Irving Shapiro Interview (Part 2)

Konrad Pregowski Author

04/07/2022 Added

29 Plays

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Interview with Irving Shapiro of Gering, Nebraska.

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[00:00:00.120]Not to fall down.
[00:00:02.010]And they picked me and they picked out about 30 men
[00:00:07.380]and they took us to a, to the bath house.
[00:00:13.140]We went to the bath house. They bathed us again.
[00:00:16.860]They disinfected us,
[00:00:19.260]and they gave us work in the bathhouse.
[00:00:23.790]Bathhouse was a place where they used to,
[00:00:25.860]after the selection that they took away,
[00:00:28.200]the women and children and the older people to the crematorium
[00:00:33.630]to gas them and burn them.
[00:00:35.760]They left the younger ones and the healthier ones they left
[00:00:40.920]and they put them to work in the camps. So we, before they went to the camps,
[00:00:46.200]our job was to bath them and
[00:00:51.030]strip them from all their clothes.
[00:00:54.750]And disinfect them and gave them prison clothes and send them out to the
[00:00:59.370]camps. When they were undressing
[00:01:05.190]and dumped all their clothes on the ground
[00:01:09.990]and walking out of the barrack,
[00:01:13.140]we used to take the clothes and put them on trucks.
[00:01:18.240]While we were walking from the barracks into the
[00:01:22.050]to the truck to load the clothes,
[00:01:24.600]we searched through the pockets and found some
[00:01:29.550]valuables. Of course, we
[00:01:35.160]didn't there to let anybody see it because if they would
[00:01:39.960]find, if they would catch us doing that,
[00:01:44.370]they would kill us right in the spot.
[00:01:48.240]So we hid whatever we can find.
[00:01:52.080]And then we had a chance to trade it with some people that work
[00:01:56.940]with civilians,
[00:01:58.800]take it to work and bring us an extra piece of bread for that
[00:02:03.690]or something else that's edible.
[00:02:07.620]The most important thing for us was to
[00:02:12.390]get something extra to eat.
[00:02:17.250]After working in the bathhouse for about three, four weeks,
[00:02:20.970]they came in and they said, they need eight men for a special job.
[00:02:25.860]We're going to be working at night.
[00:02:29.550]We didn't know what the work was. When they came the first time to take us out,
[00:02:34.530]they came about midnight and they took us over to the
[00:02:39.360]women's camp.
[00:02:42.120]And we got into a barrack and they were dead
[00:02:48.120]women lying in the barrack
[00:02:51.990]and our job was to drag them out and load them on trucks.
[00:02:58.740]They told us that those women died of a disease because
[00:03:03.670]every morning when we went back to the camps
[00:03:08.110]after the work was done at night,
[00:03:10.720]we loaded about between 800 to 1200 women every night.
[00:03:16.420]They told us that the women died of disease and they wanted us to get
[00:03:21.760]showers and dissenfect.
[00:03:24.340]And they gave us every morning,
[00:03:28.000]they gave us a loaf of bread and a salami.
[00:03:32.080]And in two, three weeks, I gained about 80 pounds.
[00:03:36.850]I ate so much from what
[00:03:40.970]they gave us the extra bread and the salami.
[00:03:44.800]Then they found out that the women didn't die of any disease,
[00:03:48.910]but they used to bring in from other barracks to
[00:03:53.770]this special barrack, they brought in the thousands of women.
[00:03:58.810]They fed him some soup at noon and at night they were dead.
[00:04:03.160]We found out that they were poisoned the soup and they want to eliminate
[00:04:08.320]some people. I don't know. They,
[00:04:10.800]they usually used to take him to the crematorium and gas them, but they want to
[00:04:16.120]do a different way. So they, they poisoned them with the food.
[00:04:20.440]And we were loading those women in on trucks
[00:04:24.790]and they took them to the crematorium and burned the bodies.
[00:04:29.230]It was going on for about four or five weeks. Every night.
[00:04:35.020]They took us from Birkenau to Buna
[00:04:40.180]and I was assigned to the machinists commando.
[00:04:46.120]There were 800 people assigned to that commando.
[00:04:53.020]First time when we went out to work,
[00:04:58.960]we got assigned three prisoners
[00:05:03.460]to two civilians.
[00:05:05.980]And my job was pipe fitting. I was in Buna
[00:05:13.060]until May until January the 18th,
[00:05:17.770]1945.
[00:05:22.180]And the Russian front started getting a little closer.
[00:05:29.050]So they started to preparing to
[00:05:34.510]marched us out out of the camp.
[00:05:39.310]And one night, March 18 was cold,
[00:05:42.490]about two feet of snow on the ground.
[00:05:45.670]They get us, get out, get out,
[00:05:50.380]gathered us up in the camp.
[00:05:53.740]Took out all the bread with
[00:05:58.820]anything that was left over in the kitchen. And they gave it to us prisoners.
[00:06:04.010]And they took us out
[00:06:06.710]at night to march someplace.
[00:06:09.860]We didn't know where we were going. While we were marching out of Buna.
[00:06:14.870]One of the guards came over to me and he said,
[00:06:20.510]you take that dog. And if we get to our destination,
[00:06:24.860]I take him back from you. Says that take good care of him because
[00:06:29.690]this dog belongs to the camp commandant Schwartz from Auschwitz.
[00:06:36.500]That dog saved my life. Because first of all,
[00:06:41.360]there was a lot of people walking in the snow and weak and hungry.
[00:06:46.340]They, they dropped, but when they dropped. They, they, they, uh,
[00:06:50.420]killed you right there.
[00:06:51.950]But the dog pulled me through the snow.
[00:06:56.900]And not only that, a lot of people were carrying some food, some bread.
[00:07:01.430]And when you walk, everything becomes so heavy.
[00:07:04.910]So they threw out everything and the dog sniffed it and
[00:07:09.650]found bread and some meats, some sausage, what they had.
[00:07:14.210]And they the dog found that.
[00:07:17.720]And I was gathering that stuff up.
[00:07:20.510]And that was easier for me because the dog was pulling me.
[00:07:25.670]After three days and three nights marching
[00:07:29.030]we got into a place they called Gleiwitz
[00:07:33.770]that was a,
[00:07:36.110]a center where they brought in a lot of prisoners and they loaded them
[00:07:40.880]in railroad cars. They put us in,
[00:07:45.830]in boxcars, open boxcars, coal cars,
[00:07:51.530]and about 250 of us into a, to a car.
[00:07:56.690]And we didn't have any room to sit down. No,
[00:08:00.790]not talking about laying down even to sit down. So we stood,
[00:08:05.990]stood up all the time.
[00:08:08.420]We were standing . And the ones that had that place next to
[00:08:13.310]the,
[00:08:14.720]to the edge of the car found out later,
[00:08:19.820]we had it a little better because when the train took off
[00:08:25.520]12,000 prisoners.
[00:08:29.060]And they dragged us for 14 days
[00:08:33.200]from Gleiwitz to Czechoslovakia to
[00:08:37.860]Austria to Germany,
[00:08:42.140]into central Germany.
[00:08:45.110]And they never gave us a drop of water
[00:08:50.420]or anything to eat. And whoever stood there, the edge of the car
[00:08:57.390]got a pot or something.
[00:09:00.060]And we took a few strings and tied on to the pot.
[00:09:03.810]And we scooped some snow. When the train was moving from the ground.
[00:09:10.630]And after two weeks, we came into a place where there was all mountains,
[00:09:15.340]always all mountains. We didn't see nothing else.
[00:09:19.300]And we got in between the mountains,
[00:09:21.610]in the train and we got into a camp.
[00:09:24.670]They called Dora and they had about 120,000 prisoners in
[00:09:29.650]that camp. We didn't see absolutely nothing from the outside.
[00:09:34.000]That was the camp where they manufactured the D2 rockets.
[00:09:39.880]I wasn't at camp for about three
[00:09:44.230]months. And after three months,
[00:09:48.520]the Russian front start coming a little closer.
[00:09:52.840]And then they decided one night to take us out from that camp.
[00:09:58.570]So they cooked up a soup for us,
[00:10:02.230]and they fed everybody the soup.
[00:10:03.940]We were 400 and they gave us a soup to
[00:10:08.680]eat and they start marching us out of the camp.
[00:10:13.210]Something was wrong with a soup because everybody got diarrhea and we're
[00:10:17.890]walking for about seven days.
[00:10:20.560]And we let left a trail all the way till we came to
[00:10:25.540]the place where they wanted us to, to go.
[00:10:30.250]We came to a place to the Elba River and there was a barge
[00:10:35.080]sitting over there waiting for us.
[00:10:39.510]Before we got on the barge, one of the guys
[00:10:46.020]fell down and he couldn't get up. He was so weak.
[00:10:50.850]So one of the SS troopers grabbed me and he says,
[00:10:55.530]go and bury him. He gave me a shovel. It was grass.
[00:11:00.330]They gave me a shovel to dig in the grass.
[00:11:02.760]Everybody got a ration of bread because they want wanted,
[00:11:06.480]they went to put us on the barge. So I held under my arm.
[00:11:10.920]I didn't dare put away the bread on the ground because somebody would grab it
[00:11:15.240]right away. So I held on my arm that bread,
[00:11:19.110]and I was digging the hole with a shovel.
[00:11:22.290]And I looked at it and the man that he was still alive.
[00:11:27.450]My God, I was thinking, I got bury the guy he is still alive.
[00:11:30.900]And then a German soldier from the Luftwaffe
[00:11:35.700]came by and he says to me, what are you doing here? He says,
[00:11:41.730]I got a bury him. He said to me, he says, he's still alive. I says, I know,
[00:11:46.410]but I got the order from SS to bury him.
[00:11:49.470]So he took out his gun and he shot the man.
[00:12:02.680]So when we got liberated we were in the camps, right
[00:12:05.380]away they opened up an office, they call it UNRRA office.
[00:12:10.600]And they started
[00:12:14.170]repatriating those people from the camps to their countries.
[00:12:19.060]The Russians started going to Russia.
[00:12:22.330]The Belgiums went to Belgium, the French,
[00:12:26.620]but we,
[00:12:28.420]some of us didn't have no place to go.
[00:12:35.050]My name is Irving Shapiro. My name is Irving Shapiro,
[00:12:39.550]Nebraska. I'm from Gering, Nebraska businessmen.
[00:12:43.780]Of course I wasn't always a businessman.
[00:12:49.300]I had, I was born in Poland,
[00:12:52.840]April [inaudible], April the 15th, nine,
[00:12:57.450]I had a large family, lots of aunts, cousins, family,
[00:13:01.720]lots of aunts, uncles, and grandparents.
[00:13:05.560]And they old grandparents during the Holocaust,
[00:13:09.070]all perished during the Holocaust. The only one,
[00:13:15.280]the only one left was my young brother
[00:13:20.380]which I was shipped out with brother, get up with him,
[00:13:23.320]which I will do a camp shipped out into [inaudible] into a,
[00:13:27.490]I named my three months
[00:13:31.480]at three months in a transport the three months.
[00:13:34.390]And I share a and I never saw him again,
[00:13:38.650]still trying to find them. I'm still searched for him,
[00:13:42.790]trying to find them search for him.
[00:13:45.700]But I didn't have any luck so far.
[00:13:50.410]I didn't have any luck so far.

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Irving Shapiro Interview (Part 2)

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