or whatever, but it was only a little. If they caught them, they got executed. The whole thing was just unbelievable. People were dying in the street. Children sometimes had, they came out, and the parents died from starvation. Not everybody could take it. Some people killed themselves. They thiew themselves out from the upper floors to death because they could not stand the hunger. Hunger is very painful. Very painful if you have to be days without food. So they could not take it, and tiiey always, everyday when we went out every moming, when we met at place, we ask, the word Goil, the word goil, is a Hebrew word. This meant from verdict, so we ask what was verdict was going to be today. Those people that wrote that book, worked for the, like in the govemment of the ghetto. But then they wrote, like, diaries. Little diaries, every day, not every day but the days they imagined that it is not so risky that they could write what happened, you know. If you read, I don't know if you read the book, you read the whole book? JG: Almost all of it. SK; So it gives you an idea how it was. Anyway - JG; Do you think how they portray life in the ghetto here is how it actually was or do you think it was worse? SK: It was worse, a lot worse. Every time I heard tiiat they had like a big milk can, like they used to have, a big milk can and it was underground, you know. And tiiey knew where it was, so a couple of them survived, the one that wrote it. A couple of them survived, and after the war, they digged it out, and tiiey put that book together. There are many books, but those are the most one. We had that, 1 bought that book when we met in 1944, we met, in 1944, m Green 37 1984, we met on the Concorde to celebrate forty years of life of liberation, the sur\ivors. They had tiie books, and there they had the maps, and there we could find out everything. Now, 1 am going back to the deportations. The most that I remember, you know, that it was in 1942 in the summer, that I write in my memofr about the guy that was caught after the war in Hanover, Germany. JG: Herr Guther Fuchs? Is that who you are talking about? SK: No, no. Gunther [Fuclis]. In 1942, they made an order, they made it to Rumkowski was the head, the eldest, the Jews officer, they told liim they want 20,000 people. What kind of people? They wanted people that are under-aged, kids that were under 10, and older people, they want them out. So he had a speech, at midnight on the big night, and he asked a lot of people to come and he said, "Parents, give me your children. Give me your children." What parent would give up a child? We had to do it. He said, you're not going to do it tlus way, it is going to be a lot worse. Cause he had an order from the guard, 20,000 people. The ghetto started with 250,000 people. There was some people that came and some that escaped you know to the Russian zone, like I told you. Then, some that came in from little towns, from villages, and some that later on were brought in from Germany from Austria, from wherever he occupied, that he desfroyed a lot of people, he took a lot. When we went to work, we were seeing people laymg on the street dead. They died from starvation, they died from being beaten, you know. A lot of them were taken away and they eventually never came back so they sent them to camps that they already had. Not far from Lodz, tiiose that they were taken in the beginning, like 1941 and 1940, they were taking out people later on we found out that those people they gassed, not with the gas chamber, like they later on will, because the final solution really started in 1943, but they were getting them with the carbon monoxide, the exhaust from tmcks, you know, that is how they were getting them and that was horrible, that was a place that they called Belzist, not far from Lodz. But who knew that everything was so tight and so closed up; we were completely closed up from the world. We did not know. Whatever happened in Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, we did not know until after we survived whatever happened. Everything was so closed. Okay we were working the factories — JG: Whatt>'peoffactoo'? SK; All different factories -they had have sttaw factories, that was where they twisted straw to make braids like hair, and there was sewing boots, and those boots were for the soldiers who were fighting on the Russian border. They were carpenter factories. There were factories where tiiey made sweaters. -There was so many, I don't know Green 38 how to mention it. I was so yoimg, that 1 did not know how to mention it. I was working in the sweater factor}'. They had a department where they were was knitting sweaters by hand and that was where I was, and that was for the Nazi's, for tiie wives, for the children, you know, and I had to [while] one is still alive. 1 was working m the department where we were embroidering all the military insignia. Like the Flakenkreuz, you know what the Hakenkreuz is, the Swastika, for the flyers, the airplanes, and for the, they had a group called toten commander, toten means dead, they were for killing people. They had, you know, like a skeleton head. If you go to the museum, you probably will see all tiiosesigns . That was what I was embroidering. That was my work. I started in 1941, spring, until the end, August 1944. Nobody can describe how bad it really was, nobody. In 1942, when the fathers did not want to give the children up, they decided they were going to make a curfew called a spehi' (??) in German, We could not go out fromwher e we lived. Everybody had to be in their own house, their own apartment, and so forth. It took two weeks, I guess, two weeks. And they went from house to house, you know, everybody had to come down to tiiecourtyards , stay like in a circle, approach him, liis name this guy was Gunther Fuchs. Whoever he wanted to be to life, he sent to one side, whoever he did not want to be to life, was sent to that side. The children were the fu^t, and tiie older people. JG; Did you know what was happening? Why they were doing this? SK: I was involved; 1 was in it! JG: But did you know why he was splitting people up? SK: This was afready when the final solution started. You know, they wanted the killing machine to work. JG: But were you aware of that? SK; Ach- if we saw young kids and older people going to one side, and you know, people like 17 and 18, 19 and the 20's, tiie young people go on the other side, we realized they were taking them away for sometliing. They had taken three of the youngest kids fromus , my family was taken. They were taken on the other side, on the left side of the courtyard. There was a wagon where the German soldier was standing and a policeman was standing, but we had policemen, we had firemen, we had everything in the ghetto. It was just like a govemment. You know, was established. And, tiiere was a lot of kids that went. The Jewish policeman was a friend of my father. You know. There were two brothers and the youngest one was a girl. The older brother was, 1 do not know how old, he was then about ten, or eleven. He saw the Jewish policeman. He knew him. So he wiggled his eye to him, like giving him a sign that he wanted to escape. And the German was tumed around. He was watching the other side. So, the boy Green 39 escaped. He jumped from tiie wagon. He escaped to the other side to a house, to a courtyard from anotiier stteet, but they were coimected. And there was a bumed up house, so ran up there into the bumed up house. He was hiding. The younger one was only about fifteen months apart; he did the same thing. He escaped and also ran behind him. The little girl did the same thing. Escaped. But she did not run there. She ran to the house that was next to it. She went up on the last floor and opened the door, tiiere was a woman laymg in bed. So she was hiding under her bed. The whole day, the rest of the day, all those mothers and fathers whose children were taken away, and the other people that were taken away, I can still see the faces, the way they looked. It was unbearable. They were crying; it was terrible. They did not know where then children were. We knew they were taken away but they did not know where they were. We tiiought maybe something happened later on when it was dark already. The policeman told my fatiier that the oldest one escaped. He did not know about the other two. The oldest one escaped. So tiien it was real bad. We were gomg around, and he told us that he escaped that he went to the other courtyard, but it was in a different street. It was a house in a different street, but there were openings that you could go through. JG: Do you know where it is on the map? SK: I think it was Propetchnot. I think it was Propetchnot. Anyway, I'll try to look later. So what we would do, we would go around, the whole courtyard went to the other house and everyone was calling their names, called the cluldren's names. Eventually, they were afraid to go out until it was real, real late. The older one went out, and the other went out. And tiie little girl came in. It was about 7 or 8,1 don't know. We were all kids. There were some kids that were babies, toddlers. They could not go. It was a horrible tragedy. But life goes on. And one day, we woke up in the moming and we heard they took otiier people from the hospital. There was a building that, like a medical buildmg before the war, and they made it in the ghetto for a hospital. There was no medicine. Nothing. Not even an aspirin later on. But, some people were in the hospital. Very few women became pregnant. But it was the food that tiiey gave us. We realized that the food that they gave us, the rations, must have been something in it that we did not get our period. You know. We did not get our period. So, very seldom, anybody that was pregnant in the ghetto. There was a few people that were in the ghetto that were having their babies. During the middle of the night, they threw [the sick people] out through the windows into a wagon [that] was standing on the side by the building. The woman that gave the babies, and the other people that were sick, that were in the hospital. The people that lived near that building, heard a lot of noise during the night. And then they heard the Yiddish, in Hebrew, "My Israel!" My Israel that means you know, God help us, things like that. We found out that at the hospital I have a cousin, a Green 40 janitor, he's a second cousin, but his father had to be in the hospital. 1 cannot mention all those terrible things that happened because it is impossible, it's unbelievable, if I tried to think myself, I don't know how I survived. I don't know whether it was pure luck or whetiier maybe, 1 was the same size at the time when I was twelve or thirteen I did not go tell them. Maybe my body could take less that 1 eat, you know, I did not have that much food. Maybe it was better this way. I don't know. I don't know. A lot from my family that were in tiie ghetto, most of them died. Some of them made it to 1941, some of them to 1942. The aunt, the daughter that I told you about, was with us together in Cracow. They took out the parents, they took out child. She was left alone. She was left alone. She went to the apartment after the selection and eventually she became insane, thinkuig wliat happened to her. A couple days later, my father was going back from work and he saw her standing ui the side of tiie house, and he said to her in Yiddish, Hannah, what are you doing here. She closed him up. So, right away we realized that she became completely insane mentally. That people that tiiat had called, where they had a jail. People that committed some, you know, terrible thing. Wliat was the little thing, some people, there was no heating, and you know, we had coal heat and wood, but none of it was available, none of us got to get it, and it was very cold at night. So some people went out during the night, not in the main street where the guards were standing, to see if tiiey could get up somethuig, maybe from a old empty house, a piece of wood or a log (??) to bum. If they were caught, they were thrown right into jail. That's when [they cauglit him]. They took him out whenever they took out at the end from 250,000 to that many people that came in from the other part of in the ghetto that they brought in was only 80,000 left in 1944. So you can imagine how many died, how many were killed, how many they deported, how many people we never heard of But my family was still whole. No matter how hungry we were, we did our best to stay togetiier, we were still whole. In 1944 when they started the complete liquidation. JG: I know it's hard to talk about but could you explain some of the terrible, terrible things that you saw? SK: 1 saw a lot of terrible things, but tiie terrible things 1 saw when [Gunther Fuchs] made that terrible selection in 1942, lots of folks were when, each one had to face him. There was an older woman, and she must have been a widow that was brought in from Germany, you know, and she tried to open her moutii in German, and right away pulled out the gun and killed her on the spot, And he said, "Take this frash away". And there was a janitor, 1 think my fatiier was janitor at that time in the ghetto. Later on, he worked in a factory where they brought in shoes that were searched already, you know, from the deported people from Austria and Gemiany, and so they opened that Green 41 hoping to find a lot of gold and a lot of diamonds, you know; tiieGerma n were very well to do, a lot of them, and they were hiding whatever they owned in shoes, in clothes, whatever. All those things came into the ghetto, and they were standmg, the Germans, the Nazi guards were watching and taking people away. Ahh, that's one. That is one of the terrible tilings. And he wanted to kill my father. That was just as tenible. JG: Is there any other tiungs you remember? SK: What? JG: Are there any other situations that you remember? SK: You mean in the ghetto? There were a lot of bad things that happened, but 1 can't explain a lot of tlungs mvolvmg people, taking them. But what can I tell you. JG: Canyoutt7? SK: Hull? JG: Can you try to explain how it was? SK: They made some people to work, and if they did not work, or if they think they did not do it right, they were killed. Every courtyard, you know, whenever they had the gas, here we have batiis you know before the war, a big place where everybody had a key to a door to go in. They had to take all, I don't know how to say it in English, had to take ail the dirt out, they had them in wagons with people pulling it. Tiiere are pictures there, here too, of people pulling it. How bad can it be? Everyday we saw the bodies, the corpses, and they carried tiiemt o the cemetery. It was just terrible. It was just unbelievable. Unbelievable. I can tell you, you know it's bad now, we were a family. I was the only one of the children who survived, and my father survived. JG: Eventually, not just m the ghetto. That was overall. SK: Yeah, he survived the camps too. 0, tiie most part that 1 remember was from the glietto, because we were in the ghetto, the ghetto was closed up in May 1940, and was 1944, we were deported for good. JG: Were you one of the last people? SK: Yeah, the last people. Yeah, They tried, tiiey did first on our side of the ghetto, and we had a cousin, the one who lives in Canada, his family was on the otiier side of tiieghetto . But during the night, you know, to the different streets that you could go to, not to pass the guards, we went to their side of the ghetto, we were buying time, trying to be careful inside the ghetto two days later they were all taken out together. Green 42 JG: Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski's motto was: "Our only path to siu^ival is through work," Do you believe that what he was doing, making you work in order lo be able to prevent from being deported [was right]? SK: That was tiiegliett o that made him the First Eldest, it means in charge of the ghetto and he organized everything you know like police, and the fire department, and people that were taking care of the food industry and things like that. We told he was working for the Gemians, tiiat was what we were told. There were songs that tiiey were singing about him, you know they made poems and songs in the ghetto. And even, how bad it was in the ghetto, the first year we still had a school, I was going to school in 1940. And we had people that were actors and artists, they were juggling, like theafres that they made, but that was the first couple of years, not the last two years. JG: Do you believe that how he was trymg to make it so the Jews were able to survive? Do you think that he was acttjally for the Jews? Do you believe what he was doing was good? SK: Yeah, now we are thinking, and 1 heard, that was at a meeting not long ago that we had a speaker and we were talking about tiiat,s o now tiiey studying, there is a special group tiiat they are sttidying those things that happened in the ghetto. Now, before they told me that he cooperated with the Germans. Because all the orders the Germans gave, he had to give it up to us, and if we didn't follow it, the Germans came in themselves and they did it themselves. But through studying we think that the cooperation that we had them is to prolong the lives of the ghetto. Actually, we were tiie last ghetto in existence in Poland. To prolong the lives, to bide time. Nobody believes that, I mean some people believe that there's gonna be an end to it. How long can it take, tius war the way it's going on, somebody is going to survive right when they took us to the last deportation, to Auschwitz, you know, and I remember when my father had some American money, he gave every kid like a twenty dollar bill and I put it in my pocket in the suit that I was wearing. Here children, if you ever come to a place and you need to help yourself, this is the money that the whole world will accept, American dollars, may be you will be able to help yourself with it. I think this is the way it happened. Then we came to Auschwitz. JG: How did you get to Auschwitz? On the cattle train? SK: On the cattle train, they were so well prepared, the Gemians, they did everything with such psychology that some people really believed. All the time we were starving and here they gave everybody some bread. Everyone had bread. They said nothing could happen to us. They did not beat us at the time of the deportation, they helped us up on to tiie cattle train some of them, they said nothing is going to happen to us. They just were taking us to a Green 43 different ghetto where we were going to work and we were going to be with the family. Rumkowski used to say that too, Now thefr hair would be missing fromou r head, you know. JG: Did you believe them? SK: We did not believe them. Wlien we went inside, we were on the ttaui, and we saw the situation on the train, who did we believe? We could not believe in nothing anymore. We knew tiiati t conies to some kind of destmction. They picked when we faced Mengele. And we were all still dressed up, and we faced him. And he made a selection. And we were right away split when we came down from the train. There were people that were walking (working) in the camp from long before and with the Gemians, and they started to scream "Raus, Raus," Raus means get out, get out. Fast, fast, fast. Everybody was splitted apart; we did not know where everybody is. I managed to stay with my motiier and the two youngest children went the other way from my mother, and when we came up we faced him, we did not know who he was. Later on we found out it was Mengele. We faced him. He made me, I was already 17 or 18 years old, he made me go to this side. And he tried to split -he had a cane because he had an accident once on a motorcycle, and he had some damage on one of his legs, so he walked with a cane — and he friedt o split tiie two younger children to the other side. But my motiier held onto them so tight that he said go with them, so she went with them. And I went this way walking with thousands of people. I went walking this way. 1 had my head down towards my mother's side. (Looks over her right shoulder.) And I saw my mother was doing the same tiling,ha d her head down towards nie (Looks over her left shoulder). As long til we got lost, til she got lost in the crowd and I got lost in the crowd. That was the last time I saw my mother and the children, the youngest two children. And then the older boy, I don't know what happened to him. Probably, the same thing, but he wasn't at the same lime with us. But when I asked my father whether he was in camp with him, he said no. And I asked that cousin that is in Canada, because we went together, whether he saw him, and he said no. So they must have done the same thing; they put him to the other side, and they ail went to the gas chamber. JG: Your father went to, I thought your fatiier - SK: No, no, the night we were spending in the big, big, long room like two blocks. In a line to go be shaven, shave our heads and to the baths, to have a shower. There was a gfrl in the same transport -1 told this to my children a few times already -there was a girl standing in the back. Here we were standing already naked, because when we came in, they had a speech that we had to take leave everything where we are standing, get undressed completely naked. And don't try to hide anything, because they can find anywhere anyplace. Because some people tried to hide thefr Green 44 gems, diamonds, or whatever they had witii them, they're gomia be shot riglit away. Cause they're gorma find anything. We were staying in this long, and in this Ime was a giri from the same courtyard with us, and she had two or three older brothers, I don't remember, they were little, I remember one Passover we used to go, after our Passover was finished. We used to go stay beliind tiie window and listen to them singing, you know, and everytiiing. She was together with us. So, then a big window on the other side of the wall, there were big windows with one curtain, one drape covering it, That girl knew that she had three brothers, and she noticed through the little spaces outside of the window that there was a man behind. You know, the women went fust to the baths. The women's transport. And the men that he picked were beliind. And then they were also to go take tiiose showers and leave thefr clothes and go into the showers. She was going to the window to open the drapes to see if she can notice one of her brothers, and she was beaten with a rifle butt on her head, the Germans were beating her all the time. Her face was bleeding, and they kept beating her, and she kept on nmning and miming and saying, she told us, me and my sister, that she tliinks she saw our father in the line behind. So we knew, at least we had in mind that he's between the living. That he was the one that [was] picked to live. At least we were always thinking and always dreaming while we were all three still alive, that maybe our father would survive. He was forty-four years old. Bom in 1900, he was forty-three years old. So we thought maybe he was alive. I am going to go back a little to what I told you about the spalir (??), in 1942, the selection. It is on both those pages two fifty two and two fifty three. (Reads from The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto: 1941-1944.) "[The criteria for specific inspections varied greatly, as is demonstrated by what occurred at] 38 Zgierska Sfreet. This building, which has many outbuildings, (like 1 explained to you) is inhabited by more than two hundred families. One of the outbuildings on the right-hand side also (had) an exit window but faced #40. (Points to the picture: There is #38 and this was #40. And —40 had a lower building.) Inspection of 38 Zgierska Sfreet was already completed, while the one in the neighboring building was still in progress; the inhabitants of the fu^t outbuilding, who had been exempted from resettlement retumed to their apartments, and, out of curiosity, looked out their window at the operation in progress in building next to theirs. This was noticed by the inspecting officers, who then ordered everyone out into the courtyard. During the new inspection, forty of the fifty people present were selected for deportation. It was only due to intervention by Aron Jakubowicz (somebody with that name) that many Green 45 of those people, work shop employees for the most part, were released. A few, however, did fall victim to (the Germans).^ Because they had a (??) there too. But it is, they saw the people tiiat were looking out of the window from Zgierska 38. They would notice that he did not take all those people that he was mtended to. So they ordered, a couple of days later, [that] we [have] another selection. But we had to be closed up and come down and face him. So we were afraid today tliat they were going to take away the three youngest children and our mother. So what we did, we hid them in a double basement. Every tenant in tiie building, there was under the main building a big, big, long basement. And every tenant that had an apartment was divided by a basement. So the next time when we heard we were going to have selection, we took the three youngest children with our mother with whatever candles we had, 1 don't know, down to be there in the apartment that belongs to us. The apartment was locked and then we locked the mam enttance to the basement, that was facmg the coiulyard, with two double locks. We had keys. We gave them a key, to her, the children and the mother, and we put away the other set of keys someplace in the apartment, that everybody, with the older children and my father knew where it is. So in case someone from us won't be taken to the fransport, we know how to open and to get them out if they won't go, The children were having to leam how to survive there. They lived another two years until the end, 'til the liquidation of the ghetto. I mean how did this, how does it happen? The beatings. Right in the beginning. They're carving the skin with the flesh of the people with the -they kicking them, taking out the Rabbis, the biggest Rabbis, they're kicking them. They're kicking them witii their feel and with thefr rifles. And later on when the glietto was closed, they were not inside unless they came in to inspect in tiie factories how we were working. They were inspecting where I was working. I remember one was standing behind me, watching the way 1 go with that needle, because they were looking whether we don't do work to sabotage them. 1 mean, it's so many years, who can remember everything to describe? It's, but those are things that 1 will never forget. And the way my mother went with the children, and the way I went this way. This 1 can never forget. This stays always in front of my eyes. And, 1 wa.s twelve days in Auschwitz. And from Auschwitz we were taken to Stutthof And agaui, they took away our clothes and they gave us sacks. Some had uniforms. Some had, you know, those with the stripes. Those were the ones that were really a long time in the camp. But the people that were building Auschwitz that were taken away in 1940, 1941, they were builduig Auschwitz from the start up, from the ground. They were building It is important lo note that the book states: "A few, however, did fall victim to chance.* Green 46 those barracks and everything. Those were the ones that had those uniforms witii the sfripes. But us tiiey gave rags to put on. They already had tom rags that they had from the people that, was afready inspected, that they looked already for the gold and diamonds. Those people tiiey killed afready, that was the clothes that were given to us. No underwear, no bras, no socks. Just tlus sack that we were wearing on us. And they gave you shoes; there was piles of shoes that everyone, when we got out of tiie back, had to grab a pafr a shoes and go. And we stayed and watching. I have a very small foot; I wear a size 5 or S'/j. Me tiiey made grab a pair of shoes with high heels that was may be size 4, and that's how I was until I went out of Auschwitz. Then we had to go through one more time a selection, and we went out of Auschwitz. We did not know where we were going, but there had to be undressed completely, and it was overnight. We had to wait probably until the train is going to arrive. And we were living naked, naked until the 12*^ of September on tiie ground. Naked on the ground; one, two, traveled like sardines in the boxes. They only gave us two blankets to cover ourselves. And later on, we had to go and face lum. I will never forget that. -I was talking to my cousin in Canada when I was there last time; he had an aunt that was from the other side of the family, not from my side of the family, but he had an aunt that she was stayed together with this mother because his father was taken out of the hospital, you know, like I explained you, staying with his mother and the rest of tiie children with the five boys. Ortiy one survived. They were little kids. One of his aunts was with us in the same group. She must have had chicken pox when she was a kid because she has spots on the face.- When we first arrived, we were still all clothed when he selected us. We were still in our clothes. But he did not notice; he just looked for whether we young enough and old enough. But when we were going out of Auschwitz, we were naked, so this we was five in row, had lo approach him, watched. This girl was together with us, she was a lot older than us, that we were happy that she was witii us. So he noticed her face. And she had scars all over her body too that she probably, either she had small pox or whatever she had as a child -because she was living in a little town, you know, and shortly before tiie war, they came lo live where the family lives -so I remember he noticed on her face. And then he told her lo tum around like that, [and] show[ed] her with his finger, to tum around like that. (Twiris her finger in the air.) And she tumed around like tiiat, and he sent her to the other side, to the gas chamber. The side of the gas chamber. -The last time I was in Canada, we always stay with that cousin. He is very well to do, he's a builder and lives in a mansion. But we always stay with him when we come there. And the last time I talked with him about it. Green 47 because I remembered what happened to her, I forgot her name, I told him the way she was taken away. She was in her middle twenties, you know, late twenties. And, she did not go to Stutthof, but she went the otiier way. Eventually, we went to Stutthof, we did not know. We did not know. [We] fraveledfo r two days. I don't know. The trains had little openings. They are just like for aiumals where they transfer. A little opening. Whenever tiiey came to a stop, we saw people. And so we screamed, "Water! Water!" And there were some kids. You know, there were trymg to bring water. They were German kids, but they did not know, and the guards chased them away. And we came to SttJtthof JG: What else do you remember about Auschwitz? SK: What? JG: What more do you remember about Auschwitz when you stayed there? SK: Oh, I remember the same thing happened, we had to go out very early in the morning, 4 o'clock in the moming, stay outside, they called it "an Apell", apell means a counting. They were counting us. Late in the afternoon. Certain times. They were counting how many of us. We were thirty-five. Some people were so sick that [when] we stand up in a row, the other one had to hold them. You know, hold them, they're hands, so they wouldn't faint. And the counting was taken for three hours. In all this ice and all this snow. Stand freezing. In Auschwitz, what they gave us. They gave us a piece of bread, I don't remember, whether it was in the moming or late, but a slice of bread! Then they brought us big buckets, big kettles with soup and whoever was sfrong enough and had a bowl or somethuig with tiiem,runnin g up to tiiefoo d that they gave us in the bowls, and five people had to sip from the same bowl. No spoon, no notiung. Five people had to sip. The first three days, 1 could not take one sip. My appetite, my everything, was taken away. 1 guess I was in shock, you know? I was in shock, 1 couldn't take it. So, I lost my appetite. After three days, the hunger pains started to work on me. I was not that sfrong to go and fight with the girls to let me have a sip. 1 was . ..it is very hard to explain. JG: Canyoutty? SK: You cannot imagine! How barbaric they were, you cannot imagine. And then in the smaller places, they took people, they gathered the people in certain places and they took tiiemt o the woods. -I had a neighbor, and he comes from Latvia. So his parents and all those people that looked a little older, whatever, they took them to the woods, and they had to dig their own, they dug ditches and they bumed them, they shot them, and they bumed them. Some of the family members were still alive, and that was what they did in a lot of places. - All in those smaller places, Green 48 you know. That's what they did. It is unbelievable. And then we came to Stutthof We didn't do nothing in Stutthof. At least we did not sleep on the groimd. But they had the bunks, empty bunks with no mattresses, no nothing. But we were like three or four giris to a bunk. Tliree. And they brought us sometime some cooked leaves, green leaves, the bottom was full of sand. Because it wasn't washed. Whatever they gave us. Some days they didn't give us Nothing! We could not wash. The buildings in Smttiiof, they must have been for buildings for the Hitler younglmg in the early years. Because they had a bathroom; they had toilets; they had sinks with water. So the first couple of days, we were going and washing up! And a little water, we thought this was paradise already. A couple days later, they came in and one of them. Stmck me. Stmck me, he started to scream, "Raus, Raus!" Raus means out, out! One of them stmck me; I fell to the stone ground and I hit my head. And from then on, the bathrooms were locked. No water, no washing, no notlung. There was a big ditch outside, with special places, special wood [you] make like a place to sit down. And we were able to sit, and that's how we, that was our bathroom, The guards were on top standing, like by a jail, you see, on top, the guaids. In a little kiosk. And was life. Sometimes, tiiey came to select for some kind of work. We did not know what the work [was]. But we always -with tiiree giris- [tried]. They love it that we would always mn togetiier, and mshed to be selected for work. Somehow, they did not take us. Maybe we looked too young for them, or whatever. That was in Febmary. I got typhus. I was lying for I don't know how long with a verj' lugh temperature. And my sister used to say 1 was talking so much, she got out of the way. 1 did not know what 1 was saying. But eventually I got out from the sickness, I became better. When I became better, I could not walk. I was so weak I couldn't walk. 1 had to, like a baby when it starts to walk, I had to hold myself all around. My younger sister was taken out from where I was, she was taken in another barrack, a distance away, we did not know. But every banack had these fences in between them. We could not go. One day, they all escaped. The Germans. And we opened up the gates, and we ran from place to place. We were mnning. Some ran to the kitchen and got tiie little bit that they found and we were going around from [one] barrack to another-me and my younger- sister looking for the youngest one. And we were calling her name, "Golda Goldberg, Golda Goldberg," Oh! She showed up in one of the banacks. She was afready swollen! Her stomach swollen. Her feet swollen from hunger, from the disease. -But you know some girls keep a piece of bread, save it for later, they were stealing one from the other, keep the piece of bread for her life. -And she was such a beautiful giri, 1 look once a month, she looked so much like a sister of mine. She was already so sick that we took her to the barracks. They chased us all the time out Green 49 for the count. It was snowing, it was raming, it was Febmary, and she was in such pain. Even if we got something to eat, she could not eat nothing. She was in terrible pain. She did not have no - She had thrown up, but only the stomach juices came out of her. And they were already taking people up for the Death March. We did not know what the Death March is, but we think they were saying they had [to take] us far away. They said the army, the Russian army, is approaclung -tiie enemy army- and they did not want the army to catch us. And we did not know because she was so sick, she could not walk, so we were waiting when she died. She died rightwhe n I fell asleep. She died wlule 1 was still awake, and so that, I don't know when it was done, she was different. I started to push her, "Dakka, Dakka" - that was her name. And she opened her eyes, and she said in Polish, "Where was I, What did I see?" So she lived for anotiier few hoius, and 1 was with my behind lymg to warm her stomach, that was how sick she was, and then she passed on while I fell asleep. So we took her outside, later, there were already corpse lying, everywhere, ten, fifteen, twenty tiiousand people were dying, we did not know. We tiiought it was maybe the cholera, whatever, tiie disease plus starvation. Then we decided that they were going to go to fransport. Later on, we found out that the old people that stayed with us, they were liberated by tiieRussians . Instead of going to Stuttiiof, it probably would have been better if we wouldn't go. And then we decided that we were going to go and we went one day. We went a whole day walking in the ice and snow with the soldiers. The soldiers got tired, the Nazi's, so they took us in a smaller camp that was someplace tiiere,an d it was an Italian camp. I think it was a camp because we saw men that were Italian. They were working in fields,an d farms or something. And, they must have been political prisoners or whatever, and they had some barracks with giris, too, and those were Jewish girls. (Holds up a picture, see Appendix 1) That was my sister that was a year younger than me. That's the only picture 1 [have]. JG: The youngest one? SK: That's the one that was a year younger than me. She was a tall girl. See, she and another gfrl are the tallest girls in the whole row. Botii my sisters who were younger than me, a year and fifteenmonth s and they were a lot taller than I was. They were growing faster. I made a picture. We made a picture, this is a little picture 1 want it donated to the Holocaust Museum, h's a story to titispicture , how we got it. And, 1 went with her. There was a barrack, and they had a lot of hay lying there. We were hiding under the hay. And we decided we are not going to go anymore. Because if we go, they either they were gomg to kill us or... So we were hiding in that camp. And that camp lasted. There were so many girls with frozenlimbs , frozen Green 50 hands, and everything. I was the healthiest of all of them. 1 was changing the bandage of one of the girls that got frozen and you could see only the bones out of the toes. I went outside in the snow washing it and hang it up to dry. Outside there were mountains of dead bodies, corpses, [of giris] tiiat [had] died. I dried it, and, I mean, she was blessing me. Later on, I found out that she died, 1 met some gfrls that niglit that she died. My sister was sick already. -One day m Smttiiof, they brought a barrel with baked potatoes, cooked potatoes, [and] she went out between all the gfrls, whoever was throwing the potatoes. 1 [woitid] never [go]. 1 was afraid. She went out to get a potato. She was tall like 1 told you. Because she was tall, he grabbed her. And it was an Italian guard -those Italian guards were even worse than the Germans; were very anti-Semitic- He was a prisoner in the camp but they made them guards. And he grabbed her. He had a stick like a baseball bat, and he hit her over the head. And he hit her so much. I was staying some distance, and I was watching; I hated watching. And when she came back a couple days _» later, she started to spit up blood. She must have had some of tiie disease already. She spit out the blood .- O , the same moming, early in the moming, we were liberated the same aftemoon. But early in the moming, the Gennans escaped completely because the Russian army approached. They escaped [and while they were escaping they] were throwing hand grenades. 1 don't know whether they were throwing them to kill us [or] 1 whether the Russians were throwing. A hand grenade went into the barrack where I was. And the whole ceiling, the whole roof, collapsed, and I was completely covered. 1 was lying unconscious under the wood. Nobody saw me. I did not know what was going on. And, a while later, 1 must have woke up out of unconsciousness. 1 heard my sister screaming, "I see everybody!" in Polish, "1 see everybody except my sister! 1 see everybody except my sister!" Then probably when I finally regained consciousness, 1 started to move with my legs. And some of the girls noticed that under the mins, tiiere was moving. They ttied to move away the mins, and tiiat is where I was. That was right here. (Points to her nose and back.) My hands here had holes full of where you could see the bones, a piece of nose missfrig. I had a grenade splinter that went througli tiie kidney, and landed through the kidney and was fraveling through the tube that connects the kidney with tiie bladder. And when that piece of iron, that piece [of] steel was Inside, and it was moving close to tiie bladder; I had terrible bladder attacks. That was after we were liberated already. Terrible bladder attacks when it was traveling in the kidney because it wasn't a liquid, you know? It was fraveling. JG: Were you in Stutthof right now or were you in the Italian... ? Green 51 SK: Not Stutthof, that was that little camp where we were staying. And we were liberated the same day, and you know right away they gave us food, they gave us water, and a couple days later, they established a field hospital because they had some of their own soldiers that were injured. A couple of field hospitals. They had doctors with them, and then they examined us. 1 was sent to anotiier department, to another room. And my sister, they sent her to anotiier one. And it was still, you know, those barracks were damaged a lot of tiiem. And [tiie dirt] was getting in; everything was infected. I still had that piece sitting in [my] hmgs, but it is not moving. JG: That piece of what? SK: [Of] a sharp nail. My sister, who was in another department, she was looking for me. 1 was looking for her [too]. I could not go down because 1 couldn't walk. They transferred us later on. They made a bigger hospital [near] Danzig, [The field hospital] was near Danzig. Stutthof and everything was near Danzig. And whenever I heard they were transferring people, I asked to be transferred. Each place I came, I was looking for my sister, [even] when 1 couldn't walk already. They told me that she wasn't in there; she was transferred to another hospital. Then 1 looked all over Danzig, wherever I saw a hospital. And wherever I came, tiiey did not know. In Toppel, they knew she was there. She was looking for me, I was looking for her, and she was looking for me. Anyway, she was ver>' sick when 1 came to the last hospital. Tiiere was nuns that were nurses, and I asked them. She said that they had a girl like that and she wanted to go to a Polish hospital, so they sent her to a different cit>', to Tolvner. JG: To where? SK: The name was Tolvner. 1 have papers from this hospital, but she died there. She died there. With this diagnosis. (Holds up a piece of paper.) My fatiier showed this diagnosis to a doctor here. [He said] if she would have been here, she could have been treated. You know the Russians had no penicillin, none of those things at the time tiiat she needed. That's 1939, this picture was the graduating class, her graduating class of 1939 with the teachers, the faculty, some parents. That was her. Tliat is the only picture 1 have from my whole family. Some girls used to come in to our house, and we had friends, things like that. That's all I have from my whole family [before the war], After several months, they released me from the hospital, they gave me something to wear. The Russians, and they gave us enough money just for the tram to go back from where we come. So we went to Lodz. Another gfrl that was from Licka, from Lithuania, was with me. She did not want to go to Lithuania because Lithuania, in the Green 52 Ffrst World War, was Russian. Full of the Russians, And she knew it was [still] full of the Russians. She did not want to go. Even Poland was full of Russians too. But Poland was different. So she came with me to Lodz. JG: Why was Poland different? SK: Poland was always patriotic for its size. Before the Cold War ended, the Polish people started to revolt, you remember, it was in Danzig; in the shipyards. What was his name? I have forgot. He became later on the president. One of the slupyard workers started to orgamze somethuig. And -I forgot his name-but Poland was the first one because they had a govermnent whatever it was. [Democratic] Anyway, I was a few months August, September, middle of October, I mtended to go, 1 was working for some people who, they were a couple of brothers, they had a factory, tiiey had a clothing factory, they made a small shop there and had a few people working for them. They lost their farruly and so 1 was lured for them, working for tiiem, 1 cooked for them. So at least 1 had something to eat. And that girl, 1 introduced that girl that came with me to one of the men that was workuig there, and he lost his wife and tliree children. He was still a young man, but he lost his wife and three children. And after one week, they were married. So she made me stay with them in that one room. So I had a place where to sleep, at least. Because the first few days, we were sleeping in the attic. On top in the attic. And we were afraid, because a lot of Polish people were killing Jews in Poland after the wai-. There were organizations tiiat they called them AGAR. 1 don't know what it stands for, AGAR. It was very anti-Semitic. Even going on tiie frain, back from the hospital to Lodz, the trams in Poland have small compartments. Here you go ui, it's all one, people sitting on both sides. In the Polish train, at that time, had small compartments. So I was sitting vnih this gfrl, and there came m two young soldiers, Polish soldiers, and tiiey started to talk, you know they see two gfrls and they start to talk back and forth, and they realized that we were Jews. Each time the train started to go, they were trying to open tiie window. But the windows were so old, probably stuck, they could not open them. 1 realized that they trying to throw us out with the speeding train, through the window. So 1 told to the girl each time when they made stops, you know, tiie little towns, each time, 1 told her we had to follow, wherever tiiere is a stop, we have to go to anotiier compartment. They followed us. And each tune, they tried to open the window. They couldn't. They wanted to open another one, and tiiey wanted to kill us while we were riding on the tram. So finally, we were lucky they got off a lot earlier than we did. So when I came to Lodz. I looked for a special place where they have already like a committee; where they have names people are looking for -the loved ones, for family, for everything. So we went, we read it a day or two. I Green 53 could not fmd nobody tiiere on the list. She had afready somebody that [she] was married to -a guy already from Lodz. We met him on the train m Danzig, at the frain station. He started to talk to her. She said she lived in L6dz, and he told us where he lived. So we went to there. But we did not have no place but with nobody, so we slept on top of the attic on the little gravel stones; until 1 found a place where to work with those two brothers in the tailor workshop. I am mixuig up so I am going back. So I infroduced her to this guy, and after two weeks they were married. Like 1 told you. I was living with them in the same room. Later on when I was walking in the street, I met a guy that lived in tiie same builduig when I lived here; we were living here, he was living here. He had one room with a wife and two children. Both the wife and two children perished. His sister-in-law survived, his wife's sister. But we were going with her. I met him a couple of times. We were very happy to see each other, you know, and I was telling him that maybe on one of the stores 1 could work. I have to work and make a little bit of money when I go. In the meantime, I met a couple of people that were working with my father in the ghetto, and they were in the camps, and tiiey said to me that my father is alive, he survived. 1 could not believe them, I thought may be they were frying to build up my spirits, you know, and everything. In October, one day in October, that neighbor's house from the ghetto, he was afready m Germany. You know, people smuggled themselves out of Poland to Gennany. They did not want to be in with the Communists, they smuggled themselves out of Poland to Germany. JG: How did they do that? SK: They smuggled tiiemselves. We did later the same thing. Everybody found a way. There were people that were smugglers already, that were making money this way. But, and he was in Frankfurt, in Gemiany. And my father, was liberated by Americans but he was in it. The DP camp already, that's called Feldafmg, he already had a place where to stay in this camp. And he started to go wherever he heard there was a camp where a lot of women, he would going, traveling, and looking, because he knew he had the three oldest children were girls, and looking to see if any of us survived. Or our mother or any of us. He was looking, he didn't find any of us. And there was a girl who survived with her mother, 1 don't remember which one it is. She heard my father was asking for the names of my sisters, and me, and everybody. The one girl got up and she said she survived, and she was in the same school [as she]. And, her uncle, her mother's brother was in the Russian amiy, when the war started. He joined the army and he was in the Russian army where the fifth went to liberated Lodz. So when he came to Lodz, he looked every place where he had family living. And he came to their apartment, all he found vt-as a bundle of picttjres on the floor. So he grabbed the bundle of Green 54 pictures, and on his mind, he had already on his mind to get out of Poland. So he tiirew away the unifomi [and] a little bit later, he smuggled himself, he escaped Poland. He looked around and he went to Bergen-Belsen and he found his sister and his niece alive. He gave them the picmres. When that gfrl heard my father asking the names and everything, she said she was with my sister in the same place, and she had tiie picture, and she said listen, if your daughter did not survive, then I want you to have tiie picture. That's how I have this picmre. The only one that 1 have of my famUy. My father could not find anybody, going back to Feldafmg, he had to tt-ansfer on another train in Frankfurt on Main, that's a big city in Germany. And wltile he was going up to tiie ttain, from the same side, a neighbor of ours that saw me in Lodz, was going down to Frankfurt. And they went inside, and he told hfrn "You're oldest daughter survived, she is in Lodz." Then my father started to say, "Where is she? How can 1 find her?" and so on. He described her, that I was injured, I had a scar on my face now. If you [my father] want to look for me, this is going to be a description that he can tell tiie people. More or less, he knew where 1 was. More or less, and he knew in what neighborhood I was in. -in the beginning, 1 was with the woman that I was watching her child. She had food store, and sometunes I was there.- So he told [my father] to go into this food store, maybe they will know exactly where I am. Then my father went into the food store, and that man knew me from seeing me there. -They were friends, this man, he was a Polish friend. But he was [also] friends with this lady who owned that store before the war. They were aristocratic. She escaped to Warsaw, and she was one of the best seamsfress in Poland, you know, in all those aristocrats, you know, were hiding during the war. She would sew for them. She survived but her husband was killed in the uprising. She owned that store now, she escaped, she already had a boyfriend, and she escaped with her child already when the Americans come to Germany.- But that man knew more or less where I was living. My father was looking for me. Three days he was looking for me. He went from house to house from apartment to apartment. And on the third day, he found me. It is, how he found me, my cluldren always want to hear that stor}' because it is, could have been made a movie. I mean, the lady that I came with-that lady from Lithuania and she was married already to this guy, he was a tailor, and she was also a seamsfress- she was sewing. -They took private work into the house for people, you know, how they need to fix something.- She was fixing a coat for a guy that was tall and big at that time; she was sewing the coat - and he was supposed to come to pick it up-1 wanted to wash up. That was the only way I could wash up, there was no bathroom. I had to go to this room and [1 had] to heat Green 55 up some water on tiie stove. 1 had a bowl, a big bowl, and 1 [had] put m water and I was standing washing myself up. 1 was naked. And all of a sudden 1 hear big steps in the [hall] -it was a long hall like a hotel. And all of a sudden my heart stops and I hear a lot of noise coming from the hall. And I say to her -her name was Hindlen -I say to Hindle, [ "Please lock the door, titis guy might come. [He] is probably coming and pick up the coat in here and I'm standmg naked. Give me a blanket to wrap myself aroimd!" So I had a blanket wrapped around where I was standing at tiie bowl naked. The neighbors were already outside because my fatiier was knocking on everj' door and asking whether they seen a gfrl like that. [They told] him that it was the last door in the hall; [there] they [had] seen a gfrl like that I going m and out. So, there was knocking on the door. She went and she opened up the door and here I noticed my father. Right away 1 fainted. And all I remember is my father picking me up from the bowl and putting me on her bed until I came to myself I was so hysterical, you know, from happiness! You can get hysterical just like from sadness. Then my father started to ask me questions. He told me how he found out that I'm alive, and [that] he had a place already ui the DP camp. And [how when] he was there looking for me, he [had gone] to look [in] the Polish f War Veteran's Organization because he was a veteran and he knew a lot of them firom the Polish one. They had a Jewish Veteran orgaiuzation, and a Polish one. -That's like they have here too, in America. Matter of fact, I am always getting mail to support them. And 1 do. Because it is dear to my heart. I know.- So [he told me that] they offered lum already to give him back a kiosk, you know, with tobacco, and cigarettes, and everjihing. They offered r him that he can be a conductor on a frain [and] get tickets. Everything [is] up to me. If 1 want, we'll stay here, and ' he'll have a good job and he will be able. 1 told him no. I am not staying, 1 don't want to stay here. I have to get out of here. If I'm not gouig from here, I can't be here, I said, the country is full of blood. How can 1 stay m this country? We have to get out. They killed the girl across from that store, that lady that 1 was working for [had]. Across the sfreet was a Jewish store, they killed a Jewish girl there, the Polish people. They came m and they killed her. I said, "We have to get out!" So my father said, "Whatever you say, my child, we are going out." So we had to smuggle ourselves out, like a lot of people, to Germany. And then when we were in Beriin and Germany, we'll find a way to go to the Americans. There was one of those guys that was working with those two brothers in the little tailor shop -he came with his wife and a child from Russia. [He] was still my best fiiend in Lodz after the war, and we still are best friends. Even witii Hedda, my older daughter, they are still best friends. They live next to where (??) And we told them what we decided to do. He had a child afready, two or three years, and with her second child she was Green 55 up some water on the stove. 1 had a bowl, a big bowl, and 1 [had] put in water and 1 was standing washing myself up. I was naked. And all of a sudden I hear big steps in the [hall] -it was a long hall like a hotel. And ail of a sudden my heart stops and 1 hear a lot of noise coming from tiie hall. And I say to her -her name was Hindlen -1 say to Hindle, "Please lock the door, this guy might come. [He] is probably coming and pick up the coat in here and I'm standing naked. Give me a blanket to wrap myself around!" So I had a blanket wrapped around where I was standing at the bowl naked. The neighbors were already outside because my father was knockuig on every door and asking whether they seen a giri like that. [Tliey told] him that it was the last door in the hall; [tiiere] they [had] seen a girl like tiiat going m and out. So, there was knocking on the door. She went and she opened up the door and here 1 noticed my father. Right away I fainted. And all I remember is my father picking me up from the bowl and putting me on her bed until I came to myself I was so hysterical, you know, from happiness! You can get hysterical just like from sadness. Then my father started to ask me questions. He told me how he found out that I'm alive, and [that] he had a place already in the DP camp. And [how when] he was there looking for me, he [had gone] to look [in] tiie Polish War Veteran's Organization because he was a veteran and he knew a lot of them from the Polish one. They had a Jewish Veteran organization, and a Polish one. -That's like they have here too, in America. Matter of fact, I am always getting mail to support them. And I do. Because it is dear to my heart, I know.- So [lie told me that] they offered him already to give him back a kiosk, you know, with tobacco, and cigarettes, and everytlung. They offered him tiiat he can be a conductor on a frain [and] get tickets. Everything [is] up to me. If I want, we'll stay here, and he'll have a good job and he will be able. I told him no. 1 am not stayfrig, I don't want to stay here. I have to get out of here. If I'm not going from here, 1 can't be here, I said, the country is full of blood. How can I stay in this country? We have to get out. They killed the girl across from that store, that lady tiiat I was workuig for [had]. Across the sfreet was a Jewish store, they killed a Jewish girl there, the Polish people. They came in and they killed her. I said, "We have to get out!" So my father said, "Whatever you say, my child, we are going out." So we had to smuggle ourselves out, like a lot of people, to Germany. And then when we were in Beriin and Gennany, we'll find a way to go to the Americans. There was one of tiiose guys tiiat was working with those two brothers in the little tailor shop -he came with his wife and a child from Russia. [He] was still my best friend in L6dz after the war, and we still are best friends. Even with Hedda, my older daughter, tiiey are still best friends. They live next to where (??) And we told them what we decided to do. He had a child already, t^vo or tiiree years, and with her second child she was Green 56 pregnant with a girl. He was in Russia, he escaped to Russia. Her whole family escaped to Russia. She had four brothers. So the whole family survived and they came back.- My father told them that he is tryfrig, that we are going to escape to go to Germany. He said he wants to do the same thing. And we found out that from a city not far from the German border, a big city called Pozn^ -you won't find it in this book, Poznan- from there we can go on a Russian frain. Not a regular train. It was a frain, and in the back of the train, they had like open trains; like with hay and things like that that they were bringing. He knew very well Russian, and he said we are gomg to buy a lot of liquor in case the Russians gomia be tiiere [so] they [would] let us on tiie train. This train goes to Berlin. So if they let us on the train, my father had to pick up another gfrl, one of his camp survivors told liim, [who] knew that their sister is already in L6dz to take it to. You need to have vodka in case the Russians gotta come in to get them to drink so that they are not gonna bother us. [Then] they're gomia let us stay. And he knew Russian, so it helped. And that is how it worked. So we came to Berlin on the Russian side. We came to the Russian zone. And then we were... JG: How did you go through the German side? SK: 1 told you, witii the Russian train we came to Beriin. And Berlin was in mins! O my God! Everything. But we were in the Russian zone. And tiien we found out -[while] still beuig in Poland- that they have in the American zone a building that tiie people [who wanted to] smuggle themselves [to] get mto the American zone can come. It [was] supported by the Joint Dishibution, by the higher of the Jewish Organizations. That's why they were taking care of us. We had bunks, we could stay until we are transferred to the American zone; to the DP camps. So, we had to smuggle ourselves from the Russian zone. On moimtains we had to clunb, but we were young so we did h, until we came to the American zone. And we found out where the building [was], and we went [there]. That's where we were for about a week, until they [started] transportuig people to different displaced persons camps in Germany in tilie American zone. My fatiier knew afready that he was in Feidafing. He had a place already where he was staying, on a big block with other survivors, young guys. So we said we wanted to go to Feidafing, and that's how we came. We were in Feidafing! My father met another woman. 1 told him right away don't expect my mother because 1 had seen where my mother [had gone]. 1 did not know at the tune [where] it is where they were going. But we realized m a day or two from those people that were [in Auschwitz] a long tune already. They were saying, "Don't you smell the afr, don't you smell grease, don't you smell like something buming?You see where those people are! You see that smoke from this distance? That's where those people went." Green 57 JG: How did you react when you heard that? SK: How did 1 react? What could we do? We couldn't do nothing! That's what 1 say, I was in shock for three days. I couldn't swallow a sip! So some people right away were behind you [to take your food]. What? They were dying! How could we react? We could not do nothmg. There's nothing we could do. While we were there, sometimes we went out. It was hot! You know, it was summertime. Twelve days later, they took me out. The people were all shaven. You could not recognize each other, I hardly recognized my sister when we met in tiie bed after we were shaven. I saw one of my teachers -m Europe, a teacher is not like here. In Europe, we looked up to a teacher like to God! She was very well respected. That was one of the most respected professions. You looked up to a teacher more than you looked up to your mother, whatever! -And I saw my teacher, and we looked at each other, and we could not say it word. I knew what she was tlunking and she knew what I was tlunking. Wliere are we? What has happened to us? God, look what happened to us. And this Feldafmg was supported by tiie UNRA. You know what this stands for? United National.. .something like that, I don't know, I would have to look up papers from years ago to findou t what h is. Anyway, you can fmd out what UNRA is in the museum, things like tiiat.An d by the Hebrew Aid Society, and they gave us food, and they gave us to wear something, clothes that they collected when Americans (??) took over. While we were in Feidafing, it was New Year's Eve. I [had] met some girls and 1 worked together with them, and we became friends.An d a couple guys, we became friends. We went someplace for a dance, you know, like the young people do. And when I was dancing, eventually that grenade splinter that 1 had in my kidney started to move, and it started to give me those attacks. They had a hospital in Feidafing -you biow a hospital, the doctor was a survivor doctor, things like that-1 was there for a while. Whatever they gave me, sedative, did not help. My father started to scream at the doctor. He said, "[If] you're not going to do something [for] her, 1 am going to write in the German paper, how it looks how the survivors are taken of!" So after that, the day after that, they brought in fix)m someplace and x-ray. They made a x-ray and they noticed the [splinter]. And where [it] went, I had spots here -you know just like you have spots after they give you the vaccination.- So I was ttansferred to a hospital near Munich, with a special urological department, and that's where they examined me. They had specialists [who] examined me -it's a German hospital- and they operated on me. They took the grenade splinter out. It was the size of a big nail. Tlie doctor said if it would be two more days, it would have cut the tube. Because the tube that comiects the kidney with the bladder is thin -like you see., .you ever seen a chicken when they open the intestines. Green 58 how thin it is?- it could have cut it through. I would be ill from the urine, it would go in my body. So that's why I was operated. It took a long time to recover. The following Januar>', I met my husband. And everybody wanted to immigrate, to go away. We knew that some time, those DP camps were going to be dissolved. The people would be able to inmugrate, wherever the wanted -some had relatives in America; some went to Australia, some went to New Zealand; everywhere. But I wanted to go to [America]. I knew I had an aunt in Canada. But to me, Canada was America. I did not know that Canada was a different country than America. Because we were, you know, writing. My [stepjmotiier was wrhing the letters to her sister. One of her sisters -[when] my mother was still smgle- imnugrated to Canada riglit after the First World Wai". And my mother was still single, but I was always writing tiie address on the envelopes. And I remembered in my mind, my mind was, I remember her address just like now! You know, but we could not send no mail yet. Nothing. So my father met an American officer -a Jewish American officer, a rich man- and he told him the story about the other sister-in-law in Canada. [My father] said he knows the address. So, he said to [my father], "You know what? I am going for the holidays, T am going back home for a while for over the holidays. So I'll write a letter to those people in Canada and tell them tiiat tiieir brotiier-in-law needs to write where they are." And I remember while I was in the hospital ui Mumch, the first CARE package came from my aunt and uncle to my father. And then later on, in early January 1947,1 met my husband. It was when one of my cousins [who] lived in Belgium -she survived, she was married already-gave birth to a little boy and we found out. My stepmother and I came and we helped prepare everythuig for the bris for the littie boy. And my husband came in, it was [because] his brother was invited. He came from where he lived to Landsberg. -She lived in Landsberg which was opened up after Dachau, It was not far from Dachau. And it just so happened that my father was liberated from Dachau. My father was in Dachau a year. From Auschwitz, they sent him to Dachau,- And my husband came in because he needed some infonnation from his brother [who] was already with my cousin in the house. So they made him stay for the bris. That's how we met! It was meant to be. That's how it is. My oldest daughter was bom the end of the same year. We were married two months later. Exactly two months. Because, you know, everybody talked of immigration. You didn't have to be married to immigrate, but since we were thinking of getting married, we didn't wait, you know, because we had to apply. That's how it is. My father with his wife came six months earlier and 1 came six months later. That's how it is! Arm was bom here in 1951. And so was the yoimgest in 1955. My husband was working-his whole family were meat cutters, the real Green 59 wholesalers in meat. His father was, and there were seven brothers ui the family, and they were all in the meat business [too]. When he came here he fried to fmd a job as a butcher, and he found a job in a slaughterhouse. It happened to be they were killing kosher. But they had thefr business outside for tilings that were non-kosher because not everything that you kill for kosher becomes kosher. -I don't know if you know that. I didn't know eitiier when I was young. But, if something is wrung by the time tiiey are cutting witii the kiufe, it cannot be kosher anymore. A kosher aiumal has to be cut with the first cut; it means that the animal could not suffer.- So he worked for eight years, and tiien we decided to go into a small business, an open market. It was in tiie black neigliborhoods, you know mostly, and then I lost busuiess for the deli. And right after Ann was married -which was 1976 -shortly after we sold tiie business. I told my husband I don't want to work so hard anymore. I did not kill nobody, I didn't kill my father, I didn't kill my mother, I didn't kill nobody. I don't want to work so hard. It was ver>' hard work; seven days a week. I said to him, Ann was married, my youngest was already in college, [and] the older one was already working for the govemment. So,we managed. Until he got sick. JG: Can you describe the day you found out that you were going to be able to be immigrated, that you were going to be able to come to America? SK: We registered, you know, we were all waiting for the Visas, to be able to go. The immigration procedure that we went tiirough until we were able to go to the ship to immigrate, was hoirible too. It took a lot, to investigate everybody at that time, you know. They were in the Cold War with the Conununists and Russia, and they had to. Everybody was investigated, with the CIA, tiie FBI, whether you had any coimection. We were about two months in a special camp and the medical procedures we had to go through, and everything was checked. It was not easy either. And, also, many women were separated. They were in a different barrack of those camps. There [where] women with lots of children, it was barbaric in tiiose camps. I happened to be with a woman that had a little boy, and I had my little giri, and he was also from Lodz. The men himself, I don't know, I think he went to Califomia. I was supposed to go to California, too. Because you know, they had to be people. At that time President Tmman decided that we had to liquidate the DP camps. And in 1948, Israel was already a state. And a lot of the people went to Israel. But the Jews were not allowed to come in yet. But England there is still, they lived I don't know you still have to leam everything from Israel too to fmd out. He gave an order that we are going let ui 100,000 people from the DP camps, and they weren't just Jews. There were Polish people too, and 1 bet there were a lot of Germans that Green 60 were SS people and everything and they went m to DP camps and they were going on as survivors. Who knew? We know [now] that a lot of people are still here that were Nazi's. -You didn't hear the story several years ago about the Five (??). They were trying [to get into] Israel and they found out. They couldn't fmd a real legal witness, but he himself testified that he was a guard in a camp, but not in those that he was accused of So they let him free and he came back. But he was a Lithuanian guide.- The Lithuanian and the Ukrainian and the Polish. They were sometimes worse than the Gennans. They were so bad. They were so bad. They did not want any Jews in their country [after the war]. The Jews were there for five,si x hundred years m Poland. A lot of Jews, from the Spanish Inquisition -what happened in the fifteenthcentury - thmgs like that. They were spreading all over Europe. And there was a king who favored with the Jews. And he invited some people to follow him, his name was Tegimiush. That king, I remember from history I leamed. Now, there were some Jews in Poland, the Russian Jews, [and] they don't want to go to Israel. They can't go in and out, and America won't let them in anymore, so they are just staying in Poland. They are not in Russia. It's a democratic countiy. It's a free countiy now. It's supposed to be. But 1 don't want to go to Poland. 1 don't want to leave....on that American JG: Why do you think all the Polish tumed their back on the Jews? Or did you feel like the entfre European commuiuty - SK: You know the Jews are known as the people with book, if you had it. The Jews were always trying to educate their children; to leam them, A lot of them could not go to [a] Polish university, if they could afford to send them to friends -I am talking about before the war, before Hitler- to send them to Germany, to urtiversities a lot of them, and because they have quotas, on everytiting. They have (??) of the Jews. And Jews were educated. A lot of Jews were doctors. And a lot Jews were dentists. And most of them had trades, you know. And Jews don't drink. Jews don't spend money on vodka. Jews always did a little better. So they thought that we are taking away everything from them, That we are taking away their houses. They were always against Jews, [even] in the best of times. But I was a kid and I could not understand all those things, you know. JG: Did you experience any of those things? SK: I knew one thing, that on Easter -that was the time when Jesus was resurrected- we were afraid to go out. The Jews killed Jesus, things like that. And this is written in thefr Bibles that they had. Because in all the churches, they were talking about that, the Jews killing non-Jewish kids for matzos, whatever. And things like this I heard. But I couldn't imagine what it was. I couldn't understand what it was. Had I been a little older, I probably would have Green 62 death there, the soldiers, and that was when his first breakdown started. But he still believed, almost before the end, that he will succeed. Until the big invasion. If it wouldn't [have] be[en] up to the Allies, when they were altogether, [and when] they were agauist [Germany], and how many Americans died. And how many everytiting. They show always on television, those lustory chamiels, you can see how it was when they invaded. See how the, what they call tile V-day? D-Day? JG: VEDay? SK: Yeah JG: During the- SK: In France. JG: Oh, D-Day. SK: I had a cousin, on my mother's side -a distant cousin, she was married- and two days after she was married, her husband was taken and he was killed in tiiat battle ui, on that beach, what do you call it? JG: Tlie Battle of Nomiandy? SK: Yeah, yeah, the Battle of the Bulge on that beach in France. It was Normandy. Normandy. Right. JG: Would you have wanted the Allies to bomb Auschwitz? SK: At that time, I didn't know nothing. But after tiie war, when we realized they were bombing there and tiiat they were not fai- off-they had maps. If tiiey would have bombed Auschwitz, the rails that was leading to Auschwitz, he wouldn't be able to take us out in Litzmannstadt and the Lodz ghetto. It was too late. The invasion of Nonnandy was in 1944, in June 1944, riglit? We were still in the ghetto in August 1944. That was when he started, in the middle of August, that's when tiiey started to final liquidation. If they would have bombed the railway, the trains to Auschwitz, they couldn't take us. Where would they take us? How would they be able to kill so many people in such a short time and dig it? Lodz was liberated in 1944.1 think October 1944. But L6dz wasn't damaged. Warsaw was damaged. Because if the Polish people would start to make a -to organize and to save [uprising]- they want[ed] to be the ones to liberate Warsaw. Not the Russians. That was the Russians a whole month, if they didn't postpone - that's why Warsaw was bombarded a lot, because they did not want to go out of Warsaw, just like they didn't want to go out of Berlm -you know the Polish postponed it. Not knowing they liquidated the ghetto in august, but they wanted to take Warsaw with tiieir own hands, not with the Russians. You know? Some of the soldiers -my brother Green 61 understood. Because I have some friends who [were] older, five or six years, and this means a lot, five or six years, you know. So, they [knew] everytiiing. But there were a lot of Jews [that] were more educated, things like that. That's why they hated us. All over the world, tiiey hated us, because Jews are smart, that's why. JG: So when you were young, because you were so young, you didn't hear anything about Hitler, did you? When you were in Poland? SK: Hitler was in 1933, he became chancellor, right? And he threw out those Jews [who] were originally] from Poland and [who had] immigrated to Gennany. There [had] already immigrated to Gemiany. So he threw them out. And they [went] into the Polish border and somehow, Poland wasn't happy with it. They didn't want it, but some had relatives, [and] they had come [to] take [tiiem] and things like that, I heard something like that, but I couldn't understand it. JG: After the war, did you read anything about Hitler, or did you ever want to understand? SK: I didn't have to when I came to America, I stalled to understand as soon as he invaded the coimtry. As soon as he invaded Poland, I started to imderstand what it was all about. JG: Even when you were so young, you understood? SK: Yeah, sure. 1 started to understand. I saw what was going on. 1 remember my father used to say, when he was about fourteen or fifteen years old and tiie Germans took lum to Germany to work, [that] tiiey were good at that time. It was the king then, they still had the Kaiser there. So, who knew? We didn't know. Hitler was the one that he was God to them, he was to them like God. And they all murdered for him; they all "helled" for him; and tiiey all believed in him; and they did everything. Even the Germans (??), [there] were a few trying sometimes to get rid of him. But they were all caught, I read a book about it. They never succeeded. They were all caught. And they were all killed. JG: Do you still wonder, have you ever wondered, how could this have happened? How was this able to be done? Like, how did Hitler implement his final solution and why didn't America or anybody come in [and help]? SK: Yeah that's right. We were always hopmg that. I remember my father used to say that maybe ft won't go on so long. Maybe America will get involved. America never lost a war. I remember, during the years of the ghetto, he said, "America never lost a war. Maybe if America gets involved, they will, I mean, they will fight the Gemians and everything will be over." Because [Hitler] plaimed to invade the whole world. His biggest mistake w'as when he broke the pact with Russia and he went into Russia. And he came deep mto Russia, and they started to freeze to Green 63 in law was in Polish division of the Russian army, my husband's brother. I have pictures of him with the urtiform still. And he was the first one that came to Lodz. And this was in 1944. JG: Wliat do you feel about people who still say the Holocaust never happened? I SK: I am writing in my memofr-what you read-that some people are stiti denying h (see appendix ). h was just not long ago that there was a dial fri England that a historian -1 forgot his name- [who] wrote that there was no Holocaust. And the Jews were [not] gassed; and that nothing is tme; that we did it ourselves, whatever. That we are guilty. There was an American historian, a young Jewish woman that is a professor at (??) University -it was r not long ago, tt was m the papers, and was m the news, you know. And at that same tmie, before the trial was done, Israel released the memoir wliat Eichmaii [had] WTOte while he was in Israel during the trial, in his cell, what he was writing, his memoirs. So at the same time, wiien this trial was in England, they released that. And that helped tiiat American historian a lot, because Eichman himself wrote what had happened. And the English historian lost the ttial ~I forgot the name, I read it in the newspaper, I heard it on television, I forgot the name. f JG: Did you yourself attend a trial? SK: Yes I attended a frlal against Gunther Fuchs. Me and my fatiier. It's right in my memoir. That was in 1963. That was the guy who in 1942, the spahr that they took out all those children and older people. JG: Where was tile ttial? r SK: In Hanover, Gemiany. '^ JG: Were you still in Germany at that time? SK: No! In 1963,1 flew from here, because my father was still alive, my father was with me. JG: Can you explafri that experience? SK: Oh, the ttial was going on for a while afready. 1 heard that a couple of Jewish -a couple of sailors, with Israeli ships, that were in Gemiany at the time- and they came to Hanover; to a dry goods store where you buy material, and it was long since -it was two boys from L6dz, they survived the camps - they were Israeli sailors on the ship. They came in that store and they were looking for material. And one says to the other, "Look up at tiie other end. Isn't that the guy, isn't that Gunther Fuchs?" And he looked and tiiey both [saw him]. That's how I was told they found him. He right away, he feh that they looked at him -you know when you stay someplace, and you see somebody look at you, looks at you, you get the feeling - he grabbed his wife, and he ran out of the store. He ran outofthestoreandthey chased him. They grabbed him. Police came. And there were people all around. And Green 64 somehow he managed to escape. That was the first tune. One day, somehow, he had to be caught. They must have reported Visen (??) Organization -and just like they look for Nazis all over the worid- they found out where he lives and he was going under the same name. And tiiey found out, and they approached, and they caught lum a second time. And tiie police arrested him. And that's when the trial was gouig on already for three years. We had here, in 1963, the president of the HRS, The Hebrew Rights Societj', heard about it -he must have read about it and heard about it. And he knew our situation -when we came first here, we have to tell liim the story of fiom where we are, and what we are and where we were.- So he contacted my father and he asked my father whether he is familiar with this guy [Guntiier Fuchs], And my father said, "Oh my God! He is the one tiiat he selected in the spalu-". We called it a spalu; in 1942 when they all the cluldren and all the people came out, and so many people were killed at the time. "What happened?" [My father asked.] He said [Gunther Fuchs] was caught and he is on trial in Hanover, Germany. So, he said, "Can you make a statement, whatever you know about him?" So we made a statement. I did not know that we were going to be asked to come to the trial. And after tiie statement, my father [started to get] letters from the World Jewish Congress, letters from the persecutor in Germany, to come to the trial. We hesitated. 1 hesitated. I was afraid to face him, you know. I had already, we were m business, my kids were still young. My oldest daughter was fifteen years old. I had to leave my husband, I worked every day. I had to leave my husband. I hesitated. How will I know wiioni to recognize? And maybe I will recognize. I remember he was a blond guy. A tall, blond, good-looking guy. Young. It took a while until we had the second notice from the World Jewish Congress, from the prosecutor. They need our testimony, [it was the] most important because he killed a woman, as I told you, he killed a woman in front of us. And we were eyewimess to murder and things like that. I was thinkuig and thinking, 1 said, "You know what?" I said to my fatiier, "You know what? If I'm not goima go, I am going to have it on my conscience all my life. If he gets released, I'll have it on my conscience all my life. And we have to go." I arranged for somebody to help my husband, and my daughter came from school and she went to the store. My stepmotiier was staying with Aime and Sylvia. We flew into Germany. He told us to take first class, I didn't know what fust class [was]! It was the first time I ever went on an airplane! He said, "Wliy not take first class, they're paying for it!" So, we flew in and we stopped in Frankfiirt. In Frankftirt, there was somebody already that was working for us and put us on the train that connected us to Hanover, Germany. And we checked m the hotel there, and we noticed the officials in this hotel Green 65 were so cold, you know. That we were real scared. -And my husband had a cousin in France at that time, right near the Riviera [she] was living. And we told her when we go to be there, we might go to France and vish her- But we testified on the trial. We were sitting there. There were three Jews just in Hanover, one of them explained me, what he heard, who he is. Two of them were on trial. One was a dark haired, and one already had silver hair. He was still young, but he had silver hafr already. And we had to tell the whole story to the Gemians. Everything. He even made me, he even took a pencil -do I have the newspaper here? -he asked me to draw witii the pencil how tiie selection looked, fri tiie courtyard. And then at the end, I broke down in the trial twice. They had to lead me out from the courtroom. Then in Januarj' 1964,1 had everytiiing, my daughter had all my papers because 1 had some lawyers m Germany that are trying to get the Social Security for me from my husband. My husband's social security, the widow's pension for me, so I had to have all those papers there. JG: So, how did you feel seeuig him? Was he in the room with you? SK: Yeah, we were sitting, like on a stage, both of them. In front of him, was sitting the judge. And there was with me a guy, he was translating from Polish. I could have done it in English already, but then I was speaking English, but he was franslating in Polish, what I was telling lum. I told liim the whole story the way it looked. And first they did my fatiier and I was sitting outside. They wouldn't do us together. And later on, after my fatiier finished his testimony, they brought me in. Then they let my fatiier already sit. And I told them the whole story about the ghetto; what it was, how the selection went, and ever>'thing. And what he did witii that woman who started to open her mouth, that he killed her right away. And the way he said, "take tius trash away," and everything. Then tiie judge asked me, did I know the other guy? Would I like to tell him something about the other guy? He must have been in the L6dz ghetto too, some kind of official -you know, they had in the building in tius market. They had a big building, you know, and everything. And the other one I never met. I don't know- so I told him I never met him. So he didn't ask me anymore. Yeah, they also heard that 1 missed, you know, I missed things, they tell me I miss them. And later on I remembered that tiiey had an organization [on] one of the streets that was far from where my father had a kiosk, there used to be, it was house for the nuns. Where nuns were living. They made their criminal out for the side, we called it krippopf (??). It was short for, you know, it was a criminal-like, aiding with the investigatfrig, things like that. They used to bring in each time, they were taking Jews in, and they wanted to tell them what they owned. That Green 66 some had diamonds, and some had jewelry, and some tiie American dollars, and some had money to tell them. Because if they tell them, they beat them, and if they didn't tell, tiiey beat them. And they killed a lot of them. And they took them every day for beating. They were Jewish policemen that were assigned to work, not to do the investigation, but to work inside tlus building. One day, they took my father. I don't remember what year it was. And they held him for twenty-three days. They beat him ever)' day. Every day, he tell them where we had the diamonds; where we had the jewelry. We didn't have any! But we had a little bit, some few American dollars, [that] was what my grandmother had -that her daugliter from Canada used to send her, every month a few dollars. But, they beat him every day. And what they did -how we were licked, how they did- they had a wall with canes, you know big sticks, canes. And they told you to pick up yoiu own stick with which one you wanted to be beaten. Have you heard anything like that! And they found out from some people that survived and came out, they found out that if they asked them to pick up the stick, to pick up a thick one, a heavy one, not a thin one. Because with the tiiin one, when they hurt you, it hiuls you a lot worse tiian witii tiie tiiick one. So, tiiey tell my father, "You better tell us where you have, and what you have, because last week, we killed a guy by the name of Goldberg." My maiden name is Goldberg. -I want you to know and it was tme, he was killed. It was the man that had a bakeiy before the war, by the name of Goldberg. They killed him.- And they said, "The same thing is going to happen to you. You better tell us." And whatever tiiey had, for twenty-tiuee days, they beat liim. So, somebody told us about tiie Jewish policeman that was working in the building, and if he would be able to take some food to my father in his cell, to eat, so he can survive the beating, the hurting, with whatever little we had, we spared. You know, whatever, from every child and this man was risking his life. And he did. He give my father a few times, something in his cell that he can eat so he can survive the beating. Tliank God, after twenty-three days, they let him out. When my father came out, his behind was as black as this. (Points to a black piece of paper.) I will never forget it. After twenty-three days. He was lying a long time on his stomach. Thank God! It was meant for him to survive. -Even, when he died, he was young. He was sixty-six years old. He died of a heart attack. Two and a half years after we came back from the trial.- Those were the kinds of things they did. They brought in people, you know, special, you know. Some people had something, so they gave it to them. But I heard if you don't have, you don't give them nothing, it was better than if you had something to give them. Because if you give them something, they think you have more you don't want to give them. Like I told you, at first in the begmning, when they came in, when they took us out the fnst time, to Krakow, you had to put out the money so all the paper bills they took away, they put in thefr pockets . They Green 67 had everything, all the gold, all the jewelry and all the values, and all the paintings that we still hear [about] now, you know. German Jews and Austrian Jews were well-to-do! In Poland, there [weren't] many Jews who were so well-to-do. Mostly middle class and some of them had factories. Poland was democratic before the war. Buth lasted only nineteen years. Between 1920 and 1939. You know! How wealthy could they get? So that's how h was. Poland was most of the time occupied all [those] years. That's what I heard, and tiiat's what I leamed In school. JG: I know it is the hardest to talk about, but when you were in Auschwitz, did you ever get to the point where you were, like, I don't want to live anymore, or anytime during the war? SK: Oh, a lot of us, we were thinking you know. Sometimes we when we were sitting, when we were talking, we were dreaming of surviving the liberation. We had hope. But sometimes, a lot of times, we said we wished we never get up from sleep. We wish we never get up from sleep. Because, those four and half years we were in the ghetto, it was terrible! Unbelievable! We were sitting for ten hours in [the factories]. And we had one break. And during the break, we had soup. They gave us soup. They had a kitchen, and we called it "resort." You know what a "resort" is here! We called the factories, resort. We made fiin, even, alt our problems we made fun! It shows you here, you see. (Points to the frontcove r of The Chronicles of the Lodz Ghetto: 1941-1944.) That was a break during the factory. We are sitting outside, in the winter time. (Describes the picture.) That must have been like the water pump. We are sitting around. And we're eating a little soup that tiiey gave us. But those families, like for instance my family, was still together you know. Even we had tunes when the children you know, during tiie selection, when they were always taking away. The second time when tiiey came back -they came back the second time because in 1940, it's in this book (Points to The Chronicles of the Lodz Ghetto: 1941-1944.) [Gunther Fuchs] noticed some people, it was a lower building in 1940. He noticed the people from '38 that they still in. So they came back and made a second selection. That's when we hid the children, my mother. So it lasted two more years. But the, sometimes when 1 talk to my cousin, when I come to Canada -we used to come a lot, and lately I don't go, I haven't been there for several years- we can sit sometimes 'til two or tliree in tiie monnng and talk about all those things what happened, about the families -I had from my mother's side alone, I had aunts and uncles. There were eight kids. I had some many aunts and imcles, and so many cousins. I don't remember the names and everything. I survived and I have no one. 1 found two cousins, when we were already in Gemiany. I found out about two cousins. They are fromth e same family, the two cousins. And this one -that lives in Canada- his mother was my motiier's cousin, but she was the same age as my mother, so we were so close, like brothers and sisters.- So Green 68 we were sitting and talk[mg] about what happened to us, about tiie family, what happened to them over the years, whatever we can remember -he is younger and he can remember even more. Because most of the family lived in the neighborhood where he lived. And we lived in the other part. We lived in the part where it was the ghetto was established. We were inside the ghetto. And, ohhhh, I'm tired of telling stories. That's h. What did you ask me first? JG: I asked, like, when you were in Auschwitz, what were you thinking? What went through your mind? SK: Well, I was in Auschwitz twelve days. What when through my mind? I knew already, I found out, that my motiier and the children are gone, and we hope that we are going to survive someday. So we were hopfrig stiU. And we dreamed. We think [about what] that girl us, through this little space, she tliinks she saw our father, she didn't see none of her brothers. -I found one of her brothers after the war. My husband was they had a football, they had soccer group, and my husband was in the soccer group. So, they went fromon e DP camp to the other. Like here, tiiey go from one you know, like from the Orioles to New York or wherever. I came to one place called Weiden, it's a city, Weiden, And tiierewa s this displaced persons camp. And he was staying and watclung, I was already pregnant with my daughter at the time, and he was staying and watching the game. And I go up to liim and said, "Did you every fmd yoiu sister?" He said, "No." He asked me where I was when we were together. I told him I was with her togetiier just in Auschwitz, and I remembered the way she was mnning and looking and was beaten up all the time, looking to see if she was going to see any of you. And she told us that she thinks she saw our father. And thank God, our father survived. -He was the only survivor from his three brotiiers and sister. He was the only survivor, because by then, it was already 1947, and he didn't know it then, that they didn't survive. But I recognized him because it was short time,i t was about two or three years. But now, I wouldn't recognize anybody from that time- But the hope that we are going to meet oin father, maybe those kept us. And that sister, the one that was younger tiian me that died, she was liberated the day she died. She died in June, and she had so much hope and how it can happen, I don't know. Because she used to say, if we're gonna survive, she used to say, she's going to go to Palestine. Palestine was, you know, before we called h Palestine. Because she had friends that had all the siblings were belonging to the Zionist Organization. I don't know, all different, 1 don't know if you know all this now. I forgot tiie names. From one girl, I don't know which one it is, a couple of the, one sister and a brother went by foot. Green 69 They went fri 1938, by foot to Israel, to Palestine. Not knowing what's going to happen to us a year later. But with the stor>' that they chased out the Jews fromGermany , that ones, they immigrated from Poland to Germany. They were old afready, they could imderstand what it was going to be like. And you know, when children live in a family, it was like a ftmeral.Thei r parents were so hurt, that the children left. But they were a country of pafriotic Zionists. They wanted to go. She was always there, the one that stays next to her, this giri. (see Appendix I) She stayed next to my sister. She came home, my sister, she used to tell us how it was in their house, when [her older sister] left [for Palestine]. So she dreamed she is going to go to Palestme. And I said, "You know what, we're gomg to fmd out [an] aunt in Canada, in America -to me it was America- and we will go to America." She couldn't survive. She was too sick to survive. Not one rtight tiiat I go to bed [don't] think of her. And to me, it stays in front, the picture the way she was, like here! Not the way she would have been now. The way she was like here! I was with her the up until the minute we were liberated. She couldn't make it. That's how it was. JG: How have been able to deal with seemg so many deaths and atrocities, especially both of your sisters? SK: How was I able to deal with it? JG: How did you have the sfrength? SK: 1 was ver>' hurt. That's why my children, I don't know, my children sometimes they are very good... they're very good. They understand. But nobody can understand like I feel. I hope that they will never come to a time that they can understand how it feels. Because I always tiiinko f them! 1 always think of them! Sometimes, I think, "Why was I better?" "Wliy was I better?" To go through so much, to go through such agony, and I was able to survive. I was almost killed just when the barrack collapsed, and I was under there, yet I survived. They say that, you know, sometimes, they scream at me that I always come out on the subject. And you know what? Be^veen our fiiends [about] that we still survive[d], that we still are here. Even though we didn't know each other before the war -we comefromadifferentpartofPoland, and everything-no matter where we go, even if we go to a party, or we go to a wedding, we go to anything, and if we sit and talk, at the end you come out on that subject. Especially since I came back from the ttial, especially. Because when [my children] were all little young, I had to work witii my husband to make a living, and I wanted them to be educated, I wanted them to have everything what I missed. Everything. I was, maybe, I was a bad mother. I was supporting them to go to college. I remember when Ann fmished college, she applied for her Master's, I don't know, she remembers that. She went away to Califonua, you know, with a Green 70 girlfriend, and she came back and she said, "Mom! I have gone eighteen years to college; to school, I am tried already of school. I am going to work one year. 1 want a rest; I am sick of it." I said, "You know what, Ann? If you are going to start to work, you're gonna feel the taste of money, [and] you will never go back to get your Masters. If you wanna go, go riglitnow . I am working so I can pay for ft. You go right now." And she was glad she went. It's hard. It's very hard. Since, especially since 1 lost my husband. It's gonna be fourteen years next month. It's the hardest. It's the hardest. We were still together. You know we had good times, and the children were young. We had parties and bfrthdays, and Sweet Sixteens, and that. We were occupied. So since I got older, and I am alone, it's hard. I miss, I thmk maybe if I could have my sisters, my brother, if 1 had a relative, someone to go out with, someone to do things with, it's hard. Verj' hard. I tr)' to make the best of it. It's veiy hard. But wait a minute, maybe I still have the - JG: I have one question also, this is kind of like what allowed you to go on. When you saw your sister die, your yomigest one - SK: the oldest one, I didn't see her die. JG: No, no, no. The youngest one. How were you able to still go on? SK: It was so terrible, because oh she was so sick. The girls that died every moming. They had to take [them] out from barracks. Someone on tiietop , fromth e bunks, someone on the top, so they didn't caie if they threw them down. And she used to say, "O, the same thing's going to happen to me? They're gone throw me down too?" We were the youngest. [So, we] were on the top bunks. She used to say, "The same thing's gonna happen to me." And we both, me and my sister -the one that... this one (Pointing to a picmre) were still.- We took her down, inside wrapped in a blanket, and we tried. We didn't have a lot of strength, because we were weak! We had almost no food. And we took her down. We tried so hard so she wouldn't fall down. And we took her outside and it was wet, and the snow, and everything. All we unwrapped the blanket, and I was trying to [keep her] several minutes in the blanket, still look[ing] at her, and I got closer. And the guards standing. He could have killed us. And he was watclung. We couldn't go away, to leave her. But that's what we had to do. We closed up the blanket because that's how we left her. And when we left tiie same day, when we left for the [Death March]. When we got in line to go, I looked back at the place where we left her, and there was nothing there anymore. Because there was several otiier bodies [used to be] there [too]. I said to my sister, "You see. She's gone. They already took her away." We Green 71 didn't know what they would do with her, what they were doing to bodies. They bumed them probably in the crematoria. Because, they hadn't... like in Auschwitz. All the Jewish people from Lithuania, and from Latvia, came to Smtthof And in Stutthof they drowned a lot of girls. We were almost drowned. It was near Danzig, it was near the Baltic Sea. And once in a while, they took out a group of giris, and they put them on the small little wooden vessels, you know, and they tumed them upside down. Tumed the vessels upside down. Tliat's how they killed them, Tliey couldn't do it just fast. It was close to the end. The end of 1944, the beginning of 1945. The gas chambers and the crematoria couldn't work so fast. So they found other ways how to kill. One day, my sister and me were sitting on a boat like that. All of a sudden, there were so many airplanes in the sky, I don't know what kind of airplanes it was, [and] they were scared to tum over tiie boat. They brought us back on the tmck. They brought us back to the barracks. What ever is meant to be. JG; Do you attribute fate to a lot of things that happened? That this was fate that this was - SK: To me, maybe it was fate. Just so happened those airplanes, end of 1944 and like in the beginning of January 1945, whatever, they were already close to the end of the war, you know. The Allies were already deep into Germany and everything. And they were killing the last minute. Like 1 am telling you. The day, the same night, I was liberated the end of March, I don't remember what date. It was the end of March, in tiie ntiddle of tiie day, the Russian army was already there, in the camp. During the night [the Gemians] escaped, maybe a couple of hours earlier. They were throwing hand grenades. You know, into the barracks, and tiiey escaped. So you see, they waited imtil the last minute. Some of them were caught. 1 saw later on, when I was little bit better in the hospital, when I was in Russian Hospital, they were bruiging in German prisoners of war to the hospital. And, where those nurses were trying to feed them, 1 don't know, to feed them twice a day or once a day, they gave them food. And I was afready helpmg them. They were starving. So I was trying to give them another little bit, and the Russian nurse hit me over the head, she said, "You already forgot what happened, what they did to you?" You know, but 1 was tr>ing to give them more, we, what can I say? I don't believe we could be like that. I think wiiat is happening now in Israel is a different stor)'. They're defending their land, they're defending their life. But these are different Jews already. They have their own country. We didn't have no country, no place where to escape. We blame the whole free worid, a lot of them, they knew what was going on. Either they tried to deny it, they tried to deny it. I was told once that Hitler offered Roosevelt to Green 72 give him ten thousand kids (??), or whatever. To give him a certain amount of money, it was a big certain amount of money. Roosevelt was good president, you know, was good for this country. But, he knew a lot what was going on. You don't have to go far, and look at those ships, it was tiie film. The Ship of Fools. Look at the ship, you read about it? Have you seen the movie? JG; Recently. SK: Have you seen the movie? The movie was The Ship of Fools. It was ship, lots of well-to-do Jewish people, aristocrats, doctors, things like that, in 1938. It was supposed to be a cmise ship. It was 19,900 people on the ship, you couldn't fmd it in the Holocaust Museum. JG: Is that the one that went to Cuba? SK: They went to Cuba. They were in American, in the borders and everytiiing. They couldn't even say let those people in? They went back and the majority, most of tiiem died in the concenttation camps. JG: So, you partially blame Roosevelt? SK: I wasn't here at the time and I didn't know about Roosevelt at that time when it happened. But when I read about it, and I saw that movie, I started lo leam about this. And there was a Polish diplomat in London, he was an ambassador, whatever, in London. He just died not long ago. It was in tiie Jewish Times, one of the papers. He notified Roosevelt, what was happening to the Jews in Poland. He notified him what was going on to the Jews in Poland, [that] we were being killed, being gassed, burned. It was from one govemment agency, whatever it was, I don't know, but everything went, no one wanted to listen. That's why we say, the world never again, we wrote and everything like that. It should never happen again. Post Interview: JG: How did you stay warm, did you have enough clotiiing? Were you able to keep your apartment heated when you were in the ghetto? SK: In the ghetto, we had our own aparttnent. The one we were living in before the war. JG: Were you able to keep it warm? SK: No, nothing! There weren't no coal, no wood, no nothing. But, like in the frount building, I had the pictures you know, the front building had gas cooking. But downstairs, as 1 told you, where the used to live, I don't think we ever would have survive. Wlien they took us out in November, they sent one transport to the east and one transport to the west. And we were m the one that went to the west. So we were in Krakow. This is the front building. This Green 73 was a big buildmg. He just snapped a picture. And those apartments had the running water, and they had gas for cooking, and on the first floor, this first one was a bakery and this side was a restaurant that he was one of the owners, it was a brother and a sister who owned that complex, ft's right in the book tiiat there was more than two hundred tenants in there, and that's how ft was. And farther down, like in between, there was a photographer. And he liad gas. So they made him, in the ghetto, they made a lot of gas burners, you know. And ever>' apartment was assigned what lime you can come in and cook. Whatever they give you, the koltirabi, and they gave us kohlrabi, it was growing up like wood. And, sometimes they gave us a few potatoes. Later us, they didn't give us the potatoes. Then we realized you can make a meal from potato peels. So we made meals from potato peels. Whatever we could. And they gave us a piece of bread. Whatever they gave us. I don't know (sigh), it's hard. Those three windows (Pointing) was our apartment. Tins window was a grocer)'. And here, these tliree windows was the compartment for the grocer. So whatever we needed, everything was in bulk. It wasn't like here in cans, everything was by bulk. If you needed butter, you went in to get five sticks of butter, or ten sticks of butter. If you need, it was kilos. A kilo of sugar, tlungs like that. So we went in and we got it. Whatever we need. And my mother came home at night. She paid them. JG: Did you have enough clotlting to stay warm? SK: You mean in the camps? We were freezing to deatii! We were staying outside for tluee hours for counting twice a day. JG: And you survived! SK: I guess, like they say, you body is so sttong to survive, something, sometimes your body is weak like a... We were young, so young. We were shivering. We were standing five girls in a row, one warmed each other staying so close to each other, and they counted us for three hours. What for are they counting us for tiiree hours? For punishment! To punish us. JG; My last question: they shaved your hair, in Auschwitz, did they do that continually, while you were in Stuttoff? SK: They shaved my hair in Auschwitz, they shaved my hafr when we went to Stuttoff. When we came to Stuttoff And when the Russians came and liberated us, so from the condition we were in, they shaved our hair, too. JG: Because of lice? Green 74 SK: That's what is end of March of 1945, they shaved our hair, too, because they established the field hospital, you know. JG: Just three times? SK: Three limes, yes. When my father met me, six montiis later, from March to October, six months, I already had some hafr. I was dark, 1 was a brunette. Suice my husband passed away, two months later, I went into a depression. And 1 am still on medicine. They got me on depression pills. I will have to take it all my life. And since then, I cannot cry. 1 cannot weep. I go to the cemetery, and I have my father, I have my husband, in there, I have my step mother, I talk to them, and my oldest daughter goes. She had tears in her eyes, she goes, I carmot cry. 1 was, since I got depressed, I cannot cr>'. I feel a tear might come to my eyes, but not enough to mn through. It's unbelievable. I hope it's going to help you with what you need. JG: It will. Thank you very much for you time, Mrs. Krieger. Green 75 INTERVIEW ANALYSIS In his 1961 book entitled. What is History?, historian Edward Flallett Carr stated: "history is a contmuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unendfrig dialogue between the present and the past" (943). However, Carr eamestly cautions that, "histor>' cannot be written unless the historian can achieve some kind of contact., .or imaginative understanding,.. of the mind of those about whom he is writing " (930). In view of tiiis, "[The] Holocaust refrises to go the way of most histor)'," as historian Nora Levin explained (qtd in Marms 2). The Holocaust is about murder; it is about the mass genocide and the aimihilation of six million European Jews. No amount of imaginative reconstmction will ever change that fiindamental reality. Consequently, no anioimt of historical investigation should be pennitted to detract from the awesome honor of these events. The events surrounding the Holocaust are in very real sense incomprehensible. Only those that were its witnesses, victims, and survivors can provide an accurate account of such history. Only those that personally experienced such horrors are able to fully understand and portray the atrocities and destmction of the Holocaust. Therefore, in the study of the Holocaust, conventional historj- -collected and analyzed by the historian-proves mcomplete and inaccurate. Instead, oral lustory provides a more effective and accurate means for depicting, understanding, and documenting the events of the Holocaust. Oral history presents a verbal account by those individuals who survived, witnessed, or personally experienced such historical events. Historian Donald Ritcliie defined oral history as a, "collection of spoken memories and personal commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews" (qtd in Doing Oral History I). In reference to the Holocaust, oral history is not merely a "collection" because every voice, every survivor, has a unique stor)' to tell. There is no standard Holocaust experience. Ever)' survivor's story is important m gaining a greater miderstanding of the Holocaust. The life story of one survivor. Sallv Goldberg Krieger. -her experiences, emotions, and reflections- serves as both evidence and a historical record that forever documents and certifies the events, facts, impact, and horrors of the Holocaust for present and fiiture generations. Aside from Holocaust survivors, no ordinar)' person ~ and therefore no ordinar)' historian -can altogether understand how mass murder on such a scale could have happened, or be allowed to happen, under the authority of the German state. The accumulation and interpretation of facts cannot yield this understanding, and consequentiy; comprehensibility of the Holocaust may never be possible. Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and award-winning writer, explains that the obstacles faced by historians in understanding the Holocaust lie in the fact that "it defies imagmation and perception; it submits only to memory...Between the dead and the rest of us there exists an abyss Gi^een 76 tiiat no talent can understand" (qtd in Marms 3), An impregnable barrier exists between the historian and the subject, either by chronology or historical circumstance. Because the historian cannon penetrate it, neither can he comprehend tiie horrors or grasp the ultunate sigitificance of the Holocaust. Historian Michael R. Marms explained. "We simply do the best we can, knowing that our efforts [our literary works] are necessarily, imperfect, incomplete and madequate" (7). Consequently, only those mdividuals tiiat experienced or observed the effects of mass killing and sustained cmelty provide the most accurate liistoo' of the Holocaust. Because, "above all else, the Holocaust is a human story," marked by the suffering, lioiTor, pain, courage, determination, and despafr of its victims and victimizers (Weber 14). But it is not a universal stor)'. The Holocaust was the mass persecution and annihilation of human bemgs, as never before seen, and never again repeated. Only those involved have experienced and can understand such death and suffering. Consequentiy, there exists an insmmountable barrier between their extreme suffering and the all other ordinarj' existence. Therefore, tiie Holocaust is most authentically presented through the stories and emotions of those individuals who were its witnesses and its victims. As in all histor>', the Holocaust was not merely a momentous event, but an accumulation of "small" events that loomed large to the people involved. It is through tiie personal accounts of witnesses, victims, and survivors that such "small" events are documented. Because "many of tiie facts of the Holocaust died with the victims," these accounts serve to chronicle events that would otherwise become one "of the numberless events that occurred during the Holocaust [and] were never recorded" (Weber 14). Personal accounts do more than simply record; they present lustorical events in light of individual experiences. As each individual's experiences are limited, they allow for a comprehensive portrayal and analysis of specific events that are subject to broad generalizations in books and "coherent accounts." People fail to realize that behind historical events lie actual persons who not only witnessed, but were affected emotionally, psychologically, and physically from such events; whose lives were permanently changed by those things they witnessed and/or were subjected to. "Titis is an obvious oversight that can be overlooked in the striving for proper scholarship. Hard facts and figures can overwhelm the flesh-and-blood of the Holocaust" (Weber 14). Personal accounts serve to "humaiuze" historical events. To create an emotional dimension that cannot be captured througli the bleak depersonalization characteristic of textbook history. "The vivid power of uidividual Green 77 stories... [and] personal accounts make the textbook lustory come alive and inspire... [Tliey] convey the reality of life during the Holocaust [and] are...an important contribution to our understanding" (Berenbaum 224). In A Short History of tiie American Nation, historian Jolm A. Ganaty (tiie textbook supplement m my AP U.S. History curriculum) mentions the Holocaust in passing: "As the Americans drove swiftly forward, they began to overrun Nazi concenttation camps where millions of Jews had been murdered...Little could be done about those already in tiie camps, but there were thousands of refrigees in occupies Europe who might have been spirited to safety. President Roosevelt declined to make the effort; he even refused to bomb the death camps of the groimd that the destmction of the German soldiers and military equipment took precedence over any other objective" (447). Such a portrayal of the Holocaust is not only insulting to the six million Jews who lost their lives and to the 300,000 Jews who survived the bmtalit)', starvation, and horrors of the Nazi concentration camps and death marches, but is wholly inadequate. It necessarily "mcomplete, omitting vital aspects of suffering and criminality, and hence ringing false as a portrayal of what action happened" (Marms 3). The personal interview of Sally Goldberg Krieger, a Holocaust survivor, serves as a valuable historical document to rebuke such slanted and subdued depictions. It dramatizes tiie realities of the Holocaust and bears witness to the inliunian and barbaric treatment of the Jews by the Nazis. Her stories and experiences serve to "humanize" the Holocaust by transforming numbers [i.e. statistics of the nmnber of Jews killed] into living people, living people uito actual individuals, and actual individuals into helpless victims of emotional and physical hatred, abuse, suffering, and punishment; bringing incomprehensible afrocities into emotional understanding. Historically valuable, the interview captiues the emotions and reactions and of one individual who botii witnessed and experienced the atrocities of the Holocaust. The interviewee validates the existence of certain events and institutions, but it is done in a manner that conttasts with the palliating nature of textbook history in describing the violence and bmtality towards the Jews. We called in Kripo. 1 was short for, you know, it was a criminaMtice, aiding witii the investigating...They used to bring in each time, they were taking Jews in, and they wanted to tell them what they owned. Thad some had diamonds, and some had jewelry, and some the American dollars, and some had money to tell them. Because if they tell them, they beat them, and if they didn't tell, tiiey beat them. And they killed a lot of them. And they took them every day for beating...One day they took my father. And they held him for Uventy-three days. They beat him Green 78 every day. Every day, he tell them where we had the diamonds; where we had the jewelry. We didn't have any!...But tiiey beat him every day. And what they did -how we were licked, how they did -they had a wall with canes, you know big sticks, cans. And they told you to pick up your own stick with which one you wanted to be beaten. Have you head anythuig like that! (Personal Interview 65-66) Such was the tme extent of bmtal force mercilessly executed by the Nazi Germans and its de facto forces. However, in textbook history these mthless acts are rarely mentioned, let alone presented in detail. They are lost in the palliating nature of scholarly writings and therefore mitigate savage reality of Jewish treatment. Foremost Holocaust historian, Lucy S, Dawidowicz, in her book The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945 gives no direct reference to the functions of the Kriminalpolizei [Kripo] save from their description as the "criminal police." She alludes to the confiscation of Jewish property and the repercussions that those who attempted to hide articles of value were subject to; "Jews were ordered to bring in all their gold and jewelry under the tlueat of death. Hostages were taken to enforce the extortion of large sums of money from the Jewish communities, but were seldom released even after the contribution had been delivered (200). Therefore, it is evident that textbook histor)' is subject to broad generalizations. Consequently, such history mitigates the tme bmtality and force used by Gemian authorities upon innocent Jews. Moreover, textbooks present history as merely a collection of fact. Thus, conventional sources do not present the tme nature of events and do not account for the impact of such events upon those individuals involved. Textbooks and other traditional historical sources cannot show how inhumane treattnent affected the Jews emotionally, behaviorally, and psychologically. Such freataient was not limited to bmtal force. German's utilized starvation as a means of "naturally" killuig the Jewish population, especially in the ghetto where rationing was subject to administtative control [indirectly througli the Judrate] by the Nazis. "Oh, it was tenible. Whatever tiiey gave us -it not enough to live, not enough to eat" (Personal Interview 27). The incomprehensible pain of starvation compounded by forced/slave labor is not accounted for in historical sources. It is explainable only by those that were imfortunately subject to such tteatment. The whole thing was just unbelievable. People were dying in the stt-eet. Children sometimes had, they came out, and the parents died from starvation. Not everybody could take it. Some people killed themselves. They threw themselves out from the upper floors to death because they could Green 79 not stand the hunger. Hunger is very painful. Very painful if you have to be days without food. (Personal Interview 36) Personal interviews provide a sense of reality. They take mere words and facts found in ttaditional historical documents on the Holocaust and infuse them with sittiations. people, and emotions. Oral history serves to fill in the gaps of human experience needed to fully understand histor)' that conventional sources camiot do on tiieir own. However, oral history cannot stand on hs own. Personal accounts must be combined witii pertinent lustorical context to allow for a greater understanding and a more uiformed appreciation of history. As demonstrated in The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "personal narrative is woven into the text so histoiy is made incarnate tluough the experience of men, women, and children who went through the event and who told of what they saw" (Berenbaum, 3). "Historical objectivity and private passion complement and illuminate each other. Private tragedies open a listener's ears to the historical cataclysm. Witiiout the combination, there remains eitiier emotion, lacking knowledge, or factual information without compassion" ("Information About the Series" I) Nevertheless, oral history is faulty in the fact that written franscriptions of personal interviews fail to convey the tme richness and texmre of those emotions expressed. Personal interviews serve lo revive places and events through voices and convey the unspeakable tiirough expressions. However, such voices and expressions cannot be captured in the written word. Written franscriptions camiot capmre the most important dimensions -the tone of voice, the slight pauses of recollection, the facial mid body expressions, and the body movements used to show what the voice caimot articulate. Such tilings can only be seen, felt, and appreciated by the interviewer, as tones, inflections, expressions, and emotions are forever etched into thefr mind by personally interacting and conversing with the biterviewee. Changes of voices produced by stoic, grieving, excited, or angry people cannot be fully conveyed in writing. Tones, sighs, inflections, dialect, sonow, and grieving must be heard to be appreciated. Voices disclose hidden depths and meaning that transcriptions and literar)' works camiot capture. As Elie Wiesel noted, silences also speak. However, silences cannot be heard or felt on paper. Oral lustory cannot attain historical objectively, because, by defmition it is the verbal account of historical events by those individuals who witnessed, survived, and experienced them. Every individual is subject to personal biases including age, religion, upbringing, gender, and race. [However, one must note tiiat all historians are subject to personal biases and "unconscious preconceptions," and consequently such predilections are reflected in all Green 80 textbook and conventional history.] The personal account of the interviewee is tiie product of thefr perception and uiterprelation of particular evenl(s) -reflective, tainted, and mfluenced through personal experiences, attitudes, and biases. Additionally, oral histories are a reflection on historical events that occurred several years ago. Many, though not all, of the Holocaust interviewees are older [elderly] individuals and prone lo memory loss. Moreover, they are farther away in proximity to the event and therefore their age and stage in life has changed. Many Holocaust interviewees were children during tiie Holocaust.' In the time between the event and present day, it is possible that new experiences will have altered their perception and mterpretation of it. Memory Is shaped by personal experience. Therefore, the friterviewee's account is subject lo thefr present dispositions. (It makes one confident that a different account would have been given had the inter\'iew been immediately after the event.) The personal account of Mrs. Krieger presents a compensatory history of the Holocaust; designed lo demonstrate what Bertrand Russell called tiie "superior virtue of the oppressed." This is typical amongst accounts of Holocaust sur\'ivors and reflects thefr lifelong stmggle to find significance in tiieirordeal . They place a great importance on the impulse to bear witness, to take in what happened and make it known to others, in all its terrible tmths. Survivors follow in the "commandment" of screlbt und farscreibt, write and record. Their message is universal, to remember and never let the worid forget of the Holocaust. Holocaust survivor Ruth Kent slated her personal interview: I just wanna make sure that this does not happen again.. .1 was the witness lo the Holocaust and I warma make sure that it will never happen again and also that the stories that the Holocaust was just a hoax is just not tme. I'm that one that was there. And I'm the one that was there. And I'm the one that survived all the hardships and I'm here lo tell. Tliat's why I told my story. 'Cause I was the witness to this and when you hear these people denying the Holocaust, it's almost unbelievable. 1 was there and I'm here lo tell it. So I do hope that this will never repeat itself again for my children's children, for generations lo come. (26) Similarly Holocaust survivor Miriam Ingber responded when asked of the legacy of the Holocaust: ' Mrs. Krieger was only twelve years old when the Holocaust began in 1939. In Mrs. Krieger's uiterview, al the age of 73, commented, "I was a kid and I could not understand all those things, you know...I couldn't imagine what it was. I could understand what it was. Had 1 been a little older, I probably would have understood. Because I have some friends [who] were older, five or six years, and this means a lot, fiveo r six years, so you know. So, they [knew] everything." Green 81 Legacy...I...it's showing let's hope it's never gonna happen again. Thai's why kids like you and generations should see what it was. A lot of people try to deny that was never. Holocaust was never. They said it was a lie. So, you go tiiere, you see tiiat, you have proof It's not a lie. Believe me it's not. I'm a living proof, still a living proof There's not too many living proofs almost left. But that's it a, a Holocaust Museum. (28) Similarly, Mrs. Krieger bears wimess to the six million European Jews who did not live lo tell their story. Her aim is to provide an eyewitness account and primary source docmnenl to discount those who proclaim that tiie Holocaust never occurred. Mrs. Krieger wrhes: You children...all we ask of you is not to forget tiiat the Holocaust was real, and that it should NEVER happen again. Many of us are still alive and are the original witnesses to the tragic times. But, in lime, we will not be here lo remember. So dear children, the burden of not forgetting is on You. Oitiy by remember and mforming others of what did occur during litis modem time, the 20^ Century, will you be able to understand and try lo prevent this from ever happening again. (Letter lo Elie Wiesel 3) Aside from the emotional value of Holocaust mterviews, many serve lo disclose events of the past never recorded by conventional textbook histor)'. The namre of the Final Solution accounts for the fact that there still remain an extensive number of unknown and unrecorded events, people, and atrocities. The Final Solution was, for the most part, carried out secretiy under tiie blanket of bmtality and destmction of intemational war. German documents pertaining lo the annihilation of the European Jewry were carefully guarded, and orders were dispersed through the ranks by word of mouth. Nazi authorities attempted to censor all persons [Jews] that recorded such the tme nature of afrocities and events. Allied powers were essentially unaware of tiie mass genocide midertaken by the German Stale. Therefore, Nazi authorities were able to subject the Jews to horrific and bmtal treatment without fear of being reprimanded. However, following World War II, the foremost leaders of the 3"* Reich were convicted of crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against hiunaiut)', and conspiracy in the Nuremberg Trials. This incited an extensive undertaking by the Intemational Militar)' Tribunal to investigate other cases of war crimes. It also brought the Holocaust lo tiie forefront as it proved that the persecution and extermination of millions of European Jews during World War II was indeed a reality. The desire lo avenge such wrongdoings of German authorities, in accordance with the willingness of numerous countries to indict such persons, lead to thousands of Nazi-war-crimes Green 82 trials tiu-oughout the worid. Despite the vast number of war-crimes ttials that were documented, few conventional sources have included such resources in their presentation of Holocaust histoo'- Other than a brief mention of the Nuremberg Trials, war-crimes frials have nearly been cast off from Holocaust smdies. Historian Lucy S. Dawidowicz has no references to such trials m her book. The War Against the Jews, as it only covers the years 1933- 1945. Therefore, oral history proves an invaluable source in disclosing these events. For individuals are able to bear wimess to those "small" events, insignificant in the larger scope of the Holocaust, but loomed large lo tiie people involved. The interview of Mrs. Krieger recounts the afrocious acts of one man, Herr Gunther Fuchs [Gestapo officer and commissioner for Jewish affafrs m the L6dz Ghetto], and his 1963 war-crime trial m Hanover, Germany where he was convicted of "putting to deatii thousands of people" and sentenced to life in prison (Letter lo Elie Wiesel 1), Gunther Fuclis is not mentioned in any conventional sources nor textbook histories. His name only appeared in an inttoduction to The Chronicles of the Lodz Ghetto: 1941-1944, where he was described as having "played a particularly sinister role" m the life of the Jews in the L6dz ghetto (Dobroszyski xl). Such a depiction is, indeed, a broad generalization, and mitigates the tme magnitude and cmelty of Gunther Fuchs and his actions. Like many portrayals of German authorities and Hitler's "willing executioners," thefr freatmenl and exploitation of the Emopean Jewry was far woree than that which is presented in textbook histoo'- Consequently, personal accounts of war-crimes -that would have otherwise gone undocumented and unknown -divulge the actualities of such treatment and prove no less valuable ui greater understanding the individual victimizers of the Holocaust. Interviews reveal that unspeakable horrors inflicted upon the Jews was not only carried out from those in Gennan High command—the generals and admirals who dfrected Nazis Germany's military conquests -but proliferated to mere civil servants. Thus, these accounts show that such behavior and treatment was rampant amongst all ranks of German authority. Mrs. Krieger recalled the actions of Gunther Fuchs: Nobody can describe how band it really was, nobody. In 1942, when the fathers did not want to give the children up, they decided that they were going to make a [selection] called a spehr in German. And they went from house to house, you know, everybody had to come down to the courtyards, stay like in a circle, approach lum, his name this guy was Gunther Fuchs. Whoever he wanted to be to life he sent to one side, whoever he did not was to be to life, was sent to that side...I saw a lot of terrible things, but the terrible tiungs I saw when [Gunther Fuchs] make that terrible selection in 1942, lots of folks were when, each one had to face him. There was an older Green 83 woman.. .and she tried to open her mouth in German, and right away pulled out tiie gun and killed her on the spot. And he said, "Take this trash away." (Personal Interview 38,40) This selection was incompletely described in The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto: 1941-1944: Litzmannsttidt-Ghetto, September 14, 1942: ...The mspection of 38 Zgierska Street [Mrs. Krieger's place of residence in the ghetto] was already completed, while tiie one in the neighboring building was still m progress; the inhabitants of the fust outbuilding who had been exempted from resettlement remmed thefr their apartments and, out of curiosity, look out thefr windows at the operation in progress in the building next to theirs. This was noticed by the inspecting officers, who then ordered evei-yone out into the courtyard. During this new inspection 40 of the 50 people present were selected for deportation ...Many of those people... were released, A few, however, did fall victim to chance. (253-4) As shown, even primary sources like The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto do not "reveal with unusual precision and in devastating detail" the everyday life and daily events of the Jews in tiie Lodz ghetto. The Chronicle was a day-by-day account of the events which affected tiie Jews, and was written by a team of scholars and journalists in the Department of Archives of the Lodz Judenrat (whose function it was to gather and preserve documentary sources about those terrible times). Historian Lucy S. Dawidowicz, heralded The Chronicle as "a major documentary source about the life and death of Polish Jews under Nazi occupation. It is probably the single richest historical record tiiat has survived and is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand the Jewish experience" (qtd in Tlie War Against the Jews 452). However, The Chronicle was written under constant fear tliat the Germans would uncover the work. Lucjan Dobroszycki comments in the book's introduction, The [that was] the primar)' explanation for the very cautious tone and the absence of evaluation whenever the Germans are mentioned. Only bare facts are presented.... Nearly every instance of the martyruig of the ghetto's population is echoed by the Cluonicle, even though things are not always called by name. The text is fiill of euphemisms and impersonal descriptions ...[The chroniclers] never report what the victims think and feel about tiiose who caused their tragedy, even when they are bemg sent to thefr deaths. There are only facts and descriptions of the event. ...It [was] not possible to write about those who commit the crimes...The Germans and their Green 84 policy toward the Jews are either mentioned tersely or not at all -just when the Germans were defining which ghetto dwellers with live and which ones will die. (xviii) Therefore, the uiterview of Mrs. Krieger is historically valuable for depicting and presenting tiiat which even the foremost record of the Jewish experience m the L6dz ghetto caimot. It hmnanizes and personalizes the events, as Mrs. Krieger reveals their emotions, thoughts, and feelings about those tiungs they were subjected to during the Holocaust. Personal interviews are for the most part, not nearly as self-censored as official documentation by Jews written during Nazi occupation. Consequently, they are able to talk freely about tiiose German authorities and other "wilting executioners" who committed such afrocious crimes. The interview of SaUy Goldberg Krieger is just one of the multitudinous personal accounts and oral histories of tiie Holocaust. But nevertheless, it holds inexplicable lustorical significance. Althougli no one interview or individual can capture the scope or impact of the Holocaust, each is important in gaining a greater understandmg of this paramount event. For, every inidividual has a wholly umque story to tell. Ever)' individual provides a new prospective in viewing, analyzing, and studying the events of the Holocaust. The accounts of victims that survived -like Mrs. Krieger -ser\'e as logical entry points into the study of that epoch. Flowever, the mmiber of living survivors continues to depreciate with each passing year. It is not long until there will be no living proof that the Holocaust ever occurred or that these people ever existed. As history Hilberg has suggested recently: "he era of researchers witii personal experience of tiie period who coitid work with a sense of 'feel' for the documents, is coming to an end" (qtd in Marris 7). Moreover, historian Lucy J. Dawidowicz wams, "Itistorians [when left to their ovra devices] do not always tum out to be reliable guides to the recovery of the past" (qtd m Marris 202). Oral history must be utilized to fuLfill the Jewish commandment to Holocaust survivors: write and record, before it is too late. It must capture the persona! emotions, experiences, and affects of tiie Holocaust upon those individuals mvolved, before the "human" aspect of the event is lost in the mundane and impersonal history of conventional scholarly works and textbooks. Green 85 APPENDIX I .^ - •'S.i'A Green 86 APPENDIX II Green 87 APPENDIX III Street map of the ghetto of Lodz Gneito Dounflafigs are snown oy oasneo lines Zgie'SKa and Limanowski siieeis were (enced oK (rom gneiio and crossed by budges SCALE METERS 0 Green APPENDIX IV .1' "I," I milts 5P .J 1 1 1- Ciechanow kilomeues 80 Inowroclaw "<•-- Weoi'ow •^/^e^i Kutno* ^ { • Warsaw •V „3,,3^ yn Siedlce Ozorkow a \ • Zyrardow* \ ..Kalisz ^Lodz ''' zczonowV TSARIST GERMAN EMPIRE EMPIRE .; Warta* • • P^b.anice V^ lo 191'' 10 JS'" Zdunska Tomaszow Lubartow Wola ^ 0 Piotrkow Radom Szydlowiec Radomsko^ Konskie Chelm Knepice ^ ddie Kielce Izbica Czestochowa • Koniecpol • Daleszyce ..-•Szciekociny Jodrzejow Tyj Wolbrom « Baranow Bedzin Stopnica • OIkusz \0' ., c' VIS • Kolbuszowa Rawa V Radomysl R^eszow' Ruska f^^^i^Auschwilz Cracow Tarnow Debica ^ jyczyn Wielpole Blala Slrzyzow Przemysl Rymanow Gorlice • * Krynica ^ DuKta AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE (ol9M © ManlnGilbtrl t9S2 Green 89 APPENDIX V DEPORTATIONS. DEATH MARCHES AND REVOLT. AUGUST 1944 Green 90 APPENDIX VI STUTTHOF AND ITS SATELLITE SLAVE LABOUR CAMPS Bait i c Sea Konigsberg Gulf of Danzig EAST PRUSSIA • Heiligenbeil Gerdauen Reimansfelde Schippenbeil deaths in • _,, . ;Sd4 Elbing miles 30 _l T 1 1 1 kilomeifes 40 © Martin Gilbetl 1982 Green 91 APPENDIX VII MASSACRE, DEPORTATION AND EVACUATION. SEPTEMBER 1944 Green 92 APPENDIX VIII TO: Elie l^iesel CheslnMo, U.S. Holocaust Mertorial Council FROM: NAME; Sally Krieger (Mrs. Karl) ADDRESS: 6 Lydia Court CITY/STATE; Baltimore, Maryland ?i;?08 TELEPHONE tiWB£R/Area Code: NAME BEFORE WORLD WAR U: GOLDBERG, SALA . PLACE OF RESIDENCE BEFORE WQRLD WAR II: Lodz, Poland; Zgierska H 38 SURVIVOR OF (CAHP. GHEFfO, HIDEOUT. FOREST): Lodz Ghetto until 1944 Auschwitz/Stutthoff Camps 1944 - 1945 This Is supposed to be a letter to the future generations. In n\y opinion, it is a miniature autobiography of the terrible memories of my life between 1939 and 1945. To all of the young people, to niy children and grandchildren, I am writing to you so that you should never forget where your parents came from, and to tell you about the aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents you always asked about, but never knew. There were so many of them, too numerous to mention. I want you to know that you MUST keep your eyes and ears open to ensure that what happened to me and all of rriy brothers and sisters" who IWed Europe, will never happen again. It was a beautiful Sutnrier morning, the 3rd day of September, 1939, the day I was supposed to start school. I was just 12 years old In June of that year; the year that changed my entire life. The powerful Genran Nazi army marched into our c1 ty on that day. That was the day when all of rry nightmares began! We were a happy family, 6 brothers and sisters, of which 1 was the oldest, and a devoted set of parents. We were not wealthy, but nevertheless, a wery happy and close-knit family. In a short story; By the middle of 1945, 1 was alone, and the only one of my 6 brothers and sisters that survived all the evils and horrors that ever occurred in the entire history of the world. During those 6 years I saw many murderous acts, constant hunger, and starvation that brought death to thousands of people in the Ghetto. Thousands died of epidemic diseases that the Nazis purposely brought upon us Numerous selections of people in the Ghetto minimized our population, One se lection I will NEVER forget. In the Surmer of 1942, all of the children and olde r people were taken away. The horrors of the parents and those tragedies are i I ways in front of my eyes. Even today, I still have nightmares of what occurred;"1 am sure they will be with me forever, I will never forget, however, the face of that German Nazi who made selections; 1 had to face him again 1n October, 1953, at his war crimes trial In Hanover, Gennany. HERR GUNTHER fOICHS, Chief of the Gestapo of the Lodz Ghetto, was on trial for putting to death thousands of people. Kany were shot to death by him, personally, during a selection I^tnessed. Because of these witnes sed killings, the Genrian Government asked me to atwnd the trial. Green 93 Current Name: Sally Krieger -2- I agonized for weeks and became sick just thinking about the trial, let alone •having to face this killer. The purpose of going to the trial was on behalf of those he killed; there was no one else to speak for their outcry. Forme, it was the way to live the rest of my life with a clear conscience; that I_was personally involved in his conviction. VERDICT: LIFE IMPRISONMENT. This verdict brought me peace of mind. It also brought on~the high blood pressure frooi which I will suffer the rest of my life and require daily medication. In spite of those horrible years \n the Ghetto, we iwere all still alive in my family. During those selections, the 3 youngest children were hidden in a double basement. My father managed to save all of us, until the final liquidation of the Ghetto In August, 1944, Cattle trains transported us to Auschwitz. We were Imnediately split up. Many died from suffocation on the train. Arriving In Auschwitz, I could not find anyone from my family. While waiting in line to "bathe" I found 2 of my sisters; we were eacn only 1 year apart In age. We then realized that the rest of the family were sent to the gas chambers. For 5 days, I could not open my mouth to swallow anything; I was In a state of shock. In Stutthoff, February, 1945, one of my sisters died of starvation; she was only 15 years old. The two of us shared a dream that,maybe one day, we would be free and find our father alive; ^•e were constantly dreaming of him. Unfortunately, my other sister was beaten by a Gestapo guard for trying to get a potato. As a result of her beating, she was constantly spitting up blood. Though she ij^ live to be liOera':ed, she was too sick to be cured, and died in a hospital in June, 1945. We were finally freeo by the Red Army in Gdansk, Poland. I hoped that one day I would find my father alive. My dream, thank G-0 came true! In October, 1945, my father came searching for me. It took him 3 days to locate me in Lodz, Poland. The moment of our meeting could have been made into a U.S. motion picture had a film camera been present at the t i me. My dear father, the late Simon Goldberg, also attended the war crimes trial, 1 reference earlier. Following his testimony, and upon our return to the United States, he developed a heart condition, from which he died 2 1/2 years later at the young age of 66 years. We came to the United States in late 1949. We-are very grateful to this wonderful country, and especially to the late President Harry S. Truman, of great memory. He opened the doors for the displaced people who had nowhere else to turn. We try to live normal lives -- raising a family, working hard so that oui children can have a better life, be educated, and pursue careers. I wish that i could have ha d that chance. We often hear that many people try to deny what really happened in Europe. How can anyone say such a thing after so much that has been said, written, and even photographed? To me and the rest of the survivors, no one can say this. My brothers and sisters did nothing wrong, to be put to death at such young ages. 1 often feel guilty for surviving, and ask myself why I was better than they. Why was I lucky tc go through that Hell and IIVP' Green 94 Current Name: Sally Krieger You children, are not guilty of anything yoor parents lived through. All we ask of you Is not to forget that the Holocaust ws real. And that it should NEVER happen again. . Many of us are still alive jnd ai-e orTglnal witnesses to those tragic times. But, In time, we will not be here to remember. So, dear children, the burden of not forgetting 1s on You. Only by remembering and Informing others of what dj^ occur -during this modem time, the 20th Century, will you be able to under stand and try to prevent this from ever happening again. In memory of rny family members,-listed below, and the others who perished, pledse keep the n-^mory alive. Sally Krieger (Sala Goldberg' In Memory Of: MfiTurt. Rivka Laja Goldberg Age at Death: 43 Auschwitz Gas Chamber FATHER: Shimon FaWel Goldberg 66 Baltimore, Maryland SISTERS; Frania Ruchel Goldberg 16 1/2 Gdansk, Poland Dorka Goldberg 15 Stutthoff Camp Blumka Gitel Goldberg 10 Auschwitz Gas Chamber BROTHERS: Simiuel Aron Goldberg 13 Auschwitz Gas Chamber Avrum Mai lech Goldberg IT Auschwitz Gas Chamber HATERNAL GRANOrATriER: Mordechai Hirsch Edelman 88 2 years before War MATERNAL Machla Edelman 78 died in Lodz Ghetto GRAfiOMOTHER; Green 95 WORKS CONSULTED Berenbamn, Michael. Tlie World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1993. Boas, Jacob. We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust. New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1995. Brown, Jean E., Elaine C. Stephens, and Janet E. Rubin, comps. Images from the Holocaust: A Literature Anthology. Lincolnwood: NTC Pulbishing Group, 1997. Carr, Edward Hallett. Wliat is History? New York: Vintages Books, 1961. Dawidowicz, Lucy S., ed. A Holocaust Reader. New York: Behrman House, Inc., 1976. - - -. The War Against the Jews 1933-1945. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975. Dobroszycki, Lucjan, ed. The Chronicle of the L6dz Ghetto: 1941-1944. Trans. Richard Lourie, et a!. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. Drynko, Romuald. Stutthof Museum Guide. Trans. S. Swigon. Sztutowo: Muzeum Stutthof, 1993. Dunin-Wasowicz, Krzysztof. "Stutthof."'Encyclopedia of tlie Holocaust. Ed. Isreal Gutman. 4 vols. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1990. Fishel, Jack R. The Holocaust. Westport: Greewood Press, 1998. Garraty, John A. A Short History of the American Nation. 7'*' ed. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc, 1997. Gilbert, Martin. Tlie Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War. New York: Holt, Rinehard, and Winston, 1985. —. The Macmillan Atlas of the Holocaust. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1982. Hitler, Adolf. Mem Kamof. Trans. Ralph Manheim. 1927. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999. Hoiliday, Laurel. Children in the Holocaust and Worid War II: Their Secret Diaries. New York: Pocket Books, 1995. "Information About the Series." Voice Vision: Holocaust Sur\'ivor Oral Histories. Dr. Sidney M. Bolkosky. Mardigian Library of the U of Michigan—Dearborn. Board of Regents, 1999. 6 May 2000. Fisher Foundation. U of Michigan—Dearborn. 30 Jan. 2001. Ingber, Miriam. Interview. By Erica Harvey. 28 Dec. 1999. 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L0g I the HOLOCAUST; the FATE of the POLISH
