Joe Fishel Holocaust Survivor Testimony (Tape 1)

Joe Fishel Author

10/31/2024 Added

11 Plays

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Holocaust survivor Joe Fishel talks about his experiences during World War II.

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[00:00:00.040]My name is Joe Fishel and I was planning to make this tape for quite a while and I never got around
[00:00:13.440]to it. Today I have a free day and I figure I'm gonna sit down and chat with you and tell you all
[00:00:20.680]about me. I was born in Poland in Będzin in 1921 and I had two brothers and two sisters. My father's
[00:00:37.960]name was Bendit. My mother's name was Rivka and they were born in Będzin, Poland and they
[00:00:47.380]were related to each other. They were first cousins.
[00:00:49.920]And they were married in 1913. We had a grandmother by the name of Perle living with us before
[00:01:00.120]the war.
[00:01:05.520]My grandfather's on my mother's side name was Elimaloch. My grandmother's name was Perle.
[00:01:16.260]She lived while I was born.
[00:01:19.720]The rest of my grandparents were not alive. On my father's side, my grandfather's name
[00:01:28.660]was Meyer and his mother's name was Earl, which in Trinke is named after her.
[00:01:39.820]My father was born in 1896 and my mother was born in 1898.
[00:01:49.520]My grandmother Perle died in 1934 and my father died in 1931.
[00:01:58.520]Now I'm going to tell you a little more about my cousins and so forth.
[00:02:05.520]My mother's name was Rivka and she had one brother, his name was Chaim Leib.
[00:02:14.520]And he had two sons, one was named Meyer
[00:02:19.320]and the other one was Yaakov.
[00:02:21.320]And then he had six daughters.
[00:02:24.320]I don't remember their names, but six daughters should be sufficient
[00:02:29.320]because I can't think back so far.
[00:02:33.320]My father had a much bigger family.
[00:02:36.320]He had three brothers, of course one sister and two daughters in the United States.
[00:02:42.320]One was named Manas
[00:02:49.120]one was named Yosef Hersh
[00:02:52.120]and one was named Shio.
[00:02:58.120]Manas had four children, two boys and two girls.
[00:03:04.120]Yosef Hersh had six children, three brothers and three girls.
[00:03:11.120]And Shio had four, one boy and three girls.
[00:03:18.920]And this was my closest family we ever had.
[00:03:21.920]We were very close to each other.
[00:03:23.920]We used to see each other practically at least once a week or more.
[00:03:28.920]Sometimes we used to see each other every day because we lived close to each other.
[00:03:32.920]We didn't live too far away from each other.
[00:03:34.920]So in a small town, if you want to see somebody,
[00:03:38.920]you just walk out in the street and you see everybody you want to see.
[00:03:42.920]We have quite a few second cousins on my grandmother's side.
[00:03:48.720]And on my grandfather's side, on two grandfathers' and grandmothers' sides,
[00:03:52.520]which we were very friendly with them.
[00:03:55.520]We were not too close with them, but we were very friendly.
[00:03:58.520]As far as I remember, I can't go back too far.
[00:04:03.520]I remember when my father died.
[00:04:05.520]I can describe to you today what happened to my father.
[00:04:09.520]First, I'd like to tell you what I heard,
[00:04:14.520]because I was very young when my father died.
[00:04:18.520]My father had a factory from shirts.
[00:04:22.320]He used to deliver all the shirts he could make to Woolworths.
[00:04:25.320]We had a Woolworths in Katowice.
[00:04:27.320]Katowice was only 15 miles away from Będzin.
[00:04:30.320]And all the shirts, he had a friend over there.
[00:04:33.320]His name was Simberknopf.
[00:04:35.320]I don't know, he lived, he knew him for quite a while.
[00:04:40.320]He went to America and he got hooked up with the Woolworths stores in the United States.
[00:04:45.320]Then he came back and he opened quite a few stores in Poland.
[00:04:48.320]And this man told my dad, whatever he has, whatever he can make,
[00:04:54.320]whatever he can produce, he'd be glad to take it from him.
[00:04:58.320]So that's what we did. We had about 15 machines working every day, about 15 girls,
[00:05:04.320]making shirts, different kinds of shirts, sports shirts, all kinds of shirts.
[00:05:08.320]My father used to be a specialist. He used to be a cutter.
[00:05:13.320]I found out a little later, when I was a little older,
[00:05:18.120]my father could cut out, there was a hundred yards of material, or 200 yards of material.
[00:05:23.920]He could always cut out an extra shirt out of this material, which nobody else could do.
[00:05:30.920]So that's why he was a very good professional man. He knew what he was doing.
[00:05:35.920]He didn't know how to sew, but he knew how to cut all kinds of new designs and different things on the shirts.
[00:05:42.920]And he was very good at it.
[00:05:44.920]My dad was not a too religious man.
[00:05:47.920]He used to go Shabbos to the synagogue, but during the week he didn't go.
[00:05:53.720]He used to go sometimes in the evening, you see.
[00:05:55.720]But we lived in a town where most, I would say 95% were Jews, you see.
[00:06:02.720]So we had synagogues all over.
[00:06:04.720]Wherever we went, we had synagogues.
[00:06:06.720]We used to come Saturday, Friday afternoon all the stores used to close up.
[00:06:11.720]Nothing was open.
[00:06:13.720]Saturday all the stores were closed on account of Shabbos.
[00:06:17.720]We used to have big soccer matches on Saturday.
[00:06:21.520]My dad used to love to go to the soccer matches on Saturday.
[00:06:25.520]Mother used to be mad.
[00:06:27.520]Sometimes he used to take me along and sneak me in there too.
[00:06:30.520]But he always told me, "When you come home, don't tell mother that I'm taking you to the soccer match."
[00:06:36.520]Sundays we used to go to the soccer match.
[00:06:38.520]My dad used to love to swim.
[00:06:40.520]And he used to take us all the time to the lake and swim with us.
[00:06:45.520]And I was too young to enjoy
[00:06:47.520]my father.
[00:06:49.320]I wish I would be a little older.
[00:06:51.320]But the time came in 1931 when my dad came home.
[00:06:56.320]It was on a Sunday afternoon.
[00:06:58.320]And he took sick.
[00:07:00.320]He had an attack, a gallstone attack.
[00:07:05.320]In Europe, before the war, they didn't do anything to you.
[00:07:07.320]They gave you a painkiller.
[00:07:09.320]And then he continued with the pains.
[00:07:11.320]And he was screaming.
[00:07:13.320]It was something awful.
[00:07:15.320]The man was laying a whole week in bed.
[00:07:17.320]The doctor came, probably gave him an aspirin.
[00:07:20.120]That's all they did before the war.
[00:07:22.120]And all of a sudden, one Friday night was around this time of the year.
[00:07:27.120]It was around, I think it was January the 7th then, 1931.
[00:07:34.120]We all went to sleep.
[00:07:36.120]We all got dressed for the next day to go to school.
[00:07:39.120]And we wished him good night.
[00:07:43.120]We went to sleep at 12 o'clock at night.
[00:07:45.120]He passed out on us.
[00:07:47.120]I don't know if he had a heart attack or...
[00:07:48.920]he just died on gallstones.
[00:07:51.920]And it was a miserable day the next day.
[00:07:53.920]It was a funeral.
[00:07:55.920]The funeral was awful cold.
[00:07:57.920]It must have been about 25 or 30 below zero at the time.
[00:07:59.920]I'll never forget this.
[00:08:01.920]You know, in Europe, funerals are not like over here.
[00:08:04.920]They used to take you out of your own house.
[00:08:08.920]You know, my father was laying on the floor all night.
[00:08:10.920]Thursday and Friday they used to take him out of the house.
[00:08:12.920]And they used to carry him about five, six miles.
[00:08:16.920]That's the way it used to be, funerals.
[00:08:20.720]It was a very bad day of our life.
[00:08:24.720]Everything, after my father died, everything changed.
[00:08:27.720]The whole, the whole thing changed.
[00:08:30.720]See my, I had a older sister by the name of Lola.
[00:08:33.720]She went to business school.
[00:08:36.720]Well, you know, after my father died, there was nobody to run the business.
[00:08:42.720]My mother was trying and we couldn't do it.
[00:08:46.720]So little by little, we sold everything out.
[00:08:50.520]We sold the machines out.
[00:08:52.520]We sold the material out.
[00:08:55.520]You know, when you start selling things, and there was a woman, one lady.
[00:08:59.520]She had five kids on her hands.
[00:09:03.520]I had a sister by the name of Fela.
[00:09:05.520]She was my second sister.
[00:09:07.520]And Fela went to school then too.
[00:09:12.520]We all had to quit school.
[00:09:14.520]Then I had a brother by the name of Elimaloch.
[00:09:16.520]He went to high school.
[00:09:19.320]He had to quit school.
[00:09:21.320]I and Dave were the only ones who...
[00:09:24.320]I went to school, but not Dave.
[00:09:26.320]Dave had to stay home.
[00:09:28.320]But we all had to turn around and pitch in.
[00:09:31.320]See, in Europe it was proper.
[00:09:35.320]Everybody should pitch in for rent and for food.
[00:09:38.320]You know, everybody who went to work had to pitch in.
[00:09:43.320]So my sister got a job.
[00:09:46.320]My older sister. My younger sister got a job too.
[00:09:49.120]And they all started making money.
[00:09:51.120]We didn't make any big money.
[00:09:53.120]We couldn't hardly support ourselves.
[00:09:55.120]You see, then my brother had to go to be an apprentice.
[00:09:59.120]He used to make sweaters.
[00:10:01.120]So in order to become a sweater man
[00:10:04.120]on a machine, you have to be an apprentice.
[00:10:07.120]So he was an apprentice.
[00:10:09.120]He worked for two years for free.
[00:10:11.120]And then, about around '36, '37, '38
[00:10:16.120]he would start making some money.
[00:10:18.920]But times were very rough.
[00:10:20.920]Right after my father died, 1932, 1933,
[00:10:24.920]there were days we went around hungry.
[00:10:28.920]There were days everybody went to work without any food.
[00:10:33.920]It wasn't easy. It was a very hard life.
[00:10:37.920]But nobody knew that we were going around hungry.
[00:10:40.920]See, the house always used to look clean.
[00:10:43.920]Everybody was dressed nice.
[00:10:45.920]And we never complained to anybody.
[00:10:49.720]We never complained.
[00:10:51.720]I had a lot of friends, rich friends around me, you know.
[00:10:54.720]By rich, you know in Europe if somebody had enough food on the table
[00:10:58.720]and he was dressed nice, he was rich.
[00:11:00.720]It isn't like over here.
[00:11:02.720]So, times were very rough between '32 and '35.
[00:11:09.720]They were very, very, very bad.
[00:11:12.720]We lived in a beautiful apartment.
[00:11:15.720]We had a three-room apartment on the first floor.
[00:11:18.520]So, our landlord was nice enough,
[00:11:21.520]after my father died,
[00:11:23.520]to let us stay for two years, can you imagine?
[00:11:26.520]Without paying rent.
[00:11:28.520]We paid them all back afterwards.
[00:11:30.520]When everybody started working,
[00:11:32.520]we all started pitching in
[00:11:34.520]and we all paid our rent.
[00:11:37.520]We paid all our bills off.
[00:11:39.520]And about 1936, 1937,
[00:11:42.520]mother started opening, she opened a little restaurant.
[00:11:45.520]My grandfather was very well known in Będzin.
[00:11:49.520]He used to have a big restaurant.
[00:11:51.520]All the big senators and councilmen used to come to him.
[00:11:56.520]And he was very well known.
[00:11:59.520]If somebody wanted a favor, a government favor or something,
[00:12:02.520]he was right there and helped them.
[00:12:04.520]Sometimes he used to free guys, you know,
[00:12:06.520]when they used to go to the military.
[00:12:08.520]He saw to it that they shouldn't go.
[00:12:11.520]He could do miracles.
[00:12:13.520]When he died,
[00:12:15.320]all this disappeared.
[00:12:17.120]And the same thing was when my father died.
[00:12:20.120]We were very well known in Będzin.
[00:12:23.120]But old-timers knew who we are.
[00:12:26.120]Young people, you know, my age,
[00:12:29.120]they, people know me.
[00:12:32.120]What sticks out on me the best
[00:12:35.120]was holidays.
[00:12:37.120]The holidays were the nicest part
[00:12:39.120]of the whole European culture
[00:12:42.120]and European life.
[00:12:44.120]Because holidays
[00:12:45.120]were something beautiful.
[00:12:46.920]When you're a child,
[00:12:47.920]everything is beautiful to you.
[00:12:49.920]I was about 10, 12 years old.
[00:12:52.920]Purim, I'll never forget.
[00:12:54.920]Purim was the nicest holiday.
[00:12:57.920]In Europe, especially in Będzin,
[00:13:00.920]we used to have people going around
[00:13:02.920]just like people go around Halloween here.
[00:13:04.920]But they used to make big parties,
[00:13:06.920]Purim parties.
[00:13:08.920]So we used to have an uncle
[00:13:10.920]by the name of Bendit
[00:13:14.920]and one uncle by the name of
[00:13:16.920]Sruko.
[00:13:18.920]Sruko
[00:13:20.920]had his,
[00:13:22.920]they both have
[00:13:24.920]stores,
[00:13:26.920]paint stores.
[00:13:28.920]They were very well off people.
[00:13:30.920]I mean very well off.
[00:13:32.920]They had a lot of property and they had money and everything else.
[00:13:34.920]So they were the rich uncles.
[00:13:36.920]And the rich uncles used to invite
[00:13:38.920]the whole family over
[00:13:40.920]to read the Megillah
[00:13:42.920]and make a big party.
[00:13:44.720]In Europe the parties were just like weddings.
[00:13:46.720]We used to spend the whole evening.
[00:13:48.720]We used to go to 8 o'clock
[00:13:50.720]and a lot of people used to come
[00:13:52.720]just like Halloween to the doors, knock at the door.
[00:13:54.720]And we used to give them money or we used to give them food.
[00:13:56.720]And we always used to go once a year.
[00:14:00.720]As a child I'll never forget this.
[00:14:02.720]This was the highlight of the year of course.
[00:14:04.720]We used to go to our uncle.
[00:14:08.720]They used to read the Megillah over there.
[00:14:10.720]And we used to have a big, big dinner.
[00:14:14.520]So much food.
[00:14:16.320]I've never seen so much food in my life.
[00:14:20.320]So all year we always talked about this dinner.
[00:14:24.320]He used to read the Megillah for us.
[00:14:26.320]And we used to dub and we used to bench.
[00:14:28.320]We used to sing all kind of different songs.
[00:14:32.320]And that was fantastic.
[00:14:35.320]And we had two groups.
[00:14:38.320]One group was at Bendis and one was at his house.
[00:14:42.320]And then about 12 o'clock, 12:30
[00:14:44.320]I never forget, my parents used to get together in their house.
[00:14:48.120]So one house used to have about 30, 40 people every year.
[00:14:52.120]And that was a lot of people, let me tell you something.
[00:14:55.120]And we had so much fun, just like a wedding, you know.
[00:14:58.120]I mean, old-time European weddings.
[00:15:02.120]They're celebrated, of course we, I fell asleep.
[00:15:05.120]They celebrate usually 2, 3 o'clock in the morning.
[00:15:08.120]Then Sukkot was a beautiful holiday too.
[00:15:14.120]I'm telling you, we lived in an apartment, 58 apartments,
[00:15:17.920]and every apartment had suns.
[00:15:21.920]And these things, mirrors there, so beautiful you have no idea.
[00:15:26.920]All the time, every Saturday night.
[00:15:29.920]They'd open the windows, and one used to sing nice,
[00:15:33.920]and prettier than the other one.
[00:15:35.920]But Sukkot was especially nice.
[00:15:37.920]We had about three big Sukkot on the hall, on the first floor,
[00:15:43.920]then all the balconies had a Sukkot.
[00:15:46.720]We all, for all the years, we used to eat in the balcony.
[00:15:51.720]On the third floor, my neighbor used to have a balcony,
[00:15:55.720]and my father always used to eat upstairs.
[00:15:58.720]I always wanted to go down, because downstairs were a lot more kids,
[00:16:03.720]and there were more fun downstairs than upstairs.
[00:16:05.720]But Sukkot was beautiful.
[00:16:07.720]We used to sing, and we had the best good time.
[00:16:10.720]This is what I can remember in my young years.
[00:16:13.720]These are the parts that always stick out on me the most.
[00:16:18.520]I have to go back to 1929, when I was a little boy.
[00:16:22.520]I'll never forget this.
[00:16:24.520]My Uncle Manas went to Israel.
[00:16:27.520]He went to Israel, and he had it pretty good at home in Będzin.
[00:16:35.520]He made a pretty good living, but for some reason they decided to go to Israel in 1929.
[00:16:41.520]And he was not the type to go
[00:16:43.520]and start working there in a Kibbutz.
[00:16:46.520]1929 was very rough times over there.
[00:16:49.520]He went over there and stayed about six months.
[00:16:52.520]In the middle of the night, somebody knocks at our door, and here they are, the whole family.
[00:16:59.520]There were about five or six people.
[00:17:02.520]And we had to bed down on the floor.
[00:17:05.520]We bed them down, and it was a pretty rough time of our life.
[00:17:09.520]My dad, may he rest in peace, I'll never forget what he always used to say.
[00:17:13.320]I don't know why.
[00:17:15.320]He loved his brother, but he could never stand his wife.
[00:17:18.320]She was just like somebody I know.
[00:17:21.320]They stayed with us for about two weeks in our house.
[00:17:24.320]And then they found an apartment, and they moved out of there.
[00:17:27.320]See, my father had a chance to come to the United States,
[00:17:31.320]because I remember Judas always begging him to come to the United States.
[00:17:36.320]And he never wanted to go away.
[00:17:39.320]They loved the Będzin very much.
[00:17:41.320]See, they did very good over there.
[00:17:43.120]And when Manus went away, they found out that he was going to leave the country too,
[00:17:49.120]so the creditors were after him.
[00:17:52.120]They didn't want to give him any credit,
[00:17:54.120]so he begged everybody not to talk about going away or something.
[00:17:57.120]I'll never forget, that's what he always used to say.
[00:18:00.120]The creditors didn't want to give him any credit anymore,
[00:18:02.120]because they thought he was going to leave the country.
[00:18:05.120]Because Manus, when he left the country,
[00:18:09.120]I think he must have done something to the creditors.
[00:18:12.920]I never forget, I had a cousin by the name of Alter Fischel.
[00:18:17.920]He was Shia's son.
[00:18:20.920]When he was a young man, I never forget,
[00:18:22.920]when he was 16 years old or 17,
[00:18:24.920]my father always used to tell me,
[00:18:26.920]"This guy is a genius, and I'm going to take him out,
[00:18:30.920]and he's going to make a Mensch out of him."
[00:18:32.920]So my father always used to show him how to cut and everything else,
[00:18:36.920]and then he turned him over to one of his friends,
[00:18:39.920]who had a big shirt factory,
[00:18:42.720]and he started working for him,
[00:18:45.520]and all of a sudden he switched around and became very popular,
[00:18:50.520]and he opened himself a store for himself.
[00:18:54.520]When he opened the store for himself,
[00:18:56.520]he forgot my father on the way up, you see.
[00:18:59.520]So my father got mad at him,
[00:19:01.520]he said, "You'll never talk to him again."
[00:19:03.520]I don't know what happened between them two,
[00:19:06.520]something must have happened between them two very bad,
[00:19:09.520]because when my father died,
[00:19:12.520]he never came to the funeral.
[00:19:14.320]They were very close.
[00:19:16.320]And I don't know if my father asked for help,
[00:19:20.320]or he asked for whatever it was,
[00:19:22.320]and he didn't want to do it to him,
[00:19:24.320]so he probably had a big argument.
[00:19:26.320]They never saw each other again.
[00:19:28.320]So I was trying to bring this out.
[00:19:31.320]I know, I think the Alter has some sons,
[00:19:36.320]I don't know if they live in Germany
[00:19:38.320]or in the United States.
[00:19:41.320]I never saw them.
[00:19:42.320]I don't know if I should still carry around
[00:19:46.120]a grudge against those people
[00:19:48.120]or I should be death resentful
[00:19:50.120]or hateful
[00:19:52.120]because all the years
[00:19:54.120]I knew this in Germany,
[00:19:56.120]I never made a point to go and see those guys
[00:19:58.120]because I was hurt because my father died.
[00:20:01.120]He never showed up to the funeral even
[00:20:03.120]so that's why we always were hurt
[00:20:05.120]and mad at him.
[00:20:06.120]We never saw those people afterwards
[00:20:08.120]for quite a while.
[00:20:09.120]I didn't even notice they live in town.
[00:20:11.120]That's how we felt
[00:20:12.120]about him. And I don't know if I -if I do the right thing if, I don't do the right thing but I still
[00:20:21.240]if I ever see those people again I think I got enough in me to forgive him for it because it's
[00:20:28.920]not their fault you see that's their father's fault, so if I ever run across them I think I'm
[00:20:35.560]gonna talk to those people and try to make up and try to make them understand. Or try to talk to him
[00:20:41.080]and explain him what happened because I don't think they know they were too young to realize
[00:20:46.440]that probably their father probably didn't tell him about it. I never talked about it right now
[00:20:51.000]I have a chance to tell my stories or I want -I want somebody to know what actually happened.
[00:20:59.720]Times are very rough from 1931 until about 35, 36. Yeah,
[00:21:10.040]you know all of us started growing up we all started getting jobs I took a job when I was 12
[00:21:17.560]years old and I went to night school to make up high school, had a hard time -very hard time before
[00:21:26.520]the war in 1939 I made 95 złoty here and just like 95 dollars then that was a lot of money for a boy
[00:21:39.000]I was 15 years old 16 years old in '39. So it was a lot of money for a guy like me. I worked in a,
[00:21:49.320]there was a factory by the name of buddha phoenix* what I did I did mostly payrolls
[00:21:59.240]and Europe didn't have checks I come here they used to have taxes taxes just like check
[00:22:07.960]you know the people used to write for 30 days a note they used to go through the bank and
[00:22:15.080]we used to deposit those those notes to the bank the bank carried it for 30 days
[00:22:19.960]the bank charged the people so much for carrying so everybody used to pay for these notes
[00:22:28.920]and I was in charge of this. The first job of mine was in 1934,
[00:22:36.600]35
[00:22:37.880]I think I was working on a organization - in Europe they used to have people carrying around leaflets
[00:22:46.680]like we had a meeting or something I used to be to carry it I used to carry around to different
[00:22:52.760]people different members in my hometown, then I learned how to type and one of my friends saw me
[00:23:01.320]there his name was Fisher Henny Fisher and he kind of come to like me. He said
[00:23:07.800]tell you what I don't think so you make enough money I'll give you another job,
[00:23:11.720]so he promised me a job. One day he calls me said, "I'll tell you what I'm going to take you over to
[00:23:18.600]my place where I work and I introduce you to my boss and you got a better future over there than
[00:23:26.440]here." And about 36 I went over there and the boss knew my mother very well, he was my mother's age.
[00:23:37.000]My mother was very popular when they have young years and he knew her very well, he started talking
[00:23:44.040]to me and he gave me the job right away. I started making 75 złoty. Plain labor at the time used to
[00:23:52.060]make two and a half złoty a day - can you imagine how much we made, that's how we made - that's how
[00:23:58.560]the wages were. A lot of money I used to make 75, my brothers got out of the apprenticeship.
[00:24:06.340]And he used to make 60 or 70 dollars and my sister was making money both sisters were making money so
[00:24:13.000]everything went back a little bit to normal. We didn't have to go around hungry anymore.
[00:24:18.720]My mother opened a little restaurant I don't know if I told you already about it
[00:24:24.800]at home and she was cooking. During the holidays we had Jewish soldiers coming for the holidays
[00:24:32.080]-for the high holidays. We had a big Seder
[00:24:34.840]my mother cooked for them they used to come in for breakfast, lunch, and dinner we had about
[00:24:43.460]30 40 soldiers. And we made enough money made enough money and paid all the bills for the
[00:24:49.460]whole year and this went on for 36 to 39 til the war broke out. When the war broke out we
[00:24:58.400]still had some money coming for the Jewish Community Center. They paid us off during the war
[00:25:03.560]that's how
[00:25:04.560]we
[00:25:04.560]lived through the first period of the war 1939 we lost our jobs right away in 39
[00:25:14.560]and this is how the war started. The war started in 1939 on a Friday I'll never forget.
[00:25:23.600]The German bombard Poland and the war started seven o'clock, by nine o'clock we knew there's a
[00:25:34.280]war.
[00:25:34.440]We
[00:25:34.540]didn't even know there's a war we saw planes flying we didn't know where they're going
[00:25:39.480]and it didn't take him long to take over the country and they took over the country in no time.
[00:25:46.500]They were Friday afternoon, Saturday morning they were already in Będzin,
[00:25:51.160]the Germans. So the first what they did they closed up there was a synagogue in the church
[00:25:58.620]in our town, they closed up the whole neighborhood, burned the whole synagogue out with the people in
[00:26:04.420]them. They didn't let them out, it was the first how do you do. They showed us how to behave
[00:26:11.060]and believe you me, it was very rough. You ran out of food we had to stay in line for bread
[00:26:18.680]every morning, so I used to get up five o'clock in the morning in order to get first in line
[00:26:23.200]then we had a uh policeman - a German policeman if things weren't going. You know people were
[00:26:30.720]hungry they were pushing or something so he took out every fifth guy.
[00:26:34.300]The first week every fifth guy and shot him, I was pretty fortunate I wasn't - I wasn't the
[00:26:40.420]fifth so that's how I lived through this. The following week they put out announcements
[00:26:48.440]because all the Jews have to wear white bands with a star on it. Any Jews thats going to
[00:26:56.380]be found without a star in a white band in the street is going to be shot to death. So
[00:27:04.180]everybody had to put a band down and I was living close to the police station and I
[00:27:09.420]have to get and every, every time they needed somebody to clean the place they grabbed me
[00:27:14.880]because I walked out with my band they knew notice I'm Jewish so they grabbed me to the
[00:27:20.020]police station. I got acquainted with a policeman and he didn't believe when he first saw me
[00:27:25.140]he said I'm Jewish because from all the pictures and all the propaganda what they showed them,
[00:27:34.060]Jews that looked like Arabs their long beards, you see we had some of this in Poland too. They go
[00:27:41.540]around and you know how they steal how they rob people that's what they show them the
[00:27:45.740]propaganda machine all of a sudden he sees a normal boy just like I am short cut dressed
[00:27:52.620]like a human being so I had a conversation with the guy and he told me about it he says
[00:27:59.000]he never knew this, that the Jews looked like I am if I wouldn't have worn the band he
[00:28:03.940]would never know about the Jews. The Germans didn't know who was a Jew but the Poles helped
[00:28:12.980]them if there are Jews couldn't be found or something the Poles were there right away
[00:28:17.440]to show who is a Jew so after we had our bands on so they didn't have a hard time finding
[00:28:24.460]out who was a Jew. It was very hard to get out the streets because every time you went
[00:28:29.900]in the streets somebody hit you, they chased you, they run after you.
[00:28:33.820]It was very miserable the first two months then everything settled down alright we know
[00:28:40.780]our places we knew where we couldn't go where we could go so we always just stayed together
[00:28:46.880]you see but I was good like I said every second day every third day to the police station
[00:28:53.020]then I that was my my job already I didn't let him catch me anymore I said I'll tell
[00:28:58.540]you what I'm gonna come in here every day and clean your place you shine your shoes
[00:29:03.700]so you wouldn't have to grab me all the time. So the guy got acquainted with me he kind
[00:29:09.020]of liked me so he helped me out he always gave me a piece of bread or something like
[00:29:13.580]this and I did we have another sergeant by the name of Mischka he was a regular killer
[00:29:19.380]he used to go around with a big dog, a german shepherd, and he used to beat up on people.
[00:29:25.460]He couldn't he couldn't stand anybody I'll never forget my cousin, from Paris Jakub he
[00:29:33.580]beat the heck out of him the guy was laying for about two weeks in the hospital and the
[00:29:40.060]guy went around afterwards he was - he was so mad at me after he got beat up he was he slowed
[00:29:47.960]down he was kind of scared. They were looking for my cousin for about three weeks my cousin
[00:29:53.860]took him - ran away to Paris during the war.
[00:29:58.080]He told them that they shot him and buried him right away this is what they told him
[00:30:03.460]so for some reason he let go of it. In the meantime my cousin went to Paris he changed
[00:30:09.820]his name and from Paris, anyway, in 1943 was shipped out to the concentration camp and
[00:30:16.700]he lived through the concentration camp to tell the story about it and I was in Paris in 1965.
[00:30:22.560]He told me the story and he had a brother was the same way he came into Będzin with a with a big car, big
[00:30:29.460]Mercedes, as a German officer. And
[00:30:32.140]who turned him in? A Polack turn him in that's how they, they caught him and they hung them.
[00:30:37.700]And I kind of got tired around October
[00:30:43.280]1939, I
[00:30:46.500]said I'm gonna take off and go to the Russian zone.
[00:30:51.580]Russian zone was about a hundred, hundred fifty miles away from Będzin from my home town.
[00:30:55.560]We picked up one morning. I
[00:30:58.440]didn't want it. I said goodbye to my
[00:31:01.440]Parents my mother and all my sisters
[00:31:04.800]and brother I said, "I'll tell you what, I'm taking off. I
[00:31:08.360]can't stand being here. I'm young. I want to go to Russia
[00:31:12.920]A lot of people came from down the other side and they say this, 'the Jews in Russia have it pretty good to get jobs,
[00:31:20.600]they're not discriminated.'
[00:31:22.600]So I said why don't I go over there and if I like it over there I'll bring you all over there."
[00:31:28.940]That wasn't easy.
[00:31:31.840]We went, you know the first couple three weeks war started everybody went everybody run places
[00:31:38.380]I wound up in Lwów
[00:31:42.780]where I met some friends from home-from Będzin
[00:31:49.620]and I was together with them and all of a sudden after being four weeks.
[00:31:55.280]I was very miserable, you slept on the floors and different kind of
[00:31:59.540]apartments.
[00:32:02.440]After being there about three weeks, I couldn't take it any longer. They put out
[00:32:08.440]one morning, it was in October,
[00:32:12.260]they put out some
[00:32:14.960]signs all over the streets,
[00:32:16.960]"Everybody
[00:32:18.640]has to register for work."
[00:32:20.700]And so I said, "I always have time to register."
[00:32:25.500]It was around Monday. I said, "I still have time till about Friday.
[00:32:30.260]So I want to be the last to register." I didn't want to register right away.
[00:32:34.380]Some guys registered,
[00:32:37.540]they took them and sent him to Donbas. Donbas was a coal mine.
[00:32:41.900]When they sent him away, they told him where they're going. I said, "it's a coal mine
[00:32:48.200]I got plenty of time to go."
[00:32:50.440]So I picked up and turned around
[00:32:53.440]and went to Sarnoff.
[00:32:55.440]It was about 25-30 miles away from Lwów, to Sarnoff.
[00:33:01.440]I got acquainted with some people I knew from before the war
[00:33:05.440]and I stayed with them for a couple, three days
[00:33:08.440]and they smuggled me back to Germany.
[00:33:12.440]I said, "when I die, at least I'm going to die,
[00:33:17.440]my whole family
[00:33:17.940]I don't want to stay there
[00:33:19.940]If I couldn't bring them over there with me
[00:33:21.940]and to Donbas, you know, to the coal mine
[00:33:25.940]I didn't want to take my mother along.
[00:33:27.940]So I figured I'm going to go back,
[00:33:29.940]I was very homesick.
[00:33:31.940]Every time I took a picture of my sisters and my mother
[00:33:36.940]I cried,
[00:33:37.940]and I couldn't take it after all.
[00:33:39.940]At the time I was about 16, 17 years old,
[00:33:42.940]it was very hard on me.
[00:33:44.940]So the first opportunity I had to cross the border,
[00:33:47.180]I went back
[00:33:51.180]I came back
[00:33:53.180]I never forget my mother,
[00:33:54.180]she starts screaming at me.
[00:33:55.180]"Why the heck did you come back?
[00:33:57.180]Why didn't you save yourself?
[00:33:58.180]We don't know what's going to happen to us.
[00:34:00.180]At least I know you would be safe there."
[00:34:03.180]And I felt good about it.
[00:34:06.180]and she left us.
[00:34:08.180]So I told her,
[00:34:11.180]"I'm going to be wherever you're going to be.
[00:34:13.180]And I don't want to go away,
[00:34:15.180]I'm going to stay right here
[00:34:16.420]with you.
[00:34:18.420]And whatever happens to me
[00:34:20.420]or to you, it should happen to me.
[00:34:22.420]I don't want to go nowhere"
[00:34:24.420]Sure enough, we stayed around there for a year.
[00:34:27.420]And after a year
[00:34:29.420]about October the 7th or 8th,
[00:34:33.420]I got a knock on the door.
[00:34:35.420]We still lived in our old apartment,
[00:34:37.420]still our furniture and everything
[00:34:40.420]But, like I said, we had odd jobs,
[00:34:43.420]we were very hungry.
[00:34:45.420]The ration cards what they gave us
[00:34:49.420]wasn't enough to live on
[00:34:51.420]and we didn't have any money
[00:34:53.420]saved or put away like some rich people,
[00:34:56.420]that they could go out and buy on the black market.
[00:34:58.420]we couldn't afford to do it.
[00:35:00.420]We only left whatever we got on the ration cards,
[00:35:04.420]and I saw my mother shrink.
[00:35:06.420]You know, she was getting skinny all the time.
[00:35:09.420]It broke my heart,
[00:35:12.420]just looking at her.
[00:35:14.420]So, when they, in October the 5th, came into our house
[00:35:20.420]in the middle of the night, they knocked on the door.
[00:35:23.420]And I figured, this is it
[00:35:26.420]that was what took us out to a house of orphans,
[00:35:30.420]a Jewish house of orphans.
[00:35:32.420]They called it "Sierociniec,"
[00:35:35.420]and they had a big auditorium over there.
[00:35:38.420]And they kept 300 guys locked up in the auditorium.
[00:35:42.420]We were there for about...
[00:35:43.420]Two nights
[00:35:46.420]The first night they shipped out the first shipment,
[00:35:50.420]150 boys,
[00:35:52.420]and I was picked to the second shipment.
[00:35:55.420]The first shipment went to Germany,
[00:35:57.420]they went to the worst camp there was.
[00:35:59.420]Most of these guys didn't last too long,
[00:36:02.420]because they worked in a powder factory.
[00:36:04.420]They used to make powder for ammunition,
[00:36:07.420]make bullets, all kinds of bullets.
[00:36:09.420]Most of these guys died like flies.
[00:36:11.420]The second transport
[00:36:12.420]went to Bałtyc Saybusch, Jeleśnia.
[00:36:15.420]Jeleśnia was on the Polish border,
[00:36:17.420]so we were in contact with Polish people.
[00:36:20.420]We could speak our own language,
[00:36:22.420]and the Poles helped us out as much as they could.
[00:36:27.420]Of course they didn't help us out because they were good guys,
[00:36:30.420]just because we did some business with them.
[00:36:34.420]I'll tell you about this,
[00:36:37.420]what we did with them a little later.
[00:36:39.420]First I want to tell you how they do
[00:36:41.420]when we got to Elysium.
[00:36:43.420]We came into Elysium, we were,
[00:36:45.420]I told you we were 150 guys.
[00:36:50.420]They took us off the train,
[00:36:52.420]we didn't know where we were going,
[00:36:54.420]everybody kept a suitcase in his hand.
[00:36:56.420]We were walking 7 miles
[00:37:00.420]from the train depot to the camp.
[00:37:05.420]It was only 7 miles,
[00:37:07.420]but the roads in Poland
[00:37:10.420]were so deep in mud.
[00:37:14.420]A foot deep in mud.
[00:37:16.420]You know the Polish farm towns,
[00:37:19.420]you don't have no sidewalks,
[00:37:21.420]they don't have no roads.
[00:37:22.420]I mean they didn't have them then,
[00:37:24.420]now maybe they do have,
[00:37:25.420]but then they didn't have anything.
[00:37:27.420]So you were just walking
[00:37:29.420]in about a foot deep mud.
[00:37:32.420]We were lined up 150 guys.
[00:37:35.420]These guys were screaming the SS,
[00:37:37.420]we should walk faster,
[00:37:39.420]we couldn't hardly walk.
[00:37:41.420]They had some boots on,
[00:37:43.420]we had shoes on.
[00:37:44.420]Most of these guys lost their shoes,
[00:37:46.420]walking in this mud.
[00:37:48.420]It was very miserable,
[00:37:50.420]so we finally arrived at the destination.
[00:37:54.420]So we walked in a big farm,
[00:37:59.420]it was a farmhouse
[00:38:01.420]-a big farmhouse.
[00:38:02.420]You know they used to have cows in them before.
[00:38:06.420]So they let us in over there,
[00:38:08.420]and we stayed overnight without anything.
[00:38:12.420]We had to lay down on the floor,
[00:38:14.420]you know in October it was pretty cold.
[00:38:17.420]That was the first how do you do that we got from the election.
[00:38:22.420]So the next day we woke up,
[00:38:25.420]there was no food, still was no food.
[00:38:29.420]So they divided groups and 25 people to a group.
[00:38:33.420]We always used to hang out around you friends,
[00:38:36.420]we always used to have 3 or 4 guys staying together.
[00:38:37.420]So I was pretty fortunate as they took 3 guys, 3 friends of mine
[00:38:43.420]and sent us to the same camp.
[00:38:45.420]We got into this camp,
[00:38:47.420]it was a little town in Poland
[00:38:51.420]Wyszowate.
[00:38:53.420]It was close to Cicha
[00:38:55.420]-Cicha and Wyszowate were two little towns.
[00:38:58.420]We worked both these towns.
[00:39:00.420]What we did over there is,
[00:39:03.420]they used to hang down old farm houses
[00:39:06.420]and build new prefabricated homes,
[00:39:10.420]because they brought down a bunch of German Volksdeutsche
[00:39:16.420]from Bessarabia, from Hungary and from Lithuania.
[00:39:23.420]They used to make out of ten farms one farm.
[00:39:28.420]So we used to tear down ten Polish old houses,
[00:39:32.420]and out of the ten houses
[00:39:35.420]we built one prefabricated home.
[00:39:38.420]And we did all those buildings,
[00:39:41.420]we painted the houses, we did everything inside,
[00:39:45.420]and it was pretty good.
[00:39:47.420]Life was not bad,
[00:39:49.420]because we stayed in contact with Polish people.
[00:39:53.420]Usually over the weekends we used to go
[00:39:55.420]-we used to have only one SS man watching us.
[00:40:00.420]And this man was an old man,
[00:40:03.420]and lived close to our barracks.
[00:40:04.420]We were not under guard like other camps were,
[00:40:09.420]closed, under closed wires.
[00:40:13.420]We were free, we were open.
[00:40:17.420]We used to go to work in the morning,
[00:40:19.420]seven o'clock and get up at five
[00:40:21.420]and after five we did our chores.
[00:40:24.420]The food was pretty good like I said before.
[00:40:28.420]The bread was delivered once a week to us,
[00:40:33.420]it was from a Polish bakery
[00:40:36.420]and right away we got acquainted with a Polish baker.
[00:40:39.420]We used to give him something,
[00:40:41.420]we gave him some clothes or something,
[00:40:43.420]so he gave us a couple or three loaves of extra bread.
[00:40:46.420]You know for twenty-five people
[00:40:48.420]three or four loaves of bread was a lot.
[00:40:51.420]The same thing we did with the meat.
[00:40:53.420]See we were not responsible like those big camps,
[00:40:57.420]where you have two or three thousand people,
[00:40:59.420]everybody steals from you.
[00:41:02.420]You know instead of getting a quarter of a pound of bread,
[00:41:04.420]they always got a little less than a quarter of a pound,
[00:41:06.420]because those big shots in those other camps
[00:41:08.420]used to steal from you.
[00:41:10.420]And here we were in a camp,
[00:41:12.420]we got whatever ration used to belong to us,
[00:41:16.420]and it was very important.
[00:41:18.420]It was very nice to be in a camp like this
[00:41:20.420]we were just actually like a family.
[00:41:23.420]After being four or five weeks in this camp,
[00:41:26.420]things start going much better you see.
[00:41:31.420]For a while at the beginning they used to shove us around,
[00:41:35.420]they told we are a bunch of Jews,
[00:41:37.420]we don't know how to work,
[00:41:38.420]we don't know what to do.
[00:41:40.420]Then they found out that we did a pretty good job,
[00:41:43.420]tearing the houses down and building the houses.
[00:41:46.420]You know you take a 21 year old man,
[00:41:48.420]or a 17, 18 year old man,
[00:41:50.420]the oldest in our camp was 22 years old.
[00:41:53.420]You take 17, 18 year old guys,
[00:41:56.420]we were willing to work,
[00:41:58.420]we didn't mind working,
[00:42:00.420]work was fun.
[00:42:04.420]So we didn't get any mail from home
[00:42:07.420]for a while at all,
[00:42:09.420]then we started getting mail.
[00:42:11.420]The mail opened
[00:42:12.420]but all the letters went through a censorship.
[00:42:17.420]See they censored all our letters,
[00:42:19.420]when we got in the camp,
[00:42:21.420]and the same thing going out.
[00:42:23.420]And we couldn't say anything bad about the camp,
[00:42:25.420]we wrote home it's so good
[00:42:26.420]and everything is fine you know,
[00:42:28.420]and that's what the Germans wanted you see.
[00:42:29.420]After being four months in this camp,
[00:42:32.420]they gave us three days vacation,
[00:42:35.420]for a weekend to go home.
[00:42:37.420]You know we were workers, hard workers.
[00:42:39.420]We showed us we work hard,
[00:42:42.420]there was one, the Lagerführer.
[00:42:45.420]He was a top man from the German,
[00:42:49.420]gave us vacation for three days.
[00:42:52.420]So you know we used to go home
[00:42:54.420]and every time we went home we took along
[00:42:57.420]plenty of food.
[00:42:59.420]We used to come home on vacation,
[00:43:02.420]just like a bunch of brokers you see,
[00:43:05.420]bringing food home.
[00:43:07.420]And food was very hard to obtain in my home town,
[00:43:11.420]nobody had any food.
[00:43:13.420]First ride the first year 1940-41 was very very hard,
[00:43:18.420]and it's gotten worse as the years went along.
[00:43:21.420]It's gotten even worse,
[00:43:23.420]but somebody came home like we used to come home.
[00:43:26.420]We used to come home with chunks of salami,
[00:43:29.420]big ones.
[00:43:31.420]And that's something
[00:43:33.420]they used to see us bring home different things
[00:43:36.420]I don't know, we were lucky.
[00:43:39.420]For some reason whenever we went,
[00:43:41.420]you see we used to go with
[00:43:43.420]-they used to call it a Wache, a guard.
[00:43:46.420]And the guard was guarding us, he was supposed to be guarding us
[00:43:49.420]but after he took us home he went his way and we went our way.
[00:43:53.420]But in the meantime when you go with a guard and the guy wears a big gun,
[00:43:58.420]everybody respects him and that's what happened.
[00:44:01.420]Whatever we had in our pocket nobody checked us,
[00:44:04.420]normally if we would go without a guard they wouldn't let us go through.
[00:44:07.420]They wouldn't let us take all this stuff along,
[00:44:10.420]when we went with him we took everything home.
[00:44:13.420]So we came home and we left enough food for about 2-3 months.
[00:44:19.420]I never forget a first time when I went home.
[00:44:23.420]My brother wasn't home anymore, my oldest brother
[00:44:27.420]they came in and got him,
[00:44:29.420]and he went to this bad factor of what I was telling you
[00:44:33.420]And I don't think he last more than 2-3 months, he died right away,
[00:44:37.420]they put him in in the powder factory and from there nobody came out alive.
[00:44:43.420]And it didn't take very long for them to die over there at least,
[00:44:46.420]alright, they didn't suffer too much.
[00:44:49.420]First of all they died for hunger,
[00:44:51.420]and secondly they died probably who knows from what.
[00:44:56.420]So I was very upset,
[00:44:59.420]Dave was only about 10 years old at the time I think,
[00:45:04.420]and you know he was a little boy and he started becoming a carpenter.
[00:45:09.420]I don't know, he was an apprentice carpenter,
[00:45:12.420]he was trying to learn a trade during the war,
[00:45:17.420]so you know just in case if he gets some place he should have a trade.
[00:45:21.420]My mother wasn't looking so good, she didn't feel good.
[00:45:25.420]My sister and the baby was home,
[00:45:28.420]my older sister was home.
[00:45:30.420]And of course things were awful bad, they were rough every day,
[00:45:35.420]they weren't getting any better, they were getting worse.
[00:45:38.420]Just like people are waiting for their death,
[00:45:42.420]we didn't know what's going to happen next day,
[00:45:45.420]we didn't know that they were going to kill us like this.
[00:45:48.420]We knew that something was going to happen,
[00:45:51.420]the worst could happen, we figured maybe they would send us out to work.
[00:45:54.420]So like I said, we didn't mind working,
[00:45:57.420]we showed them that we know how to work.
[00:46:01.420]I forgot to mention one thing which is very important for me, I have to mention.
[00:46:06.420]I had a friend, a gentile friend, which came into Będzin in 1938 before the war.
[00:46:14.420]He was a very handsome guy, very nice boy,
[00:46:19.420]and he kind of looked Jewish, he didn't look like a gentile.
[00:46:23.420]And his father opened a big bar next to our house, right next to our house
[00:46:31.420]and we got very well acquainted, we were very close friends.
[00:46:36.420]I introduced him to all my friends, he didn't have any friends, he didn't know anybody
[00:46:40.420]I introduced him to my friends and I introduced him to some of my girlfriends too,
[00:46:45.420]Nobody knew that he was even a gentile.
[00:46:48.420]He used to come over to my house and spend a lot of time in our house,
[00:46:52.420]evenings after work.
[00:46:54.420]We spent a lot of time together.
[00:46:56.420]When the war broke out, when I went home, when I was home
[00:47:00.420]his father called me away to the side and said he would appreciate very much
[00:47:04.420]if I wouldn't come into his place anymore.
[00:47:07.420]He said it in a very nice way,
[00:47:10.420]and then I found out they turned Volksdeutsche
[00:47:14.420]That means they're Germans, they've become German.
[00:47:18.420]You know, they were afraid they were going to take the bar away from them.
[00:47:21.420]They were coming from Oberschlesien,
[00:47:24.420]that means they were originally Germans.
[00:47:28.420]And they turned Poland, they turned Polish, then they become again Germans.
[00:47:33.420]So I just politely stepped out of the house and I said, I'll tell you what
[00:47:39.420]you don't want me around here, I don't have to come around.
[00:47:42.420]I didn't lose anything yet
[00:47:45.420]and I don't have to see you, I just walked out.
[00:47:50.420]You know, I didn't mean any harm
[00:47:55.420]and maybe he didn't mean anything either, but I could feel it.
[00:48:00.420]You know, usually when I used to come home, the guy used to stay right away,
[00:48:03.420]he used to come to the house and be glad to see me.
[00:48:06.420]And all of a sudden, you know, I was out two days,
[00:48:09.420]I went over the first thing, and the father was forced to tell him I was home
[00:48:15.420]but he never told him I was home
[00:48:19.420]So that was the end of the conversation, I just walked out,
[00:48:23.420]I never saw the guy again.
[00:48:26.420]I came home a few more times, and I never even talked to him
[00:48:29.420]-I saw him, he walked by on the street
[00:48:32.420]I never wanted to have anything to do with him.
[00:48:35.420]If that's the way they felt
[00:48:37.420]-you know, some Poles, they were afraid they'd gonna lose their jobs
[00:48:41.420]or they'd gonna lose their business or something.
[00:48:44.420]So they didn't want to have anything to do with Jews,
[00:48:47.420]and he was one of them.
[00:48:48.420]So, I lived without him.
[00:48:51.420]You know, that was only the beginning,
[00:48:53.420]it was the first year after the war.
[00:48:55.420]You see, it was 1940 I'm talking about.
[00:48:57.420]You know, a little later it got even worse,
[00:49:00.420]these guys were...
[00:49:03.420]Sometimes, if a Jew was trying to hide
[00:49:06.420]these guys, like him, were showing the Germans where the Jews are hiding.
[00:49:12.420]If a Jew was hiding...
[00:49:13.420]A Jew that was trying to hide a Jew or something
[00:49:16.420]save his life.
[00:49:17.420]So these guys, the Volksdeutsche actually, used to go around
[00:49:20.420]and they used to dig him out wherever they used to be.
[00:49:24.420]So I kind of feel awful bad about this guy
[00:49:28.420]and when I met him, he was one of the nicest men there was.
[00:49:33.420]And, you know, you live with a guy, you know him for a couple years,
[00:49:36.420]and I could never understand why a guy should turn this way and be this way.
[00:49:42.420]I spent that time three days at home.
[00:49:45.420]Most of the time
[00:49:46.420]I spent with my sisters and brothers.
[00:49:50.420]Of course, Dave was a little guy
[00:49:53.420]and one of my oldest brothers went to camp
[00:49:56.420]and he didn't last long.
[00:49:58.420]After six weeks
[00:49:59.420]they didn't let us know,
[00:50:01.420]we found out as he died after six weeks being in camp.
[00:50:04.420]And I saw all my friends,
[00:50:09.420]but the friends did
[00:50:10.420]-most of these friends were tailors.
[00:50:14.420]The Germans needed uniforms
[00:50:15.420]so they turned the whole town over
[00:50:18.420]to a camp of tailors.
[00:50:21.420]And they had maybe ten or fifteen thousand people
[00:50:25.420]from my hometown employed as tailors there.
[00:50:28.420]So as long as they needed them,
[00:50:30.420]they kept them there until 1943.
[00:50:33.420]And after '43,
[00:50:34.420]they took all the Jews out of Będzin.
[00:50:38.420]They called it Judenfrei,
[00:50:40.420]they took them to Auschwitz.
[00:50:42.420]And I forget it was in June
[00:50:44.420]1943,
[00:50:49.420]because I was home still in April,
[00:50:51.420]I went home on vacation in April
[00:50:53.420]and I saw my mother.
[00:50:54.420]The last time I saw my mother in April
[00:50:57.420]was for Passover,
[00:51:01.420]I came home for two days
[00:51:03.420]and I stayed home for two days.
[00:51:04.420]And then we got a telegram
[00:51:06.420]to come right away back
[00:51:09.420]so I have to tell you about my mother.
[00:51:11.420]You know, I came in, you know
[00:51:13.420]when you're young, you run around like crazy
[00:51:15.420]you want to see your girlfriends, your friends.
[00:51:18.420]So all this sticks out in my mind
[00:51:21.420]all my life, the rest of my life.
[00:51:23.420]I'm going to remember this.
[00:51:24.420]My mother said, "Joe, you came home only for two days.
[00:51:28.420]Spend a day with your mother,
[00:51:32.420]your girlfriends can wait."
[00:51:35.420]She said to me, "You got only one mother.
[00:51:37.420]You will never have more than one mother in your life,
[00:51:41.420]so spend a day with me.
[00:51:42.420]Don't run around with your girlfriends or with your friends."
[00:51:46.420]But when you're 17 years old,
[00:51:49.420]you know, you stay with your mother for a half hour,
[00:51:51.420]then you still want to see your friends.
[00:51:54.420]And I went out and saw my friends,
[00:51:56.420]then I came home and she cried.
[00:51:59.420]Those tears,
[00:52:01.420]her tears, I'll always see them
[00:52:03.420]the rest of my life.
[00:52:05.420]I'm gonna see her tears,
[00:52:07.420]the way she talked to me,
[00:52:09.420]the way she was upset.
[00:52:11.420]She said,
[00:52:13.420]"this is the last time you might see me.
[00:52:16.420]So please spend the rest of the time with me."
[00:52:20.420]Next day I didn't go nowhere
[00:52:22.420]and I spent the whole day with her.
[00:52:24.420]And right now I feel bad,
[00:52:27.420]because I didn't spend even the first day with her.
[00:52:30.420]Because the more I look back about it,
[00:52:33.420]the more it bothers me deep down inside,
[00:52:36.420]because I didn't spend both days sitting around
[00:52:40.420]and talking to my mother.
[00:52:43.420]Because this was the last time I saw her in my life
[00:52:47.420]and June, July, there was Judenfrei.
[00:52:50.420]She was actually home until the last minute
[00:52:54.420]until the last Jew was home in Będzin.
[00:52:57.420]That was 1943 in July,
[00:53:01.420]they took them all out.
[00:53:03.420]They took them all to Auschwitz from there,
[00:53:06.420]this is the last word I hear from them,
[00:53:09.420]and from my sisters.
[00:53:11.420]I'll never forget when we came back to camp,
[00:53:15.420]the second day after getting the telegram,
[00:53:19.420]everybody was waiting for us.
[00:53:22.420]What they did, they took the SS man,
[00:53:24.420]what was so nice to us.
[00:53:26.420]They took us home on vacations all the time,
[00:53:28.420]and they sent him to Auschwitz,
[00:53:30.420]because he took us home.
[00:53:32.420]They found out that all this taking home,
[00:53:35.420]and all those things we were doing were illegal
[00:53:38.420]and the man wasn't there to run the rest of the crew.
[00:53:43.420]So they took the man and they took the foreman,
[00:53:48.420]they used to call him the "Shiba."
[00:53:51.420]The main man, the Jewish fellow that used to run the camp,
[00:53:55.420]they took him, with the SS man,
[00:53:57.420]and they sent him away to Auschwitz.
[00:54:00.420]Let me tell you something,
[00:54:02.420]two days later, we did get a new SS man
[00:54:07.420]and he was from Auschwitz.
[00:54:10.420]And he was just a plain killer,
[00:54:12.420]plain killer, I'm telling you.
[00:54:13.420]He beat the heck out of us
[00:54:16.420]and he made us clean the rooms,
[00:54:18.420]he made us throw everything out,
[00:54:20.420]he made us be so miserable.
[00:54:23.420]We couldn't go out, we couldn't do nothing anymore.
[00:54:26.420]For a while, he used to take away the horses,
[00:54:30.420]what we used to use, you know, to pull the wood.
[00:54:35.420]What we used to build us houses,
[00:54:36.420]and we were the horses, we had to pull all the wood up to the hill.
[00:54:42.420]A couple of guys got killed because they couldn't hold on,
[00:54:47.420]And those banks came back on him.
[00:54:51.420]And he was so rough every day, you know, after being so good, being in camp all the two years,
[00:55:00.420]we didn't even notice we were in a camp.
[00:55:03.420]That was the beginning of feeling
[00:55:05.420]we were really in a camp.
[00:55:07.420]We couldn't go out, we just couldn't stick our noses out,
[00:55:10.420]and those Polish farmers didn't know what happened to us.
[00:55:13.420]So they used to come close to us, but he was staying outside with a gun and watching the barracks.
[00:55:19.420]We couldn't go out,
[00:55:22.420]and after four or five weeks, he kind of let off.
[00:55:26.420]I got to him
[00:55:29.420]I told him,
[00:55:32.420]he was certain we were telling stories and different things.
[00:55:34.420]I told him, listen, you were here with us,
[00:55:38.420]we all tried to live together now.
[00:55:41.420]For you being so mean to us,
[00:55:44.420]and doing everything you do to us.
[00:55:46.420]It isn't the right thing what you're doing.
[00:55:49.420]Those other camps, by the way, around us,
[00:55:52.420]they didn't feel it.
[00:55:54.420]Everything was fine over there, but our camp
[00:55:57.420]was in the worst shape we've ever been.
[00:56:01.420]So I kept on talking to him
[00:56:03.420]I said, "You're sitting here, you're starving.
[00:56:06.420]You haven't got no money, you haven't got nothing,
[00:56:08.420]why don't you come on, wake up.
[00:56:11.420]Let me go out, I'll bring you some food."
[00:56:15.420]The minute he started listening to me,
[00:56:20.420]I knew right away that I got him in my pocket.
[00:56:23.420]It took him three days
[00:56:25.420]he tells me, "Joe, I don't know what you're doing."
[00:56:28.420]See, I used to clean his house up,
[00:56:30.420]I used to clean his barrack up.
[00:56:32.420]I had a chance to talk to him,
[00:56:35.420]and I said, "If you let me go out, you're not going to be sorry.
[00:56:40.420]Just let me step out of here."
[00:56:42.420]First thing what I did, I went to the bakery,
[00:56:45.420]and I went to the meat wholesaler.
[00:56:49.420]Well, he used to bring us meat
[00:56:51.420]and I gave him some stuff.
[00:56:53.420]And he gave me a big salami.
[00:56:56.420]The bakery gave me a couple of loaves of good bread,
[00:57:01.420]I brought a couple, three, four pounds of butter and some eggs,
[00:57:05.420]and when he came back, I left it in his room.
[00:57:09.420]When he came back, he saw all that stuff in his room,
[00:57:15.420]I was kind of scared maybe he was going to turn me in.
[00:57:18.420]Or that I tried to bribe him or something,
[00:57:20.420]but he had a smile, he started singing every day.
[00:57:23.420]And he started looking away what we were doing,
[00:57:26.420]after two months, so help me God, that guy changed.
[00:57:28.420]In fact,
[00:57:30.420]that happened in April, in June and July.
[00:57:33.420]We had a soccer team coming in from a different camp.
[00:57:37.420]To our place,
[00:57:39.420]we played soccer, it was a whole celebration.
[00:57:41.420]To get together,
[00:57:43.420]can you imagine, that's what I did to this guy.
[00:57:46.420]And even he offered us to take home,
[00:57:49.420]but we didn't want to take any chances.
[00:57:51.420]They told us next time they catch us,
[00:57:53.420]they shoot us down like dogs.
[00:57:56.420]So we didn't want to take any chances.
[00:57:59.420]In about June, we came back from work,
[00:58:04.420]and all of a sudden, the SR
[00:58:07.420]-the SR was the storm troopers
[00:58:10.420]who were staying all the way around our camp.
[00:58:13.420]And they took us out from this camp,
[00:58:15.420]we didn't know where we were going.
[00:58:18.420]That was 1943.
[00:58:21.420]So one of the guys, I'm not lying, so help me God, -he told me
[00:58:25.420]-he gave me a, because our Kapo was gone, he went to Auschwitz
[00:58:28.420]so nobody was there to be the foreman.
[00:58:33.420]So one of the SS Army gave me one of those sticks
[00:58:40.420]and he said, "you take over, and if somebody steps out of line, beat the heck out of them."
[00:58:46.420]I said, "I don't step forward, I can't do those things.
[00:58:49.420]I've never hit anybody in my life and I'm not going to do it."
[00:58:52.420]So he hit me and got somebody else in my place.
[00:58:57.420]Anyway, they took us in, I'll never forget this,
[00:59:00.420]they took us in to Annaberg.
[00:59:02.420]Annaberg was at Durchgangslager, that means they kept us there for a while.
[00:59:06.420]And then they shipped us out from Annaberg someplace else.
[00:59:11.420]You know, it was very hard for us to get used to all the food they served over there,
[00:59:16.420]it was very hard after being, you know, being on our own.
[00:59:19.420]We had plenty of food
[00:59:21.420]all of a sudden they sent us in to camp with the Russians.
[00:59:26.420]You know, everything is Russian and you just get so much.
[00:59:29.420]I had a hard time getting used to it,
[00:59:31.420]for the first two, three weeks I didn't eat.
[00:59:34.420]So we only stayed in Annaberg for about two weeks,
[00:59:39.420]they shipped us out.
[00:59:42.420]We wind up after two weeks in Gräditz,
[00:59:46.420]Gräditz is by Fallbrecht.
[00:59:48.420]There were two camps, Fallbrecht and Gräditz,
[00:59:52.420]and let me tell you something, Gräditz was just like an old brewery before.
[00:59:55.420]There were about six floors,
[00:59:59.420]everything was in one building,
[01:00:02.420]and we slept, the rooms were very big.
[01:00:05.420]And we had bunk beds, three high.
[01:00:08.420]They were just wood, plain wood
[01:00:12.420]and they gave us one cover, one blanket to cover up.
[01:00:16.420]We didn't have no hay on it, nothing.
[01:00:20.420]We lay down, we had to sleep, then we went to work.
[01:00:24.420]We had to go to work,
[01:00:26.420]and this particular camp, the cook was one of my friends.
[01:00:31.420]He was actually at home,
[01:00:34.420]before the war, I don't think I would associate with him,
[01:00:37.420]but I knew him.
[01:00:40.420]Thank you.
[01:00:41.040]Thank you.

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Joe Fishel Holocaust Survivor Testimony (Tape 1)

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