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TRANSCRIPTS OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR INTERVIEWS (Page 2)
©2000 Jim Terr / Blue Canyon Productions. All Rights Reserved
JOSEPH KESNER
In May 10th, 1940, the Germans invaded Holland, Belgium and France on a Friday, and three days after that on a Monday, May the 13th, 1940 I came home and told my family, "Let's get the hell outta here." And we did. We took a train. We wanted to go to France. We took a train from Antwerp, Belgium, to Brussels. We never got to Brussels, really. Because before we got to Brussels at Schaerbeek they were calling through the microphone, or whatever they call it. "The refugees from France or Paris get out of here". So we did. My wife and my little boy-he was then 7-8 months-my father and mother in law, and three sisters in law got out and were led to a freight train, very clean with straw and everything else. And that was the only thing that we had there. And we were on a trip that took us 5 days. We were in France, for one place to another because the military obviously had priority. And we were told that when we arrived in Valentine Haute Garrone The Haute Garrone was a department of France. Capital Toulouse. We were in St. Gaudens which was the Super sous-prefecture as they called it. And we got out of there in Valentin. Valentin was the birthplace of Marshall Foch in World War I. Anyway, we got there.
We were escaping because we were Jewish. We didn't want to get burned in the gas chamber that's why we escaped. Two months later a few Arabs, Tunisians, Moroccans, Algerians came to the place to wait to be repatriated to North Africa. And we were talking and they told us that there would be a much better life in North Africa. For two sheep you could get a 14-15 year old wife. I thought this was a good idea. But then France collapsed. And I went on the bike from Valentine to Toulouse, which was about 200 kilometers back and forth and I got a passport from the Dutch consul in Toulouse, giving us an opportunity to leave Valentin to go to Algeria.
We got to Algiers. First we went to Porvendre; that's close to the Spanish border on the Mediterranean. From there we took the boat. The Governor General came on, and took us to Algiers. In Algiers we had some French living there-Arabs who gave us their address, so we thought we were ok there. Then we came to the place where they were living and they were to the bled (oasis). That's like living in the country. The guy, his name was Muktar-I'll never forget that. The guy came up with a taxi. I said to my wife, "Let's get in it and go to the Dutch Consulate in the Rue Richelieu In Algiers. Of course, it was after 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon and the thing was closed, so we went the next day. I'm showing that there were some good Arabs too.
The next day we went to the Rue Ricelieu and the guy gave me 100 francs, because I didn't have that much money. The day after I went every day to the consulate and the secretary told me one day that there was another Dutchman that was living there. Oh, good, send him to my place to the Place Du Government, which was the hotel. Alright He knocks at the door at 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon. I opened the door and said "My God what are you doing here." It was a friend of mine that I hadn't seen for years that came to Antwerp at the age of 12. I taught him to speak French and now here he is. You get a little money from Monsieur Gotray. He was the Swedish consul who also took care of all the countries that were occupied by the Germans.
He said, "come to Oran". We went to Oran. I had to go to get some money for a ticket for the train. I became Catholic and went to see Cardinal Dozun in Algiers. He gave me 200 francs. I went to the Protestant Church, they gave me 200 francs. I went to the Jewish community and I got their 200 francs. So I got enough money for one ticket. My wife and my child had to be on it. So I got the wrong ticket, as we called it. Take somebody to the train to get a ticket and you have to give that back when you go out. So that was the idea. Any time the conductor came into the train to Oran I disappeared. But we got there. People waiting for me, a number of friends. Oran is in North Africa. We've got Algiers, Oran, that's Algeria. On the other side is Tunisia. On the other side is Morrocco. My son was born in Oran. He's now a professor at the University of Salt Lake City. I wrote a story about that, the one I gave you.
A few months after that, I had a feeling to leave. I had premonitions. Feelings of "do this," the same way we left Antwerp to go to France. This time there was a feeling of "Let's get the hell out of Oran." The day after we left, all of the foreigners in Orran were picked up by the French Vichy with the Gestapo behind them and were sent to the Trans Orient (railroad)-the real road through the Sahara.
We went to Casablanca, and from Casablanca to Tangiers, where we were there for about a week. On August 15th my oldest son died. He was undernourished. We didn't have much food. He caught Malaria-Paludismo-so he died and he's buried in Tangiers. I started work for the British Intelligence Service. My wife and the new baby were living there and I was working for the British Intelligence, and after I placed a bomb in the German thing it exploded, and the story is right there. I was smuggled out of Tangiers to Gibraltar. I was there for a while because I resolved the problem of a spy that came in and we recognized him as being a German and not a Dane. Captain Townsend, the security officer, told me "you're not a British Subject, so we can't give you a medal, but is there anything we can do for you." I said, "Yeah, my wife and son are still in Tangiers, can you get them over to Gibraltar." It happened. After a while she was not allowed to come ashore in Gibraltar. Women were not allowed in that period.
We got on board the Yon Sobieski from the Gdinia American line. We went to England, and that's where I joined the Air Force. The Royal Dutch Naval Air Service, affiliated to the RAF. I was flying B-25's. Meanwhile, my daughter was born in Hereford, England on my birthday, November 15th. The most expensive birthday present I ever got. (laughs).
That is up to England. In England I was flying, and later on I was demobilized back to Antwerp, Belgium. But the whole idea was….Oh, I forgot to tell you that I escaped from a camp in Tunis. We had been in a boat in Tunis to go to Malta. Malta was British at the time. There were 19 of us…Somebody betrayed us. We went to a camp in Tunis. I've forgotten the name of the camp. There were 4 of us left. A Frenchman, a Czech, and English and myself. I have a God-given gift for language. I spoke Arabic. One day during the Ramadan we killed the guard and got away, because he was on a hill and it was 12:00 o'clock when the train came past, and it has to make a turn around the hill and slows down. We jumped into a freight car for cows. And in Tangiers I placed a bomb in the German laboratorium that they had, full of telescopes to see where they're going in Gibraltar. It exploded, dominis secularum, amen, for all the Germans there.
My wife played a very interesting role there. In Tangiers, the secretary of the German Embassy was in love with my wife, which is ok. He drank a lot and she got out of him exactly what I needed to know. She was always in the background but always there. We were always together,. When she was there and we were there, we went to London patriotic school and Madeline went to the Obram Hills. And then to Hereford, where my daughter was born. Madeline was always right there when she was needed.
I became aware of the Germans and the Jews in Antwerp because we were close to the German border. We knew what was going on. In 1936 there was the Olympiad in Berlin. Hitler's Olympiad. Quite a few countries didn't participate there. So they had a counter Olympiad in Barcelona, Spain, which was social democratic. Don't mix that up with Communism, because it isn't. That's where I got to know a guy by the name of Jack de Challard. Never forget him. He was from Canada from the people that came to fight against Franco. He started with that. On the same day-the 18th of July, 1936, Franco started his Civil War, which was nothing else but he was being paid by the Germans, and by the French, and by the British, and by the Americans. But they won't accept that. It is a fact. They didn't know what was going. Most people didn't know what was going on. We knew. We had family. My family was in Germany. It was Crystal Night-the night that they broke all the glass and windows of all the Jewish Synagogues, shops. They broke everything that belonged to the Jewish people. When we were on the road, we met so many people that had escaped.
My three sisters and my mother in law went to Switzerland. My father in law died in Auschwitz. I found out later on that all my family was killed in Auschwitz and in Sobibor.
My brother was missing. He was shot by the Germans in Antwerp. He was delivering false identity coupons and so on, and he got caught in the raid and that I heard from the people that were there. After I left, all of this happened. My family and everybody was taken by the Germans. We never found my brother's body. I have a big book here full of names of people, 500,000 Dutchmen that have been murdered. My Grandma in Sobibor from my father's side. My grandparents from my mother's side in Auschwitz. Three Uncles and Aunts in Auschwitz. Cousins, Auschwitz.
The people who are trying to tell other people that it never happened are either ignorant or they don't want to know the truth. I have met some of these people. There were people that denied the fact that there was a holocaust. They denied the fact that the Jews were blamed for everything that was wrong. They said, "oh, that's exaggerated." Six million Jews were murdered. Six million other people-Gypsies, Poles, Russians, Dutch, Christians, were murdered. 12 millions in total. These people who are saying these things things ought to be, as my friend would say from Montana, they should be hung, drawn, and quartered. Or hung first and then give them a fair trial. Of course that's a joke, but I can understand that. How can they deny these things? Look what happened in Kosovo? Look what happened all over the world? These people should be taught, first of all, what was going on. They should read stories. And I wrote one of them. I wrote a book on it, which at the present moment is being re-edited, corrected.
When I was on the run with my wife and my little boy from France, Tangiers, and so on, I was hearing the words from everybody that most of them murdered were refugees. In Orran, I wrote it in the story that I gave you, I was in the Salvation Army. My son was born December 19, 1940 on a Friday and on December the 22nd the Salvation Army had a party for the "pauper's meal" and I went there. I was the only Jew. No I was not the only Jew, there were three other ones: Mary, Joseph and Jesus. There were Poles, Czechs-you name the nationality that was occupied by the Germans. And I sang the song, "Oh, Holy Night" in French, and when I finished I saw all of these people, all refugees that were sitting there, crying. And all of a sudden, all of them begun to sing the same song in his own language. I head from them what was going on. They told me that they had run away.
When I was going to Gibraltar I was smuggled out at the coal bunker. There were two guys in it. One of them was the Viscomte d' Jonghe d'Artois. His mother was lady in waiting to the late Queen Astrid of Belgium. The other guy, Juteyenne (sp?) he was running away from the Foreign Legion. You should have seen how they looked like. They had escaped from Tetawan and they also went to Gibraltar. You should have heard what they told. The murders, the torture that was going on in those camps. In that one camp about 19…there were 4 left. Another 15 were murdered, tortured to death. The camp that I was in.
I never told my wife what I was doing, and that was the best thing that I could do. Even when I was in England, flying…I never told her where I was flying. I was a navigator, bombardier, air gunner. And I was flying the B-25. My crew, there were three of them-the pilot, Joshua van Leeuwen, he was Protestant, John Meyer was the bellygunner, he was Catholic, Brandon was the tail gunner, he was Islam, and I was Jewish. And the joke went through the camp if one God isn't there to help us, the other one will be.
Crazy things like that when you think of it.