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TRANSCRIPTS OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR INTERVIEWS (Page 5)
©2000 Jim Terr / Blue Canyon Productions. All Rights Reserved
PROFESSOR HERBERT F. ZIEGLER, University of HawaiiI'm teaching history of the Holocaust here, in the University of Hawaii, once a year. One of the first issues that always comes up with my students, is "how do we know about the Holocaust." And on the surface, the answer is a simple one. We have all sorts of information. But then, if you dig a little deeper, it becomes obvious that much of our information, actually, comes from records and documents that we accumulated. Documents about the perpetrators of the Holocaust. I think it is very important, for better understanding of the Holocaust, that when we talk about sources about the Holocaust that we also know about the side of the victims.
It is very important, therefore, that people who have survived the Holocaust tell us their story. A story that is obviously very painful. Not everyone can tell it, but I think subsequent generations will not only be grateful, but terribly appreciative that we have that side of the story. In my class, we are keenly aware that there are different sources of information. And those who survived the Holocaust constitute one key important source.
The danger is that the perpetrator's record, which, in large part comes through testimony from trials, and so forth, is that a perpetrator is obviously likely to tell his side of the story, which isn't always necessarily the truth. Especially if you are in a court of law and you're facing prison terms, and executions. Clearly, you tell a story that is rather self-serving. So that's one problem, I think.
There are other sources, like documents, memoranda, and so forth, that we can analyze and sift through and evaluate. But, again, I think that if we just use one side of the story, I think we get a warped picture here. I think it's not the whole picture that we're after.
Personally, I only know one survivor, myself, and he is, in fact, rather reluctant to talk about it. I know for a fact that there are survivors living in Hawaii, but none of whom I am aware of are actually willing to speak up. I would be interested, for instance, to have somebody speak to my students in my class, but nobody is really willing, at least in this community, to do that. Understandably so, but nevertheless, it's sort of a problem. It's important to get as much evidence from those who are willing to talk.
I think that the issue of continuing danger depends a little bit more on where they might live. I think the real issue is having to re-live, repeatedly, the horrible experience, and bring back memories that can only be painful. I think it's just human nature, generally speaking, that you probably, for the most part, don't want to do that. I think there are exceptions, however. I do think that people who have survived--who think however painful it is, they have an obligation to tell the story. And while it may be personally painful for them to tell the story and re-tell the story, they nevertheless want to play the role of the witness and remind the rest of us what happened in the past.
*************************************NOTE: READERS SHOULD UNDERSTAND THAT WITH THE PASSAGE OF TIME, MEMORIES OF FACTS AND CHRONOLOGIES MAY NOT BE ENTIRELY ACCURATE, AND NO CLAIM IS MADE BY THE PRODUCERS THAT THESE NARRATIVES ARE ENTIRELY ACCURATE.
THEY HAVE NOT BEEN FACT-CHECKED BY THE PRODUCERS OR OTHER INDEPENDENT PARTIES.
FURTHERMORE, THIS TRANSCRIPTION OF ALL THAT WAS SAID MAY NOT BE ENTIRELY ACCURATE.
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ZINA BIRNBERGI was 2 years old at the time and I was walking with my mother, and I saw a child near a door lying down, and I didn't understand what it was. But later, I realized, and the memory doesn't leave me alone. The Christian people-the Polaks, killed a Christian child, threw it at a Jewish door, and then they made a pogrom. A pogrom means an attack on the Jewish people. Whoever had the chance at the time to hide to run to hiding places, the rest of the Jewish people were killed by the Polaks. They said that the Jewish people killed a Christian child, and that's why all the Jewish people have to be killed. And that memory doesn't leave me alone. It must have been in 1935 or '36. No, before that, we had a Polish president, Pilsucski was his name. And he didn't allow the Polaks to kill Jewish people or threaten us, nor do anything bad. They did bad things anyway, but not as much as they wanted to.
One day, it must have in 1935 or 36, I'm not sure, I was passing by a street and I saw a lot of people standing there and crying. I soon found out that somebody killed the President, Pilsucski. And everybody was crying, and it was terrible. A short time later, the Polish people made another President-a German-I forgot his name right now. I always remembered it, right now I forgot. Ahhh, Smigli Ridz. And he became the President of Poland. And then the Polish people had freedom to do what they wanted to. To attack us from everywhere whenever they wanted and how they wanted.
In 1939, all of a sudden a bird flew into our house…..No, before that. In 1939 we lived in a street that was close to another German and Polish people. And it was just very close before the war started. Just before they created the ghetto. A group of Polish people, and maybe even German people with them, started to scream, "Let's kill those Jews here. There is a Jewish family here, let's kill them, let's kill them. My oldest brother was a great actor and singer and he knew a lot of things. He was a high officer in the Polish Army, which for Jewish people was impossible. When he heard all of those screams he imitated voices. He imitated about 8 to 10 voices, and each person had a different thing to say about how to let those Polish people have it. And they got scared to death and they ran away.
Shortly after that we had to move to another area where the ghetto was supposed to be later. We moved out of that area and my brother came home for a short time. I saw a bird flew into our apartment and it flew around and I knew that my brother is coming. Since I was eleven years old I had dreams, premonitions and visions. So I foresaw the future, and in that time during the War it was the worst time to have those things, because I saw everything before it happened. And when my brother came home he asked me to go to his fiancée and tell her that he came home. When I walked there, a group of German boys in teams of 20's stopped me and they told me to…..ah, ahhhhh….I'm nervous, I forget what I am saying. To pull their….I forgot what it's called….To pull their slate. I understood German , every word, but I didn't say. And I kept telling them "I don't understand. Say it in Polish." But they wouldn't until one guy grabbed me by the arm and put this cord of the slate in my hands to pull them. I didn't do it. I kept on going until I came to the proper place where I wanted to come, and then they let me go. On my way home, I saw a place where they were selling bread…A German place, and I stopped to buy bread. I heard somebody scream, "There's a Jewish woman here, there's a Jewish woman here." And the Germans started to look for the woman and somebody pulled her out, and she was crying and begging telling them she's not Jewish. But they took her away anyway. I thought they meant me, but I don't look Jewish. So no one ever bothered me.
Then, at a short time my brother left for Russia, and after that, we never saw him again. A short time after that, they closed the ghetto. The ghetto is like a concentration camp, but in that place the families stay together. Everybody stayed together. We were selected. So, they closed the ghetto in the very beginning of 1940, and a short time after that, maybe in early March, my father….I was sitting in the windowsill and just looking, and all of a sudden I saw my father coming towards me and eating a carrot. And I screamed, "father, father, father." He didn't hear me and I kept on calling him and then he disappeared, like into the air. And I knew that my father is dying. I short time after that, maybe about 2 weeks later, he came home and went to bed. And he was in bed for about a week. And one day he started to call me, "Faigale, Faigale, chase away the devils, chase away the devils," and things like that. And I didn't understand what was going on. And I was begging him, "Father, there's no one here." Then my mother came in and sent me on an errand, and I, instead of walking, I just ran as fast as I could. And about ten minutes later I came back. My father was dead.
When the Nazis walked in, before all of that happened. When the Nazi's walked in in September, 1939, they were singing songs. Although it was in German, I could understand every word. I just understood because I speak Jewish. They were singing, "We are taking Poland. We will take America. We will take the whole world, and we will slice open the American-Jewish bellies, and we will take their gold, their silver, and everything else they have, because it all belongs to us." I can never forget those songs and those words, and how they spoke, because I understood every single word. When the ghetto closed after my father died, my youngest brother got sick and he died from starvation. There was a close family-there were 4 people, and they were in the ghetto together with us and we were very close. One day I found out where they lived and went to visit. The parents had already died. The two sisters were left alive. One was laying in bed, and the other one was sitting next to her. When I came up, I wanted to say hello, and sit by the sick girl by her bed, and the other one chased me away. She screamed, "Don't touch her." I noticed that she had lice on her body. Her eyes were closed and they were full of lice, and she died a short time after that. And then the older sister died of the same problem.
People were starving and dying in the streets, especially in the wintertime. They were falling like flies all over the street, and lying dead. There were special things where you take the garbage away-I don't know what there were called. Young boys were….It was like a round can like for garbage. And young boys were carrying that to throw the bodies in. One was for the garbage, the other one was for the bodies. Those bodies were mostly thrown into big groups and they were put on piles to burn them.
Then we started to have selections. The first selection, they were taking away young children and women. All the people and young children. I was not a young child, but I was only 12 or 13 years old at the time, and I was not very healthy. The first year in the ghetto I just got very very sick and I almost died. So my mother and my younger sister and I were hiding in a rooftop, and I saw a little window, and I laid down and looked out through that window, and I saw one of the trucks that had the people from the selection on the truck. It was not a truck; it was a wagon with two horses. And one of those people, one man, tried to escape, and they caught him and tied his feet to the wagon, and his body was hanging down and his head was bumping against the concrete. There was a long sign of blood from his head. Those things were horrible to watch. After that the selections continued.
One day, I was caught, and my older brother was caught in that selection. My older brother managed to escape and he ran into a building and he hid in that building. The Germans were chasing him, and they found another man. They didn't find him. He came home alive, and I was taken to a special place, to a hospital out of the ghetto and I was put in a room. The first floor in Poland was like the second floor here. I was in a room with a lot of other people. There was only standing room. I was standing by a wall, and I was praying for hours. All I wanted to do was go home and see my mother one more time, and then I didn't care if I died. That ordeal was early in the morning, and about late afternoon I managed to get out of that room. I went over to the door and there was a little window and I looked out, and one of the workers asked me if I wanted to go to the bathroom, and I said "Yes." So she let me out, and I saw a woman with a young girl talking to a policeman so I hid behind them. I was very small. And when they walked down I walked down beside them and I managed to run out and I ran as fast as I could because I was wearing wooden shoes that were about two sizes too big for me. I managed to get behind the morgue (?) and I stood there for a while, and there were a lot of other people hiding there. They heard me and they thought it might have been a Nazi, so they were quiet, and they didn't know what to do. Then somebody asked, "who is there," and I didn't answer until I saw who was talking, and I came out. And when the guard changed, the people started to talk about running away, and I saw one and two and three people run away, so I run after them, and I run out. And a German Nazi grabbed me by the arm and kept me, but I managed to slide out of his arm and I ran away, and I ran home. It took many hours, because in-between I had to hide by small buildings-entrances to courtyards where like a big opening, and the doors were closed, so I used to hide in these places, until I came home late at night. No one expected me to be alive.
The horrors in the ghetto continued and the selections continued for a long time. In the beginning of 1944, we hid in a basement. It was a very deep hole in the ground. It wasn't really a basement. We were hiding there for about a week, or maybe ten days. My older sister would go out and try to find some food until it was impossible to keep on staying there, and we came out and went to where the German guards were, and we were sent to Auschwitz.
When we came close to the trains, there were a lot of Gestapo men with dogs-German Shepherds-and they were pushing us up on the trains, and we were so crowded that one person stood practically on top of the other. Many people died from starvation, from the heat of being so close to one another. They died standing up. They couldn't fall down. There was no room to fall down.
On the trains that I was on, and my mother, and a big part of my family. We were a very large family. And a lot of people died standing up. Then, when we finally came down from the trains, there was a selection. My mother was taken away and one of my nephews-my older sister's boy, with my mother. And they were taken away. My sister had twins, and they were taken away-my oldest sister. I had a very large family. Most of them were taken away to the ovens. A short time later, we stood there. I stood there and I watched the ashes from the oven where my family went to. And I just couldn't take it. I ran after my mother when they took her, but my older sister grabbed me by the arm and she said, "Stay here. Don't move." And she held me by the arm. She wouldn't let me go. She saved my life.
After that, we went into a room where they were bathing. So we stood on the cold shower, and then we were given concentration camp clothes. The clothes consisted of one dress, nothing else. And a pair of wooden shoes. And the ones I got were two sizes two big on my feet. From there, we were in a camp, in a room. We were laying on the floor, like herring, or sardines, so close on after the other. One woman just coughed and she was taken out and put out on the table and beaten to death. I will never forget that. How could people do that? No matter who they are or what they are, how can one woman kill another woman, with her hands and with other things, just because she was Jewish? Those were horrible times.
Then, we went through many selections. After the selections, we were put in a place where it was only electric fence in an empty place. It was a very large place, and we were only women, and a lot of use were very very young, and we stayed there for 3 days and nights, naked, without any clothes or anything on us. Just like we were born. Outside. If it was raining, or the wind was blowing, or it was very cold, we just stood there like that for three days and three nights. And then we came out. There were some women that just couldn't take anymore and they threw themselves on the fence and started to burn. There was, not ashes, but like smoke, coming from their mouth. And those stories are just horrible to remember and to tell. We were in Auschwitz and Birkenau both, for about a week or ten days, and then we were put on trucks and were taken to another place, a factory for German ammunition. When we came to that factory, there was a very large room, and there were a lot of men and there were two on tables. Those men were Italian men. Not the Italians that worked with Mussolini. Those Italians were good people. They were also in concentration camps, but they had a lot of freedom, not like we were. And they gave us food before we went into the camps. We just couldn't believe it. It was impossible to believe that after all of those horrors, that I just spoke a few of them, that the men still were human beings, because I didn't believe that there were any left. They gave us food and they were very, very nice to us.
When we came to the camps, we walked by ammunition machines. I had to stand on a chair because I was too short to be able to reach any of the machines. But I managed, and I worked very good. And one of the Italian men came over. He called me "Piccollo Bambino". Which means little baby. And he asked me to marry him. I was only 16 years old. That was in the beginning of 1945. And I told him "No. I can't marry you. I am Jewish and I will stay Jewish." So he left. But he never forgot me, and I never forgot him. He told me that any time, if I would like to come to Italy, he gave me his address and his family name, and he asked me to come and visit him. But I never went back. I didn't think of it, but I never forgot him, because he was so nice. In 1945, May 8th, the day Hitler capitulated, Czechoslovakian partisans took us out about 12:00 o'clock noon, and we marched with them to Czechoslovakia. It was about 7 or 8 kilometers from the border. There were lots of sick people and they were put on trucks, and they also went to Czechoslovakia to the hospitals. That same night, the German soldiers on their way back from the fighting, stopped at that camp and they meant to kill us all. But we had already left.
So we stayed in Czechoslovakia for a while, and the people were very nice….We stayed in a school for a few days, and then we were taken to private homes. And the people were very, very nice to us. The Czechoslovakian people. I will never forget them. About three weeks later, or maybe a month later, we decided, I was with two sisters-my older sister that grabbed me by the arm, and my younger sister. We decided to go back home to Poland and see if we could find any family. On the way back, we went to a road that was near ……..Oh I forget everything…..It was a big place with a lot of trees, and as we were walking my sister with her friend went away. They wanted to look around the area. I was left with my younger sister.As my younger sister and I were walking near the forest, we saw my sister and her friend coming back. And at the same time, a Jeep with four soldiers…not soldiers, but officers, were driving close to us. When my sister came towards us with her friend…..Before that, before my sister and her friend….the Jeep came close towards us. The Polish people came out from the forest and they were going to take us into the forest….My younger sister and me. So, my sister saw what was happening and she went over to the Jeep and she spoke to one of the officer's, the major officer. He was much more than an officer, but I don't remember the rank. And she told him what was happening and he came out and stopped those Polish men and they went back into the forest, and we went free. And then we started walking ? the train, because my younger sister and I didn't know where it was.
We were were walking towards the train until we found it and the train was full of Polish people. Different kind of people, and they were driving back to Poland. On the way, we had to change trains, and they were all Polish. And by the time we came back it was late night. We found a place and we stayed there. My sister found a man that she was talking to, and they went walking, and we stayed in a place. We had to transfer to another place where the Jewish community where. My sister didn't know where we were, and we didn't know where she was. She went with that man. A few days later, they got married.
My younger sister and I were walking and we found a temporary Jewish community-a place where we took our names. And we stayed there. There was a special room for people to sleep on the floor. So we stayed there. My brother-in-law a few days later came to look for us, and he took us to their apartment. The apartment was in what was called "The Balut"…in not such a good area. Most of the people there were Polish or German. The apartment that they found was where a German family used to live. So we stayed in that apartment and one day I was looking out the window and there was a bunch of boys downstairs, and they called me "German", something or other. And I opened the window and said, "I am not German," and I spoke to them in Jewish. So they asked me to please come down, and I came down. And they told me there was a kibbutz, and they asked me to join the kibbutz. A kibbutz is a group of people that we stay together, we live together. Not boys and girls together, but girls together, and boys separate, but in the same building. We were training to do different things, and we were walking during the daytime, and we were supposed to go to Israel.
One day, I was walking in the street and a Polish car, not a car, there were no cars-a horse and buggy were driving past us and they stopped when they saw us. And they asked us if they saw any Jews around because they had to kill the rest of them. We said "No", and we kept on walking. We came to the kibbutz; we walked in factories and different places. About a few months later, we were getting ready to leave Poland. So we had to train to speak another language. It was Turkish. We changed our names and we only spoke a few words, like our names and five-six words that we knew and that's all. Just the get through the borders. We went on a train and came out of Poland and we came to Germany. We stayed with the kibbutz in Germany and we also walked, but we had free time. During the free times, a few kids, me included, made a big garden. And I asked them to make a Star of David in the garden. And we made a Star of David in the Garden. We were in Germany for about 9 months or a year, and then we went into a place close to the border of France, near the ocean. We stayed there for a while, and from there, we took the ship-it wasn't a ship, it was a boat-where we went with 1300 people on that boat to go to Israel illegally. We were caught in mid-ocean by the British and were taken to a camp. We were taken to Cypress. We stayed in Cypress for 7 months in prison.
After we came out, we were taken to Israel to another camp, "Atlit". It was also a prison. We stayed in that prison for 2 months. Not all of us, because a lot of the people in Cypress came earlier, and they left earlier. So we stayed in that camp for 2 months, and then we went to kibbutz Kinosar (sp?) in Israel, in the Galilee, and we stayed there. When the Arabs started to attack us and the War broke out, there were a lot of horrible stories. The Arabs caught a very young boy-he was 11 years old-and they castrated him alive. They caught some other boys and did the same things. They caught a girl and they raped her en masse and let her lay there until she died. There were a lot of horrible things. And then they were shooting at us. But the Jewish people were very, very smart. The Israeli Jewish people. They took from the civilians from whatever they could get-Jeeps-and they closed them with windows so they would look like Panthers-a fighting truck during the war. And they took together between 6 to 12 of those Jeeps and they were driving from one kibbutz to the next, back and forth. The Arabs saw them going back and forth and they look like Army. They were dressed like soldiers. And they looked like Army jeeps with soldiers in them, so the Arabs got scared and they ran away. There were about 12 Arab villages and they ran away. Otherwise, they would have killed us all.
So we survived, and then the War started a short time after that. I have a picture with a rifle in my arms. I was guard at night. We stayed in the kibbutz for, I don't remember how long. And then, I found out that my brothers are alive and they are in another kibbutz and they asked us to come and stay with them together.
We left and went to the other kibbutz to join our two brothers-three brothers, actually. And my older sister was left in Poland. It was just me and my younger sister. So we stayed in that kibbutz, and then the War started. The 1948 War about Israel against the Arabs. The Arabs were constantly attacking us from all sides, and we had to fight back. Whatever ammunition the Jewish people had in the kibbutzim or in private homes, the English soldiers confiscated everything we had. But we had to fight back, and the Jewish people knew how to do things. They really were very, very smart-the Israeli soldiers. And with as little ammunition as we had, we managed to fight back. It didn't take very long until the Arabs just left us free. They didn't have ammunition, they didn't have anything, but they drove Jeeps at night. So the Arabs thought that there was a big Army and they got scared and vanished from different places. Israel became a State. I think I can stop here.
The people that deny that the Holocaust ever happened, they are Nazis. Most of them are German Nazis. But a lot of them are also Polish Nazis that were against us forever. Always and forever. And they deny it, but it is the truth. Six million people died-most of them in Auschwitz, or Birkenau. And a lot of other camps, like Treblinka. Those camps were all real death camps, and there's no denial about that, because there's a lot of documentation in different places. In New York, in Washington, everywhere, that it is true. There's no denying it.
I was there, and I know what was going on, and I know what the Nazis could do and what the Polish people did together with them. And there's no denying it. It was all true, and so much more. I only told a very short story of the real story that I could tell. And it would take days, and it would take weeks to tell my story. But I made it short. And it's all true.
When the war started, it was a very bad war. We had no ammunition, but the Jewish soldiers and the Israeli soldiers mostly, --The Jewish soldiers--I am talking about the survivors of the Holocaust--together with the Israeli soldiers, managed to fight back. And it was just……We had many miracles to win that war. It was an impossible thing to do, but we managed to do it. The Israeli soldiers were very smart, and very handy with things to show that they have, which they didn't have. And the Arabs were just too afraid. They showed their strength, but they don't have any. If they had physical strength, they don't have any emotional strength. They're too much afraid, and they're still are like that. And if Israel things that if they give away a lot of land they will ever get peace, I don't believe it. Because the more land they will give back to the Arabs, the more the Arabs will attack the Israeli people. And the more wars there will be. That is my opinion. I am not sure about it. I have a lot more to say, but……
(subsequent interview):
When the Nazis walked in to the lodge, their famous song in German was, and I understood every single word of it: "We are taking Poland. We are going to take France and all of Europe. We're going to take America……."
My first job in the ghetto was cleaning the ice that accumulated the whole winter from the streets, with about ten grown men. I was the only one girl, 12 years old. After that, I got sick, but that's not important. I had a few jobs after that. My second job was making braids from straw for boots for the Germans. And that was also a very hard job. After that, I had a few jobs. On one of them I was making a small floor mop. It was from thread. And I couldn't make the straight lines like everybody else made. I made mountains instead. A commission was there, and they went around all over to see how the people are working. Mengele, Hitler's right-hand, stopped by me, and he looked at what I was doing. He asked me how old I was, I told him. He asked me if I needed shoes, and I said, "No thank you." My shoes had holes all over the place, but I wouldn't ask him for shoes. Then, he asked me what I was doing. What did I do that job differently than everybody else….I said, "I don't know, I just like it better." He stood there for a few minutes and observed what I was doing and he looked at me, and then he left.
A few days later, I was transferred to a different job, which I couldn't do either. And then, my last job was to make silk tablecloths with a design that each stitch was different from the other. The design had to be made from a mop. And that was my last job in the ghetto.
There was Rumkowski, the President of the ghetto-a Jewish man working with the Nazis. He was with the police and the fire fighters. He was making the selections. Not him, personally. He told people when and how to make the selections. Of course, he got the message from the Germans first. But he was commanding all of those things. How and when to do it. Any other things that were supposed to be done in the ghetto. He thought that he would survive and he would be a big shot after the war. But he ended up in the crematoriums just like all of the other 6 million Jewish people did.
I just knew who Mengele was. They were talking about him in the ghetto. I did hear about him. And at that time, my memory was in perfect condition, not like today. Today, I'm very forgetful.
I heard his name because after Mengele I was still in the ghetto. I was working making those tablecloths. I made about 3 of them, and they were for oval tables, big oval tables. Like flowers, and leaves. Beautiful, beautiful tablecloths. From silk. And for that you needed 3 different kinds of needles to do it. You started up with a needle, I don't know the name of it…..A little, small thing, just to crochet…crochet needle. Then, after the crochet needle you have to go to 5 small needles, and after the 5 small needles, there was a big, round needle…….And with that, we made all of those big, beautiful tablecloths. They had the most beautiful designs of flowers and leaves…. Just fantastic. I never saw any work like that.
After I made that, I made a sweater for myself, without any seams. With pockets that didn't have to be sewn in. They were knit together in just the most beautiful sweater I've ever seen. But I never had a chance to wear it.